Post 51 - May 1, 2020
Day 51…
Yesterday, Michael and I reach a new milestone in our relationship.
He let me cut his hair.
I get my hair cut all over the world.
I love watching different people cut it.
It’s a bit mesmerizing.
It was kind of great to be able to try it out myself.
It was fun!
I don’t think that Adam Zelasko is going to hire me at his salon anytime soon, but I did a pretty decent job if I do say so, myself.
While I was cutting his hair, our collective national response to these tiny lipid-covered bits of RNA continued to devolve and fall apart.
The President’s son-in-law very proudly announced a couple of days ago that the Administration’s response to the pandemic has been an overwhelming success.
He said this as deaths from the virus hit 60,000 and are still climbing.
I don’t know why anyone is listening to the President’s son-in-law.
He brings no expertise to the table and has a long impressive record of never succeeding - at anything.
This announcement heralded a whole new level of the President doing everything that he can to shift blame off of himself.
He is in a mad scramble to not take a shred of blame for anything that has gone wrong.
This, as things continue going very badly wrong, is what he is spending his time doing.
Looking for something or someone to pin the blame on.
His latest scapegoat: China.
A couple of weeks ago, he LOVED China.
Today, though, he wants us to believe that the Chinese created this virus in a lab and purposely released it.
According to an overwhelming majority of scientists and health professionals, there is nothing in the virus’s genetic make-up to suggest that it was created in a lab.
Search though I have, I can’t find anybody who really thinks that it was engineered.
Another theory has been floated that scientists studying the virus in a lab in Wuhan accidentally (or on purpose) allowed the virus to escape out into the population.
The virus is believed to have started in bats.
The lab in Wuhan had been studying bats and how they carry and transmit viruses.
Bats seem to be far more tolerant of viruses than most other terrestrial mammals and, because they can fly, become tiny airborne reservoirs.
One of the reasons that viruses such as COVID-19 and SARS seem to arise out of China is that the Chinese eat bats.
To be fair, the Chinese are not blameless in this.
Far from it.
They have not been forthcoming at all during this crisis.
They shut down and silenced Dr. Li Wenliang, who first raised the alarm that the virus had appeared in the population, for weeks.
And then he died of the virus.
They have not been clear on their numbers nor have they been willing to share important data.
If, however, the Chinese government had truly planned to release the virus from the lab on purpose, is that really the way that they would have done it?
Infect their own people?
If they were doing it on purpose, they could have just infected a few people, put them each on a plane to a densely populated urban area in another country and have them walk around for a few days.
Regardless of sense, the President is blaming the Chinese.
He is threatening punishment.
Maybe strip them of sovereign immunity so that they can be sued for the virus.
Maybe cancel part of our debt to China.
Maybe impose harsh tariffs.
The Chinese own over a trillion dollars of US debt.
Taking into account my extremely limited understanding of how this works, what that does for the Chinese is to keep the dollar strong against the yuan.
That means that exported Chinese goods are cheaper for the US consumer.
They hold our debt and we buy their stuff.
The top US imports from China include vehicles, steel, plastics, apparel, footwear, furniture, toys, games, sports equipment, power generation equipment, electrical machinery and equipment.
We also import almost all of the things we are using to fight COVID-19 from the Chinese.
Ventilators.
Masks.
Scrubs.
Swabs.
We have outsourced manufacturing of almost everything we use in our daily lives to the Chinese who, in turn, charge us less to buy it than it would cost us to make it all ourselves.
Our relationship with the Chinese is complex and nuanced.
After decades of isolation from the rest of the world, Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 with the express purpose of establishing a trade relationship and a political alliance against the U.S.S.R.
That visit, for better or for worse, initiated the relationship that we now find ourselves in.
The Chinese rely on us and we rely on them.
It’s a marriage of convenience, but as much as the US and China squabble and tensions escalate, we need to stay together because of the kids.
This does not seem to be the best time to pick a fight with China and yet, here we are, picking a fight.
By the way, the President also just yesterday inexplicably stopped funding for a project that was investigating how viruses are transmitted between bats and the human population.
With each passing day, the country seems to be getting more and more fragmented.
States are reopening their businesses and beaches without any sort of coherent plan.
Each state is taking matters into their own hands.
I can’t for the life of me, see how this patchwork, ill-advised reopening is going to end well.
The lack of a coordinated National response to this International disaster is bound to make everything that is already bad, far worse.
Not only should we be responding to this crisis together as a country, we should be working together with our neighbors around the globe.
It seems, though, that we aren’t going to do that.
The National social distancing guidelines expired yesterday, and the President does not plan to renew them.
Armed protestors stormed the capitol in Michigan yesterday demanding to be set free from their homes.
Over the last day or two it has started to feel a bit like we are watching Thelma and Louise speed towards the abyss.
Ultimately, we have to take care of ourselves.
None of us need to be the first people back out into the world.
If the idiots in Michigan want out so badly, let them.
(The Governor actually just extended the stay at home order there until May 28.)
We don’t have to do that yet.
Half of the Nation’s states are starting to re-open while the case rate in the country has trended up in the last three days.
The death toll keeps rising.
Let’s stay home for a few more weeks at least.
We’ve come this far we can go a bit further.
Let’s keep ourselves and our families safe.
If this rush to reopen actually works and two or three weeks from now, cases have trended down in those places then let’s start to think about reopening ourselves.
We’ve been hit and we’ve been hit hard.
Texas is re-opening today after their largest sing-day increase in deaths.
Only 1% of the population of Texas have been tested.
How reopening there now makes sense to anybody, I can’t really follow.
For a small segment of the population, staying at home has been somewhat of a staycation.
For a huge segment of the population, however, staying at home has been a genuine hardship.
Money is short or nonexistent.
Just getting enough food is problematic.
Families have been separated or forced in together creating unimaginable tension.
Things that were difficult before this started are now that much more difficult.
Mental illnesses and other physical issues have not just gone away because this new virus arrived - they have actually gotten that much harder to deal with because of this virus.
Staying at home, if nothing else, however, has given us a way to slow down the spread and try to get a handle on a coordinated response.
While it is starting to look like that sacrifice and the time it bought us may have been completely squandered, it is still slowing the rate of infection.
Staying at home is keeping people from getting sick.
The next few weeks are going to be very telling.
Sit tight.
It’s not necessarily going to be easy and, in fact, it may get harder.
If we do it now, it may keep us from having to do it again later.
Let’s see what happens.
Michael’s hair will need another cut in a couple of weeks.
I might even let him cut mine.
Might.