The public good is nothing to sneeze at

People's breath has been weaponized. That's the threat facing us right now. Every time you leave your home, you face the possibility that some perfectly robust looking individual will cough or sneeze or laugh or otherwise exhale forcefully and envelop you in a cloud of microscopic particles that could infect you. Once infected, you will find out how this new disease interacts with your particular genetics and physical condition. Your odds get worse if you are over 60 years of age, but old people have survived with minimal ill effects and young people have died of complications. You just don't know.

In a situation like this, you'd think that adoption of some rudimentary precautions would be universally accepted. But this is America, where disagreement is a matter of principle. We are not the only country so afflicted, but we certainly stand out as one of the most divided and argumentative. It used to be seen as a source of synergy, but it is now -- and really always has been -- indicative of an ongoing war to control the entire country. Are we peaceful or warlike? Do we celebrate our diversity or aspire to be a pure white nation of heteronormative Christians and nothing else?

That's a lot of shit to lay on your trip to the grocery store, but that's where we are. If you go out in public these days, you have to worry not only about all the details of hygiene to avoid accidental contamination, but about the mouth-breathing antagonists who will surround you.

Some places are better than others. Some places are better at different times than others. Manly enclaves like stores where you buy hardware and auto parts are liable to be full of unmasked people forcing you to live at their level of risk tolerance.

People don't understand masks. It's not body armor. It's a condom for your breath. That analogy doesn't hold up perfectly, because a condom guards against infection equally in both directions, when properly used, whereas a mask mostly blocks outgoing breath droplets -- less than perfectly, I admit -- better than it blocks incoming hostile fire from the lung contents of naked-faced freedom fighters who might or might not be actively aggressive on top of their basic selfish, sociopathic unconcern.

I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow. I would also like to pick up a few items at the hardware store, but I don't look forward to wondering how I will be received with my facial covering. This inclines me to choose the store that advertises their precautions as a selling point, rather than one where they obviously don't care.

We all wonder who will turn out to have been right in their approach. You'd think that having the highest infection numbers in the world would have begun to answer that, but the proponents of mass death are counting on the fact that the survivors will get over any grievances once they realize that what's done is done, and that they might as well accept the losses and move on. People are resilient. If you're still capable of enjoying life at all, you'll learn to do it without any friends and family members who succumbed to the plague. Take the hard hit and power through.

Occasionally you hear of a lockdown protester who then got the disease and had a change of heart, but in a country of 330 million people, 80 or 90 thousand dead doesn't distribute corpses widely enough to get the attention of most of us. It's all theoretical. And most people survive, some with few or no symptoms, at least in the short run.

All we've had is the short run. Scientists are studying the problem from every angle, learning as much as they can, but it's a new condition for our species. We don't know long term effects because no one has had a long term yet. Thanks to the rebellious mouth breathers, thousands of us won't get one, either. Who will it be? How much will you care when it's you or someone close to you? Tune in next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, for many, many more weeks, to find out.

If you see something, say nothing

Most people know better than to idealize small town life. For all of the benefits of community support, those are completely revocable in the case of community rejection and censure. Especially for someone in business in a small town, risky assertions are a luxury.

At this point, any comments about anyone’s personal and public pandemic protective measures are off limits. It doesn’t matter if you see grocery clerks licking packages before putting them out, or restaurant staff French-kissing random people in the parking lot. Individual safety is up to individuals. This is a free country. We’re all going to have to do business with each other when the current inconvenience dies down. Gotta look to the future, regardless of who doesn’t get to have one because they proved to be genetically inferior and were culled by this largely trivial illness making the rounds.

In a small town, if enough people take a dislike to you, you're dead. Maybe not literally dead, but shunned. It's not just for colonial times. It's human nature. You don't want to risk it. You're better off to keep your trap shut.

Community standards determine what is risky. Things that might repel one person have a robust following among others. Free speech belongs to the dominant group, not to individuals. To be more precise, free speech has consequences, and those consequences hit harder on minorities and individuals than on the majority point of view. If everyone else jumped off a bridge you might be able to avoid jumping off of it with them, but make sure you stand aside and say nothing against bridge jumping. Protect yourself as best you can. Let the world burn.

