Six Weeks at Home

Six weeks.

That’s how long it’s been that this household has seriously been on “lockdown”. 

For about that long before that, there was a soft start to lockdown.  We weren’t going out unnecessarily – looking back, it was limited to preparing for a longer stay-at-home stint, but there were still some outings during that time.

Haircuts.  One of which I really need, and which may in another month send me to the clippers upstairs to try that buzz cut that my brothers and I all wore during summers as kids.

Multiple trips to Lowes, Home Depot or Target for “stuff” we thought was needed but which we’ve now learned really wasn’t.  (Or if it was, it could wait a few days for delivery).

I can point to the exact time because one of the last things I did before sealing the airlock door was forward the office mail from the post office to home.  I wasn’t sure this had happened and went in to check.  Sure enough, they’d taped across the back of my box and one of the employees there, when she saw me looking said she thought I’d put a forwarding order in.

Yes, the post office here is small enough for that, and I used to go there almost daily.  They know me like a Starbucks barista knows their regular customers.

But we haven’t seen each other in six weeks now, and I have extended the forwarding order – not another month, as I had so optimistically done before, but this time through July 1 because I think that common sense is going to tell us to limit social contact significantly whether any official directive is in place then or not.

If our legislators have their way, it may be a moot point.  The post office has long suffered from interference with any reasonable business operations by our elected officials, and the current administration seems especially bent on completely dismantling the system which will have unintended consequences far beyond what any of us can imagine.

But for now, it provides a date from which to measure.

NOTE – I wrote about the post office in a previous post, on September 5, 2011.

https://cornerat8th.blogspot.com/2011/09/put-stamp-on-it.html

What the Pluck?

Lockdown is the perfect time to find the answers to those burning questions that challenge us all, and I believe there is an obligation to share that knowledge with others who might be curiosity-challenged.

So, today’s sharing relates to chicken.

Specifically, rotisserie chickens at the grocery store.

Without a doubt, these things are useful.  I have yet to find a recipe that calls for poached chicken breast or baked chicken or any other iteration of cooked chicken that can’t be done with the convenience of meat gleaned from the carcass of the grocery store’s ready-made fare.

These time-savers run about $7.99 at our local grocery store (assuming you don’t come in at the last minute before they snag them off the warmer when they’ve marked them down).

Recently, I noticed through the magic of online grocery shopping that the food store also offers pulled chicken, already stripped from the bones and save the 20 minutes it takes to do it yourself (not including cleanup time and the general ick factor of ripping apart the chicken).

And it’s $7.99 a pound!

So, what’s the catch?  How does this work?

The thing is that you don’t get a pound of meat off of the whole chicken, right?  It’s got to cost a lot more to have them do the cleanup for you.

So today, having time on my hands and a rotisserie chicken in the fridge that is destined to become tonight’s supper I cleaned a chicken.

My last chicken, as it turns out.

I will not say that I strip off every conceivable shred of protein from the bones of the chicken, but I’d bet that I strip it as close as most anyone without OCD is going to.

Then, having my handy-dandy scale available, I put the pulled chicken in a quart Ziplock bag and weighed it.

14.5 ounces.  A mere 1.5 ounces less than a pound.  A difference so minor that the average cook working with a recipe that calls for 1 lb. of chicken will say, “close enough” and proceed without giving it another thought.

Assuming one’s time is worth minimum wage, that means the cost of getting the pre-stripped chicken versus doing it myself is $2.41.

So now you can make your own decision.  Is it cost-effective to strip your own, or will you, too, be clicking for that 1-pound package of pulled chicken?

(Photo for attention.  This is not typical of the chickens used by the grocery store.)

Decisions for the Future

Tax day, 2020. 

Except that it’s not tax day this year, because the deadline for filing income taxes has been extended to July 15 because people can’t get all their records and tax professionals can’t meet with their clients to find out what all those little bits of paper stuffed in a shoebox really mean to fill out the forms and submit them to the government.

