The Tokyo Olympic Games have provided a pastime for many of us recently. We’ve watched with feelings of awe and pride as our nation’s athletes have competed for gold and glory. The hype surrounding this quadrennial event makes it understandable if some of you have become distracted from alternate international competitions. This little piece should help bring you up to speed
There’s more to international competition than the Olympics
Dan Rather, former news anchor and author, Tweeted recently that Canada has surpassed Israel as the country with the highest vaccination rates among its eligible population. This achievement is worthy of note. It reveals the care that Canadians obviously feel for one another. All the empathetic Canadians deserve their own gold medals. They have valued social responsibility on par with individual liberty. Israel is running a close second, with its citizens poised to take silver. That competition is not yet concluded.
Canada’s national accomplishment is at least on par with America’s most recent one. Namely, providing a home country to billionaire private citizens rich enough to slingshot themselves into space for a few minutes riding personal rocket ships—funded at least partly by avoiding taxes.
What’s a gold medal, a healthier population, combatting starvation, or providing housing security to fellow humans compared to custom-made Astronaut wings, I ask ya?
As a result of it’s love affair with monopolists, America is poised for continued success in the billionaire rocket ride competition. Could a dynasty be in the offing? Who cares that we have never performed that well in luge? What’s a sled compare to a hulking rocket? And rockets can be outfitted for paying customers, too—unlike a bobsled.
Consequently, America’s billionaire class are undoubtedly hard at work spending money to build or do other things no one has ever thought to do. A dubious achievement that used to meet with little fanfare and perhaps even a stint in either a corrections or mental health facility. Who says America isn’t Progressive?
Where America really shines
No country is close to surpassing the United States in this epic struggle for national prestige.
“America, home of the highest number of self-proclaimed Astronauts!”
(At least we can be #1 in something. It sure won’t be caring for our fellow man.)
One can, however, argue Canada’s achievement wins on points for total beneficial impact. I could be wrong.
Some Americans may feel better from watching the most outrageous display of “I got mine” in the history of humankind. I can’t speak for everyone. If you’re one of them, comment below. Let us all know how your life has improved.
A proposed new individual event
I’d like to propose a new event. One that allows betting. I would pit anyone with the social intelligence of the typical junior-high student against our illustrious newest Astronauts — Commanders Branson and Bezos — in one competition (and wager everything I own on the student).
The competition I have in mind? It will be called: Reading The Room.
These first two Tone Deaf Billionaire Bs would not be the only eligible competitors. Anyone who purchases their Astronaut wings (albeit from a very, very expensive box of Cracker Jacks) would automatically qualify for the competition.
Some of us feel apologetic
We do owe a national apology to all the other Astronauts in America’s history. In fact, for what it’s worth, I’d like to extend that apology to all genuine Astronauts, everywhere.They became so after an arduous and rigorous process requiring more than the highly refined skill of vacuuming up other people’s money the way a black hole vacuums up light.
Though I will concede that skill does deserve its own title.
A medals podium? How about a village stocks instead?
That these astronauts weren’t immediately arrested upon landing, placed in stocks at the town center and pelted with rotted cabbages and tomatoes for days—says as much about modern, tolerant, demure, money-whipped America as anyone needs to know.
Come to think of it, that could lead to a whole new event? Hmmm… this has possibilities.
I hope this quick scan of alternate international competitions has increased your familiarity with these unique pathways to national prestige, inspiring you to the appreciation of truly important greatness when you see it.
In June my girlfriend and I took a much needed vacation to New Smyrna Beach, FL. It was our first vacation and first real, prolonged exposure to strangers and crowds in public since the onset of Covid-19 in February 2020.
We had a fantastic week except for one unfortunate episode. It is metaphorical to the Covid response exhibited by some people who act as if their personal liberties are license to infringe on the liberties or lives of others.
Vacation Days
Our days in FL comprised waking early, just after sunrise, to grab coffee and a quick breakfast in the hotel.
We then walked to the beach less than a half mile from our room, where we spent the first cooler hours of the morning lying in the sun with our feet in surf.
After spending a couple of hours in the sun, we walked to a small, friendly open-air bar/restaurant right on the beach. Frequented by locals, the place has the easy-going charm and unpretentious real-world vibe we both love. A regular beach dive.
Wooden picnic tables spread around a sand floor covered by pavilion type tents make up the outdoor “dining room”. On some mornings we happily occupied bar stools at the well-worn bar, enjoying the best Painkillers in town along with our BLTs and French toast.
On our third morning, we got there a bit late, and the bar stools were all taken. No worries. We meandered to a picnic table along one edge, propped up our beach chairs and prepared to enjoy a cold drink, a delicious breakfast, and beautiful scenery made comfortable by an offshore breeze.
Freedom, a Bulldog, and a Cigarette
Four people sat at the table beside us on this morning, along with an English bulldog, like the UGA mascot. It nosed around the ankles of the people seated at the adjacent table, its obnoxiously loud owner oblivious to it. The dog kept nuzzling and licking their legs while the uncomfortable diners tried to push his ugly head away.
