Coronavirus: Mixed Messages

The state of Florida is slowly starting to get serious about coronavirus even as we hear how early testing and isolation saved Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea from the Italian Disaster. Whatever the slow pace has set us up for in the weeks ahead, right now public opinion is moving away from empty bravado and more towards trying to figure out what social distancing means and how to protect oneself, if not one's neighbors.

The City of Key West has closed all sit down facilities in restaurants allowing only delivery and take out. Monroe County has ordered eateries to halve their seating and keep diners six feet between tables. All bars and nightclubs in Key West are closed and some other businesses have agreed to close as well. Public attractions are closed including Smathers Beach and famously now the Southernmost Point which. friend of mine described as "nothing to see here." From Facebook:

The state has ordered all schools closed until April 15th and testing is apparently suspended for the year. All this stuff is subject to change as you well know but finally Florida is moving to isolate the damned virus. There are rumors the county health department has virus testing kits and apparently a few have filtered down to doctors, a mere handful. The problem now is that testing is reserved to confirm obvious symptoms not to plough through the population to see how far the disease has spread and who to isolate. 

I am preparing to go back to work in a week and  I continue to carry with me the fear that I shall infect my immune deficient wife. Being the family front man in the grocery stores and walking the dog and avoiding human contact while out, would not be so bad were it not for the ever present fear of contamination. What makes it easier I suppose is that more and more of us are understanding the need for action, however weird our lives become. Actually that's crap.

This nightmare is now going to go into high gear and money is going to evaporate alongside many peoples' health. You know things are bad when Republicans are falling over themselves to give ordinary people money, and I suppose we should be grateful this is an election year. Goldman Sachs will make out like they always do but we have to hope working stiffs will get help with rent and medical bills and buying supplies because for all that we hear most people have no reserves we only see what that means in times like these.

I took these pictures a while ago as Rusty and I walked past the Green Parrot before dawn, before the pandemic when the bar was closed as a matter of course.  We've seen similar crises during and after hurricanes of a certain severity but this mess is not like a hurricane when there is precedent and damage and closure lasts days and not for the foreseeable. Politicians are finally moving to force people to separate and stop the spread but no one is hazarding a guess when the virus will go away and normality will be restored. 

I don't suppose anyone gets elected planning to cope with the zombie apocalypse and I find myself unable to generate the kind of outrage about each decision the way you see on Facebook. Beyond partisan politics and our president's bizarre leadership I am glad to see Congress stepping up and working to give assistance.  I got a bit irritated I confess reading about how piddly European countries were promising help to there citizens and our lot were learning to play their violins while the virus took root. I see lots of hope ready to blossom even as things get creepy in our towns and things shut down. 

I have been reading lots of comparisons to the Spanish Flu and the early AIDS epidemics and even though I'm not at all sure how relevant those nightmares were to the current problems, history still has lessons to offer us. Its early to be asking how long these straitened conditions will last but we hear the worst appears to be over in China, that's the good news, but the bed news is they started to see symptoms, even if they didn't under stand them, last November. The virus was identified as a flu derivative at the end of the year.

That means if we extrapolate the times this outbreak in the US could similarly last say four months...Imagine we are cautiously celebrating the glorious Fourth of July by saying good bye to the virus and its effects. And to the people it killed. Such a timeline seems a bit inconceivable but everything goes into a dystopian continuum when pondering Covid-19 and its effects on society.

Key West and the Lower Keys are going into a new phase, a response to the threat. Sitting on the sidelines and watching is interesting. Indeed we are living up to that over quoted Chinese curse about wishing your enemies might live in interesting times. A bit too interesting for my taste.

Windy Waterfront

During  the recent spell of prolonged strong winds I got a 911 call from a man who, in a panic filled voice asked to be transferred to the Coast Guard. I stayed on the line in case the Coasties requested help, an ambulance perhaps or an officer depending on what was happening.

