Monthly Archive for: "June, 2020"

America was hijacked by conservative power. They refuse to evolve and are holding down the country while most of it and its constituents have moved on, changed, evolved to reflect a global shift. Stronger the pull, the more Trump’s America resist change.

When I became an American citizen, I was asked if I’d do anything for the Constitution. Startled by such a question, I answered that no of course I wouldn’t kill anyone or do anything against my morals “for the Constitution”. I was asked to revise (change) my answer to yes.

Fundamentally, I believe this is the problem. To hold on to a piece of writing (open to interpretation) almost 3 centuries old.
Despite the numerous amendments made to it, it remains at its immutable foundation, articles that we keep on, as knots, trying to untie, creating more knots.
The Constitution has come in the way of too many issues by now, from gun control to the electoral college, to our ability to respond to this pandemic today.

How many times people have heard and said, but we can’t do this, its unconstitutional. Obviously the Constitution operates as a safeguard and it is absolutely indispensable to keep the nation in check. But when the safeguard becomes a barrier, or even a danger, we can reasonably question it.

It is clear now that America went its own way in the response to the pandemic, compared to the rest of the world. The problem being that so far, our response (or lack of) has been utter chaos, maddening, infuriating (projected into the protests that started here) we are the only country in the world who has not been able to unite, the most basic survival instinct of human nature to fight the spread of a virus, over our response.

Blame it on our states separation, the obvious inability to respond at a federal level, but Europe as a whole was able so far to unite.

A lot of Americans took it to the streets to express their anger, unconsciously associating the disease to systemic Racism. The slogan “I can’t breath” (Eric Garner’s last words) used all while our society grappling with the notion of wearing masks for the first time to protect ourselves against the virus, is an eerie coincidence. We could label it synchronicity. If we were to psycho-analyse America and read into their collective unconscious, this would be the perfect signifier of the underlying confusion caused by this pandemic. A dilemma, disconnect in their mind, a sort of split personality of 2 clashing ideals they embrace separately but are entropically becoming incompatible. A choice must be made, which one, is still unclear in the American psyche. On one hand they are all wearing masks and accepting it as they protest, subconsciously fighting the “other America” who’s slogan toots their constitutional right to freedom to not wear a mask. All this while shouting “I can’t breath” for obviously other reasons. Or not. The signifier once again is the same but the underlying messages are on the opposite spectrum. Yet all reigned in by the same dictates of the Constitution.

Through Georges Floyd’s protests, an ocean of anger flooded the gates of America, not just about Racism and police brutality, but an overall feeling of we’ve had enough. We are ready to change, like it or not, we are going to change the course of this country’s history. While the other half is holding dearly to its conservative power. Including the Constitution. This is the fundamental dynamic of conservatism and once we understand that, that it is not the will of the people, a reflection per say of the people’s state of mind, rather a pull to keep the power where it is and not have it shift away- once these people who are supporting the conservative power to their detriment understand that, then only this country can start to move on.

The Constitution is enslaving all of America into submission to its power in place. And we need this power to shift away from the hands of the conservative power if we want change. it’s not just semantics, it is fundamental in order to finally be able to give a voice to the people of America vs. states through elections. With the people’s vote, and other constitutional amendments that could finally be made to reflect the people’s will in this country, rather than state power. It is clear through this pandemic that this system isn’t working for us, and we’ve got 5 months to amend this in order to save our democracy.

So why not draft a new Constitution and unify this country in favor of the people?

With so many changes on their way, maybe laying down the foundations as a start, would facilitate all the rest to fall into place. And make sure the people’s vote – all the people – is accounted for comes November. To start with.

Thereafter, from gun laws to universal health care to free education, we can have the people, all the people of this country, weight in to make a choice. Not just the power in place. But black, brown, white, low income and middle class. And the upper class, 1%, power in place too (but in numbers, they are the minority).

Georges Washington, a founding father, was a slave owner. Slavery is inscribed at the root of this country, in the draft of the Constitution. In other words, the mindset of those who drafted the Constitution at the time were doing so with the notion that a slave / owner relationship was inherent to society and therefore would prevail. This argument applies to other countries whose models were built around the US Constitution as well.