The dog’s owner was a loud-mouthed lady with maroon hair, a leathery, scowling face, and sinewy, sun-baked limbs peaking from her cut-off denim shorts and her Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. She ignored her annoying dog while loudly pontificating about the weather, the town, her love life, and her impatience with the service.
My girlfriend and I rolled our eyes at one another, focused on the good, and put her, the dog, and her noisy play-by-play out of our heads.
After waiting a few minutes, our drinks and food arrived. We shared a quick “Grace” over the meal, sipped at our drinks, and began to salt and pepper our eggs and grits.
What’s Burning?
It was then that we smelled the smoke.
The dog-owner had lit up, and the breeze was wafting the second-hand smoke directly into our faces, our food, and beyond. It incensed me.
My impulse was to jerk the cigarette from between her fingers and put it out on the table in front of her and her friends. But I restrained myself.
Still, I was livid. My girlfriend was equally distressed. She suffers from migraines and we are careful to avoid her most egregious triggers. Cigarette smoke being one of the worst.
I spoke a little too loudly, “Can you fucking believe the nerve of some people?”
“Greg!” my girlfriend shot back at me, careful to avoid an eruption or confrontation.
I demurred, swiveling my head to scan for our server. Catching his eye, I motioned him over and asked about the smoking policy. He said in Florida they allow smoking outdoors at restaurants.
“Even when outdoors is the dining area?” I asked. He sympathized but said he really could do nothing.
I was trying to be just loud enough to catch the inconsiderate smoker’s attention. No dice. She held her cigarette at arm’s length. Directly towards our table!
“Can we move?” I asked the server, motioning with my head to a table further away but in the sun with less shade from the covering tent.
“Of course you can move,” he said.
My girlfriend and I got up, moved our gear, moved our plates, and finally retrieved our drinks.
The thoughtless smokestack never even looked up. She just kept up her steady banter of noisy banality, self-content in her own boorish world.
Once away from her, we were fine. We proceeded to enjoy our breakfast. I didn’t assault anyone and avoided jail in Florida.
Did the woman have the right, the liberty, to smoke?
I concede that, of course, she did. It was both her personal and legal right. The same right she had to bring her dog to this restaurant, which permitted both smoking and dogs.
I’m a libertarian at heart. Hell, she could have shot up pure cocaine and heroin speedballs in the privacy of her own sad little bulldog world. That’s her business.
But when she used her liberty to encroach on mine, she crossed a line. An invisible one, no less real for being so. She could have been considerate to me, my girlfriend and the other patrons and moved to an area where the breeze would blow her secondhand smoke away from, rather than onto us. We had the right to enjoy our breakfast free from her secondhand smoke.
The Covid Situation Is Exactly The Same
Substitute Covid for smoke, and the woman’s secondhand smoke is a great visual of an airborne pathogen. The smoke, its density and intensity representative of a “viral load”.
Are you free to not wear a mask? Of course.
Are you free not to wear one around me when you’ve also rejected a vaccine? Hell no!
Where Liberty Ends and Responsibility Begins
Liberty exists right up to the point when the only possible negative effect or consequence of your actions affects you and you alone. As soon as your “free action” affects someone else, or has the potential to affect them negatively, liberty shifts gears into responsibility. That seems to be an easy and a reasonable test to conduct to determine the limits of your personal liberty as a member of society. Your lame-ass claim of freedom ends at the extent of the consequences your actions can cause to yourself alone.
You aren’t free to drive drunk, or point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger, or let your GD cigarette smoke pour across my face and food… or infect me with the Covid you’re carrying (possibly without even knowing it.). Because those actions have potential consequences for others.
Who does that?
Who thinks they have the right to do these things?
This story serves as a metaphor if only because the cigarette smoke, like Covid-19, is an airborne pathogen. The Delta variant is more contagious than any known version so far. If you have it, there’s a high likelihood you’re spreading it.
Would you want that done to you?
Or are you one of these idiots who thinks it’s “fearful” to avoid a sickness which is completely, totally, well,… 99% avoidable; if you’ll give up your pathetic, ignorant selfishness and think for one minute about someone besides yourself.
And if you ever smoke next to me, exercising your freedom, then I’m certain you’ll have no problem with however I choose to exercise my freedom to put out your cigarette, right?
The new CDC guidelines for fully vaccinated persons, out this week, are a welcome bit of good news. I’m ready to join those ranks over the next few weeks. My girlfriend and I got our first Moderna shots this morning. We’ve had no side effects at all over the first 8 hours. (Well, my arm feels like I have a minor bruise). In 28 days we’ll get our 2nd shots. And then…
I haven’t spent enough time thinking about what the new normal will look like. One thing is for certain. I won’t ever take the heroic front line workers in grocery stores, restaurants, and delivery services for granted again. Along with the nation’s nurses, these folks have held this county together. I only wish there was something tangible and permanent that could be done to show the appreciation of the country. These are legitimate heroes. And yet before the past year’s crisis, they have been too often overlooked, although they’ve always been invaluable, crucial members of the economic engine. My thanks! You’ve kept us alive, literally.
And yet, in a show of derision for the sacrifices of these workers, and in disregard of the deadliness of the pandemic, many will refuse free, available, effective, life-saving vaccines. I don’t understand the rationale. Likely because there is none.
