168. Yesterday’s News

The PBS Newshour last night focused on Ukraine, of course, but it was also the first newscast in over two years that I remember making no mention at all of the Pandemic. No news on infection rates, death rates, vaccinations. The truckers’ convoys in Canada and New Zealand, and one supposed to be organizing in our own country didn’t even make the Newshour. 

 

Wallowa County showed just one new case yesterday, and the state continues to show rapid declines in cases and hospitalizations. Mask mandates are moved forward, and re-openings are announced. Death marches on—expected as its path of ups and downs follows cases and hospitalizations. 

 

But Covid-19 has been tempered by vaccinations and contagions resulting in forms of “natural” immunity, and been swallowed by fatigue, boredom, anger, and now War. 

 

I’ll mark February 24, 2022 on my calendar as the day that Covid ceased being the number one concern of the population and our governments. It might come back, gnaw away at us one mild case, one hard case at a time. It will matter to the hard cases and their loved ones, but to the rest of America it is now yesterday’s news.

 

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167.. War and Pandemic

War and Pandemic

 

The threat of war in Ukraine has pushed Covid from the headlines. It makes me think about the Influenza epidemic of 1917-18 and the first World War, when Armistice celebrations at war’s end fueled an influenza surge.   

 

But there are so many differences between then and now: the vaccines, rapid communication, and the fact that this Covid seems to like older people best. Many of those who’ve died have been in nursing homes and assisted living places. Children and the young and healthy seem to do better with it.

 

Which is one reason that people are sliding into one form and another of “normalcy”—the power of prediction made possible by rapid communication and statistics being another.  States are announcing lifting mask requirements on the basis of statistics and hospitalization rates. Oregon’s indoor mask mandate will end on or before March 31; Washington’s is set for March 21. It’s amazing that these predictions can be as accurate as they are—Omicron peaked as we were told it would.

 

War still hovers—over and around Covid as did the 1917 Influenza. That pandemic’s special trick was to attack people in the prime of life, in their teens and twenties. It followed the troops, jumped the trench lines, and made its way around the world. Troops were great carriers, and when the men came home from war and the population celebrated, the Influenza virus did the same.

 

War, and near-war, seem to be everywhere. Not only in Ukraine and Belarus, but in Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen. Meanwhile, refugees are spilling from their homes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from conflicts and droughts in Africa and South and Central America. 

 

And the virus, Covid, snakes its way through all of these places, mutates and moves more quickly. Maybe it made a bad move with Omicron, increasing its infection rate but decreasing its severity. That, and the vaccinations, seem to be slowing Covid down. I wonder what it—the virus—will do to adapt? Will it be satisfied with “endemic”? Or will it mutate again, aim itself at younger people who can carry it further faster? 

 

Or will its impact pale or lose itself in the greater costs of war, refugees, and starvation. The word is that 1 million Afghans will die of starvation this winter. 

 

There are no vaccines for war or starvation. 

 

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166. Truckers

Years ago, during my time in Turkey, I had a friend who was British by speech and passport, but a roaming expat in reality. Another name he sometimes called himself was “colonial.” He’d grown up in what were still British colonies in Africa and India/Pakistan. His wife was Italian. When the colonies slipped away with independence, he’d continued to work for the Empire as an English teacher. He was teaching English through the British consulate in Izmir, Turkey when I knew him in 1969.

 

In November of 1969, reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story of a US Army massacre of as many as 500 Vietnamese men, women, and children. The event had occurred more than a year earlier, in March of 1968. The massacre had been stopped midstream by a military helicopter pilot who put himself between the troops and fleeing visitors. An early investigation white-washed the incident, but broader inquiries led to court martials, and a public soon split over the guilt and sentencing of Lieutenant William Calley. 

 

My expat British friend’s mother was still alive. She told her son that such things happened all the time in the colonial years, but that news of them didn’t get back to England for months and years, and by then the participants had gone on to other places, the incidents faded from public knowledge, and the dead and damaged were not English in any case.

 

Hersh’s story traveled the world, but the news was blunted by months of military missteps and delays. Calley was the only one of more than a dozen implicated in the crimes that was convicted. He served three or four years and was released.  I don’t remember names or stories of any of the Vietnamese.

 

Today, Covid stories travel instantaneously. Reasons for despair and disgruntlement cross the world: schools closed or disrupted; marriages troubled; rare reactions to the vaccine; the breakthrough cases; the mistaken identification of Covid as reason for death; the postponement of elective surgery; depression, anxiety, alcohol. 

