No, Thursday's Out....

Here's a six minute video of people from other countries looking at the US response to the coronavirus.  It's funny, until it isn't. 

I rode my bike downtown yesterday afternoon, to the Salmon Street Springs fountain – well, it’s not fountaining right now, so I guess it’s a plaza -   where I saw the lovely (and enormously sad) Say Their Names installation. It features a wall of photographs honoring Black victims of police violence. All the photos are in black and white, and many are graduation pictures, a wall of smiling young faces. If each picture were worth a thousand words, there would be so very, very many words represented there. Which is the point. A few families were gathering around the plaza, getting ready for an event put on by Portland parents dedicated to raising anti-racist kids. There are a lot of protests in Portland right now, something for everyone, every day. You can don a protective vest and goggles and go to the Justice Center late at night (if you are lucky enough to have a protective vest and goggles), or you can join a car caravan that is meant to last about two hours, two days a week....

A very outgoing young Black woman was helping me at the New Seasons checkout. We did the current Portland not-too-bouncy greeting:   How are you? I’m ... okay, you? Hanging in…. And then she said, “We’ve never lived through times like these before, you know? And I think having all of it, all of it happening at once, is getting us really in touch with our True Chaotic Natures.” I said I thought “True Chaotic Natures” was an excellent phrase. She said, “Yeah. I have NEVER heard from so many of my exes in one week before.” She laughed and shook her head. Intrigued, I said, “And… so… what are your exes calling to say? And what are you saying to them?” She said, “I’m saying, ‘Man, you are OUT of your MIND!’”   I did the puzzled “tell me more” squint. She said, “They aren’t… (she clasped her hands to her chest and looked heavenward, and sighed)… they aren’t Oh, I Wish exes.” “Ah,” I said. “The other kind of exes.” “Yeah,” she said. “The ones you never want to see aga...

I got to see (distantly, masked) a friend a couple of days ago, on the first full day he was home after a week in the hospital. It wasn’t COVID-19 that put him there, though if COVID-19 hadn’t necessitated the cancellation of an appointment back in March, he might not have ended up in the hospital in July. Knock-on effects. His rueful insight about the whole illness experience was that he always, habitually, Thinks He Knows Best, and that it just isn’t true. I said, “You know, you aren’t alone in that.” He laughed and said, “Well, but STILL. After all these years. I still do it.” This conversation has been rattling around my brain ever since. It fits my current ponderings about the Portland protests. I don’t know best. So many conversations, so many analogies, so many competing imperatives, yet again.   I applaud those who are brave. I applaud those who are careful. I feel as if engaging with untrained, unmarked goons with their vans, bullets, flash-bangs and tear gas is ...

In recent days, journalists from elsewhere have begun "parachuting" into Portland to give the world an overview of what is happening, now that Trump has sent federal-ish (unmarked) troops here. If you want something less simplified and a bit longer than you can find in the larger national media, here is an article by a journalist who has been r eporting on the protests from the beginning.  It's been more than 50 days now, and things have changed in various ways, as time has passed. 

Someone started a thread on “What have you said in 2020 that would make no sense to someone in 2019?” There are a lot of responses along the lines of, “Where did you find Purell?” and “I will trade yeast for toilet paper.”   There are quite a few like, “I won’t hug you,” and “How dare she try to shake my hand?”   Mine was, “No, I don’t want to carpool.” (It could have been, “Don’t wear black downtown lest the President’s unmarked goons throw you in a van and haul you away.” Or maybe that would have made perfect sense in 2019. I can’t remember now. Oh, look. In the time it took me to write this, somebody contributed much the same response, but with the added tip that you shouldn’t struggle when they toss you in the van, but should request a lawyer.) Some of the responses are even more poignant, the missed weddings, the drive-by graduations,   “It was a Zoom funeral,” “I don’t think you should go to school even if it does open,” and “I’m looking for hospitals that all...

Some young friends were going to get married down at the coast over Labor Day, but that's not going to happen. So they sent out Change the Date cards. I've gotten a fair number of Save the Date cards before, but this is my first ever Change the Date card. The wedding is now set for... one year ... from today.  I do love having things on the calendar. I've got this one written in already.  

This minute and 32 seconds has haunted me for days.  Anthony McGill is Principal Clarinet for the New York Philharmonic. And the change from major to minor, when he gets to "America, America...," somehow brings me into focus for every note following.  And then from there, I'm off to Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter: "Ain't no love song finer, but how strange, the change from major to minor ... ev'ry time we say goodbye."   Every single time. 

