Day 142 Nat'l Emergency: Trump's Dilemmas

What if you hosted a party to celebrate the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine but nobody came?

Having invested so much time disparaging the reality of the pandemic, only to invest billions of taxpayer dollars to develop a vaccine at “warp speed,” Donald Trump will have to confront dilemmas mostly of his own making should a potential cure be discovered.

Having cultivated an image as a disruptor while encouraging similar behavior, including disbelief in government programs and pronouncements, among the legion of his followers, will Trump be able to turn those mavericks into compliant communal-minded sheep? 

What if a coronavirus vaccine is developed but not enough people take the shot to make it effective as a pandemic deterrent?

What if Trump’s past deprecation of science and medical expertise, including support for the anti-vax movement, leaves him with no moral persuasive powers to convince enough people to take the inoculation?

What if he were told by advisors he needed to publicly take the shot to rally the country behind the vaccine. Would Trump roll up his shirtsleeve and do it? Could he trick the public by getting a dummy shot, or would he fear a leak would expose his deception?

Would he have his wife and children and their families publicly inoculated? What about the White House staff and cabinet secretaries? Would he order them to take the shot?

A president is charged with safeguarding the nuclear bomb codes that could destroy the world. As this viral moment in time unfurled a president also had the power to help save the world from a virus that knows no boundaries to its ravaging impact. 

How sad that Trump has squandered opportunities to stem the transmission of the disease. How sad that Trump has championed false remedies. How sad that Trump has set the example that wearing a face mask is not necessary and definitely not mandatory. How sad that Trump has sown doubt about the medical and scientific communities’ integrity. How sad that in almost every public appearance Trump has dispensed lies, fabrications and misinformation. 

How sad that the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States exceeds 152,000 from more than 4.46 million confirmed cases. How sad that those numbers will continue to climb because of Trump’s ineptitude. 

Day 137 of Nat'l Emergency: Praying for Rain

Like the toothache that doesn’t hurt when you get to the dentist we have been stymied to discover if the repairs to our gutters and leaders have been effective.

It’s rained only once since we had the new rainfall channels installed 10 days ago. To be sure, the rain Wednesday night was intense. But we weren’t home to observe how the gutters and leaders performed. We had chosen that night to socially distance a dinner visit with friends.

It sprinkled Friday morning, not enough to even dampen the newspaper thrown onto the driveway. The longterm forecast for the next 10 days suggests sunshine except a 40% chance of rain next Tuesday and the following Monday.

In pre quarantine days we would exult in weather that fit our desire for outdoor activity. But those options are severely limited these days. No Garden Conservancy tours. No trips to the beach. Or to a friend’s pool. No outdoor festivals. Or flea markets. 

With temperatures hovering near and above 90 degrees with a dew point index an uncomfortable 60-plus, walking extensively outdoors, even on a shaded trail, is out of the question.

Confinement is not how Gilda and I anticipated spending this year. Scratched already have been trips to Washington with Shalom Yisrael guests, to Omaha to see our daughter’s family, to Colorado for a first cousins get together, to Massachusetts to see our son’s family, to Switzerland for a car tour with my brother and his wife, to Maryland for their oldest grandchild’s bat mitzvah, to Portugal for a bus tour.

On the local level we’ve missed out on plays from our subscriptions to Playwrights Horizons and Second Stage, countless dinner parties with friends at our home or theirs, hosting the Passover seder, and attendance at synagogue services and programs.

Zoom cannot replace those experiences.

There’s a special heart rending poignancy to crossing those activities out of my paper calendar that cannot be matched by deleting them from an electronic calendar on my iPhone. 

I know. My fatigue and disappointment with coronavirus life is no more extreme than what many or all of you have gone through. No one in my immediate and extended family has been infected.

At least I have this public blog to express my feelings. And for a change I am not ranting about Donald Trump.

Stay healthy. And pray for rain, enough to test our gutters and leaders. But no flooding. 