Mostly.  Unless you live in North Carolina, where our legislature’s most recent rush to punish all the citizens of this state says you have to pay the taxes you can’t calculate or you have to pay penalty and interest later in July, when they are now actually due.

Some of us have long subscribed to the theory that the government wouldn’t offer those automatic extensions if they didn’t intend for you to use them, so the change isn’t that big a deal.  It is worth noting as a landmark date, though.

I’ve written here about how a hunch helped us plan for the pandemic.  A hunch, Twitter and NPR – they all get credit.  Because of these, the potential for problems came on the radar early and we were able to get the house in order and as ready for an extended lockdown as possible. 

So mark today – this is the day that people should start to recognize that getting “back to normal” is not going to happen magically on May 1 like some would have us believe.  Impacts instead are going to go on well into the fall of 2020 and likely beyond.

Medical experts and others who study the pandemic and restart of our society indicate that if we simply “flip the switch” on any day it will not solve the problem but will rather likely set us back weeks or months.

The economic predictions are that many small businesses, especially, are not going to be able to survive a three month shutdown, much less a longer one. 

Even if the businesses survive and we’re told that it’s fine to go to events again, people are going to be wary of that for a while.  For many of us, if all restrictions were lifted at midnight tonight there would be little or no change in our actions tomorrow. 

Seniors, especially, who have seen their worlds circumscribed to become smaller and smaller have given up church services and community theater.  They’ve withdrawn from baby showers, book clubs and even standing dinners with another couple or breakfast at the diner once a week.  They, especially, are unlikely to come to a large wedding or graduation event, even for a favored grandchild and much less for the grandchild of a contemporary, no matter how dear that person is.

The personal risk is simply too great.  From the other side, who wants to go through with what should be a happy event to realize that their decision meant that Dad died?

Hardly the best way to mark an anniversary!

There is an old saw along the lines of, “Whenever you start thinking too much of yourself, remember that attendance at your funeral will largely be governed by the weather that day.”

Today is the day to start re-thinking how our society operates, at least in the short term.  And that means that while we are sitting home, responsibly socially isolating from others, it’s time to make some decisions about how our futures will look.

Easter Sunday

This is a different kind of Easter service than most people expect, and it’s probably gonna piss some folks off.  Too bad.

There’s a huge controversy right now about whether church services – of any denomination – ought to fall under the ban for large gatherings.  The issue became especially relevant – or a great talking point for those seeking re-election – as Easter Sunday approached.  The Kansas governor included them, the legislature tried to overrule it and the Kansas Supreme Court came down on the side of the governor. 

Louisiana went through the same thing – with one pastor of a freelance evangelical group deciding that he was going to hold services regardless of the law.  He was not only encouraging attendance, he deployed their fleet of 16 buses to make sure that he had a good crowd there, despite the pending criminal charges against him for doing the same thing at last week’s services.

In Louisville, Kentucky, the Court determined that the prohibition on all church services and funerals was unconstitutional and overruled the Mayor’s directive.  The governor, who has strongly encouraged canceling services, indicated that law enforcement will be taking tag numbers of those in attendance and they will be mandated to do a 14-day quarantine.  While I doubt that is practically enforceable, it does have a nice ring to it and is absolutely within his authority as governor.

Churches have long claimed that they ought to be exempt from these types of directives.  During earlier plagues – bubonic and such – the priests and monks were allowed to continue traveling about as if nothing was amiss either under the delusional thought that they were somehow protected or because the urge to keep that collection plate circulating was stronger than fear of the pestilence that was striking.

Those in charge – Popes, Archbishops, Senior Rabbis and Imams – usually got it and worked to limit assemblies.  Given the understanding of germ transmission at the time, they tended to do pretty well, too.  It was those at remote monasteries or traveling, jack-leg preachers that tended to be problematic as they were not as concerned with protecting their flocks as much as with making a buck.

