We had an unexpected dump of snow that buried the scarlet-flowered bushes I carefully planted alongside my driveway, piled up on the roof and filled the plastic culverts I had used for this summer’s apocalypse garden. Now, it’s raining. Not quite cold enough outside to snow and any celebratory thoughts about cross country skiing before Thanksgiving have been shelved.
My mentally fragile rescue dog, Sally, does not care for the snow that slides off the roof. Or the rain that drums on the metal roof. Or the crappy design of the front entry where snow often falls along the walkway you need to take to get outside. She has taken to hiding out in my bedroom. Away from blind-free windows where she can see the white monsters sliding down from on high.
Neither of us are great lovers of winter.
My least favorite activity is snow management. And I do as little of it as I can possibly get away with. Shovel the walkway from front door to the drive. Snowblow the driveway, sometimes all the way to the residential street. Unless my very helpful neighbor has already fired up his John Deere and made the neighborhood rounds. Or unless the neighbor behind me who rents their cabin short term has paid for someone to plow.
Sally and I are sheltering in place.
We’ve pretty much been sheltering in place since March. It’s looking like a long routine-rich winter. Filled with streaming service content, social media, books, video games, a 25 year old Rodney Yee yoga CD, New Yorker magazines I can never complete, podcasts, push ups, walks to the end of the street and rotating my alcohols of choice - wine, beer, Sidecars, made up mixed drinks (hmmm, what do I have in the fridge?) and shots of healthy green juice, Spicy V-8 and white tequila (known as a Bandera, or Mexican flag, I was introduced to it on one of our epic school bus trips to Baja when we were hiding out from potential ravages of Y2K).
The virus is still with us. Still dictating my behavior.
I follow lots of doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and scientists as reminders of how ‘not normal’ the world remains. At least four states that I am aware of have gone back into lockdown status - Washington is one of them. Cases are rising everywhere, but more so in counties that are economically challenged and typically vote conservative. Apparently, El Paso, Texas has brought in refrigerator trucks as makeshift morgues. They are using prisoners for the labor of moving bodies.
I don’t really know what that indicates, but it makes the situation sound a little more dire.
I listened to a young nurse from South Dakota say on CNN in a six minute interview that she wishes COVID-19 was not made to be so “political” and that people should be more attentive to their first lines of defense because nurses and doctors are their very last lines of defense. She said many of her patients were coronavirus-deniers and went to their deaths in disbelief. South Dakota’s deaths stand at about 700.
Which isn’t, and is, very many all at the same time.
It’s almost a quarter of all who died on September 11th, 2001. And as she points out in her interview, if a tornado swept into her town and killed 20 people, it would make national headlines. But the real problem is that it’s spread out, it’s more likely to be people over the age of sixty, it’s more likely to be frontline workers who have to take risks, it’s more likely to be people who have other medical issues. And, in a country of more than 300 million people, it continues to be more likely to be someone other than yourself or someone you know well.
But we need to remember how insidious it is - you can be asymptomatic and be a super spreader, your symptoms can be “all over the map” - though headache, coughing and loss of smell seem to be tell-tale signs, and that even those who survive a hospital stay may wind up having debilitating after-effects. It is way too early to let our guards down.
It’s terrifically sad the president and the government we had over the past twelve months and the propaganda machine many of these folks listen to politicized a pandemic. If someone other than this guy had been in office, at least there would have been a coordinated government effort to combat the persistent ‘noise’ coming from the agitators on the right. At least the message from our government would have been consistent enough to have dampened the spread.
Perhaps there would have been more than one round of relief. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been enormous tax cuts for those who don’t need them.
On the positive news side of things, more than one vaccine with 90% effectiveness is coming down the pike. Maybe even as early as December. As I understand it, these are vaccines that have earned Dr. Fauci’s approval. You know, the epidemic and infectious disease expert who has worked for several different administrations without acrimony, and the man Steve Bannon “joked” about beheading, as well as the man Dr. Scott Atlas, the presidential election loser’s chief pandemic adviser, accused of politicizing his views of the pandemic. To favor the “liberal” view, of course. Because us liberals are relishing the idea of another 6 months of self quarantine and wish ill on all small businesses.
I also read businesses like Walgreens, Costco and Rite Aid would be administering the vaccinations for free. While supplies last! I can’t wait for those lines!
In the meantime, heed the advice from Dr. Betsy Brown, whose Substack column I peruse daily:
The US added one million new cases in a week to now total more than 11 million. The thing is, even though the risk of dying for younger people is low, it is not zero. The risk of complications and long covid is real. Remember that hospitalization will start to surge in about 12 days with deaths to follow 2 weeks later. It did not really have to be like this. We are not getting help from our federal government at this time.
Also, and most importantly:
Wash your hands, cover your nose (and only be around others who also cover theirs!), keep safe six, and don’t forget ventilation and limiting time. And it is OK to say no if you don’t feel safe.
Remember Erin Brockovich? It turns out she continues to fight the good fight. She’s still Erin Brockoviching things and - apparently - her name is a verb these days. Keeping industry and government entities on their toes. Flint, Michigan’s water issue gets all the headlines, but I understand that there are thousands of hot spots across the country that Erin Brockovich is keeping an eye on.
Also, AAR Clyde Dildine shared this on our internal River Guide page but I thought it should get more widespread attention because it is an excellent short video about the siren song of river running. It’s called In Current and, for as brief as it is, it truly captures the lure of the river.
Hmmmm………what do I have in the fridge that matches with rum and Crown Royal? - JLM