Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Sunday, April 5th, 2020

Panic

Woke up in alarm at 7:30am today – panic, I missed my 6:00am conference call!

How did that happen?

Why did the alarm not go off?

Max hops onto the bed, demanding to be fed, he has this way of head butting me when he thinks it is time for me to act. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining. Here I am thinking that of course it would shine on a Monday after it was overcast all weekend – oh wait, it is Sunday today…

It takes me a while to take it in.

I did not miss the call.

I have time to make a coffee and return to bed with the news of the day and indulge in “News from the World”, I have only 50 pages left.

Is it only me who loses count of the days of the week in these strange times? I feel like I am losing my sanity, given how long it takes me to arrive at the fact that it is Sunday and that I can barely believe it. It turns out to be a largely lazy day.

EM and I celebrate the start with breakfast in bed before joining the virtual community of the German Lutheran Church. Our appearance twice in a row causes the pastor to actually call me later in the day while I am reading out in the garden. Given hairdressers and manicurists are not considered essential and are all closed, we will need to fend for ourselves.

While I have become quite proficient at dying my streaks purple, I have never cut my hair. It has been 7 weeks, when normally they are cut every four weeks. It could have been a lot worse, nevertheless EM thinks it is a good thing no one will see me for a while. Somehow I cannot do layers.

The Listserv is exploding with curb alerts as people continue to clear out basements and garages. Lots of plants, but by the time we get wherever, they are gone. It just means I need to order online I guess, seeing nurseries are also considered non-essential.

The Listserv has also come up with an answer on who is digging all these holes in my back garden, seems I have voles. So I throw in a vole trap and vole repellent into my online cart.

Highlight of the day was an outing to Rodman’s. There were like six people in the store, so distancing was not a problem. We picked up all the items on our list and sadly some that weren’t. Even there, no toilet paper. I still fail to understand what people do with it. Yes, the news continues to be scary for the US, but can people really be shitting themselves this much? I mean, if you read about the cronyism and incompetence of the administration, I can see how things are bad. Also noting that Kushner is not only utterly incompetent, he has ruined every business he has touched, bought his way into a Harvard degree, and the son to a convicted criminal (tax fraud). Sounds like the vita of agent orange, no wonder they get along.

And numbers are not helping. Reported infections in the US are at 335k today, this equates to roughly a quarter of all reported infections in the world. That is a scary 35% increase from yesterday and more than five times the number of infections the Chinese reported and China’s population is approximately four times as many people as the USA. The numbers alone speak to the mismanagement. And while staunch Republicans still see no reason to worry or no failings of the administration I found the below post by George Conway in italic (husband of top Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway) quite to the point.

"For Trump supporters, let me make one thing VERY clear! For the record NO ONE is blaming the President for the virus. Let me repeat. Coronavirus is not Trump’s fault. Here’s a detailed list of what we are blaming him for:

* Trump declined to use the World Health Organization’s test like other nations. Back in January, over a month before the first Co-vid19 case, the Chinese posted a new mysterious virus and within a week, Berlin virologists had produced the first diagnostic test. By the end of February, the WHO had shipped out tests to 60 countries. Oh, but not our government. We declined the test even as a temporary bridge until the CDC could create its own test. The question is why? We don’t know but what to look for is which pharmaceutical company eventually manufactures the test and who owns the stock. Keep tuned.

* In 2018 Trump fired Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossart, whose job was to coordinate a response to global pandemics. He was not replaced.

* In 2018 Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC director for medical and bio-defense preparedness left the job. Trump did not replace Dr. Borio.

* In 2019 the NSC’s Senior Director for Global Health Security and bio-defense, Tim Ziemer, left the position and Trump did not replace the Rear Admiral.

* Trump shut down the entire Global Health Security and Bio-defense agency. Yes, he did.

* Amid the explosive worldwide outbreak of the virus Trump proposed a 19% cut to the budget of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention plus a 10% cut to Public Health Services and a 7% cut to Global Health Services. Those happen to be the organizations that respond to public health threats.