On one hand, I appreciate skepticism. I am as skeptical and non-conformist as anyone you’ll ever meet. On the other hand, intelligence dictates that healthcare decisions cannot be red or blue. I can understand being willing to risk your life, or even die for a belief. I have a belief like that, myself. But, I’ll never understand a belief that allows a person to rationalize risking someone else’s life, just to avoid what, exactly?
Regardless of what the ignorant choose to do, thank you to all those who choose to be vaccinated. And for those who won’t do it I suppose there’s nothing I’m going to say to change your mind. A wise person said, when people want to show you what they are like, believe them. Some decisions in life have very few repercussions. This one is not that.
Of course it’s possible these shots may not be full-on, lifetime vaccines in the traditional sense. They may require intermittent boosters. But as someone who contracted Covid, I feel fortunate to have had a relatively mild case. Still, it wasn’t without challenges. And there is a an unknown element to possible future lingering or latent effects. You don’t want to get this, and if you’re a decent human being at all, you don’t want to give it to anyone either.
In a matter of moments, I went from savoring a couple tablespoons of Jalapeño Pimento cheese, to not being able to smell Vick’s Vap-O-Rub. At. All. Recognizing this, I popped a Goldfish cracker in my mouth, and damn if taste hadn’t bounced too. They just ran off together.
”So what?” you may ask. Well, here’s what: I still have both a tongue and a nose; so, it’s safe to assume all my olfactory equipment is still in place. Yet, even with the physical pieces still there, the big interpreter between my ears is AWOL.
You don’t smell with your nose, or taste with your tongue. You smell and taste with your brain. And this Covid virus hi-jacked my brain.
It’s not just smell and taste that are on the fritz
This morning, I’m f o g g g g y y y . I mean noticeably – s l o o o o w. The virus is affecting my brain, and I know it. Knowing it is a curse; the curse of knowing too much, because, I cannot simply retreat into a pleasant cocoon of blissful ignorance.
It’s possible some of my fog is self-induced, because fear and stress definitely impair cognitive function. But look, I’ve had self-induced paranoia before, and plenty of stress, but these have never impeded my sense of taste, or smell. And…in the absence of congested sinuses, neither has a common cold. You?
Because of all this, I’m freaked in the way you freak when the acid kicks in, and it gets a little too weird, and you have those first indications that someone else is in the control room pulling the levers and fiddling with the reception; and if it gets too strange, you have that horrifying question in back of everything, ”What have I done this time, will I ever be right again?” You feel like a stranger in your own head. And you are. Like I am.
This morning, there’s no good answer to the question, ”Will I ever be right again?”
Covid has hi-jacked my brain, or kidnapped it, or whatever, and I don’t know what the ransom might be. But, I’d sure as hell pay it. There are no reliable estimates for how long people go without smell and taste. It varies. For that unknown amount of time, a virus is running amok in that portion of your brain…at least.
So yeah, I’m afraid now. Fear and Loathing in the Land of Covid. Talk about the going getting weird…Sheesh!
Anything that can burrow into my brain and shut down the command-control for smell and taste could be doing God knows what else(!) in there. Which means anyone who is not a practicing neurophysiologist (with large side of biochemistry) can save the, ”you know this is nothing to be afraid of,” crap. That statement belongs in the large plastic bin of Unknowns.
Can I get the old me back please?
What I do know, is that the Greg sitting here typing this morning, isn’t the same Greg that was sitting here typing yesterday.
For now,He’s Gone. This stranger, sitting in his seat, is w-a-a-a-y-y slower-on-the-draw mentally. I suppose I’ll get used to having to actually think my way through my morning coffee ritual, but I sure don’t relish having to stop every few minutes with my jaw agape, searching for the right word to plug into a sentence. I’m not used to conjuring words. In fact, they usually appear to my mind effortlessly, at the speed of legal-speak in a bad commercial. I’m used to suppressing them and weeding them out. So, I sure don’t like this… faltering… hesitant… impairment!
More great advice from a true American hero
I’d compare it to that eerily similar, artificially-self-aware-deliberateness you affect when you’re half-drunk and trying your hardest not to slur. Which is closely related to that feeling of “should I drive or not?” Maybe after a few too many drinks? A toss-up question, because you probably could, but on the other hand, you also probably shouldn’t. You know that feeling? With uncanny similarity, I’ve got the very weird, very real feeling that maybe I shouldn’t. I mean, I could…Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could. But I would be Driver’s Ed me; thinking of every. single. thing.
It’s unnerving to be stone sober at 9 a.m., and yet, I’m uncertain about whether I should drive to the office to get a check, then on to the bank to deposit it. On one hand, it’s only an eight minute drive which I’ve done thousand times. On the other hand, I’ve never attempted it with steel wool buffing my thoughts and a foot gently pressing down on the back of my head. And finally, never with a virus hi-jacked brain, ya know? Especially one that makes me feel like maybe I’m leaning slightly to the right.
The unpredictable future got a little more so
I don’t want to write about this anymore. This is too personal. Covid is not about me. I’m trying to make it a little funny because I’m more than a little scared. I really hope this doesn’t happen to you.
