Whitcomb: Easter Ambiguities; COVID-19 Test Issues; Reinfection? Small-College Crisis

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“It’s New England time,

the sun

comes like an old puritan

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and it rises over the ocean

and gives leave to the flight of the birds…

-- From “New England Landscape,’’ by Fernando Valverde (as translated by Carolyn Forche from the Spanish)
 

 

 

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.’’

-- H.L. Mencken in The Divine Afflatus (1917)

 

 

“And even if … I were to present my position from a Christian point of view, I would put forward the argument that faith is essentially a gift from God and if God, in his infinite wisdom, has not deigned to grant me this gift, then there is little I can do about it except to remain honest in my unbelief. And, perhaps, remain open to the possibility of future change. After all, one thing I do know is that I do not dogmatically cling to any of my convictions, convinced that nothing I think or experience can ever change them; life has given me enough lessons in my own fallibility.’’

-- Francis Hunt, a blogger

 

 

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Catholic church in RI

While I was baptized, and obliged to attend church fairly regularly until college, I’m not a believer in any theology or in many of the contradictory details of the Jesus story as set forth in the New Testament. Still, I’m sympathetic to those who are because of their fear of death and/or need for the calming effect of systems created to pull meaning out of the seeming chaos of life. Or maybe they feel they had, out of the blue, a powerful revelation, or at least a strong sense of the numinous gradually came over them. My stance is: I have no clear idea of why we’re here or, as they say, “what it all means.” 

 

But I always look forward to Easter for how it more convincingly than the spring equinox stamps the season as spring and for the glory of Easter ceremonies and associated art. To me, green, as well as purple, is its color. Easter (like Christmas) evokes some of the pagan activities that mark a new season but that’s no reason to challenge its beauty.

 

I’ve long been interested in religious history, and so one of my favorite books is the deeply researched and elegantly written History of Christianity, by Paul Johnson, a British historian and conservative journalist -- and a devout Roman Catholic. I might reread it soon.

 

 

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PHOTO: CDC

Big COVID-19 Mysteries

Some health experts say that almost a third of those tested for COVID-19 who test negative for the virus actually have the virus, meaning that they could be walking around giving the disease to others. Testing, followed by isolation, has been presented as the savior in the pandemic but we should be aware of its inadequacies. To read more, please hit this link:

 

Indeed, how little we know about COVID-19! In South Korea, several dozen victims of the virus who had been diagnosed with it, quarantined and then released are now diagnosed as having it again. One theory of South Korean health officials is that the virus was somehow reactivated, rather than the patients being reinfected by others with the illness. Will there be multiple waves of the pandemic? Probably. We shall see.

 

Hit this link for more information:

 

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Globalism's adverse impact

Overselling Globalization

Speaking of foreign things: The virus originated in China, whose dictatorship covered up and lied about its extent. But that it spread from China around the world is not a reason to enact draconian controls on trade and other international connections, or to try to undermine such key organizations in battling the pandemic as the World Health Organization, which Trump is denouncing to distract from his incompetence, ignorance and lies in the crisis. Long before fast international travel, diseases always found ways to move around the world. Everyone on the planet is in this together. And medical science is international. Research done abroad could save us here. And international trade overall expands wealth around the world.

 

But yes, there are very serious international supply-chain issues that Trump and other officials have accurately cited.  And Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama oversold the benefits of globalization.  For example, we shouldn’t be as dependent as we are on foreign-made medical supplies. Indeed, there are also some serious domestic supply-chain problems, which, along with panic buying, explains some of those many empty shelves in stores these days.

 

To read about some domestic food supply-chain food issues, please hit this link:

 

(I notice that many of those complaining about foreign imports drive foreign-made cars. I’ve even spotted some with “Buy American” stickers.)

 

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Americans are famously impatient – not good in something open-ended like a pandemic that might be with us for at least for a year or two, probably in waves, before a vaccine hits the market. And we’ll tend to see the whole crisis as having ended when it passes by our locale for a while. It reminds me of a 1954 essay by E.B. White called “In the Eye of Edna,” in which he noted that once a hurricane of that name went by Boston, the big news media lost interest in it even as it was slamming the Maine Coast. We’re already seeing this in the stock market on some days in which there’s news that reported COVID-19 cases might be leveling off. Sorry, we don’t know how this thing will unfold. It’s very early and information is very incomplete.

