4/6/20 Covid-19 Update: "What will you do with the last good days?"
Hi friends,
It's supposed to be 60 degrees and sunny in Seattle this week, which feels like a gift beyond measure. I got up to Bellingham this weekend to go on a socially distanced walk at Boulevard with my family, and continue to explore new (to me) nooks and crannies of Seattle parks (Discovery Park is a revelation - who knew?! ). We all keep saying that we're not going to take moments like these for granted post quarantine (it feels to wrong to say "post covid" or "normal life" because those concepts don't really seem real right now), but I'm sure there will be a day in the not so distant future when we (mercifully) take all sorts of things for granted again... but for now, pretty much every moment in nature or with people feels like a bow-tied present.
Ask the experts (aka: not me):
If I had a Covid Magic 8 Ball right now, I think almost every response would say" Reply hazy. Try again later." Models vary widely from IHME's best case scenario to Imperial College's worst (it's hard to have good models without reliable/widespread testing), CDC guidance remains unclear, and even though things are getting better in Seattle (in terms of flattening the curve), things are much worse in other parts of the country where there's a lag in the effect of interventions, or where state governments still aren't taking this seriously. I can't tell you whether you should wear a mask outside (couldn't hurt?) or if the US is going to follow the same disease pattern as China (unlikely?). But here's a quick recap of what experts said over the weekend that sounds credible to me:
This is going to be a bad week in terns of fatalities in the US, but there's hope: "Things are going to get bad and we need to be prepared for that"), but there's hope that next week or shortly after we'll start flattening the curve (Dr. Tony Fauci, NIH Director for Infectious Disease)
Large group activities are not coming back for the foreseeable future: Until there's a vaccine (optimistically 12-18 months away), it's dangerous for anyone in the US to return to normal life ("I think things are going to be permanently changed coming out of this until we get to a vaccine and we can fully vanquish this. We're not going to see a V-shaped recovery or a quick snapback absent the ability to get a highly effective drug in the hands of doctors...Absent that, this is going to be an 80 percent economy. There are things that are not coming back. People are not going to crowd into conferences." (Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA Commissioner). "Mass gatherings may not come back at all until a vaccine is widely available." (Bill Gates)
US unemployment could be anywhere from 10 to 42 percent, and we need universal testing and surveillance to recover: A "massive surveillance system" (aka: disease detection, NOT spy surveillance - it's a confusing term) as experts suggest would allow infections to be detected quickly and reduce the opportunities for widespread spread such as global community is seeing today. (James Bullard, President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank)
This is really f-ing hard (paraphrasing Bill here, he didn't actually say that): "Asked about his earlier warnings of a COVID-19-like pandemic, Gates said that less than 5% of “what should have been done was done” since his 2015 TED Talk. “People didn’t get that this is the biggest single threat that could disrupt our way of life,” he said. “Even having predicted that as a risk, I’m really stunned at how tough it is to go through this. The medical costs, the economic costs, the psychological costs — everybody’s lives been completely upended. That’s not just the United States, it’s almost the entire world.”
Things that made me feel better/less alone:
For those who went to Sehome, a really cool story about Dakotah Lane (a Sehome grad who I remember having a major crush on -didn't we all? - that I now feel very justified about) - who became a doctor and came home to serve the Lummi Nation (the first physician from its own community) and has been helping them combat covid.
"The NBA and ESPN are working on televising a H-O-R-S-E competition involving several high-profile players, sources say. Players would shoot in isolation – presumably in home gyms – and match shots against competitors. Details are still being finalized." - @wojespn
"Guys will stand 5'8" from you and call it 6 feet." -@theorygurl
Anne Helen Petersen on the authority vacuum we're facing in America right now ("There are all sorts of people who have known that American was not, in fact, competent. People with whom the American government has broken promise after promise, whether in terms of civil liberties or treaty obligations. This pandemic only feels scandalous because everyone in America is being faced with the reality that many have known for some time: that the system is broken and untrustworthy, with a massive vacuum of authority, or integrity, or responsibility at its center.So we do what we can do. We make bad an ugly bread, we give our phone numbers to people down the street, we try and care for ourselves and others who’ve become sick, we tip and donate and save and hope against hope for the best instead of the worst. We distract ourselves, we get mad online, we map our fear and sadness onto other people in our lives when what we’re really mad about is that it didn’t have to be this way. It really didn’t.")
Which celebrity house would you want to be quarantined in (note: there is one extremely wrong answer, but I won't tell you what it is):
Covid-19 Poem of the Day:
What will you do with the last good days?
Before the seas rise and the skies close in,
before the terrible bill
for all our thoughtless wanting
finally comes due?
What will you do
with the last fresh morning,
filled with the watermelon scent
of cut grass and the insistent
bird calling sweet sweet
across the shining day?
Crops are dying, economies failing,
men crazy with the lust for power and fame
are shooting up movie theaters and
engineering the profits of banks.
It is entirely possible
it only gets worse from here.
How can you leave your heart
open to such a vast, pervasive sadness?
How can you close your eyes
to the riot of joy and beauty
that remains?
The solutions, if there are any
to be had, are complex, detailed,
demanding. The answers
are immediate and small.
Wake up. Give thanks. Sing.
-Lynn Ungar
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Last night's sunset in Seattle, taken from my window. Hope there are moments of brightness for all of you today.
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