 It turned out the would-be sailor was in no danger but was freaked out by the gusts that were pushing water into his dinghy and sinking it. The Coastguard operator did an excellent job of sorting him out and calming him down and I hung up reminded that it's all very well wanting to live like a devil-may-care boater but when the winds blow you still have to be able to cope. Self sufficiency doesn't come easy.

The commercial boats were sensibly secure at the docks. I joked with this guy about reading a paper book and he laughed. I have actually bought some books recently lacking electronic versions but in a life of limited space a pocket sized library is a thing of wonderment to an old man. Especially when you can read in line, in the dark, in the wind with ease.

They say the Coronavirus is emptying out hotels and cruise ships and restaurants and all manner of large gatherings. It has also been said young people are the least affected by the 'flu visiting us all from China, which may explain why Spring Break is keeping much of Key West busy.

While re-evaluating my position in respect of electronic books I am also forced this Spring Break to reconsider my feelings about mobile phones. I love my iPhone with all the features it offers me in the palm of my hand. I have to say though that it may also be too much of a good thing. I get numerous calls from parents who worry that their off spring haven't answered their phones for the past six hours or similar. It seems parents have an extraordinary ability to imagine their little dears don't drink and seek out new friendships, even brief ones, while on Spring Break. I should have hated to be on a cell phone leash when riding around Europe on a motorcycle in my misguided youth..

 For the old timers in Key West who live on the margins of the youthful frenzy of swimsuits and pool parties and indulgence  life goes on on, for him the commercial fisherman, and me the office worker. We stand back and ponder and watch.

In the middle of the chaos an al fresco picnic to celebrate the fact that snow is never seen in Key West, not all winter long.

Entering the harbor it was fortunate the man at the front of the boat was not the driver for he was facing backwards. 

Some visitors appreciate the winter sun more than others. Or perhaps it was  a hang over cure in a quiet spot?

 The couple I saw headed out into the wind and waves looked ready to get  wet:

Wind  driven waves don't get huge around here but there was plenty of spray to make their precautions justified.

I got back on my trusty electric bicycle and rode back to work. Head winds are no problem even with a small 350 watt motor.

The entrance bridge to Key West is supposed to start getting torn up one lane at a time next week. Thats when my bicycle rack and my electric bike will come into their own.

Coronavirus: The Horns Of A Dilemma

Well well, we have reached the Ides of March and in the US we seem to have reached a fork in the road forward. One part of the population looks to the future as a direct extension of the past, and the other group looks to the future through a muddled sense of past experiences none of which seem to apply. I find myself in the middle as usual, scratching my head as usual.

At last the cruise ships have agreed to stop operations for a few weeks and the last such floating Petri dish left yesterday afternoon after one final attempt at infecting anyone downtown who has not yet been exposed to travelers. The group of people who are convinced the future is linear and will be as the past has been also made their point by taking part in the Duval Crawl, a series of increasingly intoxicated encounters with bars down the main drag. In Marathon they flew their flag high by holding a seafood festival. The other group of citizens facing. profound and unnerving crisis did what they always do under these potentially dire circumstances: they went shopping.

Consequently by the time we went round to Winn Dixie in Big Pine the shelves looked like they had gotten mange, spotty with supplies. With time on our hands and a new kitchen gadget to test ("for the van") my wife set to work trolling through the vegetable aisles. How we worked was that she directed me to pick up the stuff while she tried to keep a few feet (or meters in CDC parlance) from potential carriers in the aisles. The cancer antiretroviral drugs she takes for her arthritis destroy her immune system so she would be an excellent candidate to get ill enough to die from this virus. Her future looks complicated for a while. However the selves of the supermarket had gaping holes and the weirdest stuff was missing. I needed a jug of distilled water for my CPAP machine an interesting innovation in myeline since the hospital and we managed to scrounge one six pack of expensive designer distilled water whose existence  I would never have imagined. Who drinks designer distilled water anyway? Whoever you re I thank you as normal water was long gone and only the expensive stuff remained on the decimated shelves. 

