Covid Crisis: Where We Are Now

Is this April resolve fading away in May?

May 1 has become an important date in the covid crisis, and depending on what happens in the next weeks and months, a fateful day.  The federal government has ended its stay at home suggestion and is encouraging states to reopen businesses and public life.  A number of states are doing so, in different ways and to different degrees.

This seems to be happening for no other reason than it is May 1, a date of convenience in issuing initial stay at home orders.  Some places are showing a decline in new cases and a decline in deaths attributed to covid.  Others are experiencing increases, and there is little correlation in many instances between those who are "re-opening" and those who are experiencing declines.  Texas for instance began relaxing restrictions as their daily death rate hit a new high.

The previously announced medical criteria for loosening and ending restrictions were adequate medical resources to handle a possible influx of cases, universal testing for the virus, and the ability to trace contacts of those who test positive.  None of these conditions have been met anywhere, though some places are closer than others.

Consider this: we are so far from a capability of universal testing that the US Senate is incapable of testing all 100 members and their staffs.  Virtually the only people who have complete access to testing--to multiple tests--are the president and vice-president.

So the reasons for re-opening (if that's what we want to call it) at this time are not medical but economic and (mostly) political.  There is a certain understandable human impatience with restrictions which is now boiling over, along with more domestic violence and child abuse being reported.  It does seem almost miraculous that so many people have put up with these restrictions for a solid month or more.  And despite the demonstrations funded by cynical right wing rich and fomented by their demented minions,  polls show an overwhelming support for restrictions that save suffering and save lives, even despite the economic wreckage.

So the demonstrations are mostly a distraction that the media and politicians can use for their own purposes, but only mask the political and economic interests at work.  The federal government is fully capable of doing what other western democratic governments have done, which is fully fund both essential workers and those without income because of the covid crisis.  But Republicans will not allow that, and so the only alternative for people without paychecks is to risk their lives going back to work.

The calculation is easy enough to make: those known to be dying from covid are mostly from the categories of elderly, poor and/or black and other racial minorities.  The elderly are economically useless, and the poor and working poor have no choice but to risk their lives trying to make a living.  Big corporations and big Republican donors must survive.

Even the money that has been allocated is often being channeled to precisely them: big companies, including in rightist-friendly fossil fuel, and specifically the biggest Trump donors.  It is potentially the most massive corruption in American history, and it barely makes the news.

As for covid itself, we are still largely in the dark.  I wondered why the more I read about it the less I seemed to know, until I read this piece.  That seems to be where we are: knowing almost nothing.  We just know it is a terrible disease and a killer.

What we mostly know is that the entire country ground to a halt for a month, and most of us have been under house arrest for at least that long--all of this was supposed to break the chain of transmission and provide the time to do what else had to be done to re-open, especially in testing capability.  But in terms of preparation, the month of April was instead largely squandered.  The federal government refused to do what only it could have done to scale up for this crisis, instead making things worse by diverting resources from where they were needed to where the R's thought would be politically advantageous.

Now the Rs intend to pretend the crisis is over.  Having deferred all responsibilities to the states, they now want to deny states the financial resources they need.  April looks to be just the beginning.  Meanwhile, more than 60,000 Americans died from the virus, mostly in April, an undercount that probably means a hundred thousand or more.  It will take more good fortune than anyone can expect even to make it to some of the changes we need in January without many more deaths and social chaos, assuming voters understand what is at stake in November.

As for breaking the chain of transmission, that largely worked where people stuck with sequestration and distancing, but hot spots like crowded factories, care homes and essential workplaces have kept the numbers going up.  Now restrictions will be eased, and we can hold our breath for the next several weeks and months to see how bad it gets.

Jacinda Ardern

In all of this, there must also be admiration for those who have met the occasion with what amounts to heroism.  These may start at the top with people like Dr. Fauci, and others who tell the truth and are threatened and punished for it by the psycho paranoid in chief, as well as public officials who have threaded the needle, each in their own way.

 That list must start with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern but it includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the governors of California, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and others, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

But they also include local health officials such as Humboldt County's Dr. Teresa Frankovich and other county public health workers.  They include the essential workers keeping us fed and protected, and they also include the millions of people who have both supported and maintained restrictions with as much humor and grace as they could muster.  That's everywhere it has happened, but I have a special place in my heart for the people of Italy, who suffered so much but provided the first example of how to behave in this crisis.

As for the future, we may hope that the leadership that has yet to materialize from the various regional compacts of states does soon assert itself, and--together with Bill and Melinda Gates--hope that the European Union or other international entities can come up with international solutions.   (Here's an interview with Bill Gates which links to his latest essay on where we stand at the moment in the covid crisis--something he's been warning about for at least five years.)

Here on the North Coast, we've been fortunate so far.  We've had only 54 positive tests in Humboldt County, 4 hospitalizations and no deaths.  Nearly all of those 54 have recovered, and most days for the past three weeks we've had no new positives.  At the same time, our hospitals and public health people have scaled up and geared up, with testing and medical capacity, if that changes for the worse.

