March 16th/17th/18th. It Has Begun
Several weeks ago, as I watched the news from China and began to carefully prepare, I took some steps. Notified loved ones, started this blog and began to watch for this moment to arrive. I likened it to the eye of a hurricane. I feel the analogy has held up rather well given the new developments.
I was called a fear monger, crazy and several other things I don’t care to repeat here. Well, never been a worse I told you so moment. An epidemiologist friend informed me I was 2 weeks ahead of my information re: her colleagues and thanked me for warning her before the true panic struck.
We are in lock down, everyone knows something is amiss. The runs on the store have begun, yet strangely everyone in The City still seems to think they are on a big vacation. I am not witnessing the usage of masks, social distancing. Many people are bringing themselves and their children to crowded public parks. I expect this to change over the next week as it becomes entirely apparent that enforcement will be needed for people to change their behavior. I am frankly shocked that the people of SF, despite all the trappings of education and wealth seem to be responding no more nimbly than anywhere else.
I am so thankful my roommates decided to listen to me, and follow my lead in the situation. As a result, we are all still healthy, safe and prepared. My assumption is we will all get it at some point, I just hope we can do it several months down the road when the main crush at the hospitals has ended. Other households are not so lucky, several friends are fighting denialist roommates that insist on putting their home in danger, and cannot agree on information or decontamination protocols. If I had someone insistent on stupidity I would insist they move out and stay out, tenant laws be damned.
This is plague time.
Fed has announced sending a boat to triage non-covid patients which is an absurd idea, from the helicopter out to the boat to the fact that it will become a mobile COVID machine in a matter of weeks if not days.
I thought I would feel less anxious when the rest of the world caught up to what I had been seeing since February, but quite the opposite is true. As the full ramifications of what is to come become more and more apparent, something about the talking heads echoing my own anxiety is worse than the dissonance of empty platitudes that came before.
I struggle day to day with my own anxiety, speaking to you here is assisting that. We are maintaining daily exercise, and will attempt as varied a diet is we can create within the supplies we have.
Massive Federal intervention will be required, a bail out of main street. We just pumped 1.5 trillion into the stock markets, the banks are getting money at no interest. It’s time to talk about what it’s going to take for us to function as a society to get through this situation. And let’s be frank. We had community spread here from the first case in Humboldt. Many of my friends were sick with mystery illness with COVID characteristics as early as January.
When the testing truly comes in, it will be revealed that we have many thousands of cases already, and probably did as far back as February. A friend of mine in the nursing establishment informed me today that the kits they have are 60% effective — little better than a coin toss. They barely have those and still a CT scan (and subsequent sterilization) is required before another patient can use the machine. Testing is painfully slow, and without mass identification of asymptomatic carriers we have no chance of stemming the spread of this illness through our dense urban landscape. Our hospitals are already beginning to struggle, and we are at best 3/4 days into the real cases surfacing.
We also need to be alert and aware — the global market system is in free fall. I am a trader. I am watching as all the systemic hedges fail. Gold is not safe, nor bonds, nor commodities. The economic fallout for our country, and the world will be something not seen since the 1930’s, and we all need to be prepared for what lies ahead.
In spite of ALL of this, inside of me there is a curious kernel that is ok. Not happy, or satisfied with the situation, but OK to go forward. It’s not the Federal level offering basic needs. It’s not society finally waking up to the danger it faces. What is keeping me aloft is the solidarity I am witnessing in the community around me, among those who understand the seriousness. The preppers, the medical staff, the wild eyed hippies.
The old school San Franciscans.
I have seen more of the Old City energy over this last week than perhaps in the last five to ten years.
During one of our daily walks, my roomie and I came across a group of 6 hippies chanting prayers for the health and well being for the city atop of Corona Heights. Those with masks and practicing distancing nod in support of the actions taken. We found this banner dangling from an apartment window:
Which brought a tear to my eye. If you look at the history of the 1918 Pandemic, or the plague outbreak in Chinatown 1901, the way this city made it through was by dynamic response and community solidarity. I wasn’t sure if we still had it in us.
I’m beginning to think maybe there’s more of that Old City Mojo left than I thought. I pray that it extends to the rest of the Country, and the World.
In solidarity SF, Wuhan, Seattle, the US and worldwide.
#WEWILLSURVIVE is the message from Covid County.
