Week 4
Day 22. Monday April 6 2020.
Greed will cure the virus before compassion does
But of course the biggest unanswered question for the entire human race is whether or not anyone will need additional treatment once they get the virus, "recover", and then what? will it come back to attack you again? who knows?
There was a postcard back in the AIDS epidemic "Greed will cure AIDS before compassion does". Of course this is true, though few will care to admit it. There is currently a race on in the world to come up with a vaccine to the coronavirus, because whoever does will be rich beyond their wildest dreams. I would imagine 10s of thousands of people are all working on it, in thousands of different labs around the world.
Andrew Sullivan wrote an interesting piece commending the world for stopping itself economically so that we can save our old people, but that there will come a point where the suicide rate will start to climb as people run out of money and cannot feed themselves, and that there is a point where more people are killing themselves than the number of people you are trying to save, and somehow we need to know where and when that point is. Interesting.
Another interesting projection is that current estimations are that the virus will "peak" in this country somewhere around the middle of April, but that the virus dissipation will not be actual until sometime early August, so the big question is what do the states do between mid April and early August? Oregon - where I live - is under "shelter in place" directives until May 1st, as well as directives of all non essential businesses beiing shut down. Are they going to re-open May 1? What about the months of May, June and July? The virus will not really be gone. It will still be around, and active, but everyone wants to get back to work and making money again to put food on the table.
Tough choices ahead.
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Did my six mile walk this morning, then bought a biscuit and coffee from "The Rolling Pin" even though I did not need either, but we all want to support our friend's businesses. I just ate the biscuit. Really good to eat, but the kind of thing that when you eat the whole thing you immediately regret it. You sit there bloated with regret at the gluttony you just witnessed and partook in. Ugghh.
Went out to Ken and Christine's house and delivered to them a five gallon "Kikkoman" soy sauce bucket. they needed a new one, and the chinese place is closed down and they have buckets out back near the dumpster that I have asked for before and they have given them to me, so I reckon it was ok to take one out to them.
Now I am sitting here with my tea and a biscuit inside of me, waiting, and hoping, for Greed to save us all.
Day 23. Tuesday April 7 2020.
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| Ohio Street |
There was a Frustrating hour in there trying to get a pin for my new account at Banner Bank. 7 phone calls go by with marginal help, and finally went back to the bank in frustration and they finally helped me out. Feel a little silly going to that bank now as their doors are locked due to the current social distancing rules, or, as they are now called "physical distancing", the idea being that they do not want to discourage anyone from being social, as that is a requirement of human health, but rather for all of us to maintain a physical distance from anyone outside of our immediate household circle, which, in my circle, means just me and Tamale the cat.
Because the bank doors are locked, the only way to do business with them is to get on line at the "drive-thru". Last Friday that meant me sitting on my bicycle in the middle of the line of cars. This morning it meant me standing and walking forward in the middle of a line of cars. I do have a car, but I mostly never use it, and when I do, it's mostly just to go the 25 miles Coos Bay for supplies a couple of times a month, or to go down the 500 miles to Santa Clara to see my kids a few times a year when they are available.
Standing in line between cars though I did get to say hello to my friend Steve Yates who was waiting in line behind me. He has been a good friend these past couple of years, and I haven't seen him for awhile, so it was good to say hello.
Over 12,000 dead now of the virus in America, although most projections say that it will climb significantly over the next month, and estimate that the final death toll will be in the 80k-140k range. Really though, no one really knows.
Weather has finally turned, and we are starting to get some sunny days. Still on the cooler side, but a bright sun makes all of the difference.
Day 24. Wednesday April 8 2020. 12 geese
"Who are Scott and Beth?"
There is an early passage in the book "I Claudius" where as king he goes out one day and sees 7 gulls flying overhead, and this overly concerns him and so he goes to his sage, his shaman and demands to be told what 7 gulls flying overhead means.
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| found Sand Dollar |
It's been said that mystery is just science not yet understood. I wonder.
Similarly, and along the same lines, I feel like we are missing the point when it comes to our quest for ever more and more knowledge, that complete knowledge is easily within our grasp, but are too limited in understanding to know how to grasp it, as if we are looking the wrong way at it. Knowledge of all things is a river flowing around us at all times. It's just that we do not know how to see it or use it. We are still all just dumb monkeys. We see knowledge as our salvation, yet all it is in the end is just another step along the way toward Understanding, which is a truer path. Anyway, It's all that is yet another thought diversion of mine, that occasionally shows up to distract me.
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Coronavirus deaths keep climbing, as do the percentages of deaths to the total number of cases. Confusing inputs. We are told that the percentage of deaths should be in the 2 pct range, but I am keeping a spreadsheet on the daily counts and I am seeing the percentage climb from the original 2 pct in mid March to about 5-6 pct now. We are also told that the initial wave of virus cases are about to level off and "peak" in the next week (mid to late April) but I am not seeing any kind of levelling off in my numbers. My only hope is that I do not know what I am doing and so am just looking at the numbers incorrectly, or pulling from the wrong data sets.