You want pathogens with that?

The deli mentioned in an earlier post upped the ante yesterday, when three young members of the staff all trotted out to the parking lot to greet the occupants of two cars that had just pulled in. Close contact included not just stuffing themselves each in turn into the back seat of a compact car with whoever was sitting there, but full-on hugs with others who had emerged from the other vehicle. Then they trotted back into the deli to continue preparing food for public consumption.

Large numbers of their patrons still opt to go inside the tiny space to pick up their orders. For those who want to stay in their cars and have it brought out, one of the plucky huggers will carry the bag out and hand it to you.

With all the businesses that have closed due to recommended best practices, the ones still operating have to advertise their availability. I suggest that the deli use the slogan, "You bet your life we're open!"

When the onslaught of this disease is over we will know who was overreacting. Will the cautious look foolish or will the casual look foolhardy? How much are you willing to bet that we have nothing to worry about?

The fearless

Some people are treating this coronavirus situation like running with the bulls, or jumping off a cliff with a wing suit. It’s just another grand adventure in a world of risk.

Get a grip, people. We’re talking about routine bullshit like going to the grocery store, or putting gas in the car. If I’m going to take stupid risks with my own health and the health of others, I at least want it to be fun, like having unprotected sex for most of the 1970s. I don't want it to be from scratching my nose after touching the door handle at work.

The people facing the real risks are not grooving on it. Have you heard any doctors and nurses say that it's exaggerated?

Bravado is a coping mechanism for some people. That's fine, we all have our ways. Just respect the ways of others as we all try to get through this.

I'm trying to get my nerve up to wear a mask. It's a big step in an image-conscious society. You can maintain distance in your normal garb. You can find excuses to wear gloves in various contexts. But the mask...that's a big move. That makes it real. The weather is too warm to hide it behind a scarf, especially in a store. You'd look weird, muffled in a scarf as you scan the shelves for whatever the hoarders have left. Real casual.

Mask advocates are working on many options. I want something humorous and original. Of course nothing is original, but if I came up with it on my own it's okay if others came up with the same thing. There's no way to look like you're unconcerned when you're wearing something so unusual in our culture. It's a bold statement. You might even call it fearless.

An influx of New Yorkers

Folks around here grumble harsh comments about the arrival of a lot of people from away, who don't usually arrive until the most beautiful part of summer, and leave just as it ends. While most of them come from our neighboring state immediately to the south, I've seen some New York license plates as well, especially around Wolfeboro.

Given that we've been advised to avoid each other for weeks now, due diligence should continue to carry us through. But someone did point out that any infected incomers will put additional strain on our meager health care resources. It's poignant that we've already sold them all of the waterfront and, in some places, let them build gaudy palaces on hillsides and ridgelines. They already monopolize the best of the warm weather. Now they're liable to suck up all of the medical supplies and sicken our front-line medical personnel before most of us get a chance to.

Even the uninfected among them will get to see what it's like to live here during the months that they have not been able to. I remember the late 1980s, when it seemed like every immigrant was a city dweller who had racked up a few quick bucks in the early 1980s surge and was going to go live in the country and have either an inn or a village store. I arrived here in 1987, when this was at its height, like an airplane that had climbed too high and too steeply, and was about to stall and plunge. And so it came to pass. Northern New England went down first in that recession. Part of the blame goes to the economy in general. The rest of the exodus happened after thousands of fantasizing flatlanders got to see just how bugger ugly the place is for months and months.

They'll be going nuts within a couple of weeks, whether they've quarantined themselves or ventured out to mingle with a local population they may believe is untouched and unconcerned. There's nothing to do here.

There are locals who do act as if they are immune, or as if we all have nothing to worry about. Hey, the fatality rate is only 1-2 percent. A very small local deli is supposedly only doing carry-out, but the space is so small that people waiting inside have to take turns inhaling and exhaling, because a full house can't all inflate their chests at once. And the work space is so small that a six foot distance between the staff is utterly impossible. They are not concerned. One of them is the mother of an infant. She still comes to work. This whole thing is overblown. New Yorkers welcome.

