For my family’s experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic (updated regularly), read my related entry on My Life, which is our story and experiences. This blog entry is about my opinions and thoughts on the topic.

To be clear, when I use “pandumbic” in the title, I am not making light of the pandemic itself, which is neither smart nor dumb but very insidious. Rather, I’m referring to much of the human activity around the coronavirus, which has been... not very smart. The initial federal government attitude was dismissive, dishonest, and (in a few cases) disgusting. Later, of course, the administration improved (I’m joking; they did not improve). Media coverage was often irresponsible and harmful. The public’s reaction has varied but in many cases could be characterized as ignorant, selfish, and non-helpful.

Absence Of Coherent Government

The most disappointing part of this whole thing, to me, has been the complete and utter absence of competent and coherent leadership from the federal government (echoed strongly by the late and lackadaisical leadership in many red states — like Texas). It began years before this new virus started spreading, of course. The GOP administration spent years slashing budgets for national health programs (including much of the CDC’s staff in China just before the outbreak, gutting important pandemic-related government systems, and generally ignoring science of all kinds. When news of Covid-19 first struck, Trump downplayed the risks, displayed his ignorance and dishonesty, accused Democrats of only caring about the pandemic in order to harm his re-election chances, worried more about the stock market than sick people, called the pandemic a “hoax”, and appointed exactly the wrong person to head up a task force on Covid-19. It didn’t stop there, but it’s not my job to list all the Republican failings on this topic.

Am I claiming that the response would have been better with a Democrat in charge? Almost certainly, yes, it would have been. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a learned and coherent person who would have relied on experts to guide her governance during such a time. Would it have been a perfect response? Probably not. My guess is that she too would have been overly worried about the stock market and the bottom line of giant corporations instead of helping ordinary people. I assume she too would have uttered false statements at some point (remember: “landing under sniper fire”?) But I doubt she would have named an anti-science theocrat to head the task force. I doubt she would have consistently and repeatedly called it the “Chinese Virus”, knowing that it would lead to discrimination against Asian Americans. At the very least, we could have expected the majority of her statements to be measured, reassuring, truthful, and reflective of a functioning government. She wouldn’t have answered “You’re a terrible reporter” when a national journalist gave her a chance to reassure the citizenry.

To the uneducated reactionaries who might respond: “Why make everything about politics?”, the obvious response is: everything is about politics. Politics leads to real-life consequences. Electing the worst-possible leaders leads to the worst-possible outcomes. Vote better.

In the early months, we saw many examples of federal and state government incompetence (skewing noticeably into GOP territory). One example, federally, is how long it took the military to get on board with safety measures. It was April 5 before the Department Of Defense recommended that servicemembers and anyone else on DoD property wear protective face masks.

 

 

Temporary Changes That Should Be Permanent

One of my immediate thoughts as soon as I heard of precautionary measures being taken to stem the pandemic was: “A lot of this, we should be doing anyway.”

Americans have this weird thing where we often only make necessary changes and do the right thing when it’s a huge emergency and lives are on the line. And then we undo them as soon as the air starts to clear. For example, impressive Texas corporation HEB has increased employee wages by two dollars per hour temporarily “to recognize their hard work and thank them for their commitment”, but only through April 12. Could they have paid more before the pandemic? Yes. Can HEB afford to pay them more after April 12? Of course. But they won’t. Neither will any other large corporation that’s introduced some form of temporary relief to its workers. Like the paid sick leave that some companies are offering so their employees can stay home — it is morally imperative to ALWAYS offer this.

Our local schools, when first announcing extra closure after Spring Break, said they would sanitize the schools with “hospital grade” chemicals to ensure that no diseases could remain when students eventually returned. We should be doing this regularly. Schools are hotbeds of disease transmission among children (and therefore to families) but normally they just sweep and mop and empty the trash bins.

The schools have also negotiated with for-profit educational software companies that they utilize for students at school so that students can now use them at home. (Some educational websites and apps were always available for home use; many were not.) But actively enrolled students should always have access to these programs at home — because all of us benefit from an educated society and students (especially young ones) learn better if they can go at their own pace. Instead, when this is over, access to all these programs and apps will be restricted once again.

News outlets suddenly began running cutesy stories in late February and early March about avoiding handshakes: “health experts warn that shaking hands is a prime way to spread the coronavirus.” Um. Health experts could tell you that it’s a prime way to spread a whole freaking bunch of things. Since I was young, I’ve thought handshakes were gross and archaic. I don’t have to touch you to say “hello” or “I recognize that you are in my presence”. I can say those with words, or if the situation isn’t right for words, I can say them in sign language, with a head nod, with a salute or wave. If you are the type of person who absolutely requires physical contact to be assured that I’m not your enemy, then we can fist-bump. Or try the hilariously frathouse asshole-looking elbow bump that people are doing now.

