Post 62 - May 12, 2020
Day 62…
The lady in the red bathrobe who comes out on her balcony every night at 7 to clap wasn’t there yesterday.
I wonder where she was.
I think that the couple with the dog directly across from us and a floor down must have left the city. They haven’t been out in a week.
The guy with the messy balcony above them is still out most every night and he now, brings a kind of percussion instrument out with him when applauds.
I have no idea how any of these people are getting through this pandemic.
These are people who are close enough to me that I can see them, but not close enough that I have a clue what their lives are like.
Do they have enough food?
Have they lost people?
Are they scared?
Are they angry?
Are they fine?
For two months we have all been living in a COVID-19 world, but that seems to be the only thing that all of us share.
My social media feed is full of an unbelievable amount of noise.
Two months into this, you can tell that people are starting to fray.
People are latching on to anything that they can find.
They want answers.
WE need answers.
Living with uncertainty can be profoundly uncomfortable.
Conspiracy theories, even though they offer answers that are bleak or terrifying, offer answers.
They provide a sense of certainty.
If we are pre-disposed to believe that we are constantly under attack, a good conspiracy theory confirms that way of thinking.
That confirmation of our worst fears, true or not, feels better that the alternative which is, “I don’t know.”
Being certain of the worst, FEELS better than not having an answer at all.
The President tweeted yesterday that “we have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
As he tweeted this, we surpassed 80,000 people dead from the virus and those numbers are still rising.
At a press conference yesterday, he announced a conspiracy theory called Obamagate, but then refused to say what it was.
“It’s obvious,” was his response.
The President seems profoundly uncomfortable around “I don’t know.”
Not only does he seem to not like “I don’t know” he also seems terrified of demonstrable probability when it goes against what he wants.
He appears to be grabbing blindly at conspiracy theories to keep from facing a hard truth - the truth being that there is no easy answer as to how to lead this country through this crisis.
Leadership requires taking in all of the available facts and opinions, weighing them and deciding on a clear path forward.
A good leader surrounds themselves with people who know more about their specific area than they do to advise them.
The people that the President has surrounded himself with are mostly not experts in the fields their departments cover. Many of those people are businessmen like the president.
The result of this, is that the advice he is getting is largely from a business point of view.
When information that conflicts with that point of view comes his way from people who are actually professionals in their fields, such as Dr. Fauci, his chief health advisor, it’s unsettling.
So, he tries to ignore it or vilify it and distract from it.
“Obamagate” seems to be yet another desperate attempt at distraction.
It is remarkable.
We are used to outright lying from this President, but this seems to indicate a new level of desperation.
He is flinging an accusation at his predecessor that isn’t even an accusation.
“It’s obvious” is his response when asked what he’s talking about.
Nobody, not even his advisors seem to know what he is referring to.
I do not envy the President having to lead us through this.
There is no way that any single person could get us through this without being criticized.
There is no right answer to this.
At the moment, there is NO answer to this at all.
Governor Cuomo has made mistakes and he is being criticized for them.
Hospitals releasing patients back to nursing homes was a huge mistake that has had terrible consequences.
In general, however, if you compare Cuomo’s overall leadership through this crisis to the overall leadership coming from the White House it is apparent that there is a huge and glaring contrast.
In New York State, we are heading towards the first phase of re-opening after several weeks of steady and demonstrable decline in reported cases and hospitalizations.
The clear directives coming at us from the Governor were easy to follow and, for the most part, we did.
New York has been the hardest hit State in the country and, while many other areas continue to climb in new cases and hospitalizations, New York is going down.
Does that negate the mistakes he’s made?
In World War II we were fighting a relentless enemy that wanted to dominate the world.
Terrible mistakes were made while we were fighting World War II, but we ultimately prevailed and ended the war.
Was the horrific devastation caused by dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth it?
Last year I visited both of those cities while I was working in Japan.
The memorials to the people who were lost and the museums that preserve the horrific images of the aftermath in both places are moving beyond comprehension.
Both cities are now dedicated to Peace.
Had we not dropped the bombs how much longer would the war have continued?
Could we have won the war without dropping the bombs?
This pandemic is like a war.
There is a clearly defined enemy.
We don’t know how to fight it yet.
“I don’t know” is the horribly uncomfortable answer that we currently have at hand for most of our questions.
There are, however, questions, for which some of the data is in and a trend towards what the answer may be seems to be forming.
Does having the coronavirus antibodies convey any sort of immunity in terms of getting it again?
The answer at the moment is, “I don’t know, BUT it seems like it might.”
To be able to answer that question more confidently, one of the things required that we don’t have at the moment, is time.
Parts of that question will start to be answered more definitively as we move forward, but parts will not be answered until much more time has passed and trends can be assessed.
The answers that we will get to almost every question that we are now asking will unlikely ever be a clean yes or no.
The answers are going to be messy as in it is likely to be found that having the antibodies causes a certain level of immunity under some conditions and not under others.
To fight this virus, we dropped an atom bomb on our economy.
Was it worth it?
Well, the war is still being fought so we don’t know yet.
We aren’t passed the fighting by a longshot.
We will honestly never know for sure whether it was worth it, but I can pretty much guarantee that once we are passed this, people are going to debate it for years to come.
The further away from the virus we get, the more we are going to learn and the more we are going to look back at the decisions that were made and be horrified or relieved.
Either way, we are going to forget that when these decisions were made, WE DIDN’T KNOW.
The discomfort of uncertainty is just that - a discomfort.
We live with it every day because there are almost never any definitive answers to anything.
There is uncertainty in the big questions of our lives:
Some years ago, I got a cancer diagnosis and I was given options of how to treat it.
There was no one way through it that would guarantee a complete cure.
I had to choose between a collection of imperfect options.
There is also uncertainty in the not so big questions:
Do we go on vacation to Italy or to Costa Rica next year?
Do we eat Mexican tonight or Japanese?
The questions being asked now are bigger and more frightening than usual but the answers are just as diverse.
We are all trying to weigh and judge what the best solution might be.
And there is a lot of noise out there.
I can’t decide a course of action for anyone but myself.
I have no idea what is weighing on the lady in the red bathrobe.
What makes sense for me might be totally wrong for her.
Despite the fact that I see her almost every day, I know nothing about her and what she might be experiencing in her life.
We all need to choose the best way forward for ourselves.
If we can accept the discomfort of not having all the answers, we really don’t need to choose the worst way just so that there’s an answer.
The one thing that we really can’t forget, though, is that our actions affect each other.
Whatever we decide to do as things start to reopen, we need keep in mind what our decisions may do to other people.
The noise on the internet is largely people who desperately want their lives back and are looking for anything at all to help achieve that.
Don’t let other people panicking make you panic too.
We have to learn to live with the discomfort of not knowing.
I don’t know the Lady in Red across from me, but I certainly don’t want to accidentally kill her by getting too close to her at the local supermarket.
I don’t know if that will happen, but as long as it might, I am going to stay away from her and keep my mask on.
That seems to be the best answer we’ve got at the moment.
Will it be effective?
I don’t know.
And I have to be OK with that for now.