"When you mix science and politics, you get politics." - from an opinion piece in the New York Times by John M. Barry, " The Pandemic Could Get Much, Much Worse. We Must Act Now. "  Perfectly good opinion piece, but the first line is my favorite bit by far.

I got a Dear Neighbor letter from Reed, which isn’t exactly like a Dear John letter, but isn’t all that different, it turns out. In happier days, Reed knew my name, and wrote to me about upcoming events. So seeing "Dear Neighbor" was a bit jarring, and I squeaked, “Hey, Reed, it’s ME!” when I saw the greeting. But then it turned out that Reed was sending that letter to a whole bunch of neighbors, letting us know that as of August 3, campus will be closed to everyone except students, faculty, and staff. And waterfowl. They didn't mention the waterfowl, but I figure that goes without saying. When I think about it, Reed has been darn generous, all these years, letting the public come on over and enjoy the grounds, the library, the gorgeous canyon, wonderful music, and a whole bunch of lectures, art shows, and other events.  And when I think about it, if I’m not letting anyone into my house these days,* there’s no reason they should be letting anybody into theirs. Not only ...

I get emails from an outfit that alerts people to cheap airline tickets, and you can imagine how much business they are not seeing lately, and how many airline flights people aren’t booking.   To stay relevant, the cheap-ticket people are now emailing a lot of tips on how to re-book tickets and how to get a refund and such. Their latest missive touted the mental health benefits of booking a trip in the future, even if you eventually have to re-book it, and to bolster this suggestion, they cited some scholarly research from 1997 which not only rings true for me, but it also absolutely delightful. In an article titled “ Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The “Rosy View ,” our authors ( Terence R. Mitchell, Leigh Thompson, Erika Peterson, and Randy Cronk ) discuss their finding that (I’m summarizing, here) people are more positive about trips before and after the trip itself than they are while the trip is happening. No kidding. Also, hahahahaha. If we didn’t kn...

I got word yesterday morning that a much-loved former colleague had died. I can't say old colleague, because he died young, of a fast-moving cancer. There was no COVID-19 connection. Just one of those awful things. The grapevine needed to be queried for some details, and I'm hearing from other former workmates still, today. It's nice to hear from them. It's a huge sadness.  But yesterday, even before I'd managed to contact his wife with my condolences, I got an email that a different colleague's much-loved wife had Stage 4 cancer. This wasn't COVID related, except to the extent that she had put off going to the doctor for a while, because she was trying to shelter at home. One of my friends refers to this mortality and morbidity onslaught as, "They're hoeing our roe." Who are they, and would they please stop? Before I'd managed to respond to that one, a different grapevine ramped up. This one is my friends from my home town, with whom I...

Here are the CDC numbers for deaths from  seasonal flu , and from  COVID-19 . Flu numbers are for the 2018-19 flu season. COVID-19 numbers are from 2/2/20 through 7/4/20, as recorded by 7/8/20.  The most recent weeks are incomplete. (You have probably seen much higher death numbers through July 8, but the CDC's numbers lag those on the ground in various states, and it takes them a while to compile things like breakdowns by age, gender, race, etc. So their most-recent weeks are always low.) I crunched the numbers a whole lot to get the totals for COVID-19. The CDC breaks them down by week, and by age group within each week, but does not give a running total (at least, not on this particular site). So I compiled it from all the weeks, subtotalling into two counts:  65 and over, or 64 and younger, at time of death. Feel free to download and re-crunch if you have doubts.  This project happened because a friend inquired about some bad numbers he'd seen coming out of ...

Click on some of the charts here   from Johns Hopkins, to see where the US falls in terms of mortality from COVID-19, worldwide. The first chart, where you can toggle between mortality per case and mortality per 100,000 population, is particularly compelling. The count per 100,000 population isn't about confirmed cases, so it isn't about increases in testing. Look at the US. COVID-19 can leave some victims with problems long after it has passed, so it's not always a case of either dying or recovering completely. And we can't be sure how every country is counting COVID deaths. So there are reasons to question whether all the numbers here are perfectly accurate, or whether focusing on death minimizes the combined impact from death-and-disability.  Still, worldwide, we hit 10 million cases a week or so ago, and 500,000 deaths at the same time, which comes to a 5% fatality rate over all, nobody's version of a "99% chance" of survival.      