* In 2018, at Trump’s direction, the CDC stopped funding epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries including China.

* Trump didn’t appoint a doctor to oversee the US response to the pandemic. He appointed Mike Pence.

* Trump has on multiple occasions sowed doubt about the severity of the virus even using the word hoax at events and rallies. He even did it at an event where the virus was being spread. Trump has put out zero useful information concerning the health risks of the virus.

* Trump pretended the virus had been contained.

* Trump left a cruise ship at sea for days, denying them proper hospital care, rather than increase his numbers in America.

Repeat. We do not blame Trump for the virus. We blame him for gutting the nation’s preparations to deal with it. We blame him for bungling testing and allowing it to spread uninhibited. We blame him for wasting taxpayer money on applause lines at his rallies (like The Wall). We blame him for putting his own political life over American human life. I hope this clears things up." The Lincoln Project, a group led by George Conway, released a new video criticizing the president's response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In an earlier blog I shared a timeline by an Italian FB contributor. Here is what the American timeline looks like so far. This has been put together by Maureen Williams I believe, so I cna tak eno creid tfor it. Eight States by the way have not instituted any social distancing/ lock down measures  so far.

Dec 18th - House Impeaches Trump
Jan 8th - First CDC warning
Jan 9th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 14th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 16h - House sends impeachment articles to Senate
Jan 18th - Trump golfs
Jan 19th - Trump golfs
Jan 20th - First case of corona virus in the US, Washington State 
Jan 22nd - “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Jan 28th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 30th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 1st - Trump golfs
Feb 2nd - “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
Feb 5th - Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend.
Feb 10th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 12th - Dow Jones closes at an all time high of 29,551.42 Feb 15h - Trump golfs
Feb 19th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 20th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 21st - Trump campaign rally
Feb 24th - “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb 25h - “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
Feb 25h - “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
Feb 26th - “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
Feb 26th - “We're going very substantially down, not up.” Also "This is a flu. This is like a flu"; "Now, you treat this like a flu"; "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
Feb 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Feb 28th - “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
Feb 28th - Trump campaign rally
March 2nd - “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2nd - “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5th - “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5th - “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6th - “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6th - “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6th - “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6th - “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 7th - Trump golfs
March 8th - Trump golfs
March 8th - “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9th - “This blindsided the world.”
March 13th - [Declared state of emergency]
March 17th - “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
March 18th - "It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate."
March 23th- Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93
March 25th - 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment.
March 30th - Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16
April 2nd - 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment.

This does not give much rise for hope. News from the continent is more encouraging. There are discussions on the “German Anomaly”, namely the fact that death rates in Germany are much lower than in Italy or Spain (~1% versus ~10%). 

Speaking of Germany versus the USA. It appears that if the USA were in lock down for a full two months, the average American would work the same amount of hours the average German works without lock down. Looking at German GDP per capita (USD 44.500 per annum) versus the USA (USD 59.500). I does not seem like a massive difference for the two months worth of work and these numbers do not reflect either income distribution or cost of living, which are 11% higher in the USA. So income is pretty much at par. In addtion, in Gemrany (like almost all over Europe) education from day care through university is free for all, everyone has health insurance, receives 24 months of unemployment payments in the event of job loss and when that ends there is still social security facilitating survival covering housing, clothing and food. How come this is not avialable to American citizens? Never have I seen as many homeless people in a “first world country” as in the US. The current pandemic will unquestionably lead to their numbers increasing further.

And yes, there is a lot of charity in this country, but that is what it is, charity; often with strings attached. Not a social consensus on some minimum standard all citizens should enjoy. I doubt the 6.6 million who registered for unemployment over the past four weeks did so out of an unwillingness to work. I also doubt that those working two or three jobs do so out of pure enjoyment.

Fortunately, many people I talk to share this perspective, fight for living wages, healthcare for all or against student debt, and still, somehow it is not something this society as a whole aspires too, something I just cannot wrap my head around.