Midday Bidsong

Midday Birdsong

6 May 2020

Today is cool, but not cold.  Once again, the MacBook is out on the back porch.  So, if I am writing and the computer is outdoors, I must be outdoors too. My hearing aids are in and my reading glasses are on.  (Really, they are computer glasses that have a special tint to make viewing the screen easier).

I can hear life returning to this place as spring overthrows the winter queen. At least six different birdsongs are heard. New growth is everywhere.  I have a fine bunch of dandelions growing in the back yard.  

After considered deliberation I have decided to do the mulch distribution tomorrow. Still, I have tried to be useful this Wednesday.  I emptied the ash out of the firepit.  I made the bed.  Went with my wife to pick up a prescription at the grocery.  Looked at my checkbook, ouch.  Won’t get my first social security check until the third week of June.  Looks like a month of dandelion salads for me. Good thing I have that crop going great guns in my backyard.

America and western Europe are caught between a rock and a hard place right now.  With stay at home orders in place in some locales and others states and cities “reopening” the people in these locations and their governments have to figure out what are the appropriate precautions that need to be in place going forward. The answer is elusive.  On one had you have people that wish to defer to the scientests so as to follow strict mitigation and on the other you have people who say the moral thing is get the economy up and running as fast as possible.

67 million Americans are 60 and over out of a total population of 328 million.  So, one out of five people living in the United States is part of the group where if they contract the virus the odds of death are 5%. 5% is a big frightening number if you are in that group, and I am. Not mentioned as often but people in this group if they survive face the grim prospect of long-term disability.  https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/survivors-severe-covid-19-beating-virus-just-beginning   Apparently, the lung damage from the disease can be quite severe. If we add in people with heart problems, diabetes, asthma and autoimmune disorders the total percentage of the population at risk is even higher.

The government’s top experts in this field, you know the folks that have been trotted out by the administration at the televised updates, have said the proper response is social distancing, masks, hand washing, etc.  Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx have both indicated that with total mitigation in effect, (i.e., stay at home orders and six feet of distance,) deaths from the virus could reach 240,000. Without total mitigation that number could be much, much higher. So, what is to be done? I don’t have the answer but eventually we have to return to commercial activity.  I am pretty sure the return to commerce will not look like the place we left.

I would feel better about staged reopening if I trusted human beings to be rational.  The thing is I don’t trust people to behave rationally.  So much of what we do is based on throughput which requires we cram in and process as many people in the shortest amount of time possible.  Think crowded airplanes long lines at the motor vehicle office, long lines at fast-food takeout stations and packed classrooms. I can tell you that having been on a school board the standard allocation between school students in a classroom is far less than six feet. When people are crammed together, they get antsy and they act irrationally.  They take off their masks so you can see their bared teeth. They growl and spittle flies.

How many stores have marked off six foot points to wait at when you are queued up in check out lines? How many people have good face masks, wear them correctly and exchange them properly when they should be sanitized? How often will people wash their hands going forward?

Clearly, I am just an old guy, a retiree that wasn’t that good at math.  Thus, I don’t have the answers as to how we move forward. But I can tell you the old normal can’t be the new normal as we head into the future.  With the recent spate of virus problems, SARS, H1N1 and now Coviid 19, the crammed in like sardines model of commerce should not be allowed to return. Until a vaccine is developed standing close enough to exchange airborne spittle should not be allowed to return either. The paradigm should be shifting.  Will it?  I don’t know.  We will see what happens next.

Oh well back to the chirps and trills of the midday avian concert.