Despite Washington and other founding fathers turning against slavery to support abolition by the end of their lives, it was too late. The foundation of the Constitution as written remains, a testimony of them making the choice to integrate slavery, rather than abolish it.

Not to tear down his legality to this country and the world. It’s not the point. But this country, and the world, have changed since. He had seen it changed in his lifetime already.

Besides, like a Bible or Quran, the Constitution is often brandished to short circuit solutions that we all can envision for our country in today’s world. Just like Christians may use the Bible to bolster pro life agenda, the (mis)interpretation of the Constitution leads to abuses. Could be better exemples, like the Coran and Jihad.

The idea of the American Constitution has been hijacked the same way Marx’s communism ideal has been by Lenin, Stalin and Mao. To serve their personal power interests.

The framework of the Constitution drafted in theory for the people, like the communism manifesto drafted by Marx, aren’t in any way relevant or empowering the people of America, nor did it the people of Russia or China.

In a way the foundations for capitalism and for communism have so far, never reached a governmental structure that worked in favor of the people.

The writings being open to interpretation, were used instead to serve politician’s access and griping of power.

From intellectual elite under Lenin to corporate interests in Trumps America (and predecessors).

The communist failures have always been framed as boogeymen, from the western – mostly capitalistic point of view, and vice versa.

In reality, the foundation of these 2 frameworks were too vague to be able to assert today that either of them has ever functioned as far as governments go.

It took 4 months back in 1787 to draft the first Constitution. We have 5 months, lets do it. Rebuild the foundation of the Constitution for the people today in the 21st century, in mind.

* Update 07/10/20 : this article explains everything, laying out why the age old arguments for maintaining the electoral college are no longer valid. Thank you Jesse Wegman for shedding the light for all Americans recounting a discourse (probably learned in school) that they forgot to fact check.
Lets not forget Amendment 2, a deeply rooted conviction causing too much grief in this country, needs to be addressed now while we are at it.

A hundred years ago, the majority of people’s main preoccupation in life wasn’t to go to the beach, to have a drink with friends at a bar, or dinning in a restaurant, manicure, movies, gym, partying etc… people’s main preoccupation wasn’t entertainment or distraction. What life meant to them, was something else. Build a family, shelter, have food, and build security against hardship. And still the case for most today, but what we fill our lives with, has taken a different collective aspiration, and maybe distracting from what is essential.

Not that some didn’t enjoy times of distraction back then, or seek them, but it wasn’t a priority of life. Sure the roaring 20’s happened in NYC after the Spanish flu and before the Great Depression. But that was mostly an expression of big cities. Because there, yes, priorities started to shift. Harder to build a life around traditional values of the time, society in big cities shift towards culture, socialisation and a sort of hedonistic pursuit after the war. Where’s the chicken, where’s the egg in an urban environment, I don’t know. But somehow a new way of life emerges. Was the Spanish flu pandemic already back then, a precursory test of nature on this new way of life?

Evidently, we have in a century, pushed that way of life to its extreme.

Seeing the picture of an oblivious crowd flocking to the beaches in Britain, packed as tight as can be in the middle of a pandemic, is saddening. For not its dramatic comparison to a herd of kamikaze, it at least says one thing. That everyone is willing to die rather than be taken away from the distractions, entertainment of life. This has become, in todays society the most essentiel meaning of life, so it seems.

For others, the followers, it may be that they rather hide from the truth, from reality because they cannot “take it”, they cannot fathom it, and revel in oblivion and delusion. That the pandemic doesn’t exist, or that somewhat they have super power, are invincible, maybe even are super heroes in the case of Americans tooting their right to freedom.

They cannot adapt, thinking or feeling that the pre-pandemic way of life, is the only thing they can perceive as normal life.

Once again, pandemic address our ability to adapt as a specie.

For sure our ways of life would not seem normal at all for anyone coming from an era prior to the 20th century. Should it matter? Should we let these people flocking to the beach know that the meaning of freedom doesn’t lie on the surface, the signifier, a symbolic picture of beachgoers, the choice made to act upon what one wants rather than need. That having perspective, and reaching real freedom may mean delaying instant gratification. That feeling free, isn’t the same as being free.

