I
am 73 years old and a white male. Over 10 years ago I had a minor
heart attack and had 6 stints put in. My
medical records say coronary artery disease and hypertension.
Nonetheless I feel healthy in general. I collect social security, a
small State pension, and I have a 401k that I can draw on. My
401k is the usual senior paradox, if I live a long time it may not
last and if I don't it's a lot. I am married and Suzette works
full time from home as a personnel manager for a charter school
regional office. We have a comfortable income. We own our home in a
good neighborhood. I have Medicare and private medical insurance.
Suzette and our daughter are also insured. Our daughter is 10 years
old, healthy and growing, and is enrolled in a private school. They did very good online instruction
until June. Since then she’s taken a writers’ workshop online and
next week will start an online summer camp.
I
describe my days staying at home as good. I get up, I enjoy my
coffee, read history, read a couple of newspapers online, take the
dog for a walk, take care of Paloma, do dishes, cook meals, go
bicycling and watch TV including taped football (FIFA) games that
were played a long time ago and some recent SuperLiga Danish games,
talk to friends and family on the phone and do a once a week porch
visit with a friend. My days are like a lazy Saturdays where I don’t
do much but relax and enjoy, day after day after day after day. It
feels like being under house arrest. I am aware that we are very
fortunate and unlike many people around us have everything we need.
I
have been keeping a journal for the Covid-19 Pandemic. I write it for
history, a digital file to be stored in a digital library, maybe useful one day or not.
June
27, 2020 Day 103
LA
Times 6/27/20 4 Suburban California Counties fuel dangerous
rise in COVID-19 hospital-izations
“It’s
like we’re cheating on our diet, and angry or baffled that we can’t
lose weight,” Dr. Robert Levin, the Ventura County health officer,
said Tuesday. “There’s all those times that we’re not cheating.
But [in] the few times we do, all that effort is for naught. So what
is the price we pay? Where are we headed? More cases of COVID-19.
More people hospitalized. More people in our ICUs. More people
dead.”
“Like
cheating on our diets” – and then – “More people dead.”
It
feels like things are spinning out of control. San Francisco is
stopping it’s scheduled reopening moves and talking about backing
up. It seems small things. We’re talking about how we will go out
today. We’ve decided to go to a beer garden in Uptown Oakland. Last
week at Jack London Square we felt safe. My friend Gordon said they
went to Capitola and it didn’t feel safe. It’s hit and miss.
Yesterday I came back from my bike ride and there next door was
Angela a couple of feet away from Rita sitting on her front steps,
she was leaning in to talk to her. Neither one was wearing a mask.
Angela
is my best example of someone well meaning who for her own quirks
needs to push the limits of distancing, neighborhood events, getting
together, visits and so on. But Rita is as old as I am and seems older. Angela is past 60 and not in the best of health. I don’t
blame her at all. In fact, it’s not what anyone of us does but our
behavior overall. If 300 kids attend school at EBI in September we
will probably be lucky, none of them will get very sick, but if
10,000 start school in OUSD two or three are going to die and one or
two may be debilitated for life.
I
think the powers that be, the Wall Street money managers, the
Washington powerbrokers, not a conspiracy but a consensus know that
reopening means people will die, but the economic gains are worth the
price and besides it’s people of color and the elderly and
immigrants who are replaceable, marginalized people and people who
are past contributing. Social Darwinism. Like Jane Austen characters
over 200 years ago, the gentile people live comfortable sophisticated
lives while living on the income from people like coal miners who die
in the mines leaving destitute families.
I
don’t think the push to reopen is wrong headed so much as it it
hard headed, practical and pragmatic. It’s like how much do we
spend on auto safety until road deaths go down to an acceptable
level? It isn’t just at the top it goes from the Board rooms of
Citibank, Bank of America and Chase down to the local nail salon
owner. Just like auto safety that went from board rooms and engineers and
legislators to the willingness of auto buyers to pay for it. How many
deaths are acceptable?
So
my family will wear masks, are careful of the environment we are in,
like General Milley says, "maintain situational awareness"
and we try to model good behavior, doing what we can. And yet instead
of controlling the virus, the virus is in charge. It's better
in California than Florida but not by much.
Postscript
We
went to Drake’s Dealership a beer garden in Uptown, the old auto
row, and again felt quite safe. They were taking the pandemic quite
seriously and carefully explained the rules and then followed them.
The tables outside were spread apart, we ordered our food on our
phone and paid by phone. The servers were all masked, polite and
careful. We enjoyed ourselves again. On the way out I had a coffee at
a coffee stand behind a plastic shield, no cash.
