80. The election is over; the pandemic is not

Last night ended it. The months of divisiveness and acrimony that led up to the November vote, two months of lawsuits on behalf of the president, and the political posturing by those chasing his flame and electoral base all came to a strange end. There were heroes—those who physically protected the Capitol and our legislators, and those, like Pence and McConnell, who rose to the occasion and steered congressional bodies and the country back to a road of normalcy.  

Yesterday’s most important outcome might be the coming together of public leaders and bodies to work towards righting the country and addressing current crises. The Election has been the constant noise in the wheel of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallouts. And the election has prevented us dealing with the thorny issues of systemic racism, sexism, and economic inequality that the pandemic has so dramatically exposed. 

 

In 1918, the Armistice that ended the bloody and destructive World War that had decimated a generation of Europeans and thrust the US into world affairs also frustrated recovery from the Spanish Flu. A “first wave” of that pandemic had followed troops from Kansas to England and the European front, and spread its death viruses (which we didn’t know were viral at the time) across the world. It then came home with the troops, and, with its second and third waves reaching into 1919, killed over 675,000 Americans—in a population of 103 million. Over half of the 116,000 Americans who died in the War were victims of the flu. 

 

Tragically, the War and relief at its end sent the country into a strange kind of denial; the celebration at war’s end overwhelmed the flu’s continuing death march. People hugged and kissed and celebrated on the streets, threw away their facemasks, and in general forgot the flu and let it play out its own deadly progress. 

 

The election season that has warped our national response to the current Covid-19 pandemic is now over. The strange and violent day in the capitol and the reconvening of Congress and the careful enunciation of votes, state-by-state, brought a collective sigh of relief. A chastened Vice President Pence handled ballots in measured tones, and results were announced to a relived nation. Once “objecting” senators sat on their hands.

 

The election is finally over, but not the work. Pence and Congress can look after the 25^th amendment and assess impeachment. Biden and a new team—and the rest of us—must now put the Pandemic behind us.

 

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55. Covid comes to my house

The virus has been circling around Wallowa County and hit friends directly and indirectly for weeks, but yesterday it came to my house. Grandson Trey, who has been living with his mother in Portland for the past 3 months, unwittingly brought it home. There had been exposure in his mom’s house, but she and two boys had tested negative—she said she couldn’t get Trey tested. No problem; I could get him tested here. I picked him up at the Pilot station at milepost 188 on Sunday, brought him home to join me and Aidan, another grandson whose hurried trip from Ohio brought him to Joseph a couple of weeks ago. 

 

We ate a good beef stir-fry Sunday evening, and I took Trey in for curbside testing Monday morning; he tested positive. We scrambled, got better masks, sanitized, talked about dividing bathrooms and spaces in the house. The medical people said I should wait before testing—either on symptoms or in 4 or 5 days, when the nasty virus has had time to work.

 

I mentioned the day’s events in an unrelated phone call to friend Rick yesterday--Monday.  An hour later he called back to say that he and others had decided that the house was too small for the three of us, and as I am the 78 year-old, I needed to get the hell out. He had already made arrangements with another friend for a summer rental house at Wallowa Lake.

 

It’s quiet here—no dogs barking or cars screeching, as they do even in the small town of Joseph. Quiet snow fell this morning on trees already heavy with it. I checked with the boys by phone. They’re fine, although Trey says he doesn’t have much energy. I wonder if he unconsciously knew he had it all along, and his gut had told him to come home. Trey changes the subject, tells me that I don’t have any excuses—I have to write my book.

 

I’ll try. Meanwhile, I read the papers and find a new explosion of positives out of the White House. My hunch, that the Trump campaign had raced against Covid with personal appearances in the last days before the election, betting that any outbreaks would not happen until after November 3, becomes conviction.

 

The cavalier attitude towards Covid-19 pisses me off. Wear your masks; keep your distance; limit your travel. And don’t bet against the virus.

 

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49. Fatigue

I’ve heard “Covid fatigue” and “election fatigue,” and distance-learning fatigue is settling in with students, parents, and teachers. Add working from home fatigue; after a honeymoon period of working in pajamas, chatter about work and life over coffee and lunch sounds good. 

 I’ve taken my own fatigue to reading about the last really big one, the Spanish Flu of 1918. It killed a lot more Americans—over 600,000— than the World War I, but it got swallowed up in that war and in puzzlement over the disease itself. 

 

The puzzlement: 100 years ago health care officisals scurried after treatments and tracing; they quarantined, masked, closed theaters and opened schools to care for children at risk in crowded tenements. And like now, these efforts were global—as was the blame. It became “Spanish Flu” because Spain was a neutral country in the war and did not censor its newspapers. The flu was rampant in America and in the trenches, but nothing was written about it and when it was covered openly in the Spanish press it became the Spanish Flu. 

 

It’s eerily familiar now, with some wanting to name Covid for a country, and countries competing over vaccines and remedies; a small group plugs away at tracking origins, just as researchers have tracked and speculated on the origins of our 100 year old cousin flu. 

 

Meanwhile, the spread of the Covid-19 virus waxes and wanes. The numbers of positive and negative tests, of new cases and deaths, tick on giant doomsday clocks on our computer screens. 

 

It’s exhausting—fatigue sets in. But pay attention: Most of the people dying are young—no sweat off me, the frat party exhaustee says. “Underlying conditions,” you say, and you are robust and healthy and… but what about that recent sore throat and cough? And how well do you smell? And was that really someone you know who showed up on Facebook with a positive test and asked please for you to wear a mask? 

 

They wrestled with that 1918 version for at least three years, hid or disregarded it sometimes, thought it was over sometimes. Even today some researchers are chasing its chemical truths, settling on origins in pigs or ducks, worried that we humans keep getting into the ways of wild animals and that domesticated ducks are in the millions of ducks and still get involved with their wild cousins. 

 

It’s exhausting, and we’re not yet one year in.

 

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