Enter today’s freelance churches, often with self-ordained ministers that are accountable to no one and little or no formal governance structure. 

Clusters of Covid-19 outbreaks are readily traceable to those who attended church services, weddings or funerals.  In North Carolina, there is a somewhat closed religious sect in Rutherford County. 

They have found themselves on the wrong side of the law for any number of reasons – unemployment fraud, assault and battery, various tax violations – but recently their founder and leader demanded first that everyone in their community attend church as if nothing was out of the ordinary, regardless of factors that might expose them to more risk.  Oh, and they may not allow their contributions to the church to drop, regardless of whether they were now unemployed or otherwise experiencing hardship.   One of their members, who was reported to have been required to attend, has now died of Covid-19.

On top of that, Rutherford County – which has a population of 67,000 – as the fourth-highest number of cases as a percentage of population in the State of North Carolina.  If we take out a couple of counties that had breakouts in nursing homes/congregant living facilities, it moves up to second, just behind Mecklenburg County, the most densely populated area in the state.

Think about that for a moment.  Rutherford County has ONE tiny hospital, and the county ranks #40 out of 100 in the state in terms of population, and yet they have jumped ahead of all but the most populous county in terms of per-capita infections.

Because of one church. 

Here’s the thing.  Churches seem to think that they are entitled to some type of special treatment.  When I worked for city government, they were always trying to get around building and zoning codes, arguing that it shouldn’t apply to them.

The reality is that the physical part of a church is just a bunch of people in tight quarters, with someone standing up in front talking.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a college classroom or a church on Sunday Morning or the community theater.  That means it needs appropriately marked exits, sprinkler systems, parking spaces – all the things that any other building designed to hold large groups of people would need.

Circling back to what we know – germs treat everyone the same.  We also know that Covid-19 is an incredibly communicable disease, and there is a significant history of it being passed among individuals who attend religious services in person.

Therefore, I will say this unequivocally -- If you insist on gathering together for any type of religious service right now, you are a damned fool and deserve whatever happens to you.

That’s not what makes me angry about this, though.  If you’re an adult, you can make whatever decisions you want.  If it were up to me and you took children with you, I’d prosecute you for child endangerment, but that’s not my call.

What isn’t your call and what you are responsible for, though, is when you become infected and continue about your life – now you’re unnecessarily exposing those essential individuals who are keeping us all alive. 

If you get sick and go to the hospital, you’re also potentially infecting all of those healthcare workers who are there trying to keep your sorry ass alive.  You are responsible for exposing them – as well as the EMT’s, police officers, and other first responders and all of their families to this potentially fatal illness.

The sheer stupidity of all this is obvious when you realize that there are so many other options available and virtually all of them are infinitely safer than a traditional Sunday morning service.

Watch on television – although I note that the reports seem to indicate that NONE of the big TV preachers have donated a nickel to any type of support or relief, although they will happily take your credit card according to the scroll across the bottom of the screen.

Stream your own church online.  It’s amazing how even some of the smallest churches have the ability to put the sermon up, not just with audio but with video – you can probably see and hear better, plus you don’t have to put on special clothes unless you want.

If you just HAVE to go somewhere to church, go to one of the drive-in services that some congregations are holding.  At least that is going to limit your exposure somewhat.

Better yet, take a hint from our seniors – most of them recognize that it does not make sense to be out and about OR GO TO CHURCH during a regular flu season, much less in the midst of a pandemic.  Staying home is not evidence of a lack of faith but is instead proof that one has the ability to make rational decisions based on the evidence in front of you.

As Grandma used to say, “Use the common sense the Good Lord gave you.”

A New Era Begins

TWO WEEKS.  That’s the deadline I had to create this masterpiece of all-encompassing data.  A cross between an autobiography and encyclopedia, combined with just a bit of investigative journalism on a very boring person, if you will.

