Do any of you remember that wonderful story that floated around the internet years ago about dog vs cat in their outlook in life?
The one that presented a day in the life of – the dog –
0700 – my people are up – just the best!
0730 – food – the best time of day!
0830 – walkies! – just the best!
etc
As apposed to the cat –
0700 – this is the 436th day of my captivity
0730 – perhaps I will lie on the stairs and trip one of my captors….
Well – this is the first day of our captivity in the SF Bay Area. It is not like I was going much of anywhere in the last couple of week. Well, other than running errands for just about everyone in the family. But still – I could run errands for myself which meant stops at important places like JoAnns and Micheals. And the Dublin Sewing Center, Stone Mountain and Daughters, and book stores and…. you get the idea
Now, I am not at all adverse to reasonable attempts to slow down Corona Virus (which, the US President aside – has absolutely NOTHING to do with Mexican Beer). Flattening the curve will spread out the burden on the health care system. That is reality.
What is also reality is that this a virus that spreads just like a common cold through a fall kindergarten class. It is going to spread. Most people are going to get it sooner or later, What we are trying to do is make that “later” happen as far in the future as possible.
The other part of the reality is the economic devastation. If you are someone who enjoys history, perhaps tries to learn from history and is wondering if this virus is going to be comparable to one of the ten plagues visited on Egypt from the Passover Story – I direct you to Dorothy Armstrong’s The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague. It is one of the Great Courses, available through Audible, several other sources, and perhaps your public library. It was a US public TV series in 2016 (available through Amazon Prime) and on DvD. More than just talk about the medical and health aspects – she looks at the economic, social, and political changes that were the result disease spread, lives lost, fear, hate, and complete societal changes. The entirety of Europe, as well as most of the Far East permanently changed.
Perhaps you would also like to think about the 1917-18 Influenza pandemic which helped bring WWI to a close. Or the 1956 or 1968 Pandemics.. Oh, wait! Most of us were fairly young then and lived through them with little bump in our lives.
What is going to be important about this epidemic is, in the final accounting – not going to be the virus, but how we, as a society respond and recover. It is going to take years to decades to come back from what has already happened. Every week that shut downs continue, millions more will be economically devastated in the “Western” world. Every month adds at least a year to that recovery period. We are so used to expecting medical “miracles” that being locked down for 18+ months just stuns everyone. And, if we do that – lock down time after time, there will be little left at the end.
Only one of our “chicks” is out of area right now – Noah is finishing his exams at UCSan Diego on Thurs and will be home on Friday. The rest are now all local. Everyone is healthy, bored. I now have three off work (two daughters, one SIL), one headed to work everyone morning, and one working from home. George can continue, as he has for over a year now, to work over phone and internet. We are lucky. The house is paid for. My income is assured unless the US government completely fails (in which case there will be more serious problems than the local government demanding property taxes.
I would appreciate knowing that you are all right and safe as you have time.
I have a number of essays written over the last month which I will take off private in the next couple of days.
Thank you for providing a voice of reason in a world full of people hoarding toilet paper.
I’m jealous of those on the Artania who are looking forward to 30 peaceful sea days heading back to Europe from Australia.
I would so like to be out on a ship… but think that is going to be off the table for a while. Not that I am not willing, but the ships just aren’t sailing….