36. Pandemic, fire, hurricane…

Two things I’ve learned in reading about the 1918 Influenza: how scatter-shot it moved across the world; and, as author Laura Spinney says, how it struck people “privately and individually” (Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World). There are no public monuments to it, towns, streets, or buildings named after it, as there are for wars, industrialists, and leaders of armies and countries. And because the flu paid no attention to borders or even oceans, pulling together global information on its origins and spread has been a hundred years in the doing.

Today, although there are calls for national masking and distancing, school and business closures, and the quick discovery of a vaccine, Covid-19 creeps across the nation like a fire, finding fuel here and there, blowing up and settling down in one place and another, mimicking the flu-spread of 1918-19. And like the fires now raging in California and Colorado and the most recent hurricane, the impact of Covid-19 is brutal and capricious in the people it plucks from homes and communities. 

And like fire—or hurricane—Covid-19 has not directly distressed a majority of Americans. Inconvenienced and scared, yes, but the 185,000 dead and 5 million infected are still a small minority. Even the 30 million Americans out of work are a minority, and social nets and government spending have kept most—not all—of them afloat. Most Americans are adapting to a more restricted world—airlines and foreign travel is down; camping, RV sales, and the stock market are up. 

In our town, the inconveniences and even disasters that threatened in March have given way to a robust tourism season with most—though not all—businesses thriving. The license plates read Arizona, Florida and Texas as well the more familiar Idaho and Washington. No Chief Joseph Days Rodeo, but the Eagle Cap Wilderness is full of hikers, and they are standing in line for outdoor seating at La Laguna.

Our TV screens, like those in Hoboken or Lincoln, go from Covid to fire to hurricane to Black Lives Matters. One part of America watches another part burn, run from hurricanes, protest, or die with Covin-19 in another part of America, as we wait for the rains to come, hurricane season to pass, and something bigger—a Salk vaccine or an election, to calm our waters. 

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