This week has been another disappointing one, as my friends and I have cancelled (you could say "postponed," but one is postponed indefinitely, which feels indistinguishable from cancelled, at least to me) two different eagerly-awaited get-togethers. For various reasons, they couldn't happen right now in an adequately socially-distanced way.  It was the wise thing to do; The Time is Not Yet Ripe. I got a little moist in the eyeball region over both cancellations, because I am pining mightily to see my friends, but I wasn't arguing the point, either time. Now is just not the time. The time will come. It occurred to me as I was doing chores just now that we are all like the little-kid subjects in a giant marshmallow test: you can have ONE marshmallow now, or if you wait (an unknown number of minutes), you can have two marshmallows later!  So then I had to look up the marshmallow test, to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering anything.  It turns out that while the origi...

The graph is from yesterday’s New York Times, an article called The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus     The Times sued the CDC under the Freedom of Information Act, in order to get the information. What’s that about?  Here’s a breakdown by age group, and it is also chilling. As a group, white people are getting off very lightly, at every age. It’s not just cases, either. Deaths are up for Black and Latino victims as well. “ Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, the data shows. ” The theory that the harder hit communities are suffering because of co-morbities, mainly diabetes and obesity, is also beginning to draw fire.   ‘ The focus on comorbidities “makes me angry, because this really is about who still has to leave their home to work, who has to leave a crowded apartment, get on crowded transport, and go to a crowded workplace, and we just haven’t acknowledged that those of us wh...

We’re all doing what we can, and to that end, Multnomah County Library is forgiving all existing late fees , and won’t charge late fees from here on out.* There’s a little algebra problem hidden in the following paragraph, as you will see:  “The library said it is removing fine debt for more than 72,000 accounts, a total of more than $730,000. More than 2,000 people have had accounts blocked due to fines of more than $50.” (So the average amassed fine is about $10, but if you take out the top 2,000 accounts at more than $50, the average is… I dunno. I’m not doing my math today.) “’We have watched closely as a growing body of research has shown that late fines don’t work, that a large percentage can never be collected and that ending the practice doesn’t increase the number of late returns,’ Multnomah County Director of Libraries Vailey Oehlke said in a statement….In its last fiscal year, the library collected about $550,000 in overdue fines. That’s less than 1% of its annua...

Arizona implemented crisis standards of care yesterday for medical centers.  Two of my friends are co-authors on a remarkable paper  about the planning done throughout the University of Washington system, back in the spring, for implementing contingency and crisis standards. (Ethics Lessons from Seattle's Early Experience with COVID-19)   The paper is both easy to read (clearly written and low on jargon) and very hard to read. It covers triage, racial and economic inequity in the US, ethics training for health care workers learning to pivot from "what is best for MY patient" to "what is best for the common good of all patients," the moral right of health care workers to their own safety, and other equally sobering topics. It is excellent work, and the triage piece has not yet had to be put into practice, thank god. Well, not in Seattle. Arizona may be there now. I've been trying to find a sentence or two to highlight here, but it's hard when the whole pi...

Lookit that!  Back on the 27th of June, I was wondering about all the "excess deaths" we have seen since March (deaths way above the average for this time of year, but not attributed to COVID-19). And today the Washington Post published an analysis of precisely that topic , under the headline and subhead:  Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows Fear of seeking care in hospitals overwhelmed by the                              pandemic may have caused thousands of deaths, experts say    The article doesn't look at Oregon, and I was looking at Oregon numbers a few days ago. But it does look at six areas that have had a lot of "excess deaths," and have reported extensively on causes of death:  Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York City, New York State (without New York City), and New Jersey.   Bottom line, summary:  ...

Remember my SMART reading-partner kid friend Theo? I saw him in real life yesterday, for the first time in four years. Being in better touch with Theo is one of my pandemic Gifts in the Garbage. Theo and I had kept up a sporadic correspondence after he graduated from SMART in third grade. But when the pandemic came along, his mom said we could talk on the phone. I’m guessing he was bored, and she was sure by now that I’m a safe adult.  Since that first phone call, we’ve been in touch every few weeks, and then just recently, I realized that I have been biking the Springwater Corridor, which comes within a mile of his house, so I asked if we could maybe wave at each other from afar. Yesterday we stood umpteen feet apart and talked about nothing in particular, movies I will likely never watch, websites he will likely never visit.  Like most  odd couples, Theo and I have little in common, but enjoy each other immensely. Best moment: Theo was trying to explain who Chris Pr...