Journaling the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic, Reflection #54
May 3, 2020
Lake Geneva, WI
The next step.
Yes, six states have eased up on their ‘stay-at-home’ rules, and hopefully, more will follow in rapid succession. As I have attempted to illustrate in articles in this Journal, the dangers of social and economic destruction (and the resultant more silent deaths) could far outweigh the deaths from the virus. The headlines in the Chicago Tribune are all about tracking today. How to install a flock of ‘trackers’ who would go out, question people who have gotten the virus, find out their contacts, and then isolate those contacts. Isolation, so far, would be informal (voluntary) with only relatives and family notified that the subject must be isolated.
It would entail placing this contacted person in a separate room of a house or apartment for three weeks (or some identified an unnamed facility). The details were left out of the article. Would the isolated person be allowed to leave the room? What would the isolation rules entail, and then what kind of enforcement would follow the simple fact that voluntary isolation of this exclusionary kind would not be followed very dependably? The contact people being considered for the job (100,000 nationwide and 3,800 in Illinois) would not be health care workers or police, or any of that. They’d be regular citizens without jobs hired to the task.
That brings up another problem. What if the contact people get pretty upset at being designated contact and being required to self-quarantine based upon some associate’s, or employee’s or whomever’s word? What kind of heat might the contact contractor delivering the rather devastating news suffer through?
There were few masks in downtown Lake Geneva yesterday, and the town was filled. There was no obedience at all to the social distancing guidelines. How long can this country stay locked down before it explodes out of mixed monied success, right next door poverty, and into the Twilight Zone? Self-discipline is not a hugely popular set of threads running through the weave of the American social fabric.
Share Your Experiences
Should over the next ten days one hundred million people across this USA home of the brave and free to be you and me sons and daughters of liberty decide to get out, to to work, socialize and basically go with the flow of life, what would be the response to that state by state? Could it be stopped and contained or would it take on an organic life of its own and spread? And what would we see as far as 1. Virus spread and 2. Economy spread?
James your thoughtful pieces never fail to stimulate my imagination and emotions producing more questions than answers.
Thank you.
Getting large groups of people together is nearly impossible today. That ability has been
assumed and subsumed by our supposedly elected leaders and this who purchased and now run
all of our national news agencies. Try to gather people to listen and you will be driven right off
the air, erased from Facebook or come after if you find some other way. Your message does not matter, because it is the ability to
provide any message at all that is so fiercely guarded and then fought over.
Semper fi,
Jim
You introduce thought-provoking ideas and questions, thank you.
I find it amazing that States which are fiscally bankrupt are promoting the Hiring of Contact Managers.
WOW!
As you know I live in a Very Vintage Citizen” community (Average age is 80)
We walk, visit, and even play bingo (distanced appropriately).
We even had a distanced “Street Dance” Friday evening.
Masks are not worn in the neighborhood, but most do wear a mask when we trek to town.
Could it be our habits are prompted by the fact our County of 69,000 people has one (1) case
(an already sick gentleman who passed 2 weeks later) since January?
No one seems ‘hot to trot‘ to get tested.
But personally I can understand those who may live in dangerous places would be more concerned.
As always,
Thank you for being you.
If history repeats itself, we can expect a second wave worse than the first and possibly a third wave until populations are vaccinated, have the virus, or are dead so they can’t infect anyone. The conservative press has set 70 years of age as disposable or collateral damage for the
economy. This is fine unless one is over 70. They even put a 27 yr old on ECMO, a heart lung machine at Froedtert Hospital! Reserved only for much younger than 40 without any other medical problems or VIPs. The ultra rich have probably stockpiled any supplies and PPE because of course their lives are more valuable even if they are over 70. Will people wear masks to cut the transmission rate by 50% or are we who are over 70 so devalued by society that we are relegated to being “collateral damage?” Cases are still on the rise in WI. And 59 of those are from Republican idiots challenging postponing an election hoping to suppress voters. What is the value of a life over 70? Someone’s grandparent, friend, colleague, volunteer, author, mentor.