Day 136 Nat'l Emergency: Person of the Year Choices, Turkey Time Off, Jobs Off, School Time

Five months before Time magazine releases its Person of the Year issue it is safe to say there are three significant candidates whose image could grace the front cover: 

*George Floyd, whose cellphone-recorded death at the knee of a Minneapolis policeman sparked nationwide outrage and galvanized Black Lives Matter protests; 

*Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose calm Dutch uncle counsel on the coronavirus has soothed and informed a frightened and conflicted nation; 

*The embattled frontline healthcare worker, who has selflessly placed themself in danger to heal a sick country and comfort the dying in the absence of quarantined loved ones.

Even if he wins the presidency, Joe Biden would not be elevated to cover boy status. Not this year. 

Similarly, Donald Trump wouldn’t qualify even if he manages a comeback to secure a second term. 

Chief Justice John Roberts has received lots of ink for his high-wire role in shepherding the Supreme Court, but he, too, falls short in overall dominance of the year. 

For sure, the two main stories of 2020 have been the coronavirus with its worldwide impact on health and the economy, as well as international political repercussions, and the outpouring of protest and energy for racial equality after the killings of unarmed Blacks and actions by ordinary white citizens to physically and verbally assault minorities.

It’s About Time: More than a dozen years have passed since I called on retail chains to keep their stores closed on Thanksgiving so employees could spend time with their families instead of aiding in the pursuit of every last disposable dollar. Consumers, as well, would benefit from not running out to the store once dessert has been shoveled down their throat. 

My perch as editor and publisher of Chain Store Age is long gone, but it is pleasing to note that Walmart, the nation’s, nay, the world’s, largest retailer has decided it would not open Thanksgiving. Apparently, Walmart listened to the suggestion advanced by one of its employees in a letter to management.

“We know it’s been a trying year, and you’ve stepped up. We want you to enjoy the day at home with your loved ones,” John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart USA, wrote in a memo to employees. 

Fewer Jobs: Donald Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs if elected in 2016. How’s he doing?

Not so great. Though manufacturing jobs increased in the first two years of his presidency, the last two have been not so good. 

Compared to when he took the oath of office there are almost 300,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. Of course, the pandemic is a key factor, an excuse Trump will surely cite if challenged on his record. 

But as The New York Times pointed out, “U.S. factory output declined throughout 2019, as Mr. Trump’s trade war intensified, and it has dropped further this year, suggesting there is no boom in new American factories. Since peaking in mid-2019, corporate investment has  declined for three consecutive quarters. Total foreign direct investment in manufacturing was nearly one-third lower in the first three years of Mr. Trump’s tenure than it was in the final three years of President Barack Obama’s.

“Mr. Trump ostensibly fought his trade war on behalf of American manufacturing. But economists say it has actually been a drag on most U.S. factories, by increasing prices for components and inciting foreign retaliation.  It has also coincided with a plunge in Chinese investment in the United States to $5 billion in 2019, the lowest level since 2009, according to Rhodium Group, a research firm” (https://nyti.ms/2CClSib).

School Time? As part of his reelection strategy Trump is pushing for a September opening of schools. But evidence on the impact of bringing children back to classes where they could become infected, and then sending them home where they could transfer the coronavirus to other family members, is mixed (https://nyti.ms/2ZjbJj5). 

New research has shown that children under 10 years are not as susceptible, but transmission is more prevalent as student age hits double digits. If schools open before the general public has appropriately contained the pandemic, a rebound in cases could occur, as happened in Israel.  

Few dispute the benefit of having children resume classes. But just as most parents believe in inoculations to protect their offspring from childhood illnesses, most also would think twice about placing their children at risk with the added fear they could be exposing themselves and other family members, especially grandparents. 

Day 121 Nat'l Emergency: Disaster for Trump or the Country? The People Will Decide

The letter in Wednesday’s New York Times called the Trump presidency a “disaster, a record he can’t run on.”

I share the sentiment but disagree with the analysis.