Pinto beans were in short supply as was toilet paper, bleach, ramen and a selection of cuts of meat. This group of people puzzles me. Do they suppose this virus is like a hurricane? Are they planning to huddle at home with bleach and toilet paper prepared to defend themselves against an unseen and very insidious enemy? Unlike some Facebook commentators I understand the need to feel some sense of control in an out of control world but, like the worriers seeking relief with medicinal herbs and ironically Chinese tinctures, better to save your money and buy a place on one of the very scarce ventilators when the time comes for you to breathe with mechanical support. 

The Ides of March marked the New Year for the Romans though most of us know the date as the day of Julius Caesar's death. Beware the Ides of March! In Italy where people have agreed with government demands to stay home life has ground to a halt so they are seeing in the new Roman year from their balconies and you may very well have listened to them singing, on and off key, to maintain sense of community.  The real picture is the photo above which I took as a screen shot from a television channel in Bergamo showing coronavirus patients face down on ventilators. In Key West two nights ago Duval Street was packed with revelers enjoying Duval Crawl - this picture I screen shot from a Facebook video. No way would I go down there to share viruses or drunken exhalations!

For the first time ever my family in Italy video phoned me as they sat around the table in quarantine at the family farmhouse in central Italy. Homemade sausages for lunch and why not call the uncle in America to see how life is over there? I was sitting at Mallory Square (in the top photo) and was shocked when my phone came to life with a live image of my nephew on the screen. I can tell you they are scared and were utterly taken aback as I panned my camera screen around downtown Key West showing off my ability to walk after my accident while at the same time proving no one in the US is taking this mess seriously. They are lucky as they live on a. fair and though there restaurant and farm-to-table business is obviously closed they live in an excellent spot to be quarantined. Nevertheless their stories are hair-raising, public gatherings are banned, dead people are piling up in sealed coffins in churches and marries awaiting burial some future date, people whose time was up not coronavirus death necessarily.

Publix is closing an hour early in response to a life threatening virus. Jolly good but it's not exactly what the rest of the world is doing. South Korea tests ten thousand people  a day, while we can't organize testing on any scale anywhere. Italians have agreed to stay home not to save themselves but to avoid infecting the vulnerable among them, to avoid killing the old and the sick. I read on Facebook how defiant my not at risk "friends" are about going out and living normal lives. My wife thanks you. Italians aren't in the habit of flag waving like Americans but unlike Americans when they do wave their flags they do it as a sign of national solidarity not as a token of narcissistic reassurance.

Italy is not the greatest country to live in, not for me, but I have never felt the need ti shout the advantages of my life in the US which are apparent to me and about which I feel no need t boast. I count myself lucky but which needs to get back on track. We should be leading not following in a crisis of this proportion, as killing the old and the sick by indifference is not what I feel proud of at all. 

Its not a struggle that will be overcome with bravery or stubbornness or childish bravado. Common sense and decency are needed more than ever and if we can't get it from the top we need to institute it from the bottom by ourselves without the need for leaders to tell us to be sensible. That's the America I love. I hope it hasn't been snuffed out. Im pretty sure it hasn't and of that I am proud.  

And this from a long time reader of this page:

 Cees Klumper said...

I just read my Dutch newspaper, about a 16-year old boy who was very healthy, no issues whatsoever, and is now in intensive care on life support after a very quick onset of Corona; doctors say he may still pull through. His family is not being tested so is likely infecting many others. Sister flying to UK tomorrow. Many others in Holland in intensive care are under 40 with no other known health issues before this virus shut down their lungs. The Dutch were very casual over the past weeks, now suddenly, with high concentrations of cases, realize this could kill many in a very short time including due to a flooded health care system that all considered so robust. Don't take any, any unnecessary risk people, including in Key West, as the authorities clearly lost all control.