 

On opening up the economy, I’m a little Trumpian. The closures now in effect could soon do more direct health damage, as well as economic damage, than the disease. We need to start opening up business in early May, while being prepared for perhaps several years of cycles of lifting social controls and then reimposing them in hot spots as the pandemic recurs, hopefully with less severity than this first round because of widening herd immunity. It’s obvious now that at least for the next few years, most of us will be living differently than we had before the virus. Until memories fade?


God help many small businesses and social organizations. Some people may permanently avoid them for fear that customers and members might be a source of disease.

 

Many people will permanently lose their jobs because of the closures. Some companies are already finding that they don’t need as many people as they thought. All the more reason to institute Medicare for all who want it, to offset the loss of employer-provided private health insurance, and start a national infrastructure-repair-and rebuilding program to employ millions of people and make the country more competitive.  America may need civil engineers more than it needs software engineers. .

 

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Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has generally done very well for the state in calmly performing the exhausting job of daily explaining to the public the complicated and frequently updated state responses to the pandemic. 

 

Like many thousands of people, I’m happy that she’s decided to allow state parks and beaches, except for their parking lots, to be open as we head deeper into spring. Our mostly trapped population needs the physical and mental health benefits of getting outside in beautiful places. I wish that Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza would do the same thing for Providence parks!  And thank God for cemeteries, most of which are still open,  I think, and are parks themselves.

 

And imagine the claustrophobia if the virus had slammed us in January, when it was less pleasant (except for a couple of weirdly summery days) to be outside.

 

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Bike lane in Providence

Metro areas, America’s primary source of economic dynamism, will look to make physical changes to reduce the chances of a disease spreading. That may include widening sidewalks, expanding bike lanes and increasing their number and perhaps widening the space between seats in train, bus and plane waiting rooms, and perhaps even on trains and buses themselves.  (Maybe even airlines will be compelled to open up more seat space in their pulmonary-embolism-inducing coach sections.) State officials should give mayors and other local officials maximum flexibility to experiment with new policies.

 

Of course, fear of the pandemic, as well as temporary unemployment and people working at home, is drastically cutting back patronage of public transportation. A result will be that when at least large parts of the economy are allowed (I hope) to reopen next month, that we’ll see horrific traffic jams on the roads as many once-loyal public-transit patrons anxiously avoid trains and buses and drive to work. But that will fade as the frustrations of car travel rapidly intensify, and people gradually return to public transit, as they are doing in other nations hard hit by COVID-19. But you’ll see a lot more people routinely wearing face masks, as they have long done abroad, particularly in Asia.

 

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Salve Regina, Newport

Many small private colleges, like much of retail, are now facing apocalyptic challenges with the huge loss of revenue caused by the pandemic. They already faced existential threats, especially the shrinking number of applicants caused by demographic changes. Many, including in New England will close permanently in the next year or two; others may become almost entirely online operations.

 

What will become of closed campuses? I’d guess that retirement/assisted-living communities will be one major replacement. Old people comprise the most rapidly growing part of the population. And some of these colleges have lots of land now devoted to lawns and trees right around buildings and, farther away, playing fields. Some of the latter may be turned over to solar-energy facilities or even small farms, or big greenhouses. The supply-chain dangers exposed by the pandemic, as well as the desire for fresher food, and for helping local businesses, may lead many more consumers to patronize local food producers instead of national agribusiness.

 

As for public-sector community colleges, they’ll increasingly be vocational-training institutions, with lots of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses.

 

 

When It Was Much Worse

It sometimes verges on soap opera but the drama World on Fire, the new  British TV series about World War II now being broadcast on PBS, is often very effective at getting across what it might have been like for participants and onlookers in the 1939-45 conflict, which killed perhaps 60 million people. And it reminds viewers that what people in my parents’ and generation called “The War’’ was much worse than COVID-19. As teaching and knowledge of history continue to dangerously fade in America, we tend to present current or very recent events as far more momentous than much more important ones in the past.  You can see this in how many people rank recent U.S. presidents as “greater’’ than obviously more important ones deeper in the past. Call it recency bias.

