Should be enough

This space on the internet has become a venue for me to talk about my life, things that have happened to me or may soon. I shine things up, exercise literary tricks in a low-pressure setting, but it is my diary. It is not for fear mongering, as I could count on one hand the number of things (and could boil most of those down to one finger). This site is not a news broadcast. One should not consider much of what follows reliable information, though it was to the best of my ability at the time of writing. I am filtering this through what the media has been reporting, and I do this with a mistrustful eye. The media misinform to assure continued viewership. I am far from an epidemiologist. It would be unwise at best to assume otherwise.

Like much of the sensible world, I am concerned about the coronavirus. I say this not merely as someone with an immune system -- a generally healthy one, so don't ready the Lake City Quiet Pills quite yet -- but one who studied the Swine Flu of 1918 while preparing my novel Flies to Wanton Boys.

That Swine Flu is the closest our world came in the last hundred years (almost exactly) to exterminating humanity. At the time, Victor Vaughan, dean of the University of Michigan Medical School, stated, "If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily... disappear... from the face of the earth within a matter of a few more weeks."

The epidemic did not continue at that rate -- which I will get to shortly. The Swine Flu left our species to panic another day. This is little comfort now.

The Swine Flu was beset by disinformation from both sides of World War I. Neither side wanted to admit weakness, so they downplayed where they did not outright deny. In some areas, the flu killed far more soldiers than fighting. It would be easy to argue that this is the reason the war ended as it did. Spain, who was neutral in the conflict, was not shy about reporting what was happening in their country. It infected their king, Alfonso XIII, though he survived. This is why people today who are aware of that plague will still refer to it as the Spanish Flu, because the propaganda of the era tried to pin it all on those dirty Spaniard. Racists who think they are stealthy with their dog whistles are trying to dub COVID-19 "the Wuhan Virus" or "the Asian Virus." Racists are not subtle.

The Swine Flu did not stop because of something we did. We never cured it. It stopped both because it was too successful and for reasons we do not know. "Too successful" in this means that it infected people and they succumbed to it within a day sometimes. They were not infectious long before becoming symptomatic, so they could not infect more people. COVID-19 does not have that problem. One can be infectious for over five day before the symptoms appear. (It is possible to stay infectious up to two weeks, thus the duration of the prescribed self-isolations).

The reasons we do not know are that the Swine Flu seems to have returned from whence it came. There are theories that it reentered to some animal population and could return one day. It has been long enough that this should not provoke too much worry. It is possible that we will be so ill-equipped to deal with COVID-19 that it could become endemic, meaning that it is a sickness humanity will have to continue to deal with in the way of the seasonal flu or common colds.

Viruses are not alive, a fact that some seem to ignore in this outbreak. Without a host, bacteria are still organisms in their own right. They do not need us to reproduce, though we provide convivial places in which to make billions of children. Viruses are inert. "A virus is," in the words of Peter Medawar, "a piece of bad news wrapped in protein." They do not have cells -- no cell membrane or mitochondria -- only that protein coat around their genetic material. They do not eat or excrete. They do not use energy. They do not care about you and they have no intention but will overtake your cells to produce more.

Historians estimate that the Swine Flu killed 3% of humanity. Not 3% of the infected. 3% total. With a world population then of 1.75 billion, that is 52.5 million.

COVID-19 kills 3.4% of the infected, the World Health Organization estimates. We don't understand COVID-19 yet. It may kill more. I hope it is less lethal, of course, but I cannot invest enough energy in that. Better to be overcautious and alive. (Best not to do this by hording toilet paper, a reaction that makes no sense to me. The coronavirus is not coming for your GI tract. There is not likely to be a shortage except the one you are creating.)

Looking at the metrics, 6% of those whose cases have closed after diagnosis have died. The word "diagnosis" is crucial here. There may well have been infected people who ran through the course of the infection without much trouble and never reported it to a healthcare professional. This is especially true in the United States, where our malignant capitalism gives people massive medical bills. We do not have the safety nets to stay home when we are. The example I keep seeing is that the barista who makes you coffee does not have the resources to self-quarantine for two weeks -- they do not even have the resources to get tested -- and so they will come to work with a raging infection and pass it on to you. Pandemics thrive by abusing the most vulnerable of our population. It is a systemic issue that is unlikely to change quickly enough to arrest further chaos, if it ever would. We can't all work from home. Most American bosses are of the opinion that anyone whose ass wasn't in a seat from 9-5, even if they weren't doing anything productive in those hours, should be fired and replaced. The American work culture is going to end up killing us in new, fun ways.

Italy, Iran, and China are all but locking their countries until this situation resolves. No one has a clear idea when or how this will occur.

