A defining feature of our time is that, although it is acceptable not to possess one’s facts, it is unacceptable not to have an opinion. Inverted norms will prove the tragedy and the comedy of histories defining the present pandemic.
I hesitate to write about the crisis, not because there is nothing to say but because what one would write after breakfast would be eclipsed by what one would write after lunch, which would be eclipsed by what one would write after dinner, daily. The descriptive song is John Lennon’s “Nobody Told Me:”
“Nobody told me
there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
most peculiar, Mama”
Unprecedented times should seemingly be addressed with stoicism. Alas, determination and purpose appear as if anachronisms from the 1940s; the difference being that between “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” If such solipsism characterized war efforts, we might sing “Deutschland Über Alles” instead of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
It is unsurprising that countless compatriots prefer comfort to challenge. Observing obesity, smoking, drinking, driving after drinking, motorists not wearing seatbelts, and cyclists not wearing helmets, one anticipates that, notwithstanding what one knows, people engage in everything that one knows not to do.
As an Alpinist, I assess appropriate boundaries, live within them, and have five backup plans — since nothing goes wrong as anticipated, such that one needs various options with which to assemble a response. If I did not respect the reality before my climbing guide fell to his death, with only one piece of protection saving me from falling 4,000 feet down the north face of the Grand Teton, I thereafter realized the narrow divide between surviving and succumbing.
It is well-stated, now, in the dichotomy “six feet distant or six feet under:” Never does the thought that “I’m dying to see you” carry such weight as when one abdicates adherence to medical mandates and socializes with friends.
I notice infractions when walking — unable to swim laps at The Club — observing others running and walking with friends who are obviously not one’s household members, going for joyrides in ATVs and automobiles, and attending dinner parties. If lapses of judgment were justifiable before the stay-in-place order was effective, no basis exists thereafter.
Public officials who apparently prefer corporate profits to public health and safety are pathetic. The father of family friends, centenarians Dr. Cappy Ricks Jr. and Helen Rogers, came to Mississippi, circa 1924, to set up the county health departments. The senior Dr. Ricks was state epidemiologist in Oklahoma before relocating. I was raised hearing stories about 20th-century medical advances: After 19th-century epidemics and the 1918 flu pandemic, seriousness of purpose about saving lives ensued — awareness of what goes wrong when the Boy Scout Motto “Be Prepared” is ignored.
It is one thing to endanger oneself and pay the price if the only casualty is oneself. Presently one endangers others when violating guidelines. Vulnerable populations are affected.
The situation is akin to the the 1980s and 1990s AIDS epidemic and others involving STD’s. Safe sex is essential because, otherwise, one not only interacts with one’s partner but with everyone else that one’s partner has been; with everyone else that one’s partner’s partners have been, ad infinitum.
If people do not self-isolate, they potentially infect others, sequentially. This impacts vulnerable populations: those who are elderly, with cardiac conditions, pulmonary problems, compromised immune systems, and high blood pressure, among others.
Why play Russian Roulette during life-threatening situations? Bobby Kennedy’s granddaughter and great-grandson drowned, this month, on the Chesapeake Bay, chasing a ball in a canoe. Is it worth risking human life for inconsequential activity? Human health and human life are of greater importance.
I noticed while walking, on the evening that the stay-in-place order became effective, a truck from Tuscaloosa, carrying unfinished telephone poles, on Highway 25. It is questionable whether telephone poles constitute essential activity. I pondered that prioritizing unnecessary economic activity over human life and human safety illustrates the point. I then thought that I should say nothing without clarity concerning critical shortages. I recognized the touchstone that “If one doesn’t know, don’t do it:”
Since one cannot know whether one can contract and transmit COVID-19, STAY HOME, IN ISOLATION. Confinement will cease quickly. Loss of loved ones is forever.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider.