One need only look to the Supreme Court and federal judicial appointments to recognize that for conservatives Trump has been a most successful president, defanging consumer and employee protections, undercutting Obamacare, dissolving the wall that separates church and state, providing religious cover for discrimination against women and minorities. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

Or one could look to a watering down of environmental protections to realize Trump has succeeded in poisoning our atmosphere, polluting our rivers and lifting safeguards on national lands, to know that Trump has handed big business successes they never imagined. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One could look at our frayed international relations to see Trump has succeeded in making America a shadow of its once dominant position in the world, just what the isolationists along with Russia and China hoped to achieve. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only reflect on the universal meaning of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address to comprehend that Trump has succeeded in pushing back against the twin drives for equality and tolerance for women and people of color to the joy of white supremacists. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only listen to the venom within political discourse to appreciate that Trump has succeeded in dehumanizing and demeaning political engagement, reducing it to an exchange of insults rather than ideas. Bullying vs. compromise. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only close one’s heart to the sorrow seeping through our land from Trump’s failure to act decisively in a timely manner to thwart the spread of the coronavirus, to accept Trump’s dismissal of science and medical expertise as a success against coastal elites. In his failure to express compassion for victims and their families, in his disdain for wearing a mask and shutting down schools and places of work, Trump not only places more importance on dollars over deaths but suggests a variation of his rebuke of John McCain, that he doesn’t like servicemen who become prisoners of war—he apparently doesn’t like anyone weak enough to succumb to COVID-19.  It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

Trump has brought the country to a tipping point.

It is said the only perfect vision is 20/20 hindsight. Four years ago one could only assume the worst based on his rhetoric.

Now, in 2020, Americans must choose if the trail Trump has led us on for four years deserves another four years. Or if the process of reconciliation can begin with a new president committed to our founding ideals no matter how imperfectly they have been realized in the past. 

Polls show Trump has support from less than 50% of the population. It is up to the majority to disavow Trump and his enablers in the House and Senate. Only the majority can turn Trump’s reelection campaign into a disaster—for him or for the country.

Day 104 of Nat'l Emergency: Father's Day Edition

During this time of coronavirus pandemic, Father’s Day is not being celebrated in our household the time honored way with visits with children and grandchildren (for that matter, Mother’s Day fell short as well). Neither is it possible to adhere to our custom of dining out at the preferred restaurant of the honored parent. 

The other day Gilda asked what I would like to do to celebrate. I’d like to be able to play poker with my buddies again, said I. That, too, is not happening anytime soon. 

The silver lining in that is that I have more silver lining my pockets than if the game took place every month. It’s a small consolation.

As for dinner, Gilda is baking fresh hamburger buns to caress her juicy hamburgers. She’s also making fresh potato salad. 

I hope everyone else’s Father’s Day dinner will be as lovingly prepared and delicious as mine.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Stepping outside one morning last week to pick up The New York Times from our driveway, I saw a bit of whimsy I had never witnessed in 36 years in our current home even though our yard is infested with Peters, Flopsies, Mopsies and Cottontails. Four young rabbits were playing a game of tag on our front lawn, scampering this way and that after the leader, not caring at all that I was taking in their playfulness.

The rabbits were clearly family and having fun. Their game of chase was not to be confused with squirrels or chipmunks running after each other. Those pursuits are clashes of territoriality, one animal brusquely shooing off an invader from his or her sphere of influence. 

Farmer McGregor—alias Gilda—spares no love for these creatures. She accuses them of eating her plants just before their flowers are to bloom. She has no proof, of course, though the rabbits do spend lots of time munching grass from our lawn. Guilt by association.

If it were up to me I would snare one and make it a house pet. Before they had kids Dan and Allison had two pet rabbits. Gilda has no intention of humoring my desire.

In case you’re wondering, rabbits are no longer classified as rodents. They are lagomorphs. Has to do with having four incisors compared to two in rodents. 

Promenade: We took a near four mile walk Thursday down Rosedale Avenue. We used to walk before COVID-19 hampered communal activities, but we’ve really picked up the pace since social distancing knocked out most other outdoor pastimes. 