Or is that too deep, too dooming, too much for our fragile overprotected, worry free generations. Yes with an “S” as I’m counting at least 3 generations here who have had the luxury to live in a western world pretty much rid of trauma when you compare to the first half of the 20th century plagued by a pandemic, great depression and 2 world wars. For the generation living through these times, this was the normal way of life. Some of them still alive today, may also perceive – like the people of the past 20 centuries – that the 21st century, isn’t “normal” living.

Nature will always reward those who adapt the fastest. That is a constant through the evolution of humanity.

I would like to know why every damn day, even twice a day sometimes, I receive an email from Twitter with a Donald Trump tweet when I have NEVER ever absolutely NEVER followed his account. Can you give me an answer, Twitter?

This is the assumption :
The recent spike in positives cases in FL / TX etc.. right now is the result of their opening back business the first week of May (and not the result of Memorial day weekend), 1 month too early, despite the advisory to keep the lockdown in place until May 15th at least, June 8th in NYC. To top it off, in these states, without wearing masks and doing minimum to none social distancing.

The start of the spike in these states happened around June 21 perhaps a week prior. That is a 6 to 8 weeks window. Between the time these states reopened from a virtual free of cases state, as the whole country was on lockdown, to the start of the spike. And these states had very little cases to start with. Lets hope its a spike that gets addressed asap and doesn’t end up turning into a peak in 2 weeks.

If we apply that same assumption to the case of NYC, where the first ever wave of cases started spiking up the last week of March, peaking mid-April, then the point of no-return here must have been the first week of February, where many asymptomatic people may have unknowingly spread the virus throughout the city. And beyond.

With this assumption in mind, if NYC had locked down in January, or these now spiking states would have follow through on the lockdown for another month, in hindsight, we would probably be in better standing, like in Vietnam, South Korea, to name a few countries that have kept it under control, health wise at least. The economic impact being difficult to avoid all together.

So thats a lesson to learn. Once a single case is declared, is when we need to start implementing measures. And so far, it is what they seem to be doing in countries like China, New Zealand and a few others. We’ll see how we can sustain and implement this yo yo, schizophrenic push and pull, open close method on the long run, but for now it is the only way we know to avoid doing what we had to do again for so long here in NYC. Yes the economy will suffer. Yes it will be long and painful, socially, physiologically and psychologically…. It is just a matter of making it more bearable. We need to catch the one virus case “before” it spreads, at case zero. The “before” factor being the hard reality we are faced with this virus.

Looking into the future full opening up of business planned for phase 4 in NYC, if we apply the same timeframe to the protests that started June 1st for exemple, and in all logic and by nature goes against the principle of social distancing, despite wearing masks and having a bigger percentage of the population in NYC already being immune, we should see the spike of these protests, if it happens, around the last week of July. If we do, then we know that facemarks do not protect that much outdoors, hence not indoor either, and / or that our herd immunity being somewhere between 6-10% in NYC isn’t enough to protect the population.

If we don’t see a spike at the end of July, and we are betting on this, we first need to compare the difference between the protests in NYC where people were not socially distancing outdoors, but mostly wearing masks, and the people flocking at the beach in other states for Memorial day (at a week interval) where mask wearing was just not happening despite the lack of social distancing. We are measuring here the effectiveness of wearing masks outdoors, since social distancing was obviously not happening in either case.

We also need to compare the data between NYC protests and other big city protests (perhaps the ones in Minneapolis or LA) where people there were also mostly wearing masks, but unlike us, these cities among others, didn’t yet have as much built in herd immunity since they have been way less cases there until then.

The idea is to determine if wearing masks outdoors is a big factor in slowing down the spread or not. We are probably more sure that it does so indoor, even though we know it isn’t 100% protective. When in doubt, go the safe way, and wear the mask. We can only hope that they do, and the factor at play in NYC protests is more so masks then herd immunity. If not, its going to be painful until we get there, at this rate another 3 years if we don’t find a vaccine sooner.

Social distancing still seems like the safest bet, but obviously much harder to implement. Lockdown being the most intense form of social distancing.

