“Ättestupa (Swedish for 'kin/clan precipice') is a name given to a number of precipices in Sweden. The name supposedly denotes sites where ritual senicide took place during Nordic prehistoric times, whereby elderly people threw themselves, or were thrown, to their deaths.”
“Sweden's coronavirus death rate is nearly 6 times that of neighboring Norway and Finland.”
-Business Insider commenting on Sweden’s decision not to impose social distancing and stay at home orders.
All five of them are in Wujan, China. All five!!
I should explain.
Like the rest of the world in quarentine, I have been trying to keep busy. Household projects, long put on the back burner, suddenly become important. You busy yourself with projects, chores, and lawn care. I am considering painting my garden shed. It is important to know I have never been a handyman. I have always viewed chores as, in fact, a task or work. I do not derive pleasure from these duties. Due to my native laziness, I have always looked for ways to avoid them. I am inherently irresponsible.
So here I am pondering what color to paint a shed that first must be stripped of mold and cleaned before ever deciding on a hue. And I am actually looking forward to the job! It fills me with purpose.
The world has indeed ended.
Two days ago we went to CostCo for some routine shopping. What I thought would be a chance to get out of the house, turned into an unpleasent experience. Everything that you used to enjoy about shopping is gone now. There is no longer lingering in asiles, looking at products, and chatting with salesman. Nearby resturants, where you went to lunch are closed with empty parking lots. Streets have traffic but no where near normal. People are in masks huddling over thier carts trying hard to maintain some distance from each other in narrow lanes. There is a frenzy of people near the meat displays buying more than they need.
There is a soft tug at your heart; a mournful, longing for the world to return to “normal”. You do not feel dispair. At least not yet.
According to the latest models, approximently 20% of the United States population has been exposed to the Coronavirus. That means one out of every five people I am passing in CostCo potentially has the virus. Thinking about that fact, your mind wanders as you look at people furtively.
“Is it you?”, you wonder to yourself as you look over a suspicious person.
I know it’s not me.
Or do I?
I have a friend in the local theatre business. Like many theatres, she has closed her auditoriums for the season. The risk of a patron getting sick was just too high. Yet, when she went to check on the theatre two days ago, the out door pub next to the front door was open. None of the staff had masks. There was no social distancling and customers were behaving as if there is no threat of infection.
The Governor said today that Houses of Worshop can resume services. He said, “They are a good control group”. How is that any different from people sitting close together at a theater? Do you want to be in a control group?
Is there a danger to just ignoring social distancing or not? It strikes me that you cannot go “half way” with this subject. Partial opening will only increase frustration. Either the economy will not be open enough to restore order, or infections will spike. We may have succeeded in ‘flattening the curve’ but there is still an infection risk.
“It will go away in April, like magic…”
- Donald Trump
He was wrong again.
I don’t understand. Everyday I am confused and frustrated. I do not know who to believe. I daily go between feeling this is all nonsense to genuine apprehesion about the world.
The government appears to have decided that we have to reopen and take our losses. People are going to die, but the economy must go on. It is a war of attrition now. Take our losses and move on is the new theme.
However, will we go back to normal without some treatment for this illness? Are you going to go to the movies? Are you going to get in an airplane with 200 other people? Are you going to CostCo without a mask?
Is this an acceptable loss rate? On D-Day, the Omaha Beach sector was considered the bloodiest. The first waves suffered some 90% casualties. At the end of the day the final death toll was 2,000 Americans. It was more than any other sector of the invasion. If you visit the Amreican graveyard over the beach you see row after row of white crosses. It is sobering experience.
Over 2,000 Americans are dying from Covid -19 infection every three days in this country. Current models predict this number is about to get even higher.
Is the pandemic real or not? Would it help if you to believe it if you actually saw the people die? Would you take your grandfather out without a mask? I mean, after all, he is old and outlived his usefulness right? Shall we bring back Ättestupa?
“The people dying are on their last legs anyway….”
- Bill O’Reilly
This morning I was playing a video game for a few minutes. It is one of the immersive titles called “The Last of Us”. It is a mesmerizing post apocalyptic thriller that will soon be a HBO series. It has great characters that you come to know and care about involved in a complex story of survival. In one of the scenes, the characters were talking to each other about how they miss ‘the good ‘ole days’. It is a sad and wistful scene when the characters realize things will never be normal again.
It struck me watching the story play out that , although Covid-19 is not a Zombie apocalypse, the way people behave in the story is similar to what we are seeing now. You have seen it too. People showing up with machine guns at protests, armed arrests of citizens who violate quarantine, hoarding toilet paper and meat products, and more.
We are all yearning for things to return to normal.
Colleen and I used to travel a lot. We follow various influencers on line about travel and retirement. All of them are shut down and the travel industry may never fully recover. Do you want to take a cruise these days? How about ride on a plane?
It seems to me simply wishing for the world to go back to what it was is not facing reality. It will get better eventually. But, it is not going to get better quickly.
And, we are hearing a new line of information from our leaders. “We can only do so much”, they say, “It is up to _____________________ (Insert school, Governors, mayors, business, or other individual) to actually carry out the safety measures. It is not my job and therefore I have no accountability for the process.”
This notion strikes me as frank cowardice.
Nelson Mandela wrote, “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially
when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership."
Rosalynn Carter adds, "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”
And J. Donald Waters shares, "Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance."
Are we being led well? In this historic time with catastrophic economic numbers and more deaths in 3 months than the entire Vietnam War, do you trust the government we elected?
"We're in Crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had' - John Kelly, Former Chief of Staff to Donald Trump
'This was no longer a presidency. This is no longer a White House. This is a man being who he is' - Rob Porter, one of many ‘former’ aids to Trump.
Despite the tantrums of our fearless leader, it is going to be a different country when this is over. It was after 9/11, why should it be any different now? What will the new world look like? What lessons have we learned from this ordeal? We may not be able to prevent another pandemic, but how can we prepare better?
So, what about Wuhan?
One of the chores I had been postponing for months was my office. It is dated with an old computer and dorm room like furniture. Colleen and I want to remodel the space. Part of that remodeling involved getting a new computer monitor. I have spent the last few weeks researching what I want to do and finally settled on a brand and model I would like to purchase. The trouble is no stores are open to review your choice.
I went to the internet and found my choice. However, everywhere I looked it was on back order. The same was true with competing models.
It turns out the five biggest factories in China that make the panels are all in Wuhan, the place where the pandemic began.
Nothing is going to be normal again for a long time.
I need to finish mowing the lawn.
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