Other businesses have shut completely. They did so before the governor's order to close non-essential businesses. The ones that remain open do so with varying degrees of stringent procedure in place.

The response from governments at the state and national level has been abysmal. We needed to be testing wide swaths of the population more than a month ago to determine where the virus was, so it could be contained. Supposedly focusing on minimizing economic disruption has guaranteed massive economic disruption. The general disregard for the welfare of citizens has gone unchallenged for decades. Will that change? The representatives of concentrated wealth hope that a beleaguered citizenry will be so grateful once the mess is over that they will fall into line and continue voting in favor of the plutocracy. At the same time, dismantled environmental protections will make it easier to dump your waste oil down a storm drain and burn a pile of your old tires without any social stigma, so that will make it popular with rank and file voters. No more will someone try to guilt trip us about throwing our trash out the car window whenever we feel like it. Good times are coming! What's a few thousand dead? They'll mostly be people we never even met.

COVID-19: Foraging in a dangerous world

We're still allowed to go out to get food and other necessities, but will you find them?

The nearest grocery store to my house is about seven miles away. It's on my way to work, or home from work, depending on the time of day. It's your typical modern supermarket, complete with pharmacy. On a normal day I would find almost all of what I was looking for.

In these abnormal days, the smart shopper gets there when the doors open. Even then, don't expect to find everything on your list. So then what?

There are other stores in just about every direction, mostly farther away. On social media, people share their reports. Those reports are seen at least by their friends, if not by an unlimited audience. Also, we're told to limit our exposure to other people and public contact points. Personally, I like to limit how much gasoline I use anyway. This is reinforced by the information that gas pump handles are some of the most contaminated surfaces. It was always true, but the new virus appears to be pretty hardy. Anything a lot of people touch is more likely to spread infection.

All this takes place in a buzz of information, some warning of dire risk, some dismissing the concern of millions of people as a panic over nothing.

The designated forager in a household has to decide how far to venture in search of whatever was not available at their first stop. How many door handles is it worth? How often do the workers in this emporium wash their hands and clean their work stations? How much should you worry at all?

Are Americans more self conscious than other nationalities about looking stupid? It seems like a lot of what goes around the internet these days counsels looking cool at all costs. The "be cool" posts mostly minimize those costs, but some of them are now saying, "go ahead and die, you're helping the economy." So we have two strains going: the It's Nothing strain, and the Bleeding Lungs of Courage strain. The most important factor for both of them is that you not look like you were worried when this is all over. There's even a batch of apparently scientific information going around to the effect that the virus isn't as bad as we think, and that it will wind down sooner than later.

The problem with the quest for treasures in the retail wilderness is that the threat is not from visible monsters. It's from that person next to you in the bread aisle, or a spot you missed when disinfecting your shopping cart. It's a random sneeze cloud over a sidewalk that looks deserted by the time you get there. You can't put on your armor and grab your magic sword. You can't zap it with your death ray, dive and roll, and draw a bead on the next bogey coming out of an alley as you pass. At most you might have rubber gloves and a paper mask, which you must throw away as soon as you return to your pod, there to decontaminate before entering. How important was it to go out in the first place, and into every other place that you investigated in your search?

Coronavirus response fails due to ADD

As congressional Democrats maneuver against the GOP to get an effective and supportive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the current occupant of the Oval Office appears to be losing interest in the whole concept of helping ordinary citizens to survive in the greatest possible numbers. This dovetails nicely with the news that white supremacist, anti-government groups are telling their followers that any of them who get infected with COVID-19 should go cough on Jews and police officers.