 

Whatever. The 1970s British documentary series The World at War remains, in my view, the best and most moving series on that horrific conflict. (The war created many of us – e.g., my parents met in a naval officers club in New York in 1943. They married late that year, and a few weeks later my father was on destroyer used to support the American landings at Anzio, Italy, where a long and epic battle took place.)
 

Now that Bernie Sanders, thank God, has dropped out of the race, the elderly Joe Biden should move swiftly to not only identify his vice-presidential running mate but also to pick people he’d ask to serve in his Cabinet, including several Republicans – some sort of shadow national unity Cabinet. And then he should send them out ASAP to speak to the public. Trump has sought to monopolize attention with his daily sleazy (and sometimes even crazy), lie-rich campaign rallies camouflaged as COVID-19 “briefings’’. It’s past time to give the Narcissist-in-Chief some daily publicity competition.

 


Sending Away the Watchdogs

"The president is no longer operating in any semblance of good faith, and he is more dangerous to the fabric of American democracy than the virus.”

 

-- Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official in the George W. Bush administration.

 

 

If you thought that Trump’s first administration has been the most corrupt in history you can imagine what his second one would look like. He’ll do just about anything to stay in office, and may well succeed. He’s preparing the way by removing inspectors general (aka whistleblowers) who might be in a position to flag such quintessential Trump activities as sending taxpayer dollars to enterprises connected to the Trump Organization and his relentless attempts to use his position to hurt his political and business enemies.

 

Even Fox News addicts will miss democracy when it’s gone

 

 

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PHOTO:Tom Time

Work and Family for Celebs

Tom Brady, like many of us, has been concerned with work/family imbalances. As rich and famous as he is, it must be unpleasant to be put into a situation where he feels compelled to show some of this laundry to the public.
 

Hit this link:

 

 

From Russia With Hate and Revenge

For an exciting example of what it’s like to be on the outs with Vladimir Putin’s coldly murderous regime, hit this link:


https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-52091928

 

 

Coming a Long Way

Things have come a long way since Bert Parks sang “Here She Is, Miss America’’  in an annual kitsch orgy broadcast from tacky but pre-casino Atlantic City on national TV audience from 1955 to 1979.  I loved the show – American kitsch and showmanship to the nth degree (though my favorite annual event was and is the Kentucky Derby). I was thinking about this when looking at GoLocal’s video/article “Using Beauty Pageants to Trace the Arc of Feminism,’’ an interview with Brown University sociologist Levey Friedman, whose mother, Pamela Eldred, was crowned Miss America 1970.
 

Certainly, women have come a long way since then, in the workplace and elsewhere, albeit with some strange side roads, such as Virginia Slims cigarettes, which came out in 1968 and were marketed to women. The brand’s motto, as the women’s liberation movement was gaining steam, was “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.’’ Coming a long way to equality with men in lung cancer….
 

To see/read the interview hit this link:

 

 

Our ‘Deep State’ Diplomatic Heroes

For an insider’s tour of American diplomacy in war and peace, it would be hard to top Memoirs: 1925-1950, by the late diplomat George F. Kennan (1904-2005). Assigned to key positions in Europe before, during and after World War II, Mr. Kennan was in the middle of one crisis after another, to which he brought vast learning, a deep understanding of human nature and the ability to present riveting narratives, some of them reading like thriller novels rich with intrigue and danger. Some readers may remember that he’s considered the architect of the West’s “containment’’ policy to stem Soviet expansionism during the Cold War. Now we may need new finely crafted and realistic containment policies to thwart Chinese and Russian aggression – policies that need to be practiced as patiently as what Mr. Kennan helped craft.

 

The book also serves as a tribute to the courage, including physical bravery, and expertise of those in that part of “The Deep State’’ represented by the Foreign Service.

 

Mr. Kennan’s powers of description of those he dealt were superb. On Stalin, one of history’s greatest mass-murderers:

 

“The teeth were discolored, the mustache scrawny, coarse, and streaked. This, together with the pocked face and yellow eyes, gave him the aspect of an old battle-scared tiger. In manner – with us, at least – he was simple, quiet, unassuming. There was no striving for effect. His words were few. They generally sounded reasonable and sensible; indeed, they often were. An unforewarned visitor would never have guessed what depths of calculation, ambition, love of power, jealousy, cruelty and sly vindictiveness lurked behind this unpretentious façade.’’

 

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