Trump said that the mild heat of April will be enough to obliterate it, though it is ravaging warmer climes. He is not the person I would want in control of a nation during a pandemic, lacking as he does honesty, patience, and foresight. In their place, he has arrogance and wounded pride. His reaction to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico proves this. He has been in close quarters to several people now in self-quarantine. He refuses to be tested himself. Though an infamous germaphobe who believes handshaking is barbaric, he assures the public that this pandemic is nothing to worry about and will be gone in a week or so. He, an elderly man in poor health, is the demographic to which the coronavirus is most lethal. If he gets infected -- and I hope he does not, both because I do not want people infected and for the politic disaster of it -- he is far likelier to succumb. I don't want to envision that narrative spun by his followers who think that the coronavirus doesn't exist.

As of this writing, one thousand Americans are infected. Over four thousand have died worldwide. Trump and his hangers-on brush this off as small potatoes compared to the yearly flu, but the lethality and communicability of COVID-19 is exponentially larger.

Given a predicted 40-70% infection rate worldwide, the chances that I will get it is better than most. My students are largely constrained to my facility, but the staff is not. For security reasons, the windows do not open. Hygiene is lax, even facing a pandemic. Our cleaning product are ineffectual by design, as we don't want to hand the boys anything that would give them worse than a tummy ache if they drank a bottle. All the products do is dilute and shove around grime and germs. My students do not pride themselves on handwashing and showering. (Some brag about how long they have gone without being clean, since filth is a valid defense to persistent sexual abuse.) We can encourage them to clean themselves, we can withhold points they need to get privileges, but we cannot force them. Contributing to this, some of my coworkers have side hustles working in nightclubs and bars. They are avid in rubbing shoulders (and more) with infection vectors. If one infected person show up, the entire facility would be exposed within a day. We do not have the protocols in place that would prevent this. Administration reprimands us with increasing severity for taking unplanned absences for sickness.

Hand sanitizer is contraband here. There is a foam we can apply but, as it does not boast anything in it that would kill germs, I am skeptical of its efficacy.

Bleach is beyond question allowed nowhere near my facility. Once a boys red sweatshirt ends up in the same load as his white t-shirt, pink comes back into fashion forever.

(After over fourteen emails from the state, the facility has permitted a viricidal spray. One bottle. That we must sign out. That is kept in a locked room. To which teachers do not have a key. We were also told that it is our responsibility to personally disinfect the room daily.)

The Office of Children and Family Services considers teachers essential personnel, which they make abundantly clear whenever there is a blizzard. We are on the same strata as nurses or the guards, though children can survive no essays better than no medicine. Already, the state is preparing to close other places of business to combat transmission. They are explicit that we are exempted from this. (The secretaries can go, but woe betide the teacher under quarantine.) Unless we are infected -- possibly even if we are -- we are forbidden from obeying the state of emergency.

Amber deals mostly with animals, but she still encounters to her patients' owners. Her coworkers and she by necessity live by their personal protective equipment and handwashing. If either of us becomes infected, my money is on my becoming our patient zero.

Before my weekly grocery shop, I asked Amber if there was anything that she wanted me to pick up. She suggested that I buy a extra boxes of pasta in case of quarantine, but she wasn't worried. When I got to the store, there were a larger that average proportion of irritated elderly people, but no one seemed in the midst of panic. Even the pharmacist told me that they had had no run on medication or face masks. He even offered me one, if I wanted it. I thank him and declined. The only thing going quickly was hand sanitizer, which is more justifiable if it did not go into the basements of a couple of hoarders who neglect to understand the pandemic lessens only if strangers also have clean hands.

I do not know how I would protect Amber from my infection. I have half-joked about it -- "Oh, I will set up the air mattress in the studio and you can slip food under the door" -- but I do not see how this would be enough. Even knowing the smallness of the chance that the coronavirus would do us lasting damage, I cannot suffer the idea that I could bring it into my home. We have the resources that many don't. Two weeks out of work are not going to bankrupt us, in part because I have my bank set to extract more than 20% of my take home pay and transfer it to my savings so I don't register that I have it.

If I anoint my door frame in Purell, this plague may pass us over. Even so, it has so slipped into my consciousness so that I check its progress every morning. Last week, I received two robocalls. One said there was an urgent need for healthcare professionals for the pandemic response in New Rochelle. There was no reported pandemic response there when the robot left the message. The other solicited state employees to work twelve-hour shifts at the pandemic response. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo deployed the National Guard to contain New Rochelle, the epicenter of this tendril of the pandemic, started by a lawyer and his family and reaching at least fifty people in a few days. None have died yet, but I wait with apprehension people taking revenge against a Typhoid Mary.

During the height of the Swine Flu, there was a report of a health officer shooting a man for refusing to wear a mask. We are not any more civilized than that now, perhaps less so factoring in how hyped people become in the presence of a cellphone camera.

There are two cases reported across the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge from me and in the county below. (Reliable rumor says there are more cases in the hospital not being reported.) There are cases above me, below me (swelling especially from there). Schools in Connecticut to the east are closing to slow the infections. The coronavirus will hit my county soon, within the week. We are surrounded.

Soon in Xenology: Magical thinking and witchcraft.

last watched: Castlevania
reading: Sex and Rockets