57. It’s Serious

The death counts for the coronavirus keep going up. Only two in Wallowa County, but now more than 70 total positive tests—and I can name seven of them! Our state’s new cases topped 1000 two days running, and Governor Brown has mandated a partial closedown. Nationally, they are remaking charts, as we are approaching 200,000 new cases each day. The American Covid-19 death toll will soon pass a quarter million. 

 

The numbers are slippery, but somewhere between 100 and 130 Secret Service officers and agents tested positive or are quarantined due to contact—this after accompanying the campaigning president around the country in the weeks before the election. The crowds were largely unmasked, as they were at the White House election eve party that has become a “super-spreader.” 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the president and his staff were banking on electioneering to highlight his personal vigor and victory over Covid—and to portray Biden as a sissy resorting to masks, campaigning “from the basement.” They bet that the numbers would not go up until after the election. They won that part of the bet!

 

So how do we now, with all numbers in all states spiraling upward, convince those who have not taken Covid-19 seriously to realize that this is real, that masks work, and that any real economic recovery must look for a time when we are all safe together. How do we depoliticize masks and social distancing, help churchgoers intent on crowded indoor services realize that waiting and caring for a few weeks is going to be better for them and their churches tomorrow. How do we convince college students that parties that spread disease are not cool, that if they want to be able to party next year they’d do well to drop party from this year’s vocabulary. How do we convince deniers that people get very sick and die from this coronavirus? 

 

I’m over 70 and I’ve been exposed. Quarantining now but feeling find. If it’s the same next week it will be because I had a mask on at the time of exposure. That mask, and the one that my infected grandson wore, might have saved my life. 

 

Let’s save more lives, wear our masks and remind others to wear theirs, keep our distances, support our restaurants buying takeout, Zoom our Rotary meetings and make the contributions we can to those most impacted by this very serious disease. It’s not politics; it’s health.

 

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