Post 9 - March 20, 2020
Day 9…
So… a little war-time profiteering from a couple of GOP Senators. Advance warning of what was coming at a briefing apparently spurred Richard Burr (North Carolina - R) and Kelly Loeffler (Georgia-R) to sell millions of dollars of stock before the crash. Loeffler, apropos of nothing, is married to Jeffrey Sprecher who is the chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange which owns the New York Stock Exchange. Both Dianne Feinstein (California - D) and James Inhofe (Oklahoma - R) also sold off some stock, but neither of those transactions seem to be in the same category as Burr and Loeffler. Fox News is lumping them all together and listing Feinstein first in the headlines, but it APPEARS to be a false equivalency.
If Burr and Loeffler acted on privileged information they received from their elected offices then both of them should resign immediately and be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The big health concern moving forward is ventilators - a necessary tool for the treatment of people who contract the virus and experience serious symptoms - like pneumonia. NY is forcasting that we will potentially need 30,000 of these - we currently have about 5-6,000 of them. The entire federal government’s emergency stockpile to supply the whole country is just 12,000. NY is by no means alone in not having enough. This is why Italy is suffering so much - doctors are having to choose which patients get the ventilators they actually have available and which patients don’t. A couple of days ago when Trump had the phone meeting with the State Governors and essentially told them that they should basically take care of themselves, what that did was put 50 different states at odds with each other - each of them, now, going out into the Global Marketplace on the hunt for ventilators. NY now has people in China looking for ventilators. Every other country in the world is doing exactly the same thing.
This is why we need strong federal leadership. The country as a whole should be looking to acquire ventilators and provide them to the states that need them - not every man for himself. NY and WA need more of them than ID does. The cases in NYC are more than doubling every day. The government has the ability to force manufacturers to start creating them - car and appliance manufacturers could be making more ventilators as we speak. That, however, requires forethought and organization which we don’t have in our current administration.
What do we do? How do we fix this?
We do exactly what we are doing. We let the people that we elected to represent us - our public servants - to go out there and do their jobs. If there are ventilators to be found, our Governor will find them. None of you are the kind of people who can just sit. I’m certainly not. We all feel like we have to get out there and DO something. Well, right now, what we need to do is just not do anything. As ridiculous as that sounds, that’s what we do.
We stay home.
We take care of ourselves.
We facetime our friends.
The mandate this morning is that ALL non-essential businesses in NYC need to close. If you go outside it is to exercise - ALONE. 6 feet away from everybody else.
Here’s a quote from Cuomo this morning:
“Outdoor recreation is a solitary recreational excercise. It’s running. It’s hiking,” Cuomo said. “It’s not playing basketball with five other people.”
Sick people shouldn’t leave their home unless they need to go to the doctor or hospital, he said. Young people should also practice social distancing and avoid contact with vulnerable populations, he said.
“These provisions will be enforced. These are not helpful hints. This is not if you really want to be a great citizen. These are legal provisions,” Cuomo said, adding that businesses will be fined for noncompliance but individuals won’t be sanctioned.
This will all pass, but for the moment, and for the forseeable future, this is how we are all going to live. There is nothing to be done about it. There is nothing that any of us need to DO except be kind, be safe and be smart.
Stay home. I have a bunch of friends who are leading online exercise sessions. I can hook you up!
Those books you have been meaning to read? - Have at ‘em! I am 2/3 of the way through THE OVERSTORY. Amazing! I have a 4’ stack of books to be read next to my bed.
Michael and I finished Season 3 of THE CROWN the day before yesterday and have now picked up with HOMELAND (season 4). That should keep us busy for a while. On my own, I am almost through THE MORNING SHOW, then I have to catch up on POSE.
There really isn’t anything for us to do except ride this thing out. As patiently as we can.
Stay healthy. That means to stay home as much as you can and when you need to leave, sanitize your hands every single time you touch something outside your home.
The most loving thing you can do for your friends?
Stay away from them.
Facetime with them. We have a FaceTime dinner date with a couple of friends tonight.
This doesn’t mean that we have to be isolated from one another. We just have to be clever in how we connect.
And we MUST connect.
We are all in this together.
All of us - all over the world.
PS And update from the Norwegian Bliss. They are due to arrive at the Port of Miami at 5pm. Much love to you guys!