This meant that other projects had to go by the wayside and I had to focus my normally limited attention span on something with a significant deadline that could not be adjusted, like Christmas.  Except a pandemic wasn’t really on the radar of the general public yet (at least not in the United States), so everyday life kept getting in the way.  The Clerk of Court had deadlines for estates that were in process.  Contracts needed to be reviewed.  I had to go to traffic court for people.

At the same time, most people weren’t thinking about this or visibly preparing.  Those to whom I brought it up and suggested that they may need to at least think about preparing a little bit clearly looked at me as if my tin-foil hat were slipping.

After all, this was no big deal, right?  Just another flu going around so what’s the problem?

Being a creature of habit, I recognized that I was going to have to start the new protocols of social interaction early.  The last time I went to Court – February 25 – I got a lot of sideways looks when I declined to shake hands with other attorneys.  Word was starting to get out that physical contact was a way to spread this affliction, though, and I wasn’t going to take any chances.

In fact, I got out of the courthouse without any physical contact other than from my client – an adorable special needs child who decided that she liked me and came in for a hug.

Hell, even I’m not that heartless.  She held my hand as we left the courthouse.

And then I got in the car and once out of her sight sanitized like you can’t imagine.  After all, children are nothing but walking petri dishes of infection, even if they are dressed in pink and purple unicorns.

When something like this is on your radar and not on other peoples’, it’s almost like you belong to a fringe religious group.  You don’t generally share a lot about it, because you know that the infidels won’t understand and it’s just going to make your life more difficult. 

The difference is that in this case, the true believers tended to be dressed in dad jeans and wearing a ball cap when they were out buying supplies.  We recognized each other, checked out each other’s carts – what did I forget? – but never actually spoke of it.  Again, it was different than a snowstorm or hurricane, where everyone knew and agreed it was coming.  There might be a difference of opinion as to how severe it was going to be, but just like the 4^th of July, a weather event is going to happen.

This was still being downplayed on a national level as no big deal.

I do not understand how people managed to move across the entire continent in a covered wagon.  There were no stores to stop at, no mail order.  You had to take it with you or do without, but at the same time there was extremely limited space.  How do you decide what is “essential”?

That type of organization isn’t my forte’.  It requires making lists, which I make all the time and then promptly lose. 

It also means that you have to balance risks – unlike a storm, we probably won’t lose water or electricity.  But just in case, is the extra propane tank for the grill filled up?  Do we have enough batteries for flashlights – and computer mouses (mice?), which then leads us to the need for charging cords (all iterations, since nothing is universal) which then calls for extension cords.

But why?  We aren’t going anywhere.

Unless it’s to the hospital, and recent experience with a friend taught me that (a) for all the electronics in those rooms, there are woefully few receptacles and the ones you can use are a long ways from the bed, and (b) you can do without a lot of things, but for most of us the last thing to be pried from our cold, dead fingers is not going to be a gun but rather our cell phone.

The other thing you recognize is the value of things that are the “right” size.  That half-gallon jug of hand sanitizer may be more than enough and a great bargain (back then; now, not so much) but the problem is there’s only ONE, and you really need smaller bottles to go in the cars and by each door.  By the time I realized that, it was too late and there were no small bottles to be had.

So we do without.  Actually, we don’t do without – we just do with inconvenience.  Big jugs may be comforting in some ways, but they tend to be in the way and they certainly aren’t very attractive.

The other thing that came along in the midst of this – about that 2^nd week in March, when things were starting to take on an air of panic – is that we needed to change some bank accounts.  After several months of effort, our estate plan was finally in place, but required that some accounts be changed into different names.  Except the banks won’t let you do that, so you have to open new accounts.

Fine, I can get over to the bank to do that – one bank wasn’t problematic.  They printed out the paperwork, I signed mine in the office and brought E’s back so he could sign it, sent it back in and we were ready to go. 