When I used to take psychedelics, I think some encrypted, temporarily-far-away part of me knew it would metabolize eventually. I knew I could more than likely find my way home from the far side of the Cosmos. That helped me ride out some long, strange trips. I don’t have that same assurance with this. This thing realizes it’s not going to kill me, so now…it what (?); A virus hi-jacked my brain ’cause it wants to BE me? That’s weird! I’m not a Zombie fan, at all! Right now though, I feel like a stranger, just about weird enough to turn pro!
So, I’ve had Covid for a week now. I caught it from my girlfriend. We believe we know where she got it but we cannot know for certain. We now have firsthand knowledge of and experience with Covid we did not want. I am sharing some of our experience and some of my thoughts about it for your consideration, and in the hope you can avoid it. I am not a doctor. This story is not any attempt to give medical advice or even offering a medical opinion. Nor am I suggesting that either my own experience, or that of my girlfriend is normative. This is just a personal, anecdotal account of our firsthand experience with Covid.
For over a year, we have followed every protocol. We have always masked up in public. My girlfriend has been masked around her 90 year-old mom this entire time. She has not entered her home for more than 5 minutes, and has not ridden in a car with her. With the exception of an Extreme Experience driving event at Charlotte Motor Speedway on March 28th, we have engaged in no public activities not necessary for life. (The event did an outstanding job of implementing and enforcing mask requirements, distancing provisions, and sanitization between each driving session).
Climbing in to that sweet Ferrari. Notice the masks and sanitizers.
How It Started
My girlfriend started showing symptoms, notably a dry cough, on Saturday, April 3rd. We were driving home from a family gathering to celebrate her mother’s 92nd birthday. The weather was beautiful and mild. We ate a pot-luck picnic lunch outdoors on the back deck of her sister’s home. Of the 18 attendees, we were part of a small group of 5 or 6, not yet vaccinated. 2 of those had already received their first vaccination shots. My girlfriend and I wore masks, even outdoors, out of abundance of precaution. (This turned out to be wise. I can report that everyone present is fine.) When her cough started, accompanied by a pretty severe headache, we chalked it up to having been outdoors, in pollen, in a breeze, in dropping temperatures for more than five hours. It had to be some sort of allergy, right?
But the next day, and especially Sunday night, she knew something wasn’t ”right”. She lay curled on the couch, coughing frequently into her pillow, suffering with a headache she couldn’t quite get to fade even after 24 hours and the normal headache meds. Because of our precautions, we did not consider that it was Covid. After a decent night’s sleep, she went on to work on Monday. She has a separate office where she was able to remain distanced from co-workers.
The test and result
When her cough was persistent and more frequent on Tuesday, April 6th, she went in for a test. The positive result surprised us both. While waiting for results from the test, the doctor who saw her also ordered a chest x-ray. He wanted to rule out bronchitis or pneumonia due to her cough and the difficulty he observed in her breathing. Thankfully, her lungs were clear.
I’m sure we aren’t the only ones to feel surprise and dismay at a positive result during their Covid experience. The fact is, there are many like us, who have followed every protocol. Like us, they never wanted an experience with Covid. The news, and the side effects of social disruption were more than compensatory for the effort to avoid any firsthand experience with Covid infection.
Still, our lives are now impacted by those who did not take the virus seriously, did not take precautions, and who could not be bothered to inconvenience themselves. To some degree, we are all victims of all the far-reaching effects of this pandemic. There’s no sense whining about it. But, when you believe the science, try hard, act consistently, and persevere in the effort to stay healthy and to keep from making others sick, you feel surprised and angry when you get this damn virus anyway. It’s a kick in the guts. A Covid experience was definitely not on my bucket list.
We followed all these measures, and yet…It only takes one infected person not following every measure, all the time to give the virus a transmission point.
When the test confirmed Covid, she left work to begin the doctor and CDC recommended home care and the 10 day quarantine (from the onset of symptoms). Which should technically end today or tomorrow. But, she has not had a straight line recovery. The first couple of days looked very good. On Wednesday, she was wracked by coughing fits, a bad sore throat, muscle aches, and malaise that kept her in bed until 4:30 pm that afternoon. She only got up for a couple of hours to eat a light snack and then went back to bed. It was well past noon on Thursday before she felt like getting out of bed again. Over-the-counter TheraFlu or DayQuil helped suppress her cough, though these undoubtedly contributed to her fatigue.
How it’s going and what we’re doing
From Friday through bedtime last night (Sunday), she is improving. But we have arrived at the 10th day since the onset of symptoms, and she is not symptom free. She is still sick. I can hear her coughing in bed as I write this. The coughing isn’t as frequent or violent as the worst days, but a 10 day quarantine is clearly not applicable to her. Day 10 is not a magic threshold. She would have no business driving a commute to sit in an office for full day. So, our Covid experience reveals some potential discrepancies in the official advice. To be fair, the CDC guideline of a 10-day period is given as a minimum in the absence of a fever for at least 24 hours and when exhibiting improvement in symptoms. So, there is some flexibility. And, thankfully, her office is not pressuring her yet.
My girlfriend’s youngest daughter is a nurse who has served and treated hospitalized Covid patients, and has seen some die. And her own Covid experience wasn’t limited to her role a a front-line health-care worker. Early this year, she lost her grandfather to complications from Covid infection.