* Update 07/01/20: this sums up the most important element to keep in mind when dealing with conclusions here, wise words from M. Osterholm in the Washington post:
“Unfortunately, we live with the elephant sign philosophy. I put a sign up in my front lawn three years ago to say ‘no elephants allowed.’ I have not had an elephant on my lawn in three years. So you think, see, it works! Epidemiology requires we think about much more than that.”

To be clear, here the elephant sign could be that because there has been no spike in cases attributed to the protests in NYC, we are lead to believe that wearing masks outdoors without social distancing is safe. Overlooking the fact that maybe the reason why the virus didn’t spread during the protests was that very few people if any, had the virus to begin with. Since NYC had just succeeded at not only flattening the curve but apparently also bringing down the amount of positive cases to virtually none after almost 3 months of intense lockdown.

Also, as new findings come and go each day, it seems that they are finding out that perhaps only 20% of people infected may infect others. And within this range, the “super spreaders” when combined with a large scale event where people greet, speak, sing, shout, hug, shake hands, and are rather physically close, thats where potentially many people got infected further spreading it to many different communities and locations at the onset of it all. With vs without masks, indoors vs outdoors, these are the factors we are trying to measure today, in contrast with these events happening months ago when the virus wasn’t officially declared, yet ramping around the world while no one was protected.

And so imagine if we all believe that wearing a mask outdoors is safe therefore allowing more and more outdoors gathering without social distancing, and a super spreader fresh out of Texas joins in a protest in NYC, but the reason why there wasn’t any resulting cases from the protest was because there was no infections to begin with, not because we were protected by masks, here we go. Exponential growth, we are back into full lockdown again. This would be a bad scenario, and what unfortunatly epidemiologists have no choice but to plan with in mind. Because we don’t know nearly enough yet about the ways this virus works, they ought to always proceed with caution. We can take bets, like right now they are taking the bet that wearing masks outdoors without necessarily social distancing is safe enough. But it is a huge guessing game, and if not the case, would be disastrous.

However even in such case today, on a more positive note, hopefully people continue to get tested regularly when attending forms of events where social distancing isn’t possible. Then, unlike at the start of the pandemic, they could self-isolate right away and we wouldn’t have such dire situation as we did back in April. This is everyone’s responsibility to assess the amount of risk we take on a daily base and to be strong enough instead of callous, to put up with the consequences. And hopefully, tests continue to remain free for everyone, and we can continue to mass produce them to have enough for everyone.

These bets apply to outdoor dining as well to some extend although the 6 feet distance is applied between parties tables. We could then evaluate outdoor concerts. For indoor measures, grocery stores, elevators and planes among others. The indoor bar / restaurant / club problem is obviously different and probably on hold indefinitely, since people can’t wear masks when drinking or eating.

I was never into that concept I still fail to understand. Because when i work, i try to focus so any noise, people coming and going, talking to you etc.. is a bit counter productive. Unless you are wearing noisecanceling headphones and in that case, why not just go to a silent place and forgo the headphones.

But if you mean socializing by “working” then it could be done online.

Stop calling this new generation “doomers” they are just realists.

Coming from France, where people are overly pessimistic and landing in America where traditionally people are overly optimistic, I can sense this new generation being right there in the middle, grounded in reality. They aren’t fooled by political lies, they don’t fall for the popularitiy contest of the herd, the bullies. They’ve been exposed to global thoughts, early on interacting (mind you, digitally) with people all around the world. They are grounded in reality. I feel sorry for the older generations who’ve been overly sheltered and cannot handle anything less than confort. Living in a rather uneventful world, for the better of course (boomers to millenials) but our great-grand parent’s generation, those who lived through the 2 world wars, the great depression and other turmoil that spilled incessantly through the first half of the 20th century would say: suck it up. The reality. Magical thinking doesn’t work. Harsh, but the resilience they have built within themselves throughout these times make them much more apt to sustain the psychological and economic hardship that this pandemic is bringing to us. Its not about you, you aren’t the only one affected, the whole world is. Each and every one of us. We can face the truth, make the best of what we have, life is worth living despite its condition. Take care of the other, you will find a new meaning in living. We take care of each other. You don’t need to get ahead of anyone or anything, all we have to do as a specie, is to defeat this virus and we will, as well as rebuilt a new society that can sustain this kind of test of nature. Nature is forcing us to reevaluate our humanity, and how we live amongst each other in a society. I don’t see no doom as long as we can adapt. But shielding ourselves from reality doesn’t help to confront the problems, and more importantly to find solutions.