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I found two things on my walk this morning. First, was out by Devil's Kitchen I found my first complete Sand Dollar. They are quite plentiful along the beaches in Southern California, but to date have only found broken ones up here in Bandon. This was my first complete one I have found up here.
Secondly I was walking home along a creek and found a dollar bill floating in the creek. "What are you doing there?" I asked. Then I got a stick and pulled in out. Can't spend it now, because I found it.
For awhile I was under the spell that all things happen in threes, so I spent a long while looking for my third thing, but the third thing never showed up, or - if it did - I did not see it for what it was. Not for the first or last time I am sure.
Day 25. Thursday April 9 2020.
Still low tides in the mornings this week. Walked north to the south jetty, expecting to find great things along the jetty because the waves wash up along side of it. I found another possible piece of petrified wood, and and old Karo bottle from the 1950s.
Every time I walk down to the beach I am amazed by the birds. I already have a video up on youtube - actually two of them - that are musical / photoessay-y type depictions of the varied bandon skies, but I have also been wanting to do something similar with the birds here, but need a video camera with a good zoom feature to properly capture it. Bandon is very much a bird town, with endless varieties. Much like Sydney was when we visited Australia back in 2016. It's Mostly gulls and crows here, but you get down to the ocean and you find a stunning variety of other birds as well.But before I go off and get myself a new video camera, I have an old video camera back from when the kids were growing up and I should try and first resuscitate that one. I seem to have lost the cradle for it, which would have allowed me to transfer video files to my computer easily, but now I am thinking I can get an SD card and maybe transfer files to my laptop that way. I did go out and buy a new charging cord for it about a month ago, and of course now I have suddenly lost the charging cord.
Being only human with many foibles. There is an old Robert Heinlein story about a man walking amongst his fellow humans, and by the end of the story it turns out that he is only visiting from another world, and has taken human form in order to report back to his world in order to critique the good and bad of being a human being. like visiting a museum and critiquing the art. The ups and downs of being human. The emotions and feelings. The inherent loneliness and solitude of always trying to connect to others, and never quite being successful. Living and dying alone. Living with the cruelty and insanities of war. Experiencing the overpowering sense of beauty in experiencing art or music. Or the humor in walking into a room and immediately forgeting why you wanted to walk into it. Or not being able to find the charging cord that you just had in your hand 5 minutes ago.
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My friend Avery just came over with a truck full of food that he culled from the food bank he works at. Most of the food comes from large kitchens and is donate because it is just at or just beyond it's expiry date. I take the pasta usually when he offers, but now this time I also have a gallon of salsa and a gallon peach vinagrette that I will never use, unless I can think quickly of something to do with them.
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Coronavirus numbers still rising, although they say the "peak" for the country is in just another six days. We shall see. The United States has 4 pct of the world's population, but now 16 pct of its deaths. We have an embarrassment of a president. That's the main reason. He scoffed at the virus 2 months ago, and imagined that he could stand up like a man to it and ignore it. Turns out viruses don't get scared of manly men staring them down. They will just proceed buzz saw through a human population anyway. I think Republicans are getting a hard lesson in how science works. facts are facts, and they don't care about faith or grand ideas or which side of the culture war is on God's side. Science just is, and viruses just are, and the smart people know that and pay attention to what science tells them. The idiots think that their flag waving culture is smarter than science and will reap the results. You don't wish this on any family, but I use to see this all the time in technology. You tell a VP that the decision he is making will drive the project into a wall, and he doesn't want to listen. He just wants to be in charge and look like he is making big consequential decisions. He does it to himself.
I guess we all do., to a certain extent.
Day 26. Friday April 10 2020.
It's Good Friday today, a day celebrated in the Christian Faith, the day when Jesus died I think, and then was ressurected on this coming Sunday, which is Easter? I am not a practicing Christian so not entirely sure.
A lot of churches in the south want to defy stay at home orders and hold Easter services, calling it "bowing to Satan". The south is the dumb sibling in the US.
The major predictions are that the virus is about to peak in the United States in the next day or so, meaning that cases will still arise, but not so much as before, and that RATE of new cases will begin to recede. And because we are not nearing our peak, there are two basic questions of what to do.
1. when to restart the economy. The longer we wait, the more suicides, murders and despair will increase, and it gets to a point where we are killing more people than saving.
2. what kind of country will emerge from the ashes of this pandemic. The entire US economy collapsed inside a month. How will it recover?
