Post 55 - May 5, 2020
Day 55…
I got off in my counting of days a few days ago and didn’t notice until yesterday.
I corrected it and I think I'm back on track.
I’m forgiving myself for the mistake because there is almost nothing to differentiate one day from the next.
We sit on the couch day in and day out and watch the numbers tick up.
We listen to the same news every day.
We go through the same routines every day while we wait.
And we wait.
Across the country, defying almost every single health expert’s recommendation, people are going back out.
Businesses are reopening.
The President is heading to Arizona this morning - almost the textbook definition of non-essential travel - to tour a Honeywell factory.
It’s his first trip out since early March.
As he leaves, I am listening to him trash Congress.
He is trashing the Chinese.
He is praising himself.
He is praising our testing which is not close to being up to the task yet - not in numbers and not in reliability.
In opposition to even his own experts, he is praising the early re-opening.
Arizona is an important state for him in the upcoming election.
This visit is nothing more than a campaign stop.
And people will come out for him.
There was a virtual global international vaccine summit yesterday that the US did not participate in.
When questioned, the administration’s response was that the US already funds a lot of international research, so they didn’t feel the need to attend.
Symbols are important.
It is far easier to get our information from a picture or an action than it is to get it from reading a whole article or even just a headline.
“Maintain social distancing and wear a mask” written out on a page, pales in comparison to seeing a picture of a crowd of people waiting for the President in Arizona all standing close together, none wearing masks.
Someone in the crowd has a “free hugs” sign and is hugging anyone and everyone near them.
That message of that visual is that you don’t need a mask and you don’t need to keep away from anyone.
Not joining in on an international summit sends the message that we don’t care about the rest of the world.
It doesn’t matter if we are already funding some of those programs, not showing up sends the clear and very strongly stated signal that we are on our own.
It sends the message that we aren’t willing to work with anyone.
That’s the message that the White House is sending out.
That’s what the President praises.
Almost all of the states that are reopening are not meeting even the most basic criteria that the White House, ITSELF, is recommending states have before they move forward.
They SAY that they recommend one course of action in writing but then the President DOES the exact opposite.
The result of those optic and subliminal signals is that even here in New York, up to now the hardest hit state in the nation, people are not following the guidelines for behavior recommended by health professionals.
The Government is saying one thing in writing and quite the opposite in pictures and symbols.
We see the Vice-President not wearing a mask in a hospital.
We see protesters armed to the teeth with assault weapons screaming against mitigation efforts.
We see the rest of the world joining together for a vaccine summit and we are not there.
That’s the real message that the Government is sending out.
Nobody’s READING anything.
They are WATCHING.
The message that is being received by the great majority of people in this country is that this virus is not dangerous.
The message being received is that Governors are trying to take away your rights.
The message being received is that the US does not need the rest of the world.
We, too, need to stop reading about what they are saying and just start LOOKING at the pictures of what they are doing.
That’s where the truth lies.
Do not listen to what they say, look at what they do.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.
Thirty-six years.
He took over the directorship during the height of the AIDS epidemic, he’s been through SARS and Ebola and now he’s going through this coronavirus pandemic.
He is the person that the White House is using to base their response to COVID-19 on.
HIS response to what is going on in terms of re-opening is pretty much summed up in the question he asked this morning.
“How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to normal?”
It is a sobering question.
How much ARE we willing to accept?
Nobody knows what is going to happen.
The virus could just miraculously vanish as the President has said.
The virus could come back stronger than before and kill untold thousands of people.
Or… something else.
Nobody REALLY knows.
But people who have spent their entire lives studying viruses and how they behave do not think that this virus is just going to go away.
“How much is human life worth?”
Governor Cuomo asked that question this morning.
The faster we reopen our states, the lower the economic cost but the higher the human cost.
Because of the easing of social guidelines, the estimate of the number of new cases we can expect by June has just risen from 25,000 to 200,000.
Is that OK?
Is that an acceptable cost?
This is where we are now.
This is what the great debate is.
How much is human life worth and how many deaths and how much suffering are we willing to accept to get our lives back to normal.
I don’t have the answer to that question.
I genuinely don’t know.
Are we in more danger from the economy being shut down or from the virus itself?
When you look at the map of the US, there is a tiny clump of states up here in the Northeast that are not reopening yet.
We got nailed by this virus, and even so, we are actually one of the few states that HAVE met the federal guidelines with two weeks of a steady downward curve in new cases.
We THINK.
There’s still not enough testing to be sure, but our curve SEEMS to be dropping.
We are scheduled to start reopening in about 10 days.
Let’s see what happens.
We’ve stayed put this long we can wait another 10 days.
Let’s see what happens in the rest of the country.
Having to choose between our economy and human lives is a terrible decision to make.
How much suffering will happen if the economy continues to crumble.
How many people will die if the economy doesn’t recover?
It’s a terrible decision, because there is no good answer.
Talk about Sophie’s choice.
Like Sophie’s choice, not only is there no answer to the question that isn’t awful, just answering the question, itself, is going to cost.
How do we choose?
WE don’t.
We have elected people who are going to choose for us.
Our President wants to reopen despite the human cost.
Our Governor wants to save lives.
Personally, I’m with the Governor but I am aware that that comes with a cost.
In a week or two we will see what really happens across the rest of the country.
When we know that, we will be in a far better place to make the decision ourselves.
The decision, whatever it is, will not be made by me, so, for the rest of whatever day this is, I am going to try and get some stuff done.
It will probably take me into whatever day tomorrow is and possibly the next.
That’s fine.
I think I’ve got some time.