Someone, I’m surmising a young girl and her family, positioned painted rocks on stone fences, at the foot of trees and on the base of a fire hydrant along the way. Each rock had an inspirational message. A turquoise painted rock said, “This will all blow over in time.” A yellow rock with a drawing of a bee intoned, “The bitter comes before the sweet.” Two flower illustrations under a bright yellow sun on a green background accompanied the saying, “Spring has sprung.”

Any passerby could not help but be cheered up. 

Nor could they be anything but dazzled by the life-size moose statue standing guard in the front yard of a recently renovated cottage. 

Camping Ground: Young Judea, our grandkids’ sleepaway summer camp, was cancelled, as most were in New York and New England.

Perfectly understandable given the caution proscribed in this age of coronavirus. Seriously disappointing to anyone who has relished the sleepaway camp experience.

Dagny was to have spent her first such adventure in July, joining Finley for his second season away from home. It also means Dan and Allison will not get to enjoy being empty nesters for an extended period for the first time in 10 years. Ah, well, there will always be next year.

With a little more planning, however, camps could have created a controlled environment, Gilda believes. If campers and staff were tested and screened before arrival in camp, and forbidden to leave the grounds, even for counselor days off, the camp could have been made into a virus sanctuary. Food and other deliveries could be controlled, much the way grocers receive shipments. And there would be no parent visiting day. 

Ah well, it’s too late for this summer, but as sports fans of losing teams are wont to say, “Wait till next year!”

Day 67 of Nat'l Emergency: Joe Misspeaks, Trump Stumbles Toward a New China Relationship

What should we make of Uncle Joe’s latest humdinger (latest being very transient and perhaps overtaken by a new faux pas by the time this gets posted).

Sure, the 77-year-old presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee last week mixed up statistics about the devastation of the coronavirus. Joe Biden said 85,000 people were out of work and millions had died. 

Poor Joe, his mouth and mind do not always work in sync. But who among us has not conflated statistics when making public, even personal, observations. 

Of course, we hold our politicians, especially those who seek the presidency, to a higher standard, at least if those pols are Democrats. 

Republicans, on the other hand, have long abandoned any fealty to facts if the spigot of wisdom is Donald Trump. They only care for truth if a Democrat speaks, much the same way they railed against budget deficits by Democrats with nary a word of dissent when Republican presidents catapulted the national debt to the stratosphere.

Though Biden’s misspeaks provide fodder for ridicule from the insulter-in-chief, they have also generated an undercurrent of belief that Democrats should dump him in favor of a younger, more verbally adept candidate who would be able to stand up to Trump during debates. 

My response is Democrats should not panic. While not a perfect candidate, Biden, by all thoughtful accounts, is the lesser of what many call evils. Would the public rather have a candidate who misaligns statistics about the number who are dead with the number who have lost jobs, or would it prefer an incumbent who tells people to swig some Clorox, or who disdains the advice of scientists not only on COVID-19 but on climate change and relaxes EPA rules that further endanger our citizens and planet? 

The election is more than five months away. Only political junkies are tuned in to every word Biden utters. As for Trump, we are forced to hear or read about his latest delusional ravings because the media focuses on them as he is president. Several studies have shown that the more he rants and raves, the more votes from Independents and Never Trump Republicans he is sending Biden’s way.

Consider Trump’s latest barrage against what he calls Obamagate. He wants the former president investigated and charged for what he says was a conspiracy to topple his presidency. A heinous crime, if true. But Justin A. Horwitz, in a Facebook post, posed an interesting question: “If the president has absolute immunity like Trump says, how can Obama be guilty of ‘crimes’ committed as president?”

As the Shakespearean saying goes, “Hoisted by one’s own petard!” (D’ya think Trump ever read “Hamlet?”)

Deuces Wild: There are two wild cards when it comes to the election. First, the status of COVID-19 infections and its impact on the economy. Second, our relationship with China.

Trump realizes he will be held responsible if business does not return to a semblance of normalcy with lots of people returning safely to work. He’s pushing for a quick return so five months from now voters will not hold him accountable for the loss of at least 100,000 lives because of his inaction in February and March to prepare the country for the pandemic.