The other bank, though, doesn’t use paper.  They are all electronic.  TOUCH PADS that you have to actually TOUCH.  With your fingers.  I brought 3 different types of stylus.  Not a one of them worked.

In fairness, the lady at the bank was very understanding.  While she might have thought I was a bit paranoid, they had already started sanitizing hourly and were taking steps to keep their stuff clean.  She “lysoled” the touchpad in front of me.

The problem though was that E had to go in to sign.  He was just a little busy at the time and getting away for an hour to deal with the bank was going to be difficult.  Oh, and the bank rules required that we BOTH be physically present in the bank at the same time.

I understand the need for protocol and safeguarding accounts, but c’mon.  That’s just stupid.

When we made it in eventually, it was interesting to see how things had changed.  Now you could not enter the bank building without an appointment, and you waited in your car until they came to let you in.  There was a huge Plexiglas shield between the nice bank lady and us, and she didn’t need to touch our driver’s license, it was fine if we just held them up for her to see. 

We still had to sign the touchpad, though.

News of the spread of this pandemic was dominating the news feed now, with the staggering death tolls in Washington State and even more in New York. 

Suddenly, my tin hat was becoming the fashion accessory of the season.

Soon to be joined by the face mask.

One final note today – my preparation paid off, in a way.  Someone texted E wanting to know if there was a spare face mask at the hospital they could have.  The answer to that is NO.  Those belong to the hospital, and we don’t dip into them for personal use.  Not now, not ever.  But he told the friend that I might have some since I had been put on “prep duty” several weeks earlier.

That spare N-95 scored a bottle of wine.

I heard that someone traded cigars for toilet paper.  I probably should have bargained harder.

ASSIGNMENT #5 – Another glass of wine, another section in your notebook.  How about “Account Numbers” tonight – Bank, IRA, Investment – whatever numbers you got, write ‘em down.

You can endure anything for 20 minutes.

Well That Went Downhill Quickly -- Prepping That Is

We have an established morning routine.  I usually get up first, have a cup of coffee and work on my laptop in the den.  I hear the shower come on upstairs, take him a cup of coffee and then WE DON’T INTERACT. Conversation is minimal – Do I have socks?  Are there T-shirts in the drawer?  We do not address anything that isn’t absolutely essential and then we separate – I go back downstairs.  When the shower stops, I push the button to start the Jeep to melt the ice off the windshield.

So, when I walked in one morning while he was in the shower and was greeted with, “You need to put together detailed instructions for the family.  Assume we are dead in two weeks....well maybe three.  But you have two weeks to do this in.....do you think it is doable?” 

I was somewhat taken aback.  What the hell had I forgotten to do that was going to come back and bite me?

I should have realized that something more was up when he continued (again, conversation is limited to essential communication at that hour).

“You have two weeks.  Leave space in it for me to put in my stuff like passwords and such.  Write out instructions on everything you know (?!?!?!?!)  We need to make it as easy as we can for everyone if this pandemic kills us both.”

Mind you, I haven’t even had one full cup of coffee yet, so this is something of a bit of a shock to my system.

Kill us?  This is just a bad flu going around, right?  We are relatively healthy and under 80 years old; the worst that should happen is whoever gets it feels like the bottom of a garbage pail for a few days. 

But everything I know?  My brain is full of crap that nobody needs to know.  I may not be able to find my car in the parking lot, but I remember that Herbert Hoover was born on August 10 and Richard Nixon resigned on August 8.  I know that tulips grow a new bulb underneath the old one, and that’s why you have to dig them up and reset them every few years or they’ll get too deep and die.  I know that the dogs eat a certain brand of food, but Stormey won’t eat Salmon, and Beef makes them all have upset tummies -- you buy it at your own risk. 

And I’m supposed to write it all down?

Again, my pre-coffee brain wasn’t processing this all that well.  After a while, though – and more coffee – and more explanation – things started to kick in.  I needed to prepare for incapacity and/or death and write out instructions for the difficult parts.

