Post 64 - May 14, 2020
Day 64…
I cut my own hair.
My hair had gotten so long that the curly ends of it around my ears tickled me awake yesterday before the sun came up.
That was it - I couldn’t take it anymore.
Is it a great haircut?
Well… hmmm. I’ve actually had worse.
Over the course of a given year, I end up getting my hair cut all over the place - rarely by the same person.
I don’t think about it for weeks and then one day, no matter where I am, I HAVE to get it done.
The last time I got a haircut was here in New York, sometime in early February - about three months ago.
The moment of HAVING to get my haircut this time around came many weeks ago and I had to just ignore it.
Across the country, people are crossing the thresholds of what they can bear every day.
Everybody has their own breaking point, and everybody has their own hill upon which they are willing to die.
Some people are hitting those points because they are seeing their businesses die.
Business that they, or their parents or grandparents started, nurtured and grew have been forced to close.
With each passing day, the likelihood of these businesses reopening becomes less and less assured.
These people are looking at a true abyss.
How will they continue forward if their means of livelihood is no longer there?
How will they feed their families?
Some people are hitting those points because they want to get their nails done.
The messaging that we are ALL receiving is radically diverse depending upon who you are listening to and where you are getting your information from.
Senate hearings were held yesterday to discuss how to implement coronavirus relief measures in order to re-open the country.
The White House is trying to present a rosy picture of the state of the fight against the virus that is in direct opposition with what health professionals are saying.
Health professionals, seemingly across the board, are warning, in no uncertain terms, that the effect of reopening too soon will end with a sharp rise in new cases and a sharp rise in new deaths.
Today, Richard Bright is being grilled by Congress.
Richard Bright was the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. He is a top coronavirus vaccine researcher.
BARDA is an office of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
They are responsible for creating countermeasures against bioterrorism as well as developing responses to pandemic influenza and emerging diseases.
He was fired from his position with BARDA last month and filed a whistleblower complaint last week.
He believes that he was let go because he clashed with the Administration regarding the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, an existing malaria drug that the President was encouraging the public to use against COVID-19.
His warnings of the dangers of using this drug were in direct opposition to what the Administration was saying.
The Administration wants this virus over so that they can restart the economy and are doing everything that they can to minimize or even discredit the warnings coming at us from the healthcare sector. In this case, by seemingly just firing the person issuing the warning.
So, to whom do the people who are desperate to get their businesses open and their nails done listen?
A CNN poll yesterday revealed that 84% of Republicans say that they trust the health information that they are getting from the President.
72% of Republicans trust the information coming from the CDC.
Only 61% of Republicans trust the information they are getting from Dr. Fauci.
A CBS poll is even more alarming.
According to their poll, 85% of Republicans trust the President and only 51% trust Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.
He served in that position through the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barak Obama.
He served in that position through the AIDS, SARS, H1N1, and Ebola epidemics as well as several others.
He is recognized as being one of the most knowledgeable people in the WORLD, in regard to infectious diseases.
All of this and most Republicans instead trust a man whose every utterance is followed by a flurry of fact-checking proving him wrong.
More Republicans trust a man with absolutely no medical training whatsoever over a man as respected and as experienced as Dr. Anthony Fauci.
By only getting their information from news outlets that support the President no matter what he says, people across this country are getting a very different picture of what is happening than people who are accessing their information from multiple sources and points of view.
The more that the President and Republican members of the two Houses vilify the experts and the more this gets reported and supported on FOX news, the more people believe that they are being unfairly treated by the measures being taken to protect us.
The people who have reached their breaking point by not being able to get their nails done HAVE reached that limit when you look at the context under which they are operating.
If everything that I was hearing assured me that the virus was not dangerous and that my rights were being trampled on by being kept at home, then not being able to get my hair cut might be a breaking point for me.
How dare they keep me from getting a haircut when there is nothing wrong.
How dare they.
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin yesterday ruled that Democratic Governor Steven Ever’s Safer-at-Home order was unconstitutional and threw it out.
Bars and restaurants reopened, and last night Wisconsinites went out and partied.
Together.
I don’t know what my breaking point in terms of this virus is.
I do know it isn’t a haircut.
This virus is dangerous.
I had a mild case of it.
I know people who have died from it.
Our response to this as a nation has been delayed, fragmented and inept.
In New York, there have been mistakes made, but we have learned and adjusted, and we remain one of the few large metropolitan areas seeing a continued downward trend.
Staying home and not working is blunting the force of the virus in our city.
It is working.
Two months ago, I would have laughed in your face if you suggested that I would ever cut my own hair.
Yes, I’ve watched people do it for years - but, no.
It’s not perfect.
Of course, I needed to suck it up and let Michael fix the back where I couldn’t see (although we now have another mirror that I think makes it possible for me to actually do the back myself next time.)
I now understand what people are talking about when they talk about my cowlick.
I wasn’t even sure what it really was. Now I know and understand the problem.
No idea, even now, though, how to really deal with it.
I do have a renewed appreciation for the skill of the people I’ve found over the years who know what they are doing.
All in all, though, I can now cross out “haircut” on my list of things that may lead me to a breaking point.
Yes, I am looking forward to getting a real one in a few months.
Until then, I have learned that I can do it well enough on my own.
Until then, I know that a haircut won’t be the thing that breaks me.
Until then, a little hair gel, and I’m good.