Miami

Today was supposed to be the day we flew to London to start a ten day tour of the British Isles, my wife and I.  Two weeks ago the doctor told her she can't travel as she has a messed up immune system making her susceptible to the coronavirus. Bummer.

I suggested I go alone, a notion that merited the stink eye I got for that suggestion so we had to plan a staycation and wait out the panic that has infected the planet. the doctor was pretty blunt and the idea that we might either get sick with my wife having a chance of serious complications or both of us being quarantined indefinitely somewhere unpleasant seemed not ideal for a Spring Break vacation.

 While I must  confess to some irritation I get to spend time at home and perhaps i shall test the waters of the canal and see if it is vaguely swimming warm. There are chores to be done, friends to have round for dinner and books to be read on the deck. I have plumbed he literary depths deep enough that I have a few books made of paper that need reading owing to their nonavailability on Kindle. Say what?! The next ten days stretch out in front of me with the prospect of nowhere to be and not much to do, unless Herself dreams up some obligations.

In that vein while she bought fruit to bring home, and a muffin, Rusty and I walked the woods behind the Norman Brothers Produce a mandatory stop when visiting the rheumatologist. Behind the shop there is an open space,a former orchard and Rusty settled down to sniff one small corner so I wandered with my iPhone and looked for patches of light.

I must confess I don't really understand the Coronavirus thing very well.  If one isn't in an at risk group the threat seems no worse than any other flu. I know tons of people who positively refuse to take the annual vaccine and now there is no vaccine available they are all freaked out. Call me muddled but people baffle me.

In consideration of the fact our trip involved a complex jigsaw of five flights to connect me with my family it seemed likely our paths would cross with a traveler or three infected with some virus so the doctor nixed the whole plan.

I had  been hoping to get together with my sister and pay a visit to our ancestral roots, recently discovered in Ireland, a country I have somehow never visited. It turns out my grandfather was Irish so it seemed high time to correct my travel deficiency. The coronavirus said otherwise and the voyage of exploration to County Wicklow will have to wait.

Rusty doesn't mind though he will miss out on being spoiled by his favorite uncle who was already planning elaborate menus to help keep his morale up while I was away. Oh well we all have to suffer through this period of plague.

The sooner this thing dies down the better. The prospect of growing old gets worse and worse as these weird problems crop up in the era of the Internet. Now we know everything all the time and we don't seem to be using the information very well.

Occam's Virus

When I understood that the United States has no means of testing a community for the presence of the coronavirus I pretty much gave up on tracking anything. Statistics are meaningless in a situation where you can't produce reliable numbers. A colleague got back from a short vacation in New Jersey and he reckons he is fine because New Jersey isn't a hot bed of coronavirus. I guess not if we assume the virus can be counted by the number of people officially registered as carrying the virus. What if they are asymptomatic? Then what? No one knows. 

Oh but they do and they propagate nonsense against the backdrop of a town that is thriving under the weight of Spring Break. Were you in Key West today you would see a city that is as far from a world pandemic as any I could think of, and that is to say the situation here is absolutely normal. Movies live theaters music bars restaurants are all open and selling just like they always do. In a city packed with elderly millionaires I find this slightly disconcerting but I am on the sidelines unwilling to rain on anyone's parade.

It reminds me of the Key West of old, the Key West that kept its face painted as AIDS killed people by the hundreds, which is to say the "gay plague" killed people by the hundreds and the government fiddled and hemmed and hawed and got embarrassed by the term "anal sex." Nowadays our leaders are even more squeamish and are squirming at the mention of "coronavirus testing." In the face of all this nonsense I am reverting to my novel and turning my back on all the advice and the discussions and the statistics that mean nothing. No one knows. What I do know is how to wash my hands, how to greet people without touching them and where to walk my dog to be by myself. And I know how to wait until this passes.

