Indeterminate symptoms – Driving through rush hour – Daily statistics – Retrospective –Concerns of daily life during a crisis – Travel plans become tentative – An attempt to write about President Trump with judicious impartiality – The attempt abandoned after two paragraphs – A side glance at the evangelicals
I woke up this morning with a bit of a dry throat that necessitated a few coughs to clear it and also with a slight feeling of fatigue. And yet I was not alarmed, and I did not rush out immediately for testing.
I sleep with a nightguard, so I generally have to clear my throat every morning after awakening, and sometimes this involves coughing. And since I hiked 18 miles on a particularly rocky segment of the Appalachian Trail the preceding day, a faint sense of fatigue the morning after is not particularly surprising.
But that is part of the problem. How does one determine whether various symptoms are innocuous or not? Coronavirus symptoms are not very distinctive: dry cough, fatigue, fever, shortness of breath – these can be symptoms of the virus or of influenza or even of the common cold (of which there are many different varieties).
For the hike yesterday, I began at the trailhead in Duncannon, PA, and the drive there was illuminating. I went via the Beltway to I-270 and thence to Rte. 15 North. I started later than I had hoped to do and was on the Beltway during morning rush hour, yet the traffic was light enough to enable me to use cruise control for most of the way. Going back, similarly, presented no difficulties. Almost everyone is working from home now.
The total number of cases as of this writing (about 4:00 PM EST, 3/20/20) is 266,115. Of these, 87,363 have recovered and 11,153 have died, which means that nearly 168,000 cases are still active. For the U.S, there are 16,638 cases, of which 216 have died and 121 have recovered, with 16301 cases still active. I will try to track the rate of increase during the oncoming days. I regret that I did not do so earlier, but I seriously under-estimated how quickly the virus would spread.
I first was aware of the issue about 2 ½ weeks ago – on March 3rd, to be precise. I had known about it earlier, of course, because of the news that was emerging from Wuhan, but I was not anticipating a particularly large impact here. We had had earlier alarms about the Ebola virus (2014) and SARS (2003), and these were a nine-days wonder for the most part, having little long-term effects on our medical care system.
However, during a hike with the Vigorous Hikers group one member (MC) mentioned that he was planning to travel to France. Some of the other members said that he would have to quarantine himself for two weeks after his return before he could be allowed to hike with us again. He (and I) thought that this was being overly cautious. At that point France had only 204 cases in all, out of a population of nearly 67 million. In the space of 17 days that number has increased to 1479 – more than a seven-fold increase. Now, of course, international travel has been canceled altogether, so poor MC’s trip has fallen by the wayside.
On March 14th, the Capital Hiking Club held a tele-conference to determine whether hikes should be converted to carpool hikes rather than using the bus, in which I, as a board member, participated. LE, another board member and an epidemiologist, strenuously argued for canceling them altogether, and in the end she prevailed. Even at that point I was not convinced – I thought carpool hikes were feasible – but I went along with the majority.
At the same time, the Wanderbirds club decided to change the next several hikes to carpool hikes. Since I was to lead a hike on March 29th, my co-leader and I worked out a substitute hike suited for carpools and scouted it out on March 15th. Then, on March 17th, the hikes for this club were canceled as well.
In accounts about epidemics, details such as how to acquire the necessities of life are barely mentioned. Grocery shopping has become – interesting, for want of a better word. One Facebook member who works in a grocery has admonished people not to get only a few items at a time but to make a shopping list and buy for several days in advance in order to minimize visits to the stores. And I would gladly follow this advice, but for one problem – when I make out such a list and then go to a store, several items on the list are missing. Getting fruits and vegetables, in particular, can be very troublesome. There were very few available at the Safeway within walking distance of my house. As for meat, the only things available appeared to be pork chops and sausage. I therefore drove to the H-Mart (the Korean supermarket), where to my surprise there was plenty of fresh produce.
I have not been hoarding, although in one case I have had a piece of luck. There has been a rush on toilet paper, a source of numerous jokes on our social media; and I happened to purchase a package of 24 rolls just a couple of days before the panic started. It was sheer accident; I was down to the last couple of rolls at the time I made the purchase. Now people seem to have acquired what they need and toilet paper is appearing on the shelves again, so I don’t anticipate any problems on that particular issue. I still have been unsuccessful in finding a store that has housewipes, but that is a luxury item when all is said and done. So we are not too badly off in my area, which possesses numerous food stores within a 2-mile radius. But how do communities with only one or two stores fare? Not very well, is my guess.
I have a visit planned to the Midwest in the second week of April to connect with various acquaintances there. So far I have not canceled it, but we will see how matters stand as time progresses.
During this crisis one’s attention naturally focuses on our leaders. Here I run into a difficulty. I intensely dislike President Trump. I was appalled on the day that he secured the nomination of the Republican Party in 2016. I thought then (and still do) that he was thoroughly unqualified for the job and morally bankrupt in the bargain: a man who used women shamelessly, with numerous trivial affairs that were sensual without being passionate, who caused several people to lose their fortunes by incurring debts with them that he refused to pay, who went bankrupt on several occasions and never once owned a corporation that was financially solvent, who showed thorough ignorance of governmental matters, military matters, diplomatic matters, and even matters of commerce, and who was proud of his ignorance in addition. And his conduct during his term of office has proven to be even worse than my expectations. Personnel from the Department of State, the EPA, and even the military have fled Government employment en masse, unable to put up with his whims; scarcely a month has gone by without some scandal or other besetting one or more of the members of his administration; and in open defiance of the law he conducts business transactions while holding high office and has given his son, his daughter, and his son-in-law political appointments, despite their glaring lack of talent.
It is therefore difficult for me, as the above synopsis probably shows, to write about him dispassionately. I honestly cannot fault him for initially under-estimating the scope of the virus, when I had done the same thing myself. It was only a few years ago that we underwent the Ebola virus scare, which, though not trivial, proved to be nothing like the pandemic that some of the experts predicted. The difference, of course, is that the coronavirus is highly contagious, whereas Ebola was not. The fact remains, however, that many people in the early stages, including some medical experts, had not expected the virus to erupt on so large a scale. So on that account alone I would not be as severe on Trump as some of the other commentators now are.
Still, it seems evident that the President has denuded the CDC of its ability to forestall such matters and that he resolutely ignored warnings until the number of cases was too great for the matter to be swept under the carpet. At this point he has instituted certain measures that seem to me prudent (such as banning international travel) and others that look like panicking (some of the so-called stimulus measures come under this category). The number of cases is still relatively small, and yet already our hospitals are showing signs of strain. This virus is something of a test of the strength of our health system, and our health system appears to be on the verge of flunking, largely on account of the resources that he has stolen from it. So it appears that I can loathe Donald Trump with a clear conscience.
Incidentally, the adulterous nature of these above-mentioned affairs of his does not appear to trouble his Evangelical Christian supporters in the least. It seems that the seventh Commandment is not a matter of much consequence for them. I wonder what their attitude is towards the other nine?