Post 31 - April 11, 2020
Day 31…
A month.
A whole month.
Nick Cordero, a Tony-nominated actor has been in a coma for the last 12 days.
His wife tweeted out last night that he really needs our prayers now as he has taken a turn for the worse.
He’s 41 years old.
He is a strapping health-looking guy with a beautiful wife and a young kid.
This is real.
None of us are safe from this.
Many of us are sitting at home where we feel safe.
Separate from all of “that” going on out there.
We are doing our zoom meetings and reading funny memes and watching Netflix.
The White House is going to try push us out of our homes and back to work before it’s fully safe to do so.
Now, mind you, I get it.
The economy really does need to start up again.
Millions upon millions of people are unemployed.
At the height of the depression in the early 1930’s the unemployment rate was nearly 25%.
We are currently at about 13% which is the worst since then.
Even after the 2008 financial crisis we only got to about 10%.
They are going to push us back at the point where they feel that the level of resulting death will be acceptable.
Companies are going to start gearing advertising towards us to convince us that everything is fine.
We should relax and buy their product.
Relax and go to the gym. Pickup a latte.
Chill out and go to a game or a show.
They are going to downplay just how serious this virus is to get us to go out and spend.
And, wow, do we all want that.
Let’s prepare ourselves for a whole barrage of false information coming our way.
What do WE feel an acceptable level of resulting death is?
Is there such a thing?
The White House is launching a task force to decide how this will happen at the same time that their own expert, Dr. Fauci, is saying that the peak is still ahead of us.
You don’t plan for recovery from a war when you are in the middle of fighting it.
All of that energy should be going towards fighting this virus - coordinating our response - TESTING.
Yes, we are going to need to recover, but we have to win the fight first.
And we HAVE to be smart.
The White House’s is not being smart.
We have to force them to be.
There is a 30% drop in pollution over the northeastern United States.
The lowest that has been recorded since NASA started monitoring it.
The air quality index in New Delhi was at 45 last month - this time last year it was 160.
There are blue skies in India’s major cities for the first time in recent memory.
The air around the world is cleaner.
The water is cleaner.
Do we want to give all of that up?
For the last month, my spending has gone way down.
We’re buying food and supplies.
On a usual pre-virus day, I would come home with a wallet full of receipts.
We go food shopping now only every few days.
What on earth was I buying? Do I want to go back to buying all that stuff?
The basis of our economy is actually us buying stuff.
Spending money on transportation and eating out.
Buying clothes and consumer products.
The Consumer Price Index is one of the major numbers that economists look at to judge the health of our economy. It’s down.
The price of oil is WAY down - who’s going anywhere?
We used to make fun of my Dad being a Depression baby.
He was born in 1923 and came of age in Virginia during the worst financial crisis that the country had ever seen.
He was a generous man in later years but loathe to spend frivolously.
It went against everything he learned growing up.
The rest of the family was all about spending frivolously. We didn’t live through that time.
We can all now choose how we return to “normal” and what that “normal” will look like.
The Government and corporations are all going to push us to go back to life exactly the way it was before this started.
Sounds good. Great even…
But.
Do we really want to completely give up these crystal blue skies?
Maybe we should rethink some of how we were living before we dive back unthinking to exactly the way it was.
My job requires me to be on airplanes. A lot.
I don’t see a lot of ways around that.
But maybe there are other things I can do to help mitigate the impact of that.
We should all make a concerted effort to get closer to carbon neutrality.
Just open the window and look at the difference this month has made.
We have the time to think about it.
Early days.
Governor Cuomo just offered this quote from Winston Churchill,
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.”
We have to start our lives again.
There’s no question.
We have to.
But not yet.
Let’s think about it for a minute.
And pray for Nick.