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SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it”
Published: Mar 30, 2020
Category:
Beyond Classification
PHOTO CAPTION: The massive field hospital in Central Park? Thank an evangelical Christian relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse, which is led by Franklin Graham, son of the late televangelist Billy Graham. Four trailers delivered tents, beds, personal protective equipment and 10 ventilators. 70 health care workers from around the US will arrive soon.
Sigh. I hoped to get through a day without taking a header into a cesspool. But the President made news Sunday afternoon that fairly screamed for the 25th Amendment.
First came the press conference.
Trump called on PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor.
“Mr. President, I have two questions,” she said. “The first is you’ve said repeatedly that you think that some of the equipment that governors are requesting they don’t actually need. You said New York might not need 30,000 …”
Trump didn’t let her finish.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“You said it on Sean Hannity’s Fox News,” Alcindor responded, accurately.
“Come on, come on. Why don’t you people — why don’t you act in a little more positive? It’s always ‘get ya, get ya, get ya.’ And you know what? That’s why nobody trusts the media anymore.”
Alcindor, who is a black woman, tried to finish her question, but Trump interrupted again: “Look, let me tell you something. Be nice. Don’t be threatening. Be nice.”
“Excuse me,” said the president at one point, “you didn’t hear me, that’s why you used to work for The Times and now you work for somebody else,” a reference to the New York Times and PBS NewsHour.
[Alcindor’s response, on Twitter: “I’m not the first human being, woman, black person or journalist to be told that while doing a job. My take: Be steady. Stay focused. Remember your purpose. And always press forward.”]
Later, Trump free-styled his “humanity.”
The president also expressed horror at the grim scenes playing out at the hospitals in New York City, where he spent much of his adult life. He cited the situation at Elmhurst Hospital Center — “I know it very well,” he said — which has been inundated in recent days with people ill from the virus.
“I’ve been watching that for the last week on television, body bags all over in hallways,” Mr. Trump said. “I have been watching them bringing in trailer trucks, freezer trucks because they can’t handle the bodies. There are so many of them. This is in essentially my community in Queens, New York. I have seen things that I have never seen before.”
I thought I’d read words like that before, and indeed I had — I typed them when I abridged the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, with illustrations by Paige Peterson.
“Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!”
Scrooge recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he saw a bare bed. Under a ragged sheet, there lay something covered up. Then a pale light fell upon the bed; and on it, unwatched and uncared for, was the body of a man.
The slightest raising of the cover would have revealed the face. Scrooge thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it — but he just could not bring himself to do it.
“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!”
Scrooge got the point — he reformed. Trump, in contrast, launched a series of unhinged tweets:
“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing, Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise…”
“Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “’Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.’ said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!”
Twitter bit back. Lawrence O’Donnell zeroed in on that exchange at the press conference: “What kind of pathological liar lies about his lies to people who have video recordings of the lies he’s lying about and who actually read his previous lies to him word for word as he tries to lie about those lies?”
Now we turn the page… back to the real world, where Dr. Fauci now predicts 200,000 deaths. If we’re all self-distancing. If we’re lucky.
WRONG: “WE’LL CROSS THAT BRIDGE WHEN WE COME TO IT”
RIGHT: “WE NEED TO MAKE SOME HARD DECISIONS… RIGHT NOW”
Twitter: “Many people are unable to process facts when they’re catastrophic. They create complex detailed systems that miss the 1 big thing: reality. The moment we’re in is a mass psychological crisis.”
The clock ticks inexorably. A reckoning approaches.
A friend in Colorado reported a conversation with close relatives that had 2 votes for kicking hard questions down the road and 1 vote (hers) for talking about the big questions then and there.
What do you want me to do for you?
Will you take care of me?
If I’m alone, will you check on me?
Will you take me to a hospital?
Health directives and other important papers: Are they on your table and clearly marked?
And more. You know what they are. Take a shot of courage, and get to it, please.
TODAY’S JOKE: “ARE MY TESTICLES BLACK?”
A suspected Covid-19 male patient is lying in bed in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. A young student female nurse appears and gives him a partial sponge bath.
“Nurse,” he mumbles from behind the mask, “are my testicles black?”
Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, “I don’t know, Sir. I’m only here to wash your upper body and feet.”
He struggles to ask again, “Nurse, please check for me. Are my testicles black?”
Concerned that he might elevate his blood pressure and heart rate from worrying about his testicles, she overcomes her embarrassment and pulls back the covers.
She raises his gown, holds his manhood in one hand and his testicles gently in the other.
She looks very closely and says, “There’s nothing wrong with them, Sir. They look fine.”
The man slowly pulls off his oxygen mask, smiles at her, and says very slowly,
“Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Now listen very, very, closely: “Are.. my.. test…results… back?”