 

And government—any government—and its mandates become the agents of personal distress. Some Canadian truckers, who are, like the rest of Canadians, largely vaccinated, took out anti-government frustrations by convoying and blocking border crossings. Rebel, confederate flags from the US flew in Canada. Truckers convoyed in France, and grow in Brussels and New Zealand. 

 

Truckers—a few of the tens of thousands of truckers in Canada and France and New Zealand—traveled, protestors waved flags and attracted the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike under the banner of “freedom.” 

 

Their pictures and sounds traveled faster than Covid itself across the world.

165. Truth Telling

In my last one-minute blast I argued that the year-long sustained effort by mainstream journalists to tell the truth about the 2020 election, and to label Donald Trump’s lies lies at every opportunity, is making a difference. And I suggested that we do the same thing with Covid—that the mainstream press drop the big numbers and hospital staff losses, the hospitalizations per thousand and the deaths per thousand, and tell us the true stories of the unvaccinated, breakthrough cases, the afflicted health care workers, the nursing homes. That they go back to what they started on the streets of New York when this whole pandemic thing exploded. Do you remember the mobile frozen storage units brought in to house the dead?

 

There is the occasional whisper by a nurse or doctor that a dying patient wished he would have been vaccinated—and that others go to their deaths celebrating their freedom to choose. At least we’ve heard hints of that. Why aren’t we hearing the words and seeing the dying patient or the relative watching and waiting?

 

I want to hear from Washington State police trooper Robert LaMay’s wife or mother. LaMay was fired in October… “after failing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by the deadline set for state employees by Gov. Jay Inslee. Three months later, he died from the virus.” Along with more than 300 other local, state, and federal law enforcers who passed with Covid in 2021. I’ve not heard from a dying cop or a surviving spouse.

 

Truth-telling does make a difference: On Friday former Vice-President Pence broke with the former president: “Trump was wrong,” he said, in thinking that he—Pence—could overturn the election results. 

 

Most tellingly, NYTimes columnist David Brooks said on Friday that Evangelical churches are reconsidering and reuniting. The few who boldly spoke against the election lie, the minister who broke early with Trump over his “grab” video, the few church leaders who admitted that sexual abuse occurred in Protestant as well as Catholic churches, the churches who reached across color lines, are no longer cowering. Ministers and parishioners are calling it liberating.

 

Meanwhile, what do we do with the mask mandate riots in Ottawa? The reported hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers who have given up? Getting past the headlines to truth-telling is hard work. 

164. What the Media Covers

Yesterday morning, on National Public Radio’s “The Takeaway," reproductive rights advocate Elizabeth Nash said that the news media—even the “liberal’ media—covers abortion not as a health issue, but as a political issue. Individual testimonies, the stories of women who have had abortions, and those who are grappling with the myriad health, economic, and family issues that go into the decision making, are rarely told in news stories on abortion. And while polls show that 70 or 80% of the public supports Roe v Wade, including many and maybe a majority of Republicans, the media is wed to the quickly divisive and often sensational politics of abortion. 

 

Similarly, the growing concern over full hospital beds and decreasing numbers of health care workers is not, in the press, tied to specific cases. We do not hear from the woman denied an operation, or her anxieties when it is postponed. We might occasionally—very occasionally—hear the word triage, but more often it is hidden in obfuscation. “Prioritizing” is softer than the harsh decisions implied by “triage.” 

 

And when news commentators interview nursing staff and hospital directors, the story is about tired and overworked staff members—the number of beds available, and how many patients a reduced medical staff can handle. The personal interview with a nurse who has quit is rare, and interviews with patients and their family members waiting for care almost never.

 

Covid itself is most often displayed in numbers and politics. The stories of suffering and death, which we saw from New York in Covid’s early days, are now rare. We are “normalizing” Covid much as we are normalizing the rest of the world, in terms of Red and Blue, R and D, Liberal and Conservative, West Coast, the NE, and the rest.  

 

Soon after the last presidential election, there must have been some agreement among newscasters that the election would not be talked about in terms of “allegations,” but in terms of lies and truth. It’s sometimes been a hard line to hold, but there is evidence that repeating the truth of the election results and the failures at overturning it—and pointing explicitly to the lies, is causing more and better discussion, even within the Republican party. 