We are still a good year away from a vaccine. When "shelter in place" orders are lifted, we all know the virus will just resume infecting people again in subsequent waves, yet at some point soon the country needs to go back to work and people need to start making money again and feeding their families. That is the only way forward. Families have to survive, which means jobs have to come back.
Interesting apocryphal anecdote about America today in the news. When Sweden was going to initiate its lockdown, the Swedes all lined up outside the coffee shops to stock up on coffee. When American was about to initiate its lockdown, Americans lined up outside of gun shops to buy guns. The rest of the world just looks at us in astonishment, and we deserve it.
I guess we all do., to a certain extent.
Day 26. Friday April 10 2020.
A lot of churches in the south want to defy stay at home orders and hold Easter services, calling it "bowing to Satan". The south is the dumb sibling in the US.
The major predictions are that the virus is about to peak in the United States in the next day or so, meaning that cases will still arise, but not so much as before, and that RATE of new cases will begin to recede. And because we are not nearing our peak, there are two basic questions of what to do.
1. when to restart the economy. The longer we wait, the more suicides, murders and despair will increase, and it gets to a point where we are killing more people than saving.
2. what kind of country will emerge from the ashes of this pandemic. The entire US economy collapsed inside a month. How will it recover?
We are still a good year away from a vaccine. When "shelter in place" orders are lifted, we all know the virus will just resume infecting people again in subsequent waves, yet at some point soon the country needs to go back to work and people need to start making money again and feeding their families. That is the only way forward. Families have to survive, which means jobs have to come back.
Interesting apocryphal anecdote about America today in the news. When Sweden was going to initiate its lockdown, the Swedes all lined up outside the coffee shops to stock up on coffee. When American was about to initiate its lockdown, Americans lined up outside of gun shops to buy guns. The rest of the world just looks at us in astonishment, and we deserve it.
Day 27. Saturday April 11 2020.
We are supposedly near the peak of the virus but the numbers are still rising. The next week should start to see some progress. I am on the email list for the Oregon Health Authority, and although all initial shutdowns were only until May 1st, everybody is talking about June 1st as maybe opening up businesses again. Of course once businesses open up again, there is an expected second surge of the virus, but they are thinking that the hospitals should be able to contain it by then. who knows. It seems with all my talking about the virus, and relating various facts and figures, I am always ending it with "who knows" or "We shall see", because in fact no one knows anything, other than it is here, and we have lost the war, and we are in the process of negotiating our terms of surrender. No one really knows anything still. Meanwhile, food still seems to be available in the stores. Water is still coming from the tap, so from my perspective those are big wins. For today. Next week? Next month? who knows.
Day 28. Sunday April 12 2020. Easter
Even though I was born a christian (protestant methodist), I am severely lapsed, and I had to look up what Good Friday meant, what Easter meant, etc. I then found on the Calendar that there is a date called "Easter Monday"????.
So supposedly Christ was crucified and died on the Friday, was dead the whole weekend, arose from the dead on Easter, and Monday, Easter Monday is the beginning of world salvation, because, I guess he rose from the dead? I really didn't read that far into it.
Michelle and I always had different religious instincts. She was always dead against it, whereas I have always felt that churches have some value, especially when people are broken, and have lost everything in their lives. There is really no mechanism in society that will help these people, but churches, synagogues, temples, etc. will usually always try to pick these people up and do their best to patch them up again. It is true that the patching up they do is all in the guise of trying to turn those they help into believers in THEIR TRUE FAITH, but at least they try, whereas no one else does. I will never count them out, and I will always forgive them their dogmatic sins because of these noble efforts.
I think I had known Michelle for a couple of years and we were living together before I asked her one day what religion she was. I don't think it was ever that important to either one of us. I recently read to church screech the other day that said "Good people are not the ones who get into heaven. Believers do". Bullshit. Messaging like this is why they are losing people.
When it came to raising our kids, we didn't raise them religious at all, and when they were growing up, I only dragged them into churches because I like the awesome ambiance inside of them. Just huge and glorious and silent. The iconography alone is worth a sit. Often, If I am walking through a city alone, I will often just go in a church if it is open and sit for awhile and just enjoy the feel of being there.
I always thought that maybe because we never gave our kids religion, that one of them would turn super religious on us as a result. Hasn't happened yet, thank god. (thank you god!). Could live without the rabid proselytizing from anyone.
I always told my kids I don't believe in God, but I talk to him every day. I only half mean that.
So the daily coronavirus deaths are not significantly increasing on a daily basis anymore, but beginning to level off. 21k dead so far in the US, and it is estimated to be 60k by august. No small potatoes, but it might mean that our species won't die in the next few months and there might be a way through it for the human race.
Big question now is how to restart the economy, as millions are out of work, have kids, and need the money to live. It is a given that restarting the economy to ANY EXTENT, implicitly means that the virus will come back to the same degree that you restart the economy. It's just math. But you have to start it nonetheless. This has never been about stopping the Deaths from the virus, but more how to slow down the deaths so that the health care system can handle it.
