Susan Corso's Blog — iAmpersand

Day 49 The First Hundred Days; or, Me? Who me? Nope. Not I.

One hundred days since the first recorded coronavirus diagnosis in the U.S., and counting. One million documented cases of coronavirus infection in the U.S., and counting. One Chairman of the U.S. Coronavirus Task Force visited the Mayo Clinic yesterday—and refused to wear a mask, and, unfortunately, counting. Annie Karni writes, “American Bridge, a progressive group, called for Mr. Pence to be removed from the coronavirus task force, which he oversees. ‘He just didn’t care enough about the health and safety of doctors, nurses, and patients to follow their guidance,’ said Kyle Morse, a spokesman for the group. ‘Pence, like Donald Trump, thinks the rules don’t apply to him.’”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 29, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, gesture, testing, faith

Day 48 Sure, The Feds Will Help; or, A Gesture is Not Enough

“In the seven weeks since the president promised that anyone who needed a test could get one, the United States has conducted about 5.4 million [coronavirus] tests, far more than any other country, but still the equivalent of only about 1.6 percent of the total population.” The percentage of the population hasn’t changed since the last time I did the math a couple weeks ago. “Rather than one coordinated federal response, the Trump administration has been engaging on an ad hoc basis as states take the lead.” Since then, Mr. Trump has promised ventilators would go to Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, El Salvador, Ecuador.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 28, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, gesture, testing, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

Day 47 Meeting in the Middle; or, The Sanity Equation

I remember the progression well. First, it had no name. Then, it was the plague. At one point, the gay plague, graduated to GRID, gay-related immune disease. Eventually, AIDS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. You might think it stopped there, but it didn’t. As research continued, a distinction was made between HIV and AIDS. Just because someone was HIV-positive, it didn’t mean they had AIDS. Time wore on. AIDS patients got a big dollop of humanitarianism and were changed to PWAs, people with AIDS. At that point, it was still a game of Russian roulette. Most who had it died. The process eventuated to PLWAs, and I recall taking a deep, deep breath when I learned what it signified: People Living with AIDS. Implicit was, of course, that they weren’t all necessarily dying. It was a huge mental shift that, once it occurred, took its place immediately in the collective mind. Mostly because it was a relief. Almost everyone knew someone who was positive, whether consciously aware of that fact or not. PLWAs. Well now, we have come to the same stage with SARS-CoV-2 a.k.a. the coronavirus.

Day 46 Priorities; or, Profits and Prophets

What is a true priority in this dystopian dream we’re living? In today’s Coronavirus Outbreak news aggregator, I read this: “Early in 2018, 30 microbiologists, zoologists and public health experts from around the world gathered at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva to draw up a priority list of dangerous viruses—specifically, those for which no vaccines or drugs were in development. It included “Disease X”: a stand-in for all of the unknown pathogens, or devastating variations on existing pathogens, that had yet to emerge. The coronavirus now sweeping the world, officially SARS-CoV-2, is a prime example.” Once again, I’m relegated to basic math. 2018? It’s 2020. What did we do, or what did the 30 worldwide wizards do with those two years? It wasn’t because they didn’t want to do something. They did.

Day 45 The Abdication; or, Tolerating the Intolerable

Well, I think that each of us carries an aspect, and serves the rest of us, of the collective emotionality of humankind. Because of my own personal experience with death and grief, I default to Sad. I know people whose default reactivity—especially to collective experience—is Mad. I know others who default to Bad a.k.a. Fear. You take my point. That’s why when Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie writing in “Mitch McConnell Is Not as Clever as He Thinks He Is,” opined, “When banks, corporations and wealthy individuals need bailouts, the Republican Party is there, pen in hand. ... But when ordinary Americans need help to pay their bills, and when states—which can’t run deficits—need help to avoid fiscal collapse, the Republican Party is much less interested,” I was utterly astonished that I defaulted to Mad.

Day 44 Parentless Children; or, A Dearth of Leadership

“When things aren’t going smoothly for President Trump, his go-to move is to change the subject to topics that cheer his supporters and drive his critics into paroxysms of outrage.” When my mother used to use this same technique at my childhood dinner table, my brothers and I dubbed it the Look, There’s Haley’s Comet Defense. She was brilliant at it. “Choking off legal immigration is just one aspect of the administration’s longstanding agenda that’s being cast as a pandemic response. In the midst of the crisis, the administration has plowed ahead with non-Covid priorities that, in more normal times, most likely would have met with fierce pushback.” Okay, I get it, we’re distracted.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 24, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, service, leadership

Day 43 Squanderlust; or, Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Here’s as good an international analysis as any I’ve read: “As the calamity unfolds, President Trump and state governors are arguing not only over what to do, but also over who has the authority to do it. Mr. Trump has fomented protests against the safety measures urged by scientific advisers, misrepresented facts about the virus and the government response nearly daily, and this week used the virus to cut off the issuing of green cards to people seeking to immigrate to the United States.”In the words of Dominique Moïsi, a senior adviser at the Institut Montaigne, a Paris think tank, “America has not done badly—it has done exceptionally badly.” Contrast this with the level-headed leadership of Angela Merkel speaking to the German Parliament, “Let us not squander what we have achieved.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 23, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, plague

Day 42 Neither Here Nor There; or, The Cost of Attention

Epidemiologists are now saying that the first death from this particular coronavirus was in Santa Cruz, California on February 6th, not on February 29th in Seattle, as we’d all been told. That was 73 days ago. Not even a full business quarter. The Times Coronavirus Live Updates goes on: “In a little over two months, the economy would grind to a halt, nearly the entire country and much of the world would be ordered to shelter at home and life would be transformed for nearly the entire planet. In that time, more than 40,000 Americans have died, part of a global toll of 172,000—a number that most likely vastly underestimates the true count.” Viruses are like that.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 22, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, Janus, Earth Day

Day 41 Exposing Our Flaws; or, The Reward of Patience is ...