She encouraged us to use a cocktail of vitamins C and D along with Zinc to help boost and support our natural immune responses. Emergen C Immune + is a product ready-made with those components, so we take two packets each daily. We are taking a low-dose aspirin every day to counter-act Covid’s blood-thickening effects. Other than that, as I mentioned my girlfriend has used a cough suppressant. Two nights ago, I took 2 Alleve before bed for relief of what felt like swallowing shards of broken glass. So far, the sharp pain of that sore throat has been the worst of the experience symptomatically for me.
This could have been much, much worse
Thankfully, even though my girlfriend has lingering symptoms 10 days in, both our cases are on the mild side of the scale. In comparison to millions who have been hospitalized and the nearly 600,000 in the US whom Covid has thus far killed, we are lucky! We don’t need a hospital. We won’t need funeral arrangements. But we most certainly could have. And this virus that is still in both our bodies, if transferred from us to other unwitting hosts, could produce drastically different symptoms and drastically different outcomes. My symptoms this morning are the same as I’d usually have in mid-April since I battle seasonal allergies. I’ve been able to keep up a walking regimen of a couple miles a day for most days.
If I didn’t know I had Covid, and if I worked in an office, I would have been there. I’ve coughed maybe 30 times total during the week. In contrast, my girlfriend has had multiple coughing-fit episodes. She may rattle off 30 or more coughs per event. Thankfully, her breathing has remained steady and unimpeded (if you don’t count the times she can’t stop coughing for a minute or two). But her energy level is a 3 on a 10 point scale. 3 days ago, she didn’t want to get out of bed at all. So a 3 is improvement. As I write this, every few minutes, she coughs a few times to try to clear her throat and the top of her chest.
Asymptomatic spread still a thing
As I mentioned above, if I didn’t know for a fact that the mild scratchy throat, rare cough, and barely noticeable muscle aches I’ve experienced were from Covid, I would not think twice about it. That’s the insidious thing. This study shows that almost 6 in 10 Covid cases are coming from spreaders who are themselves asymptomatic. Like me, those asymptomatic spreaders would have no cues to either be tested or quarantined.
Masks make sense in a shared environment when 6 of 10 cases is transmitted by an asymptomatic carrier. Since certainty is that elusive, is a mask too much to ask?
I’ve spoken to one doctor who believes these asymptomatic spreaders represent millions more Covid cases that will never show up on any database. Hearing this in the beginning, and believing it, I acted as if I was a carrier. As mentioned above, my girlfriend and I both did. We didn’t act that way because we were afraid we would get Covid, we acted that way because we were afraid to ”give” it, unknowingly. The safest, least intrusive, most humane, and most loving thing we could do for our families, neighbors, front-line workers, and strangers was to act like we could infect them, and behave and distance accordingly. Now, unfortunately, our Covid-induced behavior is not an act.
Next for us, vaccines
I see this as a moral imperative: I’d rather die trying to save other’s lives, than live and risk inadvertently killing them.
Still if there was a guarantee that our experience is the worst Covid can do, getting vaccinated would be a foolish and unnecessary risk. Almost any reasonably healthy person can tolerate a week of aggravating cold symptoms. But there are no guarantees. This same virus, or some variant of it, has killed millions around the globe and 600K here at home. In my view, that makes vaccination a moral imperative. Not because I’m worried about what it may do to me, but because I don’t want to be the nexus point in a contact tracing sequence that eventuates in someone else’s death. Being an accomplice in the death of another human being is not a firsthand experience I ever want to have.
Without a doubt, there are millions of asymptomatic carriers in the United States who are implicated in tens of thousands of deaths. They just don’t know it for certain, or don’t want to admit it. The lack of anything more than circumstantial evidence is not an acquittal.
”Don’t put that on me!” you say. Where should I put it? And if you don’t want that “put on you”, get vaccinated. Simple.
The takeaway
Now that I have violated my girlfriend’s HIPA privacy and given way too much information about my own health status, what, you may ask, is my point? Am I just trying to elicit sympathy over a tickling cough and a sore throat?
These are fair questions. I’m sharing our Covid experience with you, in the hope you will to think about what it feels like to have an experience forced upon you that you not only did not want, but tried your best to avoid. That feeling is not a good one. It feels like a violation. I want to blame someone, even though I know that won’t roll back the clock and it won’t make me or my girlfriend recover faster.
I am angry and concerned, or maybe angry because concerned, about the potential long-term effects this bout with Covid may be setting us up for down the road. What other future firsthand experience might some careless person have seeded into us that won’t bloom for months or years down the road? This study from London’s Oxford University raises concerns about neurological and psychological effects. Our Covid experience may extend well past the CDC quarantine period. The Covid experience for some is already of an indeterminate duration.
Long term effects of COVID 19 brochure template. These are what have been identified as potential threats down the road. Fun, huh?
I’m guessing if you’ve made it this far in my account, you’re at least somewhat concerned about Covid yourself. You probably wear a mask. Social distancing feels normal to you now. You may already be vaccinated or you’re leaning that way. I hope all of that is true. I also hope you will use your influence and your example of good and loving decisions to help instruct, guide, and persuade the unconvinced. This pandemic can still be a catalyst for positive, constructive change.