How do you restart with the least amount of strain on the health care system? This is why testing has been so important, and why American embarrassed itself in front of the world by not getting it done in time. If we had proper testing like other countries, we would know who is healthy, and who isn't. Who has had the virus, and who hasn't. the fault of not having this testing lies at the feet of the President, who slept walked through the first two months of this pandemic, and kept saying it was no big deal. Then when it turned into a big deal, all he did was get in the way and disagree with the health experts. Bungling Clown does not even begin to describe the guy.
I walked my six miles this morning. I had to drive up to WalMart in Coos bay to get new sneakers the other day. My old sneakers were really worn out and it had gotten to a point where I was spending more and more time clearing pebbles that would get into them. Now that I have new sneakers, I am of course bothered by sore feet as my feet work to wear the new sneakers in properly. I hope its that, and not that I bought WalMart sneakers.
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| coos bay |
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I had a good 6 mile walk this morning down Rosa Rd.(locally pronounced "Rose-ay". don't know why), then got the lawn mowed this afternoon. Somewhere in there I made two apple crumbles. One for my friends Ken and Christine Hall, and the other for me. Drove it out to their house this afternoon. Ken as usual out weeding his garden. Christine handling the flowers. They are both master gardeners, so they help me out here and there. they dropped off a handful of packets of flower seeds yesterday, and today told me how to plant them. So maybe that is a task for tomorrow.
Had a nice talk with Jana this afternoon. It feels really good to have a nice talking relationship with each of my kids. Its a good part of what keeps me sane in these very quiet days.
Day 28. Sunday April 12 2020. Easter
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| Stephen Gammell |
So supposedly Christ was crucified and died on the Friday, was dead the whole weekend, arose from the dead on Easter, and Monday, Easter Monday is the beginning of world salvation, because, I guess he rose from the dead? I really didn't read that far into it.
Michelle and I always had different religious instincts. She was always dead against it, whereas I have always felt that churches have some value, especially when people are broken, and have lost everything in their lives. There is really no mechanism in society that will help these people, but churches, synagogues, temples, etc. will usually always try to pick these people up and do their best to patch them up again. It is true that the patching up they do is all in the guise of trying to turn those they help into believers in THEIR TRUE FAITH, but at least they try, whereas no one else does. I will never count them out, and I will always forgive them their dogmatic sins because of these noble efforts.
I think I had known Michelle for a couple of years and we were living together before I asked her one day what religion she was. I don't think it was ever that important to either one of us. I recently read to church screech the other day that said "Good people are not the ones who get into heaven. Believers do". Bullshit. Messaging like this is why they are losing people.
When it came to raising our kids, we didn't raise them religious at all, and when they were growing up, I only dragged them into churches because I like the awesome ambiance inside of them. Just huge and glorious and silent. The iconography alone is worth a sit. Often, If I am walking through a city alone, I will often just go in a church if it is open and sit for awhile and just enjoy the feel of being there.
I always thought that maybe because we never gave our kids religion, that one of them would turn super religious on us as a result. Hasn't happened yet, thank god. (thank you god!). Could live without the rabid proselytizing from anyone.
I always told my kids I don't believe in God, but I talk to him every day. I only half mean that.
*************
So the daily coronavirus deaths are not significantly increasing on a daily basis anymore, but beginning to level off. 21k dead so far in the US, and it is estimated to be 60k by august. No small potatoes, but it might mean that our species won't die in the next few months and there might be a way through it for the human race.
Big question now is how to restart the economy, as millions are out of work, have kids, and need the money to live. It is a given that restarting the economy to ANY EXTENT, implicitly means that the virus will come back to the same degree that you restart the economy. It's just math. But you have to start it nonetheless. This has never been about stopping the Deaths from the virus, but more how to slow down the deaths so that the health care system can handle it.
How do you restart with the least amount of strain on the health care system? This is why testing has been so important, and why American embarrassed itself in front of the world by not getting it done in time. If we had proper testing like other countries, we would know who is healthy, and who isn't. Who has had the virus, and who hasn't. the fault of not having this testing lies at the feet of the President, who slept walked through the first two months of this pandemic, and kept saying it was no big deal. Then when it turned into a big deal, all he did was get in the way and disagree with the health experts. Bungling Clown does not even begin to describe the guy.
*************
I walked my six miles this morning. I had to drive up to WalMart in Coos bay to get new sneakers the other day. My old sneakers were really worn out and it had gotten to a point where I was spending more and more time clearing pebbles that would get into them. Now that I have new sneakers, I am of course bothered by sore feet as my feet work to wear the new sneakers in properly. I hope its that, and not that I bought WalMart sneakers.
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