If we hadn’t spent the last 3 months thinking everything is going to magically resolve itself super fast and without a dent in our economies, lives, psychological well being, a sort of common delusion by burying the problem and pretending it doesn’t exist, we would have actually start racking our brains for solutions to sustain the next 3 years – as health officials and other economic advisers had warned, its not doom, it just is, reality, the sooner we would have prepared, the sooner we would be apt to handle it and adapt. Instead, people get now this double wave negative cusp, where they all thought that after the lockdown, they’d be able to resume all as if nothing happened (thanks to evil loans!) but now they are faced with reality, that it won’t. A double downer. Shifting in isolation mode was hard enough. Seeing the positives sides of it would have helped better prepare psychologically for the next 3 years, and acknowledging that whatever business you ran, work you did, would have to shift (for most people) tremendously to be able to adapt through these times. And more importantly, realizing that our system was broken and unable to handle this, we could have spent 3 months trying to gather our effort to pressure our gouvernements into the right direction to face this test of nature. As the people and our needs. Instead, we let our gouvernent inject trillions into big corporations (as in there would be no unemployment resulting from this, cause you know, America always bounces back!) we let them waste millions on medicine that don’t work because a lunatic thought that his gut feelings were right, instead of injecting this money to the people who now more than ever needs to have access to free health care. And we let them, and perhaps you, inject trillions too speculating in a bubble stock market that is obviously ready to burst, with once again all this wasted money that could have been directed towards building, securing, organizing, protecting our future decade. I love magical thinking. But not when, clearly there are better ways to think. I can’t help to make parallels between the declines of empires, Rome or others and how it has, most certainly at all times occurred with this sort of magical thinking mindset.

Just take the restaurant and hospitality industry case to start with. Because everyone should be able to understand the basic equation. If they were even making a profit pre-pandemic at a 100% capacity / occupancy, then what happens when they have to slash their space and capacity to half in order to comply with social distancing? 3 solutions, either double the prices on the menu, half the price of their rent, or redenominate / devaluate the dollar. Simple enough. Not to implement, I mean in the amount of options we have. Yet everyone is just egger to reopen without thinking it through, taking out loans after loans in the hope that it will work out in the future.

Or take that great solution of dining outdoors. I love dining outdoors! Such a great thing. In the summer. So what happens now in the fall and winter? Or on rainy days? How can a restaurant that was even making a profit before all this can hope to be making one in the mist of this? Or did we all agree that businesses didn’t need to make a profit? As in Amazon, and other giant tech companies? How does it work? Its called, a speculative bubble and here, mindset. Who’s going to take the fall, is the million dollar question. Because once the funds dries out, the cliff is high. But I guess everyone is ready to take a plunge. Or are they? All these small and medium businesses we are luring into reopening, do they understand that no one will take a chance on them or help them when that happens? Free falling simply because they are out of luck. And that, in my understanding of business and economics, or even just as a human being, sounds just like a really bad business or life plan. Why try to get ahead, whats so appealing in the idea of having all this money when times like this shows us that all we really need is to sustain life in a equalitarian manner.

Everyone holding on for dear life to things as they used to be, is the definite wrong direction when these times are testing humanity on our capacity to adapt.

Lets go back to the restaurant exemple.
Solution 1 is to double the menu price. Already high prices pre-pandemic, restaurant eating is still a luxury for most aside from big city dwellers. But for the 40M newly unemployed people, that’s probably not going to work out at all, and for the rest of us probably not either because it will become out of reach. So that leaves the very rich only, to be able to entertain themselves at restaurants, bars and cafes. Will they be able to maximize the already half capacity business operation ? And for all of us here, goodbye for now, it was fun and delicious while we had the option.

Solution 2 to half the rent prices. Well that sounds good right, but how does the landlord owner deals with his share of mortgages, payments etc… to turn a profit as well? Should the government help at this level? Seems like it would be a welcomed help, but for one, it doesn’t look like they are remotely considering these kind of options, and 2, not sure how viable it is in the end, for either business models, the commercial space owner and the restaurant owner. Given that right now people are probably rejoicing finding confort in doing things “like we used to” but once again, with unemployment on the rise and the notion that social distancing is the fondation of our lives in the next 3 years, it is safe to assume that, just like solution 1, it is off to start on the wrong foot.