I do this for other people, not for me.  Dying is generally not difficult for the guest of honor.  In my experience, they tend to let go of more and more of the issues of this world as they realize that their time is close and they are about to transition to some other plane of existence.

Suddenly, what month the car tag expires becomes largely irrelevant.  It may be a pain for those left behind, though.

I’ve been a lawyer since 1985.  35 years of dealing with estates – sometimes involving the sudden death of someone, other times the slow demise where people just run out of energy – has taught me that it is ALWAYS messy.  There is stuff that we carry around in ourselves that isn’t written down anywhere.

What’s that funny little key on the truck ring go to?  And what about that huge ring of keys (that survived the kitchen junk drawer purge) that is completely unlabeled?

You have to push on the back door and THEN turn the key to get it to unlock. 

You just “know” when it’s time to turn on the pump in the fishpond, and if you don’t not only will the fish die but it will turn into a gigantic mosquito nursery and the neighbors will hate you.

What he meant was the important stuff.  List every bank account?  List the contact information for retirement/life insurance/etc.?  What are the myriad of passwords that we use to navigate modern life?  Where is the emergency cash stashed, and how much is there?  WHAT IS THE CODE TO TURN OFF THE FRIGGIN’ ALARM?!?!?!?  (That’s an important one – for both the survivors and the local police).

That was the important stuff that needed to be written down so those who are left behind to clean up what remains don’t end up hating you.  Their lives are going to be complicated enough trying to clean up what is left behind as well as dealing with their own lives, which don’t stop just because someone dies.  The biggest gift you can give them is convenience because it translates to the gift of time.

This is something everyone needs to do.  There are dozens of notebooks out there that will help you organize “What My Family Needs to Know” type information.  I’ve bought lots of them over the years, either for us or to try and help clients get a handle on things.

Most of ours are like everyone else’s, on the shelf with the first two pages filled in, abandoned to the “I need to get around to that someday” pile.

Buckle up, Buttercup.  “Someday” is here.

But guess what....I successfully completed this assignment in close to two weeks.  Okay, it took daily micromanaging to prod me along.  Some days it was easy to work on, others not so much.  But it is DONE!  Still hoping it is not needed for a very long time.  

ASSIGNMENT – In fairness, we all find that the old adage that, “. . . the cobbler’s children have no shoes” applies.  For those of us that do something professionally, it’s easy to delay.  Accountants are late with their taxes.  People in healthcare refuse to get their annual physical.  Lawyers rarely finish their own estate plans.  We were in the same boat and didn’t have any of this important stuff written down.

The links below lead to several books that can help you organize your thoughts, but right now Amazon is delayed considerably in delivering what they consider non-essential items.  In reality, any old spiral notebook will work, although a 3-ring binder may be more helpful because you can put pockets in it to hold documents if you need to.

Don’t try to do it all at once, and especially overnight.  I have long advocated the “glass of wine” approach.  Get the notebook, pens, etc. and pick a section to work on.  Pour a glass of wine.  Work on it until the wineglass is empty, and then put it away for a while.  Your brain is full and it is easy to get overwhelmed.  You can eat an elephant if you take it one bite at a time.

Let’s do one section – say putting all of the passwords/codes/websites that you use in one place.  I find an Excel spreadsheet makes this relatively easy with columns for the Website/Username /Your email attached to it (for those with multiple emails/Password/Date you last set the password/Comments – a place for the secret reminder questions, etc.

Most importantly, once you start the process, TELL SOMEONE.  Someone outside of your home given the likelihood of the spread of contagion and let them know what the notebook looks like and where it will likely be kept.

Here are a couple of samples, which, unfortunately, Amazon deems non-essential and isn’t shipping for at least a month.

