Virus Blog

7/03/20

Global. This is a time to be obedient. This is a time to cooperate. This is not a time for individuals to thrive. The virus is a team sport with no stars. My friend in the UK reports that in his city the cases are spiking. With pubs opening as early as 6am maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. When the virus first became known and we read about China literally locking down a city we said, "but we could never do that here." On to Korea and they locked down tight. Japan required face masks before they even were sure that would work. All three of those countries have done a better job. Italy was the first "western" country to experience overwhelming virus growth and they sent advice. We were behind us and they warned us to lock down. We didn't. Even when we finally did lock down the estimate is that only about 50% of the people were truly locked down. At the first moment we stupidly approached life as if we were back to normal both here and in the UK. This is not a time for personal rights and personal freedoms. This is a time to fall in line and be a member of the species.

The Mask Strategy. The presidential election may well come down to a face coverig. The President is holding another maskless socially tight rally today at Mount Rushmore where he's there to celebrate July 4th with the resumption of fireworks over four of our best presidents. It's pretty clear that this is as close as the current president will ever get to Mount Rushmore. At a time when case growth is spiking in some states, where the positivity rate is 6x an alarming rate at a time when tests are being rationed and unanimous global medical consensus says we should stay apart and cover our faces or suffer the consequences. We are suffering the consequences. The cause is clear. It appears that the President's strongest states are being hit the hardest and yet he stands with no masks and dense gatherings. His government is virtually pleading with him and yet the global community is still trusing this guy. In any TV series this guy would have been voted off the show long ago. Sadly few of the presidents men are nearly as outraged as they should be. Suggesting that "personal freedom" is more important than "societal success." Not wearing a mask crystallizes the Republican Party's strategy. It's not about "us", it's about "me"!

7/4/20

Landslide. On a holiday Friday the news was looking for topics to discuss. I walked in late to a conversation about a possible landslide victory in the fall. It's bad luck, of course, to think about such scenarios, but I couldn't help myself. What would happen if Biden didn't just win big but that the entire Democratic Party won big? What if a landslide victory returned control of both houses to Democrats and not by one or two fragile votes but by a solid majority? The answer might be a break in the log jam that has been government through most of my adult life. What if everyone could agree on bold solutions? What if we didn't just agree but we agreed on significant across the board change? What if we wiped out the isolationist policies of the last four years and replaced that with some form incremental inclusion? I think the world would be a better place. So what would it look like? The republican party would certainly change for the next decade or two in a scramble to the middle and abandon their racist far right roots. It's not something I can spend time thinking about right now but is it possible that this four years of suffering could propel us into a new reality? We might need a disaster like the last four years in order to achieve a new reality. Enough said. Enough thought.

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