Never take security for granted – Outside dining in Fairfax – Rte. 123 – Death toll remains steady – Evening statistics
“. . . the Schegel household continued to lead its life of cultured but not ignoble ease, still swimming gracefully on the grey tides of London. Concerts and plays swept past them, money had been spent and renewed, reputations won and lost, and the city herself, emblematic of their lives, rose and fell in a continual flux . . .” Substitute “Washington” for “London,” and the Schlegel siblings’ mode of living in E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End sounds rather like my own since retirement. I did not, to be sure, come into such a position through inheritance; it took a fair amount of effort to reach this degree of security. But one must not allow oneself to become complacent – of that I was aware long before the pandemic started. In this context one of my heroines should be mentioned: Letizia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon. After her son came to power he made one of his brothers King of Spain, another King of Holland, one of his sisters Queen of Naples, and so on; and in addition he gave his mother a handsome allowance. She was later asked why she lived so quietly and deposited most of the money she received from her son into a Swiss bank, and her reply was: “Someday I may have to provide for all of these kings and queens.” When her son was crowned as Emperor her reaction was to say “pourvu que ça dure!” – “if only it lasts!” After Napoleon’s downfall, she lived comfortably on her savings and managed, as she foresaw would be necessary, to support several of her descendants. Never during my lifetime has an outlook such as hers been more appropriate than at the present moment.
The City of Fairfax has set aside some areas along its central block for outside dining, complete with chairs and tables set at an appropriate distance from one another. This arrangement will last until the end of the summer. I can’t help wondering how restaurants will manage once the cold weather sets in and outside dining becomes less feasible. Will the virus subside by then? At this point it does not seem likely. Dr. Fauci says that our daily increase of new cases may rise to as many as 100,000 daily, which means that every month about 1% of the national population would be newly infected.
It looks like the construction on Rte. 123 is in the final stages at last. For more than a year this road, which is the major north/south traffic artery through the city, has blocked off its northbound traffic and compelled it to detour through various local roads, thereby increasing the city’s traffic burden not a little. The purpose of this construction has been to put a new sidewalk on the west side of the road, and it certainly was needed. Walking along the road in that area could be quite hazardous; the shoulder came to an abrupt end at the point where the new sidewalk has been put in, and one either had to dart across the street to reach the other side or attempt to walk within the road itself, dodging the traffic. But the construction has lasted well over a year, and everyone is in hopes that this traffic barrier will disappear within a few days.
Today’s entry is mainly about domestic matters; national and international ones will have to wait for another day. There is one puzzling aspect of the pandemic to be noted:
The case count has been increasing at an exponential rate but the death toll has remained steady up to now. There are numerous theories to explain this. One is that the spikes are relatively recent and the time-lag from infection to death is generally two weeks or more. Another is that the spikes have affected a greater number of younger people, who have more resistance to the disease and better chances of survival. Yet another explanation is that testing is now being conducted on a much larger scale, so that we are now identifying a greater of number people who have been infected by the virus but who have remained asymptomatic. Any or all of these may be true. We shall see within the next week or so whether the death toll will spike in the manner that the cases have done. At this point we have nearly 16,000 persons whose state is considered serious, or slightly over 1% of the cases that are still active. Our mortality rate to date is about 4.6%, very slightly less than the worldwide average.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM — # of cases worldwide: 10,970,706; # of deaths worldwide: 523,171; # of cases U.S.: 2,833,686 # of deaths U.S.: 131,417. Yet another day with a case increase of more than 50,000 for our country and more than 200,000 worldwide. Peru and Chile have now surpassed the U.K. in their case counts. Chile’s case rate is particularly high, nearly 1.5% of its population.