It's going to be a long slow process. I'll bet you've heard this one: The Coronavirus was sold by Canada to China as a bio-weapon and the Chinese lost control of it. It is a wildly bizarre conspiracy theory riddled with racism and misinformation and stupidity but it does illustrate how Occam's Razor is an approach that should be adopted more widely in daily conversation. Simply put Occam posited that of any number of theories the most likely is probably the truth to pursue if it is the most easily tested. For instance: Either Canada sold China the virus OR the Chinese ate wild animal parts that were asymptomatic carriers of a common flu virus with extraordinary properties to harm humans. You choose. Which theory seems more likely? I think I know which one William of Occam would have selected.

Occam was a medieval English friar and if my explanation is inadequate here from Wikipedia is his very valuable theory of how you walk gingerly along any theoretical fine line as though on the blade of a razor blade. I read it more than once with an eye on how to deduce the meaning for myself:

Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models. In the scientific method Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result; the preference for simplicity in the scientific method is based on the falsifiability criterion. For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives. Since one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable.

Aside from the disputed origin of this wretched virus we now face a future of increasingly bizarre theories and wild speculation and fluctuating stock markets and financial uncertainty and unpaid medical bills and on and on. The Navy is preparing to set up a quarantine tent at the hospital to help cope with the expected influx of cases. However the tent isn't up yet. No need, obviously. A part of all our minds leads us to hope that this thing is going to go away, and I am among those.  Yup, it's too warm down here for the virus to survive. Or my history of 'flu vaccines will protect me. Whatever.

I suggested to a friend that I was glad to be in the Keys for this crisis and I got a weird look. From my perspective Keys  residents, at least some of them, have experience in self sufficiency after hurricanes. They are no strangers to the notion that stocking up with food and water (and that Northern bugaboo: toilet paper)  in preparation for a period of no help. We've done it before, more than once and we can do it again. Unfortunately this also produces a rather cavalier attitude as they forget the actual disease itself. I wouldn't mind 14 days at home one neighbor said loudly, unless you can't breathe on your own I interjected. And you end up in a  quarantine tent at the hospital with inadequate staffing. They paused. In Italy I added they are putting patients on ventilators face down as even with breathing machines they can't catch a breath on their backs. Silence. Drowning is no great way to die in my opinion and to do it in a  hospital bed must just suck.

I don't ever want to be on a  respirator again thanks. I could go through the rest of my life quite happily without seeing the inside of Intensive Care again for that matter. I remember with perfect clarity how they pulled the tube out of my throat after the operation when they finally got me breathing on my own again. Even the possibility that coronavirus could lead to this again does nothing for my equanimity. To hear people dismiss Covid-19 as just another 'flu, by now, boggles my mind.

                     

I'm not mingling with crowds as we struggle to live ordinary lives, I try not to touch people at work, we buy food to go to eat with friends, our much anticipated vacation in Europe is cancelled (Rusty would be delighted if he only knew). I'm not given to panic or exaggeration but caution seems the best way forward. The biggest obstacle to peace of mind for me is the lack of reliable information and the sense that no one seems to know what we are doing. 

If this virus is as bad as they say it is why are we not doing the obvious? Why is it awful in Italy and Iran and not here? The scientists say give it time and the politicians say ignore the scientists.  I feel as though I live in a  madhouse. Actually we all do live in a  madhouse, it's just that the veneer is off and the lunacy of how we live is completely exposed.

Is it better to anticipate the worst and prepare for it, or assume the best and prepare for that? Or a combination of both inasmuch as we  hope for the best and prepare for the worst?  I wonder what William of Occam would be doing about now? Buying hand sanitizer probably and shaking his head at how obtuse we all are.

Holding Pattern

Walking around Key West or driving the Lower Keys you would see nothing much out of place or abnormal. Indeed there are a few signs about washing your hands to keep the virus at bay but restaurants are operating as normal, hotels seems to have guests sustained I am sure by this very active Spring Break and visitors are visiting by car plane and cruise ship. No change seems to be the order of the day.