Covid changed my political views
It has certainly changed me, most notably my political views, in some very good ways. (Although now it has changed my medical chart for the rest of my life, in a very bad way). For me, the pandemic moved fuzzy ideas about the shared, inter-connected aspects of health and sickness, (and therefore of health care,) out of the abstract, and into sharp-edged, practical reality. Politics gets very real and very personal when your own life is on the line. Politics is the crucible where the ideal meets the practical and the necessary.
Here in the real world, where 99% of us don’t have a private Island or a floating city where we can retreat and hide out away from the great unwashed, teeming masses, we share air. We share spaces intimate enough, compact enough to make each other sick. Some of those shared spaces and experiences are voluntary acts of will. At other times, proximity to other humans is part of a job description, the income of which cannot be forfeited just because symptoms appear. And that person who cannot afford to stay home when they might be coming down with something, might be patient zero for the next viral assault that makes Covid-19 look like a trip to Disneyland.
Starting to see Health Care as a different kind of right…
I had unsuccessfully tried to get my head around the notion of health care as a right before the pandemic. I had always thought of rights as those entitlements to which we are born, simply for being born. Thinking this way, I could not see how the right to health care is something one is born with. Most of the rights we typically consider inalienable are those we believe to be ”ours,” possessed by the individual, and not to be taken from them. Liberty, for instance, is much easier to take from a person, than to give to them. It is impossible to give someone the pursuit of happiness, as any parent knows. You want your child to be happy. You give your child opportunities. Good parents encourage their children’s interests and pursuits. But no one can give another the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit can be taken away, however.
So, I thought of rights in this way, as possessions. And thus thinking, I reasoned that while health can be taken from a person, health care is not something a person is born possessing, and therefore not a right that can be taken away. I thought of it as a privilege – a useful one, a humanitarian one, even a desirable one – but a privilege, nonetheless, and not a right. And from the standpoint of the individual, that may still be an accurate way to look at it. However, if considering the question from the view of the public good, the entire equation changes.
…One with a different primary beneficiary
My experience with Covid, began as a witness and observer. Now, I’m numbered among the human flotsam swept up in its flood. The watching, and now, the experiencing, have produced a new conviction. I now believe Universal Health Care is primarily for the public, social, and national good.
It is not primarily for the individual at all. Of course, the individual benefits. But that is a proximate end to the ultimate goal of protecting society. I am now a born-again advocate for immediate, universal, mandatory health coverage (to the extent allowable – while maintaining personal and privacy protections). Every member of society deserves protection from whatever sickness any one member may contract, thereby endangering all. A single, uncovered member places society’s health at risk, through lack of access to care, treatment options, or at-home, out-of-work, sick pay. If we are willing to pay taxes to a government that buys state-of-the-art weapons to defend us from military enemies as a social good, then we should be willing to pay taxes for the government to defend us from biological, viral, molecular enemies.
A common objection, the product of bad thinking
Many are opposed to universal health care, or socialized-medicine, or single-payer systems (or whatever politically charged label can be slapped on) because they believe a person is being freely given something of value (health care) that is not free to provide. They feel the common and understandable disdain that many of us share over handing out goodies to people who won’t or can’t earn the goodies for themselves. And not content to stop there, paying for those goodies by taking the costs from the people who are working and earning the same goodies for themselves, but are involuntarily forced to pay for someone else’s too. It doesn’t seem fair. That view, once entrenched is hard to dislodge.
We should be able to talk about this so we can prepare for the future
But is it fair to subject workers and earners (and therefore taxpayers) to sickness or death, because one person cannot afford health care to treat a sickness that exposes all the taxpayers, who together, could have afforded to pay for the treatments, thereby protecting not just that individual, but all of themselves? What is fair about that?
We will botch our way through this pandemic…limping all the way to the finish line. Although, according to our last President, we’ve been ”rounding the turn” for what amounts to the world’s longest-running, continual Nascar race in the effort. But, what happens when the next pandemic hits? Wouldn’t you rather some of your taxes go to protect you from an uninsured person coming to work sick and killing you or a loved one? These are at least issues to talk about without accusing each other of wanting to turn the country into the Soviet Union, for God’s sake.
How it’s going…and what’s ahead for many of us
Our firsthand experience with Covid is soon to involve the battle my girlfriend is going to face with her work over the timetable for her return. She’s coughing now. She’s still sick. She is certainly still symptomatic from the same viral murderer that is going to kill as many of us as we allow to do so. Thankfully, she has work provided health insurance. But she has no mechanism to appeal to paid sick-leave, or an allowance for full-time work-from-home until there is a complete cessation of symptoms and production of a negative test. She has hit the 10 day mark, and she is still coughing. Hers is an individual case, but is not likely to be unique in those terms. Her duplicate could be the cough you’ve been hearing in the cubicle next to yours all morning.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been both a global morality play and a world-wide laboratory for observation of social behaviors. For the most part, countries and cultures steeped in cooperation and interdependence have responded better than those based more on individualism. By any metric, western countries, particularly the United States, show far more positive results and deaths when factored for population, than many Eastern, Asian countries. India is the outlier in terms of its rates of infection and deaths. One could hope they share a culture that values life and where the cultural impacts behavior in a positive way, to preserve it. That’s not always the case. Though it is the case that culture impacts results.