China is a more vexing issue. The Donald thought he could sweet talk Xi Jinping into economic concessions. But the novel coronavirus outbreak shattered their bonhomie. Trump now is playing a blame, and race, game against the Chinese. 

A winning strategy might be to base his reelection on changing our relationship with China. China, not North Korea or Iran, is more of an existential threat to our way of life than any other country, even Russia, given our reliance on China for much of our consumer and healthcare products and even strategic technical and military equipment. 

But to change that relationship Trump must educate the American public and convince it that it is in their best interests to pay a little more for all the products that China produces cheaply for us. In addition,  U.S. companies must abandon their manufacturing plants in China and build them either in America or in countries that are not as competitive with us for world domination. They might also have to forego the Chinese consumer market which would sharply slow their growth rates. That wouldn’t sit well with too many farmers who export soy beans, hogs and other foodstuffs to China. 

If Trump had developed a rapport with more than just the hotheads who follow him blindly this strategy might work, but I doubt he could pull it off. Besides, he’d first have to convince Ivanka to give up her China trade.

Day 62 of Nat'l Emergency: What Dr. Fauci Might Have Said To Rand Paul

In my freecycling mind I imagine responses Dr. Anthony Fauci might have proffered to Senator Rand Paul during Tuesday’s hearing on the government’s actions to contain the coronavirus pandemic that already has claimed more than 83,000 lives. Paul advocated for lifting restrictions so commerce could be invigorated and children could go back to school. Fauci expressed caution lest the virus surge again. 

(For context, here’s their actual exchange, as reported by The Washington Post: 

Senator Paul: “So I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy. And as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.”

Dr. Fauci: “I have never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official…You use the word we should be humble about what we don’t know. And I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus. And we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children, because the more and more we learn, we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe — for example, right now children presenting with covid-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome. I think we better be careful if we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.”)

I imagined Dr. Fauci could have responded thusly: 

“Senator Paul, I know you have a medical degree obtained in 1993. You are a doctor of ophthalmology. And I would defer my judgment on matters affecting vision to your expertise. My degree came in 1966. Since 1968, more than 50 years ago, I have worked at the NIH studying infectious diseases. I trust the Senate and other branches of our government would defer their “expertise” on infectious diseases to mine.”   

Perhaps a more delicate response might have included a suggestion to read or reread Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.” Or, if reading is too challenging, maybe go back and watch “Jaws.” Both stories reveal how economic considerations undermine scientific concerns to the detriment of society.

Fauci could have looked Paul in the eye and said, “Of course, senator, your record of putting profits over your constituents’ health is obvious from your support of the coal and tobacco industries. Crucial though they be to Kentucky’s economy they are deadly not only to its citizens but to the rest of America and indeed the world.”  

To be sure, Fauci couldn’t have looked Paul directly in the eye as he was self-quarantining at home because of possible exposure to a member of the White House staff who tested positive, while Paul, recovered from a bout of the virus, flaunted his presumed newly obtained immunity by not wearing a mask as he sat in the Senate hearing room.

Alas, Dr. Fauci is a gentleman, well skilled in the art of Washington diplomacy-speak. You’d never guess he grew up in New York City. Brooklyn, no less! Fuhgeddaboudit!!!

Day 57 of Nat'l Emergency: V-E Day and the Virus

Today is V-E Day. Victory in Europe 75 years ago, May 8, 1945. 

No doubt, like many of you sheltering in place, to pass the time I am making my way through televised series, some new, some old. Maybe I will finally see “The Wire” (highly recommended by our son Dan). And “Game of Thrones.” I just finished “Band of Brothers,” the 2001 HBO 10-part series relating the factual experiences of Easy Company, 506th Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division, U.S. Army, during World War II.

At the end of the fifth episode Easy Company was marching into Bastogne during the pivotal Battle of the Bulge at the end of December 1944. Confronting a last ditch effort by the Germans, Easy Company was under-equipped. The soldiers lacked sufficient ammunition and warm clothing.