I listen to people around me and there is no sense of panic or even fear. I heard one person talking about coronavirus as though it is merely a different form of flu and he would never get vaccinated anyway. At the gym yesterday morning a  young woman in class allowed that she is taking an Airborne multi vitamin every day as a precaution. However she also spoke breezily about her  forthcoming vacation taking in total ten different flights. I think I started at her much as one might stare at  a mammal creeping toward extinction right in front of one's eyes. I know of one other Millennial anxiously planning relocation flights to the West Coast more anxious about abandoning this dreary little backwater than pondering the wisdom of setting up in a city like Los Angeles not necessarily where I would want to be friendless in a pandemic. 

These reflections force me to wonder what am I thinking? I happened across the President's speech closing down flights from Europe, leaving open one giant barn door in that you can still hop on a plane in Britain and fly to the US. Ad, despite Brexit for the rest of this year there is free movement between Europe and the UK. So am I an alarmist to wonder if my fellow Americans are being on the whole too casual about this or am I a Cassandra, a prophet doomed not to be believed were I to speak up about the grim possibilities?

My family in Italy is confined to home, able to maintain their farm but not to operate their bed and breakfast and restaurant. They exchange anguished messages about their confinement in Central Italy where the virus has a more modest foothold. They are afraid and they have heard about younger people, not just eighty year olds ending up on ventilators unable to breathe.

My childhood friend the doctor,a  cardiologist for thirty years writing me a brief note expressing his profound dismay. They might as well have dropped an atomic bomb on us he wrote. Everyday life has ground to a halt, the city has fallen silent, he doesn't know how they will climb out of the combined mess of disease,death and lack of economic activity.

In Britain my other sister lives on her farm in the far north away from population centers and watches and wonders. The British government is spending money it doesn't have creating the biggest budget in it's history to cope with the shortfall of economic activity. I read this stuff and I listen to my neighbors and I wonder what anyone is supposed to think.

The nearest thing I can relate this time to is the feeling I get waiting for a particularly brutish and nasty hurricane to land. I have hung around for every storm since 2004 and every time I hear people spout nonsense, like they have a feeling that this will be a "bad one" they mutter darkly. Or they trace possible tracks predictions put out by every weather agency on Earth. Then I hear people say "I wish it would get here and get it over" and I find myself shying away. I never want the storm to hurry up, I like the wholeness of my life before everything gets torn up by impossibly powerful winds and large storm surges. I'd like the storm to make me wait a very long time before landing and upending my life.

The people in charge in this country promise things will get much worse before they get better so as I look at a map of coronavirus cases in the US I wonder what the fuss is about. However when I look across the ocean at the other countries already dealing with this thing there is nothing casual about their attitude toward this flu.  Should we take our lead from the Chancellor of Germany? 

So far there are no cases reported in Monroe County though one traveler has been reported, as of Thursday evening, as testing positive in Dade county to the north of us. I heard rumors early yesterday that there was a coronavirus case in the hospital in Key West, but as usual the rumor seemed to be generated by those conspiracy rumors that insist that the authorities are trying to pull one over on us. I don't think anyone is served by those weird mental rationalizations. we will get our first case in the fullness of time.

I also read a suggestion that perhaps the virus can't survive an 80 degree ambient air temperature therefore we in the Keys are safe! Yay! Maybe not....Someone mentioned to me that perhaps we who have been vaccinated against the 'flu over a period of years may have unwittingly absorbed some vaccine that might prove effective at holding off the coronavirus. Someone else pointed out that sanitizer and scented wipes don't kill viruses. I wash my hands and sing "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" anyway. Might as well sound as idiotic as I feel. As magical incantations go "Old MacDonald" doesn't seem too bad to me.

For now we keep on keeping on and I dare say that is what we will continue to do whether or not there is a coronavirus in the offing, whether or not it is a super flu, whether or not the health hurricane will land and soon. Meanwhile I am enjoying walking Rusty, who is I am told immune to the virus. Lucky him because he's also immune to the rumor and innuendo and promises of catastrophe to come.