Solution 3 devaluate / redenominate the dollar. This makes the most sense to me. If $10 now equals $100 or other amount to all of us, its a form of reset that will surely create economic devastation, but at least it is controlled from the top of macro economics, and a uniform applying of this will reach through individuals, to small business to big corporations all at once solution. It could spare a lot of headache if we were willing to even consider such option from the get go to save us more grief. But I doubt.

Solution 4. A gouvernemental buyback of all small to medium businesses who need to sell because simply not viable in this social distancing time of a pandemic. Just those that operate with social contact as their fondation (think restaurant, bar, theater etc…) Wow thats crazy, but why not. If I were a restaurant owner, I would want to sell asap. Rather than spend the next 10 years trying to overcome the economic impact of these 3 pandemic years. But of course, no one would be crazy enough to buy such a business now. Or they would, because we live in a speculative model. To me, this is what needs to stop and what this test of nature is showing us to do.

Solution 5. We don’t need to social distance anymore because we all move around in a clear plastic bubble with oxygen tanks attached…. No need to change anything to our ways of business then. Wow

And here we go. The top white house economist just resigned today. “Mr Philipson is one of the few top administration officials who holds a Ph. D in economics.”…. “the lack of a top white house economist comes as the administration predicts a far rosier economic path than most independent economists have projected.”

Once we fit all the pieces together, a new world will arise

Back then during the 1918 flu pandemic or even longer time ago during the black plague, people didn’t work in offices or go to barber shops nor restaurants. At least in 1918, not at the scale as we do nowadays. Nor were there as many kids or young adults going to school and universities. So it was more manageable in terms of social distancing.

Today, its a cluster fuck, i don’t know how modern society can deal with it. We have to find solutions.

Working from home without wearing a mask all day, or going in the office wearing a mask all day. If given the choice, its a no brainier. At least for me. I have no problem wearing it when I need to, but if there is an alternate option, like working from home rather than from an office, where in NYC one has to brave the subway, the confined space of an elevator and sit next to several other masked people, I don’t think I would consider this a viable option, even for “only” 3 years.

For one, limit the in-office visit to meetings. Once a week or so. Same for school.

As for bars and restaurants, I guess the only solution is to lower the rent so that they can still operate and make a profit at half capacity. I don’t see any other alternative. Or obviously double their menu price but that seems like a doomed solution. It would be in normal times, let alone during the worse recession and perhaps depression ever.

For stores, i think the problem is less critical as people can choose to shop online or go in a store with a mask for 15 minutes or so. The time spent in a store is limited, and as long as stores enforce reduced traffic to maintain enough distance between people it should be doable. But obviously if they wanted to forgo of their space and rent, and retain employees to work from home and deal with shipping, it could be a better profit for them.

what a world, just trying to see the glass half full

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/cuba-coronavirus-success-contact-tracing-isolation

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/asia/coronavirus-vietnam-intl-hnk/index.html

 

Today I got some news, tested negative for the virus antibodies. Didn’t quite know what to do with that news at first.

So I thought for a while, what it meant to get tested, and what these results meant, even if temporary and not 100% reliable…

I guess the negative test result means for me that by social distancing, wearing a mask, washing hands and to some extend doing the lockdown, it is possible to dodge the thing. Maybe at some point I started to doubt that, thinking that no matter what, in this city, we were doomed to get it. And this is true too, but the goal is still to try delaying it, for the greater good.

And likewise, a lot of people are probably starting to believe that they cannot avoid it, hence letting their guards down. That is not a good thing.

This is why maybe it is also important to get tested, to get reassurance that we can avoid it and were on the right path taking precautions as a collective. There is of course an element of luck at play but that, for sure no one can control, just like life.

Despite the fact that test results aren’t 100% reliable either. But we got to start somewhere, trusting something, or else we will never get out of this bag of worms. Just like we all thought at the onset, and like they did in Cuba, mass testing does prove efficient.