I do see impatience with restrictions, especially among the young.  I've seen several articles recently questioning whether the statistics still showing most of the deaths come from the ranks of the elderly are feeding age bias.  In other words, we're an acceptable sacrifice.  I don't know.  I do assume that we in this age group are in for house arrest for a good long while.  I saw an estimate today saying that covid is likely to continue for at least two years.  That's also the estimate of the minimum length of time it would take for a vaccine to be widely available.

The demonstrations, the impatience, suggest that as unexpected the social cohesion has been so far, it could break down rather rapidly.  Our fearless leader has already lost his nerve.  The rest of us must somehow keep ours.

Update: On May 1, the US experienced its highest single day number of recorded deaths from covid, at nearly 3,000.
    

The Comfort of Gregory Peck

As I suppose others are doing, I've enlivened my sequestration with some comfortable old movies.  My re-viewing of On the Beach for an upcoming post in my Soul of the Future series (not exactly comforting but in a way it is) reminded me of my late 1950s/early 1960s interest in Gregory Peck.

A few of his movies are posted in full on YouTube, including a gorgeous color print of the 1963 movie Captain Newman, M.D.  This was one of the first movies I remember seeing after I'd read the book it was based on--in this case, a Readers Digest Condensed Book version of Leo Rosten's 1961 book of that same title.

The story is about a psychologist at an Army Air Force base in Arizona during World War II (1944 to be specific), evaluating and treating airmen, either to be sent back into the war or sent to further treatment.

The book is based on an actual person, Captain Ralph Greenson.  That today we know the category of  cases he treated as PTSD--post-traumatic stress disorder--is due in part to Greenson's work in World War II.

The film stars Gregory Peck as Captain Newman, Angie Dickinson as his nurse assistant and love interest, and Tony Curtis as the irrepressible orderly, Corporal Leibowitz.  There are several dramatic and effective performances by actors playing patients, notably Eddie Albert, the young Robert Duvall and the singer Bobby Darin, who received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor.

Duvall had already made his mark in the movie Gregory Peck is probably best remembered for, To Kill A Mockingbird, though that film may not have been released yet when this one was shot. By the time it was released, however, Peck had won the Best Actor Oscar for Mockingbird.

Tony Curtis had played a similar role to this one in the 1959 Cary Grant comedy Operation Petticoat.  Bobby Darin's role was also very similar to one he'd played on the TV series Hennessey in 1959, his screen acting debut (Jackie Cooper played a Naval base doctor in that series) and in the 1962 film Pressure Point.  By the time he filmed Captain Newman, Darin had award-winning roles in Come September and Too Late Blues.

 Also nominated for an Oscar was the writing team that included Henry and Phoebe Ephron, parents of later filmmaker Nora Ephron.

The real Captain Greenson went on to practice therapy in Los Angeles.  Among his famous patients were Marilyn Monroe--and Tony Curtis.

Leo Rosten was a screenwriter and novelist, and became a close friend of Greenson's.  Greenson was an advocate for empathy, and his influence may be seen in some of the quotations associated with Rosten, such as this one: "The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived."

Besides screenplays Rosten wrote on Jewish subjects.  He was also an ardent Anglophile, lived part time in London, wore British clothes and belonged to London clubs.  Though there is an elaborate and very effective Jewish joke in the film version of Captain Newman, M.D., the Captain himself is never identified as Jewish.  He's the iconic Gregory Peck character.  (However, Peck had already made what many called the first Hollywood film to directly confront anti-Semitism in the 1947 Gentlemen's Agreement.)

Gregory Peck was my favorite film actor in those years, especially for the roles he played and how he embodies them.  He was equally convincing in romantic comedy (Roman Holiday), action movies and dramas.  He played both F. Scott Fitzgerald (in Beloved Infidel) and Ernest Hemingway (or a Hemingway character anyway, in Snows of Kilimanjaro.)   He was Captain Ahab (in Moby Dick) and Captain Horatio Hornblower.  In the mid-60s he made a couple of stylish caper films, Mirage and Arabesque, that also would do me quite well right now.

Part of his screen success was due to the chemistry and good working relationships he had with his costars, such as Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner and Sophia Loren. He also became lifelong friends with male co-stars such as David Niven.

He was a second father to Mary Badham, the little girl who played Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, and they maintained a lifelong relationship.  Author Harper Lee also admired him.  She gave him her father's pocket watch. Peck's daughter named her son Harper.

Another of his films on Youtube is a British production, The Million Dollar Note, in which he plays a destitute American in London. It wasn't outside his own experience--as an acting student in New York he sometimes slept in Central Park. He was a barker at the mythic 1939 New York Worlds Fair.

For me at that early-to-mid 1960s time, Gregory Peck was a model of principle, kindness and thoughtful strength. He made intelligence another form of action. However, I took his strong and silent approach to women in several of his roles a little too literally at times, especially in high school years, since all I could externalize was the silence.

Poetry Monday: Place

Place

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

W.S. Merwin

Over many years, W.S. Merwin planted trees on his land, an abandoned pineapple plantation on Maui.  He eventually concentrated on palm trees, especially rare species.  There are now varieties of trees growing there that grow nowhere else.