The proponents of letting the thing run rampant point to the considerable economic benefits of massive casualties, provided that we waste as little as possible on trying to treat the sick. Ration care. Ration materiel. Focus on the higher economic brackets, where the real value to society lies. Sure, we depend on the lowly worker bees, but there are plenty of them. With a good dose of fear, they'll be more compliant. With a good thinning, there won't be as many of them to whine and vote Democratic. Because the supporters of the current regime tend to come from more dispersed populations in rural areas, they do stand somewhat better odds of avoiding the plague as long as they drive away refugees from the infected areas, and take a few minor precautions. Or so it may appear to them. And if it kills grandma and granddad, that's a big savings on long term care, as long as you don't get soft and blow a big wad on a fancy funeral.

Whatever happened to the real good old days, when an elder would realize that they were a burden on the tribe and wander off into the wilderness to get eaten by wild animals? Good times, man. And there was no friggin' estate tax, either. Oh wait: there were no friggin' estates.

My neighbors indulge in bursts of gunfire at irregular intervals. It provides a comforting soundscape as we shelter in place.

If the administration withdraws all support for an extended shutdown, it will mean that any business or worker who chooses individually to stay home and keep distance will have no legal backing. Lost income will simply be lost. Meanwhile, the outside world will become rapidly more dangerous as the foolhardy and the dutiful go out and mingle, giving the virus the freest possible rein. Any public spaces will become more of a Petri dish than they are already. Gas pump handles are supposedly oozing with viruses even now. When you go out for groceries you will get lots of added value to challenge your immune system. Your weekly church service to get closer to God might actually send you to meet Him. It's okay. Earthly life is just pain and suffering anyway. Death is a mercy.

If this life is such shit, and death is a mercy, why have children? Why subject anyone who does not yet exist to the misery of existence? Sharing the joy?

The best response from the working class would be a general strike. Refuse to come out and join the dance of death being advocated by the corporate tools pushing heartless policies. Hardasses will call it some kind of tough love, and our duty, like storming ashore on a beach raked by gunfire, knowing that 25 percent of you will never make it all the way across. Do it for the economy, people! Here's your chance to be a real capitalist hero, and die for the American way of life.

Hey, the fatality rate isn't that bad. Relax! You'll probably be fine. Some people have no symptoms at all! Anyone who died was already a weakling. We're better off without them.

We're seeing a new War Between the States, only this time it's states of mind. The only way voluntary efforts could prevail in the face of official indifference would be for the vast majority to go along. So many people would have to join that it became the official position simply because there were too few people left to enforce the murder-suicide of business as usual. This seems highly unlikely. Our next best hope will be that a support bill passes that actually provides support to the job-doers, without whom the "job creators" have nothing to crow about.

If investors get bailed out every time the economy crashes, what is all that bullshit about the risks they take? The people who are losing are the ones with small holdings in their little retirement accounts, that they were told would be so much more desirable than stupid old Social Security. Within my own lifetime I have seen those crash at least three times, while the mega fortunes just twitched a bit and kept lumbering forward.

It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. Insist that it not be this way. Rational plans are circulating, but they still need to be adopted and put into play. It will require big moves, national-size moves as detailed in a piece from Forbes contributor Laurence Kotlikoff on March 21.

There is almost no support for a human-based response from the Senate majority or the White House. Those who can are preparing to save themselves. It's entirely consistent with the philosophy of social disintegration that they call "individual responsibility and liberty." Translated, that means, "You're on your own, chum."

COVID-19 could be anywhere

With coronavirus in the news, everyone is figuring out how to react. Habitual preppers hardly have to change a thing, but the rest of us have to decide how much we can afford to do, and what we can't afford not to.

I live in a rural area with a low and fairly dispersed population in the winter. How much do I need to worry? I don't discount it. I really wonder.

I went to the grocery store last Tuesday, thinking to stock up on a few items with long shelf life, like brown rice and canned beans. I'd read that hand sanitizer is a good idea, so I was going to get some larger containers of it to supplement the little ones that mostly lie around drying up in my car or in my traveling shaving kit that gets used maybe twice a year.

The rice was gone. The beans weren't completely gone, but the shelves had some gaps. Forget hand sanitizer. I bought a bottle of alcohol to keep in the car to clean the gas pump handle, and rinse all the oil out of my skin after touching it.