JOSH RITTER. TUESDAY, 8 PM ET: BE THERE OR BE SQUARE
Last Tuesday at 8 PM ET, Josh Ritter gave his first “Silo Session” live stream. From his couch, he raised $20.000 for WinNYC. He’s doing it again this Tuesday, same time. And will again. And again. This week’s charity: Food Bank for New York City. Pick the way you want to watch it here. This week’s stream is 100% programmed by viewers. If you want to request a song, write to joshritterontour@gmail.com and put REAL LONG DISTANCE in the subject line. In the message: your name…location…who the song is for…a little story about that person.
WHAT DID SHAKESPEARE SAY?
from The Times:
Twitter has been taunting us: When he was in quarantine from the plague, William Shakespeare wrote “King Lear.”
He had an advantage, of sorts: Shakespeare’s life was marked by plague. Just weeks after his baptism at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the register read, “Hic incepit pestis” (Here begins the plague).
Shakespeare seems to have been able largely to shut out his immediate context…. No one in Shakespeare’s plays dies of the plague… Documentary realism was not Shakespeare’s style.
HARVARD RESEARCH SUGGESTS “INTERMITTENT” SOCIAL DISTANCING
from the Harvard Gazette
One possible method for dealing with the epidemic amid a lack of other effective interventions may be multiple “intermittent” social-distancing periods that ease up when cases fall to a certain level and then are reimposed when they rise past a key threshold. The exact numbers, the work showed, depend on whether COVID-19 is a seasonal ailment like the flu and common cold — also caused by a coronavirus — or whether it is equally transmissible year-round. Depending on seasonality, the models show that social distancing occurring between 25 percent and 75 percent of the time would both build immunity and keep the health care system from overloading. As time passes and more of the population gains immunity, they said, the restrictive episodes could be shorter, with longer intervals between them.
WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY?
from The Times: Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too
As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.
“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.
So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19,
Some Liberty officials accuse alarmed outsiders of playing politics. And within the school, there are signs of panic.
“I’m not allowed to talk to you because I’m an employee here,” one student on campus wrote in an email. But, he pleaded, “we need help to go home.”
THE BEAUTY PART
Mornings with clouds. Windy mornings. Mornings with black wind rushing like water. The trees quiver, the windows are creaking like a ship. It’s going to rain. After a while the first silent drops appear on the glass. Slowly they increase, cover it, begin to run. All of Autun beneath the cool, morning rain, the sculptures on the Roman gates streaking and then turning dark, the slate roofs gleaming now, the cemetery, the bridges across the Arroux. Every once in a while the wind returns, the rain moves sideways, beats against the windows like sand. Rain falling everywhere, on all the avenues and enterprises, the ancient glories of the town. Rain on the plate glass of the Librairie Lucotte, rain on les Arcades, on au Cygne de Montjeu. A long, even rain that makes me quite content.
That’s James Salter, from “A Sport and a Pastime.” To read more and buy it, click here.
ESSENTIALS
A mask. Any kind. Even homemade. The Washington Post explains why.
O’Keeffe’s Working Hands Hand Cream
or
Egyptian Magic. (You get much more and pay less at Costco.com)
ThinAddictives Cranberry Almond Thins 100 calories per snack pack.
Vitamin D
Data from 16 clinical trials involving 7,400 people show that taking vitamin D supplements reduces the risk of experiencing at least one respiratory infection including influenza and pneumonia by a third with positive benefits seen within 3 weeks.
(To buy Vitamin D3 Enhanced with Coconut Oil from Amazon, click here. To buy Vitamin D in Fruit Flavored Gummies from Amazon, click here.)
Apple Cider Vinegar Gummy Vitamins
Apple cider vinegar contains potassium, which thins mucus; and the acetic acid in it prevents germ growth, which could contribute to nasal congestion. (To buy Cider Vinegar Gummies from Amazon, click here.)
Chelated Zinc
Zinc is important in fighting infection. Food sources include red meat, shellfish, legumes, seeds and dark chocolate. Note: Not to be taken every day; it can cause toxicity. (To buy Chelated Zinc from Amazon, click here.)
MY TWITTER FEED
– Nancy Pelosi: “I said to them since it’s a Sunday and the churches are closed I want to begin my part of the meeting with a prayer… Secretary Mnuchin said ‘well since you quoted Pope Francis, I’ll quote the markets.’ And so that has taken us to another area of values.”
– “If you walk up to the box and have nothing else to remember… excelsior,” Cuomo says of what he tells his daughters about when he passes.
– “I may be slowly drowning in lung fluid, but I’m happy knowing that the President got Bachelor finale-level ratings.”
– Remember how pissed Roosevelt was that the bombing of Pearl Harbor just missed November Sweeps?
TWENTY CLASSICAL MINUTES
Danish String Quartet—Haydn: Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