(Note: I’ve always hated handshakes for non-disease-related reasons, like clammy palms, jerks who hold on too long, overly testosteroned people who find it funny when your hand bones start popping, and the weird unspoken ways we do it differently if people are older, younger, or differently gendered. But avoiding strange diseases is as good a reason as any to stop this nonsense.)

But we won’t stop, will we? When this all blows over, I’m still going to see people fondling each other’s palms for no reason.

And the driving. A bunch of us have stopped driving so much. In my own life it was the cancellation of dance classes and soccer lessons for my kids, not to mention the library closures, that caused us to suddenly drive less. For other people it was work stoppages, activity cessation, bar closures, and so on. Regardless, we’re driving less. Pollution has already begun to measurably decline. Canals in Venice are noticeably cleaner since humans quit disrupting them. Quantities of pollutant nitrogen dioxide have already lessened by 25% over China and “fine particulate matter” decreased 40% over San Francisco after just a few days (28% in New York City and 32% over Seattle). For the next few weeks as we step outside occasionally to see if the world’s ending, we’ll be breathing cleaner air — which should ALWAYS be the case. Clean air isn’t the only result: the cratering demand for petroleum caused a steep drop in oil prices — which punished only people cruel enough to invest in the fossil fuel industry. We have the technology already to avoid incessant driving of gas-powered automobiles, but we won’t implement it. Cities like mine will likely never have widespread reliable public transportation. It’ll be a generation or more before we give up our gas-burners. It might be even longer before we turn off the coal-fired power plants.

Protections for laid-off workers, relief for the sick who are also poor, restrictions on evictions or late fees that disproportionately affect the poor, paid sick days and extended vacation time for low-wage workers, bargaining power for millions who currently don’t have it, extensions for mortgage payments and student loans, early release of certain prisoners (non-violent, elderly, etc.) — the list goes on. Many of these things we’ll either do via government decree or piecemeal from companies that recognize the PR value — but they’ll all be temporary. Five years from now, I expect us to be in the exact same situation, economically, that we were in before the pandumbic.

Not to mention all the measures taken to control the spread of disease. Both friends and enemies have pointed out that the number of deaths from Covid-19 is still far lower than our annual death tolls from flu, tuberculosis, and other communicable diseases. But to me this only points out the absurdity of us doing almost nothing the rest of the time. The whole thing about washing our hands regularly, avoiding licking doorknobs, keeping our fingers out of our eye holes, and so on — this is always good advice. The idea of free (taxpayer supported) testing for communicable diseases? Always a good idea. But we’ll quit as soon as this current pandemic fades, and we’ll still have thousands of flu deaths every year.

Social Distancing Is My Ideal Life

I’ve seen a slew of articles along the lines of “Social Distancing Got You Down? Here’s How To Get By” (example, example 2), and none about “Whew! I Thought Society Would Never Leave Me Alone”. I assume this ratio is because people who write for those outlets tend to be overly-socialized friend junkies rather than people like me who prefer solitude. (I’m the guy who walked into the woods alone and stayed several days just prior to college because I needed some space.)

I recognize that some (most?) of you need regular social contact outside your immediate loved ones. Your need is valid; I don’t argue that you should be like me. I do wish more of pop culture would accept that it’s also okay to have limited social interaction — even without a pandemic to use as an excuse. Aside from acquaintances I’ve picked up through my wife’s employment, I don’t have any in-person friendships and I typically enjoy that fact. My daughter worries that I’m lonely when she’s at school and I’m home alone; almost weekly I have to reassure her that when I’m alone I’m almost never lonely.

All the things recommended in “social distancing” lists are things I do anyway — or would prefer to do anyway if it was socially acceptable under normal circumstances. “Reduce your rate of contact with other people”? I’m on board. “Avoid public spaces and unnecessary public gatherings, especially events with large numbers of people or crowds”? That’s me, baby. “Working from home”? Every day, my man. “Maintain a distance of at least 1 metre (sic) between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing”? No need to ask me twice, and I don’t even care whether you’re coughing or sneezing. “Avoid physical contact with others in social situations, including handshakes, hugs, and kisses”? That sounds like my ideal day. (Hugs and kisses are acceptable under highly specific circumstances.)

