Social Distancing
Damn, the lingo dictionary is expanding almost as exponentially fast as the Coronavirus is expanding. In one segment on MSNBC alone I heard them use the terms Social Distancing, Hand Hygiene and Respiratory Etiquette. Hand washing is well understood, though I recently saw a Facebook video explaining how to wash your hands properly and diligently and find that I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. That might explain a lot. As for coughing, I think its fair to say that we have all learned that covering our mouth as Mom taught us way back when was also all wrong. Now we know we are supposed to sneeze and cough into our elbow crook. When you see someone do that you figure that it’s because the added sleeve material and flesh give more of a protective shield. But the epidemiological reality is that spreading germs into our hands, assuming we are not immediately washing our hands properly, is deemed to lead to greater risk of spreading disease since so much of that occurs through touch.
My son-in-law has posted two things recently on Facebook which show me where his mind is focused. The first was a preproduction of Marlow’s Hierarchy of Needs that showed the normal pyramid we’ve all seen a thousand time. It has self-actualization at the pinnacle and it has physiological needs at the bottom base. Someone had redrawn the pyramid with a new, added base that says “Toilet Paper”. I thought that was pretty funny, but then I saw his post from today. It was a photo of a posted sign at Costco, which had apparently run out of toilet paper. It said, “We are out of toilet paper, more arriving 3/01/25020” and the poster said, “Now look what y’all have done! Costco is out of toilet paper for the next 23,000 years.” There is humor in tragedy.
We are learning all of this in real time and paying attention for a change. Some people are paying attention because they are worried about Grandma with emphysema, but I’m guessing that more are paying attention because the Dow was down another 10% today, or maybe because the NBA, NHL, and March Madness got shut down and MLB got postponed. We know that SXSW was cancelled and that Coachella was postponed. And today, while the market was tanking, and after the Governor of California shut down all public gatherings and attractions except Disneyland, Disney stepped in and shut itself down voluntarily. Smart move. Smart science-consciousness. Even smarter business risk management on the grounds that one COVID-19 case linked to an exempted Disneyland would ruin sixty-five years of brand-building for excellence. Disney stands for responsible family fun and that is just one bad profit-oriented decision from oblivion, so good call Bob Chapek as the Disney CEO for all of two weeks now.
On the subject of good and bad leadership, you may or may not know where I am going next. I have now gotten this piece from two sources today – Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now by Tomas Pueyo. What his excellent and thorough piece from Medium, a very high-brow writers website, explains is the mathematical realities of our little pandemic and why even waiting to act by one day has severe consequences to both individual’s lives and also to the particular population looking for leadership through this unprecedented (at least for the last century) situation. And of course for all you bottom line fiscal folks, it also highlights how much extra it costs society in dollars and cents to delay response even a little. South Korea as well as Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong are used as examples of what to do in the event of an epidemiological crisis like COVID-19. Some will say, as this article suggests, that they have had the benefit of having been through this drill with SARS. But others are saying that when you look at a place like Taiwan, its public healthcare system is so far and away superior to many other western countries that it stands as an example of true public leadership in being ready for our new highly populated world, prone to vulnerability to such emergencies. This is the sort of new-age leadership that we need, not arguing about whether the insurance industry’s co-pay exemption policy covers just Coronavirus testing or also Coronavirus treatment. Do you believe that shit in the middle of a global pandemic crisis? Remember when the U.S. was a leader in infectious disease control? Not so much any more.
And naturally, that brings me to the germ-carrier-in-chief. You knew I was going there sooner or later (I wonder if not writing this yesterday has cost lives?). Mr. Trump’s speech last night did a marvelous job of highlighting to all of us thinking Americans what we knew, but hoped wouldn’t come to pass, that an external crisis would be impossible for him to handle with his normal brain-dead and idiotic approach. What must go on in his mind and with those morons around him in the Oval Office that they think the world will accept his travel ban on selective European citizens as an intelligent and thoughtful answer to the pandemic. To begin with, does the word Nationalism come to mind? Exactly how many European lives are worth one American life? And the term “too little too late” rings in my ears. This brings a whole new meaning to the concept of closing the barn door after the cow got out. Hello, COVID-19 is here already or have you just been watching Fox News again, Donald? Amazing. The people of Europe immediately figured out that if they want to travel freely to the U.S. during a medical emergency they will have to sell Trump some golf resorts like the U.K. and Ireland have done. Get with the program you Continental dopes!
Did you notice that the count is mounting of the number of potentially or certainly exposed people who have met with and shaken hands with President Trump? He met at Mar-a-Lago with the Brazilian nationalist government team that’s busy destroying the Amazon Basin and it turns out one of them (pictured shaking hands with both Trump and Pence) tested positive for the virus. Where is his germaphobia when we need it? Next thing you know a new Steele Dossier will come out with more photos of women from Hubei Province peeing on him over a rubber sheet. And why won’t he or Pence agree to a Coronavirus test? I guess if you are a stable genius you know when you have been infected because why else would you have had an uncle who went to MIT?
I think I may have figured out the lingo. Social distancing is about distancing yourself from everyone who is either not fond of you or your policies and is unlikely to vote for you or send you money from your investments. By that standard, Trump will not have to self-quarantine since at this pace he is socially distancing himself from more and more people every day. The list of conservatives and Republicans getting fed-up is growing, and they aren’t even the ones that got exposed at CPAC.