I can play music in my house, but out
there the concerts are canceled, the street musicians are silenced, the Eugene Hult
Center of Performing Arts is closed.
All entertainment has stopped—sports
events, movies, concerts, restaurants except for drive-thru, Disneyland, festivals,
folks dancing…we can’t even collect at the beach, or visit friends, even family
outside our little conclave.
We yell “Hi,” across the street.
It’s quiet. We’re on hold. We’re waiting
to be shot down by a bug.
Well, that stinks.
This morning I wanted to buy an
item from a store that is closed down, but will take orders by appointment. We
arranged a meeting. The man appeared behind a drop-down grate, opened the door
about four inches, was wearing a mask and latex gloves, took my money through
the slot in the grate and gave me my merchandise. I felt like I was doing drug
deal—yet all was legitimate.
When will we trust each other again?
One time I watched a movie where the actor Ralph Fiennes’
character, in a concentration camp, was stripped naked, sprayed with water, and
allowed to freeze to death while his fellow inmates looked on in horror. I was
yelling (silently in the theater), "Rush them! There is more of you than
them." (Sunshine 1999)
No one did. Each person was afraid for their own life. If one
person rushed the Nazis, they would be shot.
If one person said, "Let's rush them," the rest of the
group would hesitate, and it would be a blood bath.
The only way more of them vs. the controllers with power and
guns is for people to communicate, to get together, to have a plan, and be
willing to stick to it.
Why did I tell you that horrible story?
Because I don’t want us to lose connection with our fellow human
beings. I don’t want us to be so afraid for our own hide that we allow authority
to the point of ridiculousness. (Hoarding toilet paper? Well, that’ll save you from the virus.)
This shows that in moments of fear and crisis we don’t think
clearly. That was one reason for the Great Depression—a run on the banks. If
everybody else is taking their money out, I better too.
Writing this blog post has caused me to think and rethink. What
shall I say? And does anyone really care? People have their own thoughts. Should
I comment on current conditions? Should I use my years and experience as a
benefit?
I’m hoping this lock down and warnings will end up as it did
after the 60’s when people were building bomb shelters in their back yards.
I tried to find a cartoon that expressed that situation succinctly.
The picture was of a couple who crawled dazed and confused out of their bomb
shelter, presumably after a number of years, only to find that their shelter
was buried under a landfill.
Beyond the garbage, the rest of the world was playing in the
sunshine.
Does this represent some sort of mind set? Ones who think
garbage, see garbage? Ones who see the lightness of being, find that?
"Stay at home," they say. "Close your
business," they say. "We are protecting you." "You're doing
great. Do more of the same." "Wear masks."
Heavens, now I can't even understand the mumbling that comes
from behind those masks.
We can't read people's faces—for a lot of speech is understood
by watching the face, and we lip-read a bit even when we don't know we're doing
it.
When I heard that You Tube was taking down dissonant voices, I
was concerned about censorship, but then YouTube, being a private organization,
can monitor their content. Every kook
can sing.
I still hold fast to the idea that we can trust people enough to
let them make up their own minds, that people can speak their piece, and that
we could sort through the morass.
Silly me.
That's what they taught me in college, but that was a good old
liberal arts school in the olden days.
I also remember the quote from Abraham Lincoln, not the man,
just the quote, I'm not that old. "You can fool some of the people some of
the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
I trust the ingenuity of the human race. I trust the independent
thinkers. Still, I was alarmed at how people fell into lock-step over a
"Killer" virus that has about the same death rate as the flu of
previous years.
I admit that with all the voices speaking, theorists,
epidemiologists, professionals from various walks of life, and doctors with a
line of credentials a block-long, have stories to tell, and they all sound
credible. Even fair-minded disconcerting people have a hard time telling fact from
fiction.
I just deleted a list I had made up of possible scenarios
regarding Covid19. It all made my head hurt. No, I think it was more a
heart-hurt.
When someone says they haven't been out of their house for a
month, I think, don't you have a yard? What's wrong with walking down the
street?
And to close down outdoor spaces is ludicrous. The emissions
from our breath floats about three feet, so six feet ought to be safe. Go
outside. Bask in the sunshine, enjoy nature's bounty. And look at each other
for heaven's sake.
Since this virus scare began, I have tried to relay fears. But
what voice do I have compared to billboards that say, “STAY HOME. SAVE A LIFE. It
is like being admonished as children, “Clean your plate, there are starving
children in Africa.”
I have often written about how our brain is wired to go into fear.
That aspect of the brain protected the
human race for millennia. But there is another aspect. FEAR controls us.
I don't know what to make of this, and I'm not an authority, but
then they also taught me in college that an expert is just a drip under
pressure.
Here is some data worth considering:
"The only means to fight the plague is
honesty." Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
Facts about Covid-19
Overview
1. According to data from the best-studied
countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is, on average, about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.
2. Even in the global "hotspots",
the risk of death for the
general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was
initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were
not taken into account.
3. Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free. Even
among 70-79 year olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of
all persons show mild symptoms at most.
4. Up to one third of all persons already have
a certain background immunity to Covid19 due to contact with
previous coronaviruses (i.e.
common cold viruses).
5. The median or average age of the
deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 1% of the deceased had no serious
preconditions. The age and risk
profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality.
6. In most Western countries, 50 to 70% of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general
lockdown. Moreover, in many cases it is not clear whether these people really died from
Covid19 or from extreme stress, fear and loneliness.
7. Up to 50% of all additional deaths may
have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown,
panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients
no longer dared to go to hospital.
8. Even in so-called "Covid19 deaths" it is
often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus
(i.e. from underlying
diseases) or if they were counted as "presumed cases" and not tested at all. However,
official figures usually do not reflect this distinction.
To read the entire report please go to https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
On March 16, 2020 Darren Schulte wrote in First Opinion,
"We have learned to live with the flu, which can cause up to 80,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and
between 300,000 and 650,000
worldwide. It doesn't
invoke widespread fear, dread, and hysteria. Life goes on. People go out in
public, eat at restaurants, drink in bars, fly in planes, take mass transit,
attend sporting events, and congregate in other large indoor settings.
"We cope with it by washing our hands with soap and water for
at least 20 seconds, avoiding close contact with people who are sick and
covering coughs and sneezes.”
The Spring That Laughed in Flowers:
The Chickens that Clucked with Eggs
From 5 hens with love,
And at home I have
something to celebrate
Someone is reading my book!
They told me the dog ought to be a Sheltie.
A Sheltie in Africa?
Well, ok.
I'm tickled that someone is reading Where the Birds of
Eden Sing. This book has been long in coming, on the shelf, off the
shelf, an act of love, a dream come true, and finally visited by the muses
giving it one spark of completion.
Now, if I could get more than one person to read it…
To read more book-talk kindly go to
(Someone liked it and I posted only last night. Yippee.
Chin up.
Think big.
Go for your dreams.
Don’t let anything stop you.
Protect the little ones.
P.S. A Llama just might have the antibodies we need . How cool is that?