I'm Dead, Now What?: Important Information About My Belongings, Business Affairs, and Wishes
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1441317996/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_.fDIEb0NCJ5JX

Sorry for Your Loss - It’s Me: My Final Thoughts, Wishes, Important Information about My Belongings, Business Affairs and Stubborn Opinions for Those I Leave Behind - Im Dead Now What Planner
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1081837160/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_TgDIEb059ST4V

Prepping - The Introductory Phase

Back to the present – or semi-present, the days starting to run together at this point.

Valentine’s day is kind of when we measure the “start point” of “Shit about to get real”. Recognizing that I am one who is very much deadline driven (and who works better at some things under strict and constant supervision, like a prisoner on a chain gang or a rat cornered and beaten into submission), I was assigned to “figure out what we need and go get it.”

I assume this was the assignment because “orchestrate world peace”, which would likely be considerably easier, was already taken.

The first issue related not only what we would need, but how much of it. I would submit that if you aren’t a family with a home economist somewhere in the mix, you’re like me and had no idea about quantities.

How many people does a can of green beans feed?

Those “servings” listed on the package are about right if everyone eating weighs 110 pounds. For the rest of us, that’s a “bite” or a “snack”.

When you have leftovers, what’s the cutoff between “keep for lunch” and “trash”?

A trip to Sam’s Club (which I DESPISE for any number of reasons and avoid if at all possible) was in order, if for no other reason than that the packages are bundled together and easier to carry in from the driveway than individual cans from the grocery store.

Here’s the good thing that I got out of that – a friend said “Download the Sam’s App”. Normally, I avoid this. My life is already ruled enough by my phone, and I don’t need one more app popping up and remotely nagging me to do something.

The amazing thing about this app, though, is that you can go through the store with your phone, bag your stuff as you shop (if you bring your bags from home) and scan the bar code. Then at the end, you just push “Pay”, it charges the credit card you have entered and out you go. I don’t know if things were starting to pick up there or if it was just a typical Thursday, but I do know that it saved me at least 45 minutes of standing in line.

I came home with a couple of weeks’ worth of groceries that didn’t need to be refrigerated and ought to be shelf stable for several months. Plus, since it was before the panic, I scored hand sanitizer (just one big bottle, that’s all we needed), liquid soap and bleach and all that other stuff that people are panicking over (except for meat – because we didn’t have that much freezer space) and toilet paper, which we’ve been ordering through Amazon for a couple of years already.

The problem with bringing home more than your normal purchases is you have to find a place to put all that stuff, which brings us to the next point – some folks do not live in a house big enough to hold all the toilet paper they are buying. Where on earth are you going to put it?

Anyhow, groceries not only take up a lot of space, but they are also heavy and unfortunately, do not unload themselves from the truck. That was enough prepping for a day or two.

A Little Pandemic History

I’m going to divert a bit here from the background and leadup to what happened.  Looking back, I realize that even I am bored with reading it, and that’s not the goal.  I also realized that even if we are staying home, it’s hard to come up with an entire new post every day because other things get in the way, so while “daily” is the goal, sometimes we may not accomplish that.

So let’s talk history a bit.  I may do more detail later, but just an overview.

Since roughly the “Dark Ages” in Europe, we tend to have pandemics (at least as far as the world was known at the time) every 100 years or so.  1720 – 1820 – 1920.  It’s not exact, but close enough for discussion purposes.

There is some memory – not in most of us, but through our grandparents / great-grandparents – of the Spanish Flu of 1918.

There is a wonderful book about it, which for some unknown reason I read about five years ago – The Great Influenza, by John Barry.  At 550+ pages, it is a somewhat daunting tome, but the audio version is easily digestible (all 19 hours, 26 minutes)!  (And for those wondering, “listening” counts as “reading” since all the words go into your brain!)

Here’s the thing.  That flu probably didn’t start in Spain but started elsewhere in Europe which, just coincidentally, happened to be in the midst of WWI and kept it secret so Spain took the fall for it (sound familiar?) – took out half a million people.

