Post 259 - November 25, 2020

Day 259…

The lines at COVID testing centers in the city, yesterday, stretched completely past their storefronts, around the corners and out of sight down the side streets.

Since all of this started, I have never seen anything like what I saw yesterday. Clearly, people are trying to get tested before they gather together with family members for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Even if the results come in before they leave to visit their loved ones, and the tests are negative, it still doesn’t make for a safe get together.

First of all, in my experience, it is extremely unlikely that anyone who got tested yesterday at CityMed will get their results before tomorrow.

The two factors that seem to have the most effect on the transmission of the virus are proximity and time.

Proximity and Time.

If somebody on one of those lines was infected, the people standing on the lines with them will have spent many hours near them. When I last got tested at CityMed, I started out about six people back into the line and it took me about 45 minutes to get inside. Some of the lines I saw yesterday had nearly 100 people in them. Those people waited for an extremely long time - if they got in at all.

If somebody picked up the virus while they were waiting in that line, it would not show up on the test that they took yesterday. Their infections would not show up until maybe later tonight or tomorrow - right at the point when they are possibly going to sit down to eat their holiday meals.

There is also the very real possibility that in the days following the test that they will have become infected. It could have happened as they left the clinic.

Air travel, since the pandemic started, seems to have not been the cause of much of the virus spread. Fewer people have been flying. Long haul flights are much rarer than shorter domestic flights. Most of us aren’t allowed to go anywhere.

The air-scrubbers in the planes seem to have done their jobs. What is not so clear, is how getting on and getting off planes and waiting for luggage and all of the other parts of air travel have played in virus transmission. Still, with the decreased number of people actually moving through the airports, there have been no reports of super-spreader events connected with air travel.

Harvard University has developed a mathematical model that shows that the risk of transmission on an airplane is much lower than it would be in a similar situation in an enclosed room because of their ventilation systems.

In the last few days, however, record numbers of people have passed through our nation’s airports. On Sunday over a million people went through TSA checkpoints which is the highest number recorded since March 16th at the start of the shut-down. On that day, 1.2 million people flew. Back then, everyone was desperately trying to get to wherever they had decided to hunker down for the duration.

This means that flights that may have been uncrowded a week ago, are going to be much fuller. Airports that up until now have been fairly desolate are going to be busy and crowded. However high the risk that passengers are taking by flying, multiply that by many factors for the people who are working for the airlines. They are going to be around potentially ill passengers for hours on end.

People with fevers will not be allowed to fly, but at least half of all transmissions come from people who don’t have any symptoms at all.  Just because the person sitting next to you doesn’t seem sick doesn’t mean that they aren’t contagious. People who live fairly close to their families will probably try to drive. That means that a contagious person could be sitting next to healthy people on a plane for several hours.

People who are making these trips will likely stay with whomever they are visiting for a few days. They aren’t going all that way to show up, eat and then leave.

Proximity and time. Those are the two major factors.

I know from friends and family who have actually decided to travel this week that some people, at least, are going into this adventure with a clear-eyed understanding of the risks. They are doing everything in their power to make it as safe as possible with the understanding that complete safety is impossible. There are always mitigating circumstances around decisions like this.

There seem to be plenty of people, however, who are just doing it because they want to. A click around the channels gets you interviews with any number of travelers who just don’t believe that they are posing a risk to anyone. Fox, CNN, BBC, MSNBC - they are all talking to people with similar views. It’s Thanksgiving and they can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take it anymore? Really?

While I have spent plenty of Thanksgivings with family, I have also spent plenty of them away from them out on the road. I have spent at least two of them in the same restaurant in San Francisco with different Jersey Boys companies. I think we were even in South Africa for one a few years ago.

No other country but the US celebrates Thanksgiving at the same time we do. Canada has a Thanksgiving, but they celebrate it earlier in the year. When Americans are out of the country on the fourth Thursday in November, you have to make do with what you can find.

Here in New York, where we have had relatively low rates of infection since the horrendous peaks we experienced back in the spring, our hospitalizations have risen 128% in the past three weeks.

In a press conference yesterday, the Governor warned that even without the anticipated holiday spike, that we could see our positivity rate rise to as high as 12%. We could get 6,000 more hospitalizations in the coming weeks if we continue to follow the model.

He talked about his plans to gather with his elderly mother and two of his children in a radio interview. His mother couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t gather, and his daughters had been upset. The backlash, however, was immediate.

“It’s so much easier to just say we’ll do it the way we normally do it. Come over. We’ll be careful,” Is how he described what his thinking was.  “It’s a mistake,” is what he concluded. He changed his plans and is figuring out how to connect with them virtually.

The President was meant to join his overpaid personal lawyer today, at yet another event designed to throw into question the results of the election. It just got cancelled because yet another White House aide who has had a lot of contact with Giuliani has just tested positive for COVID-19.

Continuing his trend of complete non-governance, the President, instead, is reportedly discussing issuing a pardon for Michael Flynn.

Flynn was the President’s National Security Advisor for less than a month at the beginning of his term in office. He resigned when it became clear that he had lied about contact that he had had with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign. In 2017 he made a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of making false statements to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

In January of this year, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. The Department of Justice under William Barr announced that it intended to drop all of the charges against Flynn, but a Federal District Judge placed the matter on hold.

Pardoning Flynn will guarantee that whatever information he may have that implicates the President will remain hidden.

This is likely to be the first of many such pardons that we will see before January 20th. We are unlikely to get a stimulus bill passed, or any other meaningful legislation that benefits the American people. The President is going to be far too busy doing everything he can to cover his ass to be able to think about any of us at all.

That so many people are flying home to gather with their families is inevitable. Given the President’s repeated belittling of the dangers of the virus, why wouldn’t the people who listen to him and believe him not travel?

Poor Dr. Fauci is doing everything that he can to warn people against gathering with their elderly relatives but since the science behind what he is saying has been undermined, the message is falling on deaf ears.

There are plenty of people who are going to stay home this week. The people who are choosing to be safe and cautious around this holiday are still going to pay the price for the people who aren’t.

Thanksgiving is going to be rough enough. Then we are going to have the December holidays to face.

The best way that we can take care of ourselves is to take care of those around us. The best way that we can take care of those around us is to stay away from them. It’s truly as simple as that.

Celebrate together - apart.

Just this year. Next year… we’ll do it up!

Stay safe and well, as best you can. If you are traveling, please be careful - not only of yourself, but also of all of the people around you.

We are all in this together.

Wherever you are and whomever you are with or not with, may everyone have a happy and safe Thanksgiving,