I’ve heard it said that as people get older, they become more of what they are. Because of the unmistakable fragility that has been revealed over and over again during The Trump Pandemic, I am inclined to believe that the exact same truism is true of both structures and infrastructures. I don’t exactly need to proof-text it for you, but here are a few examples. The Small Business Loan Relief program ran out of money—partly because large, corporate restaurant chains scooped disproportionate amounts of the fund. They have teams of attorneys and staff to deal with the paperwork, and long-term credit relationships with banks. Generally speaking, Mom and Pop do not. More than 22 million people have applied for Unemployment Insurance since the stay-at-home orders began. State governments have stripped state unemployment offices down to the bare minimum. They can’t process normal claim numbers. Certainly, not abnormal ones either. Don’t get me started on the abysmal interface between state and federal unemployment systems.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 21, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, patience, St. Augustine, quackery

Day 40 Forty Days and Forty Nights; or, As Long As It Takes

A Letter to the Editor author wrote in this morning’s Times, “I hear nothing but wishful thinking from the president.” Carrie Fisher did a one-woman show years ago; she called it Wishful Drinking—it seems more apt. The author went on, “As best as I can determine, and despite the president’s hollow boasts, testing in this country is a cruel joke. Without widespread testing, I am staying put and my money is staying in my wallet.” I’ve been writing these essays for forty days straight. I will continue to write them as I am so guided. I very much appreciate the notes, and even some contributions, I receive in return. Keep them coming please. Today seemed like a significant day to me.

Day 39 Small is the New Big; or, A Journey of a Thousand Miles

I’m no runner. Never have been. Not b’shert, meant to be. But I do know the difference between a sprint and a marathon. A sprint is an as-fast-as-you-can one-shot—for a brief spell. A marathon is about stamina—staying the course over 26.2188 miles. I know people who have trained for several marathons and nary a one of them began their training by running 26.2 and change miles on Day One. They build up to it. Various news articles this morning seemed to beat the drum of an underlying theme that no one is naming directly yet. Small is the new big.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 19, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, marathon, sprint, Tao for Now

Day 38 Pre-Existing Conditions; or, Coronovirus Trumps All

“When Queen Elizabeth II of Britain turns 94 on Tuesday, it will be the first time in her nearly seven-decade reign that her birthday will not be marked by a gun salute—another longstanding ritual lost to the coronavirus.” Lost? Or ... changed? Mind you, at her insistence. “Dr. Frederique Vallieres, the director of Trinity College’s Center for Global Health, said that the 9 percent of people who opposed taking a vaccine included both ideological ‘anti-vaxxers’ and people with underlying health conditions that would either prevent them from taking such vaccines or make them reluctant to do so.” Ideology? Or ... sheer cussedness for the principle of the thing?

Day 37 Calling the Shots; or, The Coronavirus Quilt

I’m with David D. Turner whose Letter to the Editor appeared in yesterday’s Times. Here’s the whole thing. Recalling the AIDS Era “To the Editor: “Re “Few Unscathed by Toll of Virus Across the City” (front page, April 3):“Thank you for your article on New Yorkers’ inexorably widening webs of contacts being scythed by the novel coronavirus. As a gay man of a certain age for whom the current pandemic is a second plague, I read your reporting with nauseating déjà vu. “I don’t mean to sound churlish; my heart breaks for every lost soul, each life interrupted. But daily briefings from the president and the governor, an initial $2 trillion rescue package, a coordinated international effort toward a vaccine, fast-tracked double-blind trials exploring the efficacy of existing drugs? Where was the all-hands-on-deck posture when it was just those who lived on the margins or whom a goodly portion of polite society reviled who were being felled?

Day 36 Moving Forward; or, Who Will Be Left Behind?

U.S. population today is what I put into Google. 331 million people The U.S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people What caused the inquiry was a testing statistic cited in this morning’s Times: as of two days ago, the U.S. has given a total of 3.1 million coronavirus tests. Is that really just shy of one percent? It is. In the same article, “Mr. Trump boasted of having ‘the most expansive testing system anywhere in the world.’” hind Trump’s Failure on the Virus’) have put together a carefully constructed case against the administration.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 16, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Day 35 Cry Me A River; or, How Could They?

Ten days ago or so, The Huffington Post ran a two-word headline. THEY KNEW No one asked who. We knew. Recently, “Evidence of President Trump’s mishandling of the current Covid-19 emergency has been building steadily. Most recently, The Washington Post on April 4 (‘The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged’) and The Times on April 11 (‘He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus’) have put together a carefully constructed case against the administration.”

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 16, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Day 34 Convenient Ignorance; or, The Willful/Willing Debate

Once again some of the news cheers me and some of the news makes me want to cry. I can’t be alone. Pastors suing the State of California for religious discrimination—no! Do they know what they’re doing to their followers? Uh, anyone? Prisoners released from prisons and jails—yes! To go where? Crowded projects? Uh, anyone? Disproportional African-American and Latinx deaths—no! Are we focusing our care on those communities? Uh, anyone? Opinion columnist Jennifer Senior wrote a piece called “The One Kind of Distancing We Can’t Afford.” It is principally this that prompted today’s essay although I’d been dancing around it for a couple of days.

PandemicSusan CorsoApril 14, 2020metaphysics, coronavirus, COVID-19, blindness, vulnerable, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez