The Unknown and the Cloistering

7 March 2020

Took a picture of the moon last night.  Bright it was with circles surrounding and some clouds moving by. Extended naked fingers of trees reached up toward this milky white prize. The image captured what a late winter night should be. At eleven in the evening on a Midwestern March night, the natural world was following long established cycles.

When I had made my way to bed about twenty minutes later, I skimmed across the stories, purportedly news, on my personal information device.  Bernie bros versus Bernie brothers popped up first. So what?  Then came the sad tale, for numerous reasons, of missing children and a mother who seemed not to care they were gone.  So troubling. Finally, I dove into the aggregation of stories on the coronavirus. So conflicting, confusing and concerning.

The Center for Disease Control offered this up yesterday:

What to do if you are at higher risk:

·      Stay at home as much as possible.

·      Make sure you have access to several weeks of medications and supplies in case you need to stay home for prolonged periods of time.

·      When you go out in public, keep away from others who are sick, limit close contact and wash your hands often.

·      Avoid crowds.

Higher risk means older than sixty and with any of the diseases that people over 60 in America will almost certainly have, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes or a weakened immune system. So, Boomers pursuant to the CDC’s guidance we are to disassociate from each other, cancel our travel plans, and make sure we have alcohol, bleach, and plenty of toilet paper.  We also need to stock up on our maintenance medications and Tylenol.

This is not the Black Death nor is it a walk in the park either. So, how do we really respond? I didn’t just retire to become a prisoner in my own home. However, I also don’t want to be that guy that they say, “He would have been okay if he had just washed his hands and not chewed contemplatively on his finger while thinking.” 

How do we really avoid crowds? Any person who shops knows that whatever hour of the day you shop, there will always be two less open registers open than are needed. This lack of store staff will cause you to queue up with that wheezing, coughing stream of wretches in front and behind you. Most prescription plans, if you are on maintenance drugs, do not allow you to stock up. Therefore, you are going to have to go to pharmacies where sick people congregate. 

What I am really trying to say is that the suggestions for limiting the spread of the coronavirus are totally at odds as how we live, are forced to live, by the realities of modern American life. Yes, grocery stores have delivery services but they are expensive and spotty in performance.  Yes, you can buy drugs by mail order but setting it up is a pain in the ass. Thus, we must shop and thus we will be exposed to people.

Building an informal survival stockpile of canned soups and frozen veggies goes only so far.  Yes, we can Facebook for a form of interpersonal contact, but we do have to use the mechanisms of modern life like ATMs. These will have been touched by other people. And then there are handrails on public buildings, what is the greater risk a fall or the virus? I am concerned and I am confused but my guess is so is everyone else.  But I don’t see the cloistered life for people 60+ really being successfully implemented going forward.

I guess I will stock up on lots of ramen noodles and take loads of pictures of the snow drops as they poke their heads up in my back yard. Stay healthy my friends. Here is the CDC link,

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/high-risk-complications.html?fbclid=IwAR1VPqiFRF9L6O3tq8BIc3RVV18gPovmdhBRaubufBE38wltgJjRPJRfaqI