Raw Statistics
Statistical analyses of raw numbers like the ones linked above measure effects, not causes. There are not likely to be any studies broken down by political party or religious affiliation. If there were, they might prove illuminating. Not that politics or religions create disease. They don’t. They are not the primary cause. But once started, a viral disease spreads, or is mitigated, by the actions of the people where it is present. And people act on what they believe. Persons in the hardest hit countries, with the United States firmly ensconced in the top (bottom) position, either do not believe the virus is serious, or they don’t believe it’s up to them to do anything to help stop it.
The surest proof of belief is action. If you believe a chair will hold your weight, you demonstrate that belief by sitting on it. All actions (and I include inactions as a type of negative action), are the effects of some type of belief. If I do X, I believe I will achieve Y. Or conversely, if I refrain from doing X, I believe it will prevent Y. Any modifications made to behavior on account of Covid have come from belief in their necessity and efficacy. Those who have not believed it was serious (at least to themselves) have ridiculed the warnings and spurned the recommendations. This has happened to a statistically significant degree in Western countries and cultures contrasted with non-Western.
Is American Culture A Selfish Killer?
The Soviet Union collapsed because its brand of Communism failed. What does the unspeakably poor Covid record of the United States say about our culture and government? Is American culture a selfish killer? Or is that an un-Patriotic question? Maybe that is an unfair comparison. Maybe it’s not relevant. But something in the fabric of Western culture (in general), and the United States (in particular) has been the cause of the atrocious global rankings. Some will comfort themselves with the notion that the US shows so poorly because we test so thoroughly. Some will say we are more honest and open with our results. (No one from New York or Florida, though). These views may be accurate. If so, I stand corrected. There is no evidence to suggest these scenarios are true. And it doesn’t negate the fact that many (including many state governors) believe liberty and economics are more valuable than health and life.
Origination is not as important as Elimination
To bring this back to my opening, a pandemic starts however and wherever it starts. Knowing how and where this virus started provides zero useful information to stop it. Humans are hard-wired to assign blame, but sometimes fingering the culprit is not as important as limiting the damage. Once started, people are alternately praiseworthy or blameworthy for their actions to limit the spread. Here again, the culture impacts on results.
The West could have learned from the pandemic. Citizens could have been made aware of shared, mutual dependencies. From the outset, political leaders could have promoted the literally life-altering message of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Instead, it has been the vehicle in an all-out race pitting lunatic-liberty against life. A difficulty for many to embrace these concepts may hinge on their unwillingness to take any responsibility for their role in spreading a virus they don’t feel responsible for starting in the first place. Since they did not personally start it, they absolve themselves of any responsibility to slow its spread. I don’t know if that’s true. I suppose another possibility is that a lot of people in Western civilizations really just don’t give a damn about each other, acting out the belief that people aren’t all that important, except as tools for making money.
Time for a PEP talk: Praise, Encouragement, and Progress
In another life, I taught Bradley Method natural childbirth classes for over a decade. That’s a lot of babies! I learned more than anyone who doesn’t aim to be an obstetrician would ever care to know about pregnancy, labor, and birth itself, including tricks for coaxing a stubborn placenta.
I always get a good chuckle and an eye roll when I watch a pregnant woman in the movies announce that her water has broken, grab her swollen abdomen, and induce panic around her as if the baby will fall out in the next three minutes.
The process of labor is long. (My apologies to my readers who are moms. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know much better than I do.) The average labor is 15 hours in duration. Many can safely go 24 hours or more, as the mother’s body and the soon-to-be-newborn work together to achieve a birth without arbitrary time management procedures.
There are three stages of labor, with an additional period that seems like it should be a stage unto itself.
In first stage the woman begins having contractions. The bag of muscles that is her uterus is shortening. As they flex and shorten, the opening of the uterus know as the cervix is flattened and pulled open. I always imagine this as pulling a thick sweater on over ones head.
Like this? Sorry, Moms everywhere!
In second stage, the cervix is as open as needed to allow the baby’s head (hopefully: I won’t go into breech births here) and body to pass through, and the muscles of the uterus change to a more expulsive type. This is commonly referred to as pushing stage, lasting from the time the cervix is open enough to allow the baby out to the actual appearance of the little miracle.
Third stage is the delivery of the placenta, which is usually accomplished in half an hour or less. A retained placenta is no beuno, and creates a potentially serious bleeding problem for the new mom. So, don’t forget the placenta!
These are neat and tidy stages. First stage is from the onset of contractions to the full dilation of the cervix. Second set is from dilation to birth. Third stage is the placenta.
I’ve attended over a hundred natural births. I’ve been present as a coach, husband, father, mid-wife (for my own seven children), photographer, videographer, or general support person. In every birth there is one stage not listed here that every woman in labor goes through. It’s known as Transition.
It is that stage when the uterus is working its hardest. The contractions last longer, sometimes over two minutes from the start to the peak, and they are much more frequent, sometimes stringing together with very little rest from one to the next.