 

How might the Covid world change if we concentrated on telling true stories of Covid patients and patients denied service, health care workers have been infected themselves, and those who have fled their professions entirely?

163. A Perfect Day

The sun is rising out my window, and Chief Joseph Mountain is bright against the sky. There is snow on it, lots of snow, as there is in my yard and on the yards and fields of neighbors. Plenty of snow means plenty of water later in the year.  The air is as clean as the new snow. No hint of gaseous poisonings. No noise, no rumblings of engines, sirens of ambulances, police cars or fire trucks. The dog went out at 5:30, when I got up in the dark. She’s waiting patiently for our walk with the rising sun. It’s about 10 degrees, right for this time of year. I’ll wear a warm jacket and cleats on my feet for the walk. She’ll chase real and imagined cats and deer, and I’ll rein here in with a noise collar.

 

I’ll go to work in my other home, the Josephy Center. It’s a beautiful log building full now of “Abstract Landscape” art. And, of course, full of books in my enclave, the library. I’ll work there from 10 till noon, and then host friend John Frohnmayer for a noon zoom “Brown Bag” discussion of Sport and Philosophy; Ethics in Golf; Skiing and Mysticism. 

 

It could be a perfect day… but there is the undercurrent of Covid lapping at us. The news from a friend that his daughter’s heart surgery has been postponed in Portland because of Covid; another friend waits with a painful knee to get it fixed, waiting because of Covid. And there is news in the local paper about retired veterinarian Sam Morgan falling, breaking his back, going hypothermic, being life-flighted out. Boise had too much Covid to keep him there in recovery. I think he’s in Seattle.

 

Wallowa County’s Covid numbers surged last week, as did the State’s. They might be coming down, but hospitalizations and deaths lag behind numbers. And, once again, most of those being hospitalized and dying are unvaccinated. Even though there are “breakthrough” cases of the vaccinated, in Wallowa County and in the State, about 70 percent of us are vaccinated, and we account for maybe 30 percent of the infections. Oregon Health Authority reminds us that the odds against hospital and death are much higher for the unvaccinated.

 

It’s increasingly difficult to be generous towards those who refuse vaccinations, become sick, and take up hospital beds that others need. 

162. Life--and death--go on

Gail Swart passed away last week. Cancer that she beat back years ago—teaching school while she fought it—came back. She was still teaching piano just weeks ago, and her own children were able to gather round her these last weeks. A visitor just two days before she passed remarked on her humor and her smile. 

 

In my mind’s eye, Gail always has a smile, and often a chuckle. And that often at her own expense. And her long and fruitful life brought that smile to children and grandchildren, and hundreds—no, thousands—of piano students and Enterprise elementary school students over decades.

 

It’s easy to stay with superlatives, remark on the long and good life, and grump that Covid came along and stole the chances for people to spend time with her these past weeks. I didn’t make my way up to her house at the lake, but know that if she thought of me at all, it was with a warm heart. And a chuckle.

 

The first time I remember meeting Gail was shortly after we moved here and Judy was working for Children’s Services. It was a Wednesday or Thursday night of Chief Joseph Days week, and my then-wife and I were enjoying a beer at the Gold Room in Joseph when she got paged. Sheriff Duckworth had a mom under the influence and an infant he had to do something with as he put mom in jail. 

 

Judy called Gail Swart, her number one foster mom. No one checked our alcohol levels as we drove to the courthouse, picked up the baby, and went to the Swarts’ house. Don was at the door, and had pulled an old crib from the basement. Their kids—all beyond crib age, were asleep. He and I put the crib together while Judy and Gail got acquainted with the confused baby, and we left them in charge. We didn’t go back to the Gold Room. 

 

And then Gail was teaching school and we had a second grader who wasn’t much of a singer. No problem. Gail put him in a Santa suit and gave him “Ho Ho Ho” lines for the school Christmas play. 

 

Years later, Gail and her sister Nancy made generous donations that allowed Fishtrap to buy their childhood Coffin home. I “lived” in Gail’s house for years. She played a recital to a full house there once, and she and her children and nephews and nieces visited with their own memories 

 

I remember most the music and the smile, the piano playing and the storytelling. It was a wonderful life. 

 

It’s easy to say “smile” and “wonderful.” But I wanted to chase my own life back to those precious instances when the smile and wonder were for and with me.

 

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