“Humanity is a social species”, yes. The only reason we survived (as a species) ice ages, droughts, floods, genetic bottlenecks, and other calamities in the distant past is because we cooperate, rely on one another, help each other, etc. But almost none of this requires constantly touching each each other, sneezing on each other, or regularly sharing confined spaces with each other. Most of those conventions are modern — as of the urban, industrial age. We can be a social species without you putting your unprotected fingers inside my coffee cup, thank you very much.

Hoarding Is Evil

Fortunately, my family was not among those inconvenienced by the selfish hoarding that became quickly widespread. For us, it was more of a curiosity, a sideshow — something to be observed and remarked upon. That’s because (1) we are in a comfortable financial position that means we are never dangerously low on anything and (2) we have developed a habit of always keeping backups of nonperishable consumable goods. But many people have neither the financial capability to buy whatever they need at any given time nor the space/time/planning capability to keep a rotating backup supply of toilet paper, facial tissue, hand soap, etc. And those people — already the most vulnerable among us — were directly harmed by the haughty suburbanites who flocked to giant retail stores within minutes when they first heard about Covid-19 cases in their areas.

Of course, some of what we called “hoarding” wasn’t actually that. It was simply many people buying at one time what they normally buy in turns. (No store in your area carries enough stock to supply everyone in the area with everything every day; they always assume purchases are spread out over time, spiking on weekends and certain holidays.) When larger-than-usual numbers of us on the same day bought only what we needed, that overtaxed the normal supply chain, resulting in expected outages. Still, I’m convinced some people bought more than they needed, and also that at least some people responded to the fear that others were hoarding. “If everyone else buys all the toilet paper, then we won’t have any! So let us go buy some.” Regardless of the innocence of each person’s motives, what happened was: people who least needed all the supplies got to them first and bought too much, so people who most needed them have to do without — or work harder to get what they need.

I hope no one I know bought a garage full of toilet paper or filled their spare bedroom with thousands of plastic water bottles or loaded a deep freeze with all the ground meat that a dozen less-well-off families are now doing without. If anyone I know did this, I hope you don’t tell me about it. It would harm our relationship, perhaps irrevocably.

To be clear, selfish hoarding of supermarket items by middle and lower class people isn’t nearly as bad or evil as the selfish hoarding of hundreds of billions of dollars by the world’s dominant aristocracy. That shit is on an entirely different level of evil, and can be included in the section above on “things we should have been doing anyway.” We should always be pushing back on the tendency of wealth-hoarders to get away with hoarding the world’s wealth while millions of others do without.

As Always, The News Media Could Do Better

Some news outlets have been outstanding during this time. Even one of our local TV news stations (which we can, weirdly, only access through an app on our Roku device) did fairly well from the beginning with getting out accurate information, quickly adopting social distancing on air (anchors sitting in different rooms instead of at the same news desk), and recommending sources of assistance. Many others worked to correct misinformation.

But some are floundering as they always do, blindly quoting anyone who will speak with them without regard for veracity. The biggest and most harmful example of this is the overwhelming number of TV channels live-streaming lies and incompetence from the White House. (At least one journalist has called for this to stop, though her own outlet live-streams the same “briefings”.) Trump’s pressers look a lot like campaign rallies, full of misinformation, needless (and untrue) bragging, bashing the media, and confusing the country. Much like my criticism of CNN in 2016, when they live-broadcast Trump rallies without comment or correction, any news outlet that’s been showing these idiotic speeches live should cease immediately. Record them, but don’t broadcast any part of it until fact-checkers have had a chance to go over it. When people are actually dying, some of them due to the administration’s incompetence, journalists have a responsibility to stop the bleeding at any point they can.

Many online local news sources have a bad habit of leaving up older stories without correction or updates or links to newer, better information. So when a person uses a search engine to find local closure information, we often find bad/incorrect stories still online without any indication that the old news has been superseded. (Our local school districts and city governments have this same issue. For example, our city had a press release online saying the recycling center would remain open for drop-off; there was no indication on that page that a later press release had announced the recycling center was closed indefinitely.) If even I — as an individual who runs a website for personal reasons and without any income from it — can remember to go back through older entries and edit them to link to updates or note that my opinion has since changed about something, then surely organizations that profit from the news can do the same thing.

Exposing Divisions In What We Perceive As Monoliths

Groups often perceived as homogeneous monoliths are in reality divided in many ways — this is always true, but some of the divisions became somewhat more apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, among U.S. conservatives there have always been broad spectrums of opinions on many topics, no matter how often we progressives try to paint them with a broad brush (I recognize that I’ve sometimes been guilty of wielding that brush). Recent news in Texas has provided a window into the wide chasms that exist between some conservatives and others. For example, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (ne้ Goeb) confirmed in April that he thinks it’s more important for wealthy people to get wealthier than to protect as many of us as possible from death. At the same time, Gov. Greg Abbott (who is to be derided for many things, but not for this) advised a cautious, data-driven approach to re-opening Texas, starting a bit at a time with sensible restrictions in place and always an eye on the pandemic numbers.