I'm a lousy prepper, because I can imagine too much and have the budget for too little. Fatalism kicks in. I fall back to my old standby, social isolation. It's not as stringent as quarantine. I just indulge my natural introversion and avoid people. It's virtually indistinguishable from the way I live my normal life. The major difference would be some degree of food stockpiling, but I try to eat mostly fresh food. I need to figure out what will provide decent nutrition for an extended period of shortage should a buying panic deplete shelves, or an actual epidemic cut supply lines for real.

I saw one person wearing a mask. I don't know if she was feeling sick and containing her own germs, or hadn't gotten the memo that a mask won't protect you from incoming pathogens. It wasn't even the recommended N95 model. I gave her no wider or narrower passing clearance than I give anyone.

In the produce department, some private thought made me laugh in a way that sounded like a cough. A store employee shelving vegetables darted a look at me. I tried to continue the laugh longer than was really called for, to prove that I hadn't just puffed out a disease cloud, but that just made me look like a crazy person. I moved away from her only slightly faster than she moved away from me.

Only a couple of cases have been reported so far in New Hampshire. It's been such a weak winter that we haven't seen large numbers of tourists. Here in central New Hampshire, summer is the busiest time of year. Second home residents and long-term vacationers come for the liquid water. Winter brings its own category of tourism, but the local population is at its lowest. Winter visitors come in waves: weekends and the notorious Massachusetts Vacation Week in February. The volume depends on whether the snow and ice are good enough to attract them. Even then, the biggest numbers tend further north and closer to the major downhill ski areas.

Local people travel. New Hampshire's winter school vacation usually comes the week after the Massachusetts break in most school districts. In the tourist business we notice that Massachusetts people come up here, but New Hampshire people go someplace warm. People are going to be in airplanes. They're going to visit places that may have reported a higher incidence of infection. More and more information emerges every day. And residents travel for other reasons, on their own schedules. Have they been exposed? Meanwhile, not much around here looks any different except for the few shortages noted above. How rapidly might that change?

At our bike and ski shop, we're all pretty germ-phobic already. Even when a new weird plague isn't stalking the land, there's influenza, the common cold, and norovirus. Our staff is tiny. Any absence due to sickness seriously hampers our ability to operate at all. We do our utmost to stay healthy. But up to this point the perils we faced were known evils with established courses of treatment. It is the unknown that makes coronavirus more fearful. You alternate between reassurance when you hear that  the fatality rate is relatively low, and stabs of anxiety when you imagine being one of the ones who ends up gasping for breath while a helpless medical staff just watches you die. We all have to die of something, but most of us are in no hurry to meet that obligation.

Yesterday, a customer came in to discuss a future bike purchase. This guy is a retired physician, and he spent the whole time coughing all over the shop owner. One of New Hampshire's COVID-19 cases works for Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and the idiot ignored the order to isolate himself, choosing to go expose a bunch of other people and force them into quarantine. What do you do about oblivious, selfish people who blunder around smearing whatever they've got all over every surface, as carefree as a snot-dripping toddler?

As much as a densely populated area provides much greater risk of exposure just because more people are crammed more closely together, such areas also automatically tend to come with more densely located services. A widespread outbreak in an area of dispersed population such as the one where I live would present much greater challenges for treatment as well as self-care if you had to endure either protective isolation or ride out the course of actual disease.

Beyond just money, due diligence takes time. Routines fall prey to the need for more elaborate procedures. Most people will weigh the risks, do little or nothing, and hope. It's easy to tell everyone to wash their hands constantly. You never realize how scarce public facilities are, or in what gross shape, until you feel that you need them dozens of times a day. As for hand sanitizer, it's already in short supply, as noted.

How worried do you need to be, to avoid an illness that could be trivial or fatal, that's contagious before symptoms appear, for which there is no vaccine and no treatment other than amelioration of symptoms as your body fights it with only whatever your immune system can provide? And how aggressively are you going to have to compete against people who were more worried, sooner?