When I walked in the testing place, it was just because I’d been meaning to do so for some time now but it was either not possible yet, and then when it was, the line was huge every time I walked past it. But last Thursday, there was no line, so I walked in. I wasn’t really sure anymore what was the point of getting tested, if basically the minute we walk out of there, we could potentially get infected by someone or something. Eventhough at the onset of the pandemic, all we could wish for was to get enough supplies for everyone to get speed tested so that we would know who needed to self-isolate right away, and the rest could just go about regular life. That was I believe, the hope we all had collectively.

As many others probably felt in this state of confusion, living in such a dense populated city as is NYC, the small part fatalist in me started to believe that no matter how careful I was to try to avoid getting the virus, no matter how hard I tried, I was bound to get it. And thats true to some extend, as I wrote at the start of all this, 70% of us will eventually get it in a 3 years time frame.

Another selfish part of me also started to wish I had antibodies, contracting the damn virus previously without noticing it, be done with it and resume life. Well I didn’t. And for a minute there, I wasn’t sure if I felt disappointed or happy.

It quickly became clear. I actually succeeded at keeping the virus at bay. That the collective efforts weren’t in vain. That doing the social distancing thing, wearing a mask and washing hands all the time does works, to some degree even in rat packed NYC and is totally worth it. And so I shall continue to do so without questioning it.

The will to pursue dodging the virus was never motivated by a fear of dying. Of course I don’t want to die, but my chances of dying from the virus are not much more than those of getting hit by a car. Not saying it can’t happen, this thing is so unpredictable for now, but so is life. At the same time, just like I’m not going to throw myself at a car just to test the odds, I’m not going to test the odds with the virus either. Not sure about these kid’s logic going for the “lets all try to get it” approach. I understand the feeling behind it, but the logic seems flawed. However for some people, the odds of dying from this virus are clearly way higher. As an individual, selfishly, I wanted to get it already. But for the greater good, I didn’t because the virus would be transmitted to others, maybe at risk, through me. So I was always and will continue taking a part in this collective magma of will to break the chain of spreading. Because if I get it, asymptomatic or not, I will potentially and unknowingly transmit it. And I can’t live with the idea of potentially affecting or killing someone else unknowingly. And whatever nature is testing us to do to prevent this, and by extension what our civic duty is requiring, isn’t really that difficult to do.

We’ve had 3 months of “training”. Because yes these practices require a bit of adaptation, as to not be forgetful, being aware that whenever you touch a door knob or package, come in contact with someone, these are all possible hitchhikes for the virus. And so you must wash your hands, make sure the mask is tight enough around your face else whats the point etc. But once we integrate all these processes, they become second nature. Its not difficult, it just takes practice until they become automatic, just like when learning an instrument for exemple. And so it becomes less daunting or annoying, depending how you look at it. We all (or at least those willing) had a chance to learn, and some like me, even had the luxury to do so without having the pressure of learning all these new habits while interacting with others by necessity hence exposing yourself and others to more risk.

Since the start of the lockdown, I’ve been wearing a mask from the moment I step out my door until I come back. I don’t even think of it anymore. Its really pointless to fight it, the sooner you get the habit in, the faster you adapt, the sooner you can start doing things without it being in the way. I go out, it comes on. I come back, wash hands, take it off, and yes wash hands again. I haven’t found a better solution yet, so the hand washing twice avoids the mask washing more often… Masks and packages go into a sort of “possibly contaminated” area. Far from the rest. Social distancing as much as possible while still keeping somewhat sane, and obeying these rules set for myself back in March at the start of all this. First rule being to wash hands every time i feel or need to touch my face. So would I be pissed if I got the virus after doing all this? Probably. But its not like we have a choice to not try. At least for me, as always, I give it everything. And if it fails, so be it. But I can sleep at night (well, this isn’t one more thing to keep me awake anyway) and I know I’ve done all I could to protect our humanity. Not just friends and family, but everyone.

Moreover, what it means is that the more people succeed at this new job we have, of breaking the spreading chain link, the more time doctors and medical field can find better treatments, and the least people die.

* Update 06/27/20: for more information about antibodies, read I’m a viral immunologist. Here’s what antibody tests for Covid-19 tell us (Opinion | The Guardian)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/