Another example is the sharp disagreement between liberal pundits on whether or not the president’s daily “briefings” (campaign rallies) should be aired live on television. Some take my position that they absolutely should not be aired, for any reason, live. Others, like those who own television networks, take the positions that: RATINGS! Still others believe that allowing the GOP president to air free live campaign rallies every day will show him for the buffoon he is and therefore tank his approval ratings among conservatives. (The latter group has been proven decisively incorrect — the approval ratings have remained relatively static.) My point here isn’t which group is correct, but that these differences of opinion were always there but were not always so apparent to us.

We (collectively) prefer groups to be monoliths, homogeneous. When we use a word that identifies a group, it’s easier if everyone who hears that word understands all the generalizations and connotations that go along with it. Even if it’s not true. Whether that group ID is “gamers”, “sports fans”, “white guy”, or “progressive”, maybe more of us (including me) can do better at remembering there isn’t just one type of person in that group.

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

(This section added 2020.10.30.)

As summer wore on and the pandemic showed no signs of abating, a dark and pessimistic thought crept over me. I couldn’t think of the words for it until October, and those words were: “Heads they win, tails we lose” — a phrase derived from a silly trick that obnoxious people used to play with coins when I was a child. The most obvious manifestation of this priniciple was when a bunch of us took every precaution recommended by infection disease experts — and when a lot of us didn’t.

Perhaps obviously, if everyone had done it, all at the same time, at the very beginning, just for a couple of weeks, we could have ended the pandemic before it really got going. I thought that’s what we were doing back in late March, when schools closed across the country, sports took a break, stores and restaurants closed, etc. I knew, of course, that “everyone” would have necessary exceptions (grocery stores, medical professionals, etc.), but I didn’t foresee how many of us would insist on being unnecessary exceptions — like when Gov. Greg Abbott (TX) deemed liquor stores and gun stores “essential” businesses from the beginning, or when startling percentages of people continued to have multi-family gatherings.

So some of us continued to isolate, keep our kids away from playmates, avoid cinemas and restaurants, stopped attending church in person, etc. We drastically limited and rearranged our lives in the hopes that... What? In the hopes that the rest of them would eventually come around? Instead, what happened is that the spread of the virus slowed — because so many of us were actually doing the right things — and so the people who weren’t doing the right things felt justified — because even though they changed nothing, limited nothing about their lives, they didn’t get sick and they saw the national infection rates dropping most of the summer.

“Ha!” they could say. “It was all overblown, and you locked yourselves away for nothing”, refusing to see that it was those of us who did take precautions that protected those who didn’t.

Months passed. The longer it went on, the harder it was for those of us doing the distancing, and the easier it became for those who flouted precautionary measures. And now, with national, state, and local infection rates on the rise again — in many places at their highest point of the pandemic — people are tired of continuous Covid news and are ready to move on, even those who never took it seriously.

My own household was faced with the tough choice of continuing to keep our children home from school or giving up and sending them back. The only positive of keeping them home was avoiding the (still low) chance of coronavirus infection, while negatives began to mount: mental and emotional strain, lack of socialization for still-developing young children, inferior learning options, etc. So it felt like giving up, like losing a battle, to send them back, yet keeping them home ALSO felt like losing a battle.

Who did we “lose” to? Anyone who didn’t care. Everyone who only wore a mask when it was absolutely required, everyone who went back to eating inside restaurants as soon as it was allowed, everyone who played the odds the whole time and got lucky (which is most of them). All they had to do was nothing (or very little).

Yes, the pandemic is still ongoing, and now infection rates are far higher than they were in March (but still low enough that most people you know aren’t sick from Covid-19), and it might someday get bad enough to actually affect those folks, but that’s a hypothetical future event, and right now it feels like “we” lost, and that we would have lost no matter which course we took.

Conclusion

I’ve had other thoughts on this, and forgotten them, before I decided to write this entry. I might add them later. But mainly I wanted to make this about society in general rather than Covid-19 specifically. It’s just that the pandemic opened a window on several subjects at once and provided a unique opportunity to group them here. There are other threads that tie these topics together: the really poor ways we have set things up for the long term, the truly bizarre ways we respond to perceived emergencies, and the uniquely fractured way that the U.S. in particular is set up.