We can blame it on the lack of medication or medical equipment, or limited medical knowledge or lots of things that relate to the state of the world in the early 1900s, but the reality is that the spread of that pandemic was attributable primarily to the proximity of lots of people together.

The failure to isolate.

Lots of these people were close together because they were being trained to go into the military or were returning from the War, especially in the United States. 

So not only are they doing all kinds of drills and being physically together for work, the slept in open barracks and then were packed on transport ships.

Breathing the same air.  Eating together.  Touching each other, without a thought in the world about appropriate social distancing.

Now at the time, it was known that disease could be transmitted by simply being in the proximity to others.  Smallpox, Measles, Diphtheria – they were all transmitted by the virus shedding and then being picked up by others, which was why people – entire families – were quarantined and locked away from the rest of society until they were no longer contagious.

There are two places that had entirely different experiences during the Spanish Flu Pandemic.

In 1918, Philadelphia had a parade scheduled to promote the sale of War Bonds.  (Remember, troops were coming back from the war and the government needed money).  Despite warnings from public health officials, the parade continued in front of a crowd of 200,000 people on September 28, 1918.  By October 1 (FOUR DAYS), there were 635 cases in the city.

The flu went through the city, initially taking out 600 sailors at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard.  Within six weeks, 12,000 people had died from that single exposure event.

That lapse in judgment – the decision to put commerce ahead of human life – was devastating. 

Now compare that with Gunnison, Colorado – at the time, a community of 1,300 people that was at the intersection of two railroads, so there was lots of traffic through the community.

Admittedly, Philadelphia was a major city – 1.7 million people -- so there are obvious differences in the two, but the fundamentals are the same.

Gunnison made it through the first two pulses of the Spanish Flu epidemic without a single case. 

Not one.  Because they isolated, and in a big way.

They closed off the town.  Barricades were erected.  Citizens were deputized, curfews were enacted and violators were arrested.  They were some kind of serious about it not for a day or a week or a month.  Nope.  They shut that sucker down for FOUR MONTHS.

Let’s think about this – 1918.  No internet.  No television.  No radio, for the most part.  Only about 70% of the population was literate (although there is some confusion about this.  I guess lots of people didn’t fill out those little cards for the census and mail them back in).  Lots of places didn’t have electricity (or indoor plumbing!), and the ever-reliable Sears Catalog provided all the strikin’ paper anyone had.

That is a LOT of sittin’ in houses significantly smaller than most of us have with MUCH larger families than is the norm now, looking at each other with little to say or do other than to think, “If he sucks his teeth one more time . . . . “

Gunnison was not the only town to do this.  There were several others that implemented similar measures with excellent results; Gunnison was just lucky enough to implement their lockout before anyone who was infected made it into town.  Cases of the flu happened there only in the third wave, when restrictions were lifted too soon.

Is this information secret, something that I ferreted out after hours and hours in dusty library basements at institutions of higher learning, the diligent scholar toiling away in obscurity on a doctoral dissertation that will not likely be unread?  Is it a focused legal brief, relevant only to the parties in a case and perused only by opposing counsel (the judge being too busy to actually read what most lawyers submit?

Nope.  Found it all sitting on the couch online in the time it takes to enjoy one evening cocktail (an Old Fashioned made with Knobb Creek Burbon, thank you), when I also discovered it was also put in a 2006 report prepared by the University of Michigan Medical School for the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Think about that folks.  Our government had the information, all pulled together and summarized, undoubtedly with those charts and graphs that people who write those types of reports for the government love, along with a concise and very readable Executive Summary stapled on top.

Here’s the report, although admittedly even under strict isolation conditions I don’t have the patience to read all 275 pages:

http://chm.med.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2015/01/DTRA-Final-Influenza-Report.pdf

However, for a much shorter (and more interesting) article about the author and his credentials, try this one:

https://sph.umich.edu/findings/fall2006/ancient-foes/monto.html