March 20th, 2019

My heart is heavy. Mood somber. The streets of SF are starting to empty, slowly by the day the blood is being drained from the city, as if an artery has been slit. We are OK. It has been over 5 days since we locked ourselves in, and neither myself or roommates are exhibiting any symptoms. So far, our biological containment methods seem to be working.

The routine of the day is simple. Cook food, read books, play WoW, play guitar, take a walk, cook food, maybe do some writing then to bed. I have retreated into my internal world over the last few days. I could feel the symptoms of my anxiety disorder threatening to overwhelm me, so I took the time for self care. Now I am poking my head out into the world to see what’s what… I must say I am not encouraged.

My immediate concern for my own safety, and the safety of San Francisco is not what is giving me pause.

It’s the rest of the country.

I have lived here for sixteen years. I was born in Oklahoma, and I know people all throughout the Midwest. It’s for them that I am truly terrified. Let’s take a moment to run some numbers. I am going to use extremely generous, simple numbers for the sake of illustration. The reality is likely to be worse.

If we have a mortality rate of 2% — a number not panning out in Italy, Iran and a host of other places, and 50% of the population contracts the virus over the next year(again, most likely a generous number) we are looking at 164,613,873 sick individuals. Of this, all reports have indicated ~10% require intensive care —which leaves us with 16,461,387. 16 million people in intensive care. We currently have fewer than 100,000 ICU beds. If that 2% dies, we will be burying 3,292,277. That is 3.2 million of our grandfathers, parents, grandparents and some people in their prime.

I am grateful to live in a county that has acted swiftly to implement measures to to contain the spread, but still people are not understanding. My friends that work in the hospitals are terrified. Supplies are running out, they are short staffed and overwhelmed. We are four days in, perhaps?

Here in San Francisco, we STILL do not have testing at any real capacity. People are still crowded together in the parks. Few masks are being used. We have one of the most educated populaces, and the best medical facilities in the country, and we are utterly unprepared and becoming swamped by the day.

What happens when this truly takes hold in Baltimore, or Oklahoma City or St. Louis? Places where the local government does not have money or services to spare. Where no one you know has insurance. The Washington Post is reporting 1 in 8 Republican voters live in a county with 0 ICU beds. I emphatically do NOT want this to be a political blog, this is about the experience of dealing with COVID in your town, life and mind. I mention it because these are my friends and family from back home. And the news has just told me that most of them will have no where to go when they are struggling to breathe, in urgent need of high level medical treatment.

How many of them will stay home, and die in their beds because they do not want their families saddled with a million dollar insurance bill that the hospital will come try to collect? What about those that go in, to recover and come back to a non-existent economy, with a bill for 2 months inpatient ICU stay?

A 1200$ check is a joke. Two 1200$ checks is the same joke, less funny. From the date I started reporting, we had time to prepare. I had time to prepare, and I took it. We are still slow walking in front of an invisible train, speeding towards us at a multiplicative rate. We have not even begun to address the immediate medical need of these people, my grandparents, my cousins — let alone the economic needs of the country as a whole.

Viruses make no distinction between borders or class.
We watched as South Korea was overwhelmed.
We watched as Italy was overwhelmed, yet nothing is happening…
Why on earth would anyone thing it would play out in a different way here? I said at the beginning of this blog, that I hoped this space would remain empty. I knew it would not. At the time I was writing it, and preparing, people around me in SF were calling me crazy, a fear monger and looking at me sideways in my mask. Those same people are apologizing and thanking me for the advanced warning. Let the rest of the people in this country know — New York and SF are BURNING WITH FEVER. Overwhelmed and not a week in. This is going to get much worse before it gets better and we are arguably among the most prepared.

I very much wanted to come out of hiding, read the news and be reassured by what I saw — the matter well in hand. Mass testing being rolled out across the country, well organized coordination of federal, state, local government and private business to speedily deliver crucial materials. An informed populace taking steps to protect their elders, who carry the story of themselves within their memories — — That is not what I am seeing.

I can say from my heart, that I hope that my calculations are incorrect, and that my knowledge of biology and the nature of this virus are, in fact, inaccurate. But that has not been the case so far. I implore you - this is a time for decisive action. Please avail yourself of the facts. Take precautions, and prepare yourself and family. We are all in this together, and it’s going to be quite a ride. If you look to the pandemic of 1918, the situation was similar. Federal government was preoccupied with the Great War, and it fell largely to local government and the people to help themselves and their fellow man. We did it then, and we can do it now — but do not bask in false pretenses.

This is real, this is now. We are ALL Covid County USA.