John Wise

It was a bit longer than two weeks ago that I wrote about N95 respirators being nearly sold out along with some foodstuffs, and then a few days after that, I noted that hand sanitizer was mostly gone from the shelves. On that day, America had its first COVID-19-related death, and now, just 12 days later, we are at 31 deaths.

The speed at which we people respond or choose not to respond appears to play a large role in how quickly systems that support and maintain pandemics are able to deal with the rapid onset of overwhelming logistics. Northern Italy is warning people within their country and trying to message others that the seriousness of the situation cannot be understated and that with just 10,000 reported cases, their healthcare system is at the breaking point.

Angela Merkel today said that up to 70% of the German public could be infected if steps are not taken to limit exposure to the virus. If Italy is reeling from their cases now, what kind of environment would they struggle through if, even stretched out over the next two years, they were to face something like 42 million sick Italians and just 1% of those people required hospitalization? The system would be in total collapse. With only about 1,000 people hospitalized of the 10,000 infected in the Lombardy region, the system is out of beds and is trying to transfer patients to other areas. How would any health care system deal with 420,000 COVID-19 patients needing hospital treatment, even over a two-year period, when in 6 weeks Italy went from reporting its first case to a countrywide quarantine?

Since sitting down to write this entry, I’ve cringed at the three sneezes people have let off near me. Every time someone coughs, my head whip pans to see if the person covered their mouth. I can’t look at tables, silverware, glasses, gas pump handles, number pads on credit card processing equipment, or shopping carts without seeing these surfaces as germ-infected opportunities to acquire COVID-19. I want to see past this and not be affected by my sense of evolving panic, but the lack of initiative in America to deal with this head-on has not instilled confidence in my quickly devolving behaviors.

For days now, I’ve considered backing away from social contacts as I’m becoming neurotic watching those around me. I’ve taken to traveling with hand sanitizer, and I have wet wipes in the car so I can disinfect surfaces, but this is not always convenient or remembered, so I contribute to my ever-growing fear. I know I need to start this process of social distancing, but damn, it’s hard to self-enforce that when most people around you are going on with all things appearing to be normal.

I’m telling myself that with this post, I have to back away from my visits to coffee shops, restaurants, and other public gathering places until we know more details about how people and society are dealing with this force of doom. Am I being hysterical? I feel like it, but then it feels like an issue of semantics that I cannot explain the difference between hysterics and being proactive. As I look around me and feel that I should tell those people I’ve become familiar with at my regular coffee shop hangout, I’m feeling ambivalent about how others will perceive me in my paranoia.

#StayTheFuckHome

I’m positing that personal economic vulnerability is at the heart of America’s desire for an apocalypse. We joke about a zombie apocalypse, and during the reign of Trump, people bandy about ideas of civil war as an inevitable outcome if their president is removed from office, but at the heart of American life for the past twenty-some years is a generalized wish that the entire system should somehow collapse. Why?

Housing costs, credit ratings, job insecurity, and lack of a safety net if someone gets sick, are contributing to our hopes and dreams that something should break with such ferocity that the playing field is reset. Many people voice how they have the mettle to survive true hardship and if it were to come to a gunfight, they are ready to go all out. This is not rational. On the battlefield of the job market, if you are not in demand and earning over $100,000 a year, your entire sense of stability is hinged on variables that if any of the dominos topple, the person might see the crumbling of not only their dignity but the roof over their head, the food they hope to eat, their relationships, and their health. With a blotch on their credit rating, they may not be able to rebuild the house of cards. With this kind of instability and lacking the intellectual skills to compete, it’s better to hope for a street brawl where a person can lay claim to what they need through sheer force. Isn’t this the mentality we already see among gang members?

Capitalism and the gross imbalance of how wealth is distributed in America have created a toxic economy and mindset where millions of people seek redemption and greater participation through the demise of civility. They perceive that a breakdown in the social order will allow them to rise above as they prove to others their value through strength and fortitude. The current environment where people are being victimized by the ever-increasing cost of housing, which is one of the three basic necessities of life, plays a large part in the economic chessboard where your home is a move away from checkmate.

We have allowed capitalism to devolve to a point where many people feel insecure trying to participate in an economic model based on debt and the resultant relative servitude. There is no security when someone feels trapped and in potential danger. Fear then becomes exploitable, allowing those holding the purse strings to exercise the tools that force people to bow their heads and hope nobody hears them complain. Surround the most economically vulnerable with the threat of imminent violence coming from crime, the migrant horde, or the unseen viral plague, and you have the recipe to keep the bottom 50% of a population captured on a hamster wheel where stepping off would be economic and cultural suicide.

We are no longer a community or cohesive nation; we are the consumer body prodded along to deplete inventories with perfectly timed marketing. We are like a shopping bacteria under threat of a Black Friday antibiotic that will extinguish any hope of learning who we might have otherwise been.

How are the signs of this expressed? First, I should admit that my filter is a biased interpretation of randomly ambiguous signals. I feel that it is most often witnessed in toxic masculinity, where guns, cars, tattoos, piercings, attitudes, and a potential for violence all segue into a person with something to prove in appearance, and they might argue substance, but the intellectual underpinnings are often missing. This is not a rule or a universal and I certainly know of many exceptions to this ugly and gross generalization. The differentiation is easiest for me to demonstrate by the example of who stands behind strength as a bulwark of an all-encompassing totality and those who integrate it as an effective part of their character and a small aspect of a persona.

Mastering hunting and killing skills in order to brag about them. Lifting trucks and employing massive tires that never see dirt but elevate the driver above others. Wearing a pistol on one’s hip in public to show dominance. Projecting allegiance to a group via specialized clothing that acts as de facto uniforms, such as those used by motorcycle gangs, veterans, political ideologues, and many sports fans, are all symbols that transform these people into the conformist lifestyle/brand dolts afraid to be themselves. To a large extent, I do not find these behaviors among women, but among the overly masculine and lesser-educated, I am willing to make the preposterous supposition that these behaviors are cover for the person’s own awareness of their intellectual shortcomings.

Maybe that 1-4% of Neanderthal DNA we inherited is fighting to come out and express itself? Should the troglodytes win, the irony will be that everything they covet will disappear in the flash it will take to return humanity to the pre-stone age era of living in caves or simple huts where they’ll hone their hunter-gatherer skills and celebrate having killed off thinking.