There is a universal emotional signpost. Self-Doubt. No, really. It is the, ”I cannot do this! I’m dying! Make it stop! Something’s wrong!” kind. It’s severe. It’s real. It’s uncontrollable. It is also temporary. Thus the name given to this period. Transition.
It marks the time that the mom goes from doing her best to relax and allow her body to work for her and her baby, to the time when she gets to bear down and be an active participant. But in all the births I’ve been to, I’ve never been to one during which the mom didn’t feel like it was impossible for her to finish the task. Most felt like they had to give up their claim to their own lives in order to bring a new one into the world. And I mean, they really felt that struggle!
In that period, the best thing I could do as a coach, a husband, support person was to offer genuine admiration and encouragement. In Bradley, it’s known as a PEP talk. The coach offers Praise, Encouragement, and Progress. Like this:
”You are doing it!” ”You’ve already been through so many contractions!” ”You are phenomenal!” ”Just one at a time!” ”You’re amazing!”
And I meant all those things. Seriously. I’m typing this misty-eyed with tears rolling down my cheeks in admiration and thanksgiving for the selflessness of mothers everywhere! Talk about heroes!
As a man, I’ll never really know what it is like from that side of it, but I do know what it’s like to have the woman you’ve shared this entire experience with from the time you found out you were expecting through all the changes in her body, and her mood, and trying to make sure she had everything she needed to be healthy and safe, and listening to your baby’s heart beat and watching it try to wrestle its way out of her womb.
You remember all those things. You bring that with you to the birth with such a sense of responsibility and of hope. And she’s saying she’s going to die, and she cannot go on, and it’s not working, and she has to stop.
And you’re her best thing in the world to try to help her over that last hurdle to see the baby be born, and for both the people you love more than you love your own life be safe and okay.
So, you tell her, ”You’ve got this!” ”I’m right here!” ”I’m SO PROUD of you!” ”Okay, just breathe.” ”We’re almost there!”
And folks, that’s where we are with this god-damned Coronavirus! We’re almost there. We have a little more work to do is all. We’ve been through so much! Some of us have given everything. Not one of us has given nothing. We can do this! Now is not the time to give up, or give in. And now is not the time to pretend that the birth is complete. It’s not quite over yet, but we’ve got this! Soon, very soon we can all push together into a new kind of post-Covid world and it will feel like a miracle.
A year in and some of the old normal won’t be resurrected.
Beth and I turned on the ACC basketball tournament last night and remembered that it was a year ago that the tournament was shut down due to the the first outbreak of positive Covid cases. Within a few days, the NCAA tournament was cancelled. And it wasn’t long before all sports took a hiatus.
I remember seeing the first masks in the neighborhood grocery store. They brought to mind photos I’d seen of heavily populated Chinese cities where the citizens mask up due to smog and air pollution. But seeing people wearing blue masks here in my little town in America felt surreal.
We made a decision early on that we would do our best to act as if we were already carriers. I talked to my two adult kids and the teenager living with me that we needed to curtail all contact with non-family, non-household people unless we were working and wearing masks.
That was hard on my teen-aged son who was very used to having friends over and hanging out with them. But it was more real when he was sent home for his last year of high school to finish his senior year on a Chromebook from his bedroom.
I think younger people in general have had a harder time with a more restrictive lifestyle. As I’ve previously written, younger people are more exploratory than exploitative in life. They haven’t had enough time to craft a life that they are sure they’ll like and that will bring them the riches of contentment.
The sports thing actually became a welcome change of pace. I soon found I didn’t miss it at all. We filled that time with other things that were much more shared and therefore more enjoyable. Virtual, nightly attendance to some game or other had felt normal. But just because something is habitual and autonomic doesn’t mean it should be normal.
Maybe too much of life is lived that way, without putting a lot thought into it. But the new reality of Covid created the context to actually think about the mundane and ordinary. So many things that once were normal no longer feel normal. Even watching movies is odd. The characters have no masks on and we shrug and say, ”Pre-Covid”.
So, for me at least there are some positive take-aways from being forced to re-think how life is done. It’s not a bad idea to have that conversation with yourself and those you do life with every so often. If nothing else, Covid has helped reinforce the belief that my favorite things in the world, and the things and people that make life worth living, are pretty close by after all.
Student’s of history recognize patterns of cause and effect when reviewing a course of events. Being familiar with the stories and actors of the past helps them spot similarities, discrepancies, and precedents. This is more than just the ability to memorize dates. It is the ability to step back with a wider perspective to see connections and correlations where the past is informing the present.
One of my favorite historians, Will Durant, employed a fantastic phrase that encapsulates much of what makes the knowledge of history invaluable for understanding the present.
”The present is the past, rolled up for action…and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.”
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the first Covid death in the United States. As of this morning, there have been just under half a million since that first one. That’s an average of 1233 deaths per day, but the worst month by far was January. There is a long way to go before the United States records its last Covid death. It is a national failure.
I cannot find a historical precedent for the past year. I can find examples for widespread selfishness. There are certainly periods of widespread ignorance. I cannot find an American year where the two married as they did in 2020.
I think I’m not too far out on a limb to say that Selfishness combined with Ignorance is a careless Killer.
I don’t hold out much hope of either cause being reduced very soon.