From my previous extensive viewing of war movies I knew how the fight to control the strategic crossroads town ended. I knew how the Battle of the Bulge ended. I knew how the war ended. 

Yet the story of the Band of Brothers soldiers of Easy Company, compiled in the acclaimed book of the same name by historian and author Stephen Ambrose through interviews with survivors as well as journals and letters from the soldiers, is gripping and emotional.

I’ve seen lots of war movies depicting practically every conflict joined by American servicemen on land, sea and air, from colonial times till the present. Even into the future, if we are to believe sci-fi imaginations.

Having avoided service during the Vietnam War, I have no first hand experience by which to gauge the special bonding of a platoon unit and the trauma of combat. Viewing choreographed battle scenes in France and Belgium, I feared for the safety, the lives, of individual soldiers on my TV screen. But my anxiety, palpable as it was, could not match the reality of what those young men, the real soldiers of Easy Company, actually underwent.

At the end of episode eight of “Band of Brothers,” as the surviving members of Easy Company are being transported away from the front lines for some well deserved rest and relaxation, a voice-over narrator contrasted their experience with an American home front emerging from shortages and restrictions. Life in the States was returning to normal.

Few civilians, the narrator said, could identify with “the price paid by soldiers in terror, agony and bloodshed” during the Battle of the Bulge and the siege of Bastogne. 

I wonder now about the state of our nation’s backbone. For sure we are in the midst of an extraordinary trauma. More than 76,000 lives lost, with no reliably accurate forecast for how high the toll of death may rise.

Jobs have been lost at a level not seen since the Great Depression when few of our current fellow countrymen and women were alive.

Family wealth, if one can employ that word for the millions who live paycheck to paycheck, has been wiped out for many.

To help stem the spread of the new coronavirus we have been asked to shelter in place and social distance.

But, after less than two months, significant portions of society are rebelling against quarantine. I cannot imagine how they would have fared if they lived in occupied Europe during the war. If they had been Jewish and had to hide in cramped quarters for years to stay alive, with little food or freedom to walk outdoors or entertain oneself with no radio or other media.

I get it. People want to work. They want to eat in restaurants. Shop in stores. Go to the gym. Get their hair cut, their nails trimmed. They don’t want to wear masks. They want to hug their friends, their extended family.

Do they not realize they are placing personal desires over the welfare of the community? My immediate reaction was to think of them as extremely selfish and self-centered. 

Then again, I am fortunate not to have to worry about a mortgage or retirement income. I don’t have young children to feed or school at home. 

What to me are inconveniences of social distancing are traumatic life changes for those younger than my three score and eleven years. 

And yet, I find deep resonance in what New York governor Andrew Cuomo says about the need to balance re-opening the economy against the value of a life. I am not ready, as some politicians have advanced, to jettison older, frailer people so that the next generation can go to the mall, movie theater or restaurant. In this argument, I am a right-to-lifer, which makes me wonder why I have not heard all religious leaders and anti-abortionists loudly proclaim allegiance to shelter at home and social distancing directives. 

Even while we were fighting Nazi tyranny pacifists spoke out against war. They weren’t unpatriotic. They just had a different understanding of what support for our country’s principles meant. 

We are engaged in an all-out war against COVID-19. It is a stealth enemy that has shown it can strike even inside a well-shielded (we would hope) White House. Nearly 77,000 have already died in America from the coronavirus. We are on a trajectory to soon match the number of servicemen the Department of Defense says were killed in action in Europe from D-Day through May 8—104,812. 

Perhaps most troubling is that so many needn’t have died. A new study, led by Princeton Medical Center, asserts that if orders to stay-at-home and wear face masks when outside had been issued four days earlier the number of deaths could have been halved (https://mol.im/a/8301305).

In actual combat, no matter how hard commanders try to limit casualties, they know deaths will happen. COVID-19 is a killer. We couldn’t change that. But competent leadership based on science and accepted medical practice could have reduced the terror, agony and loss of life so many families have experienced these last few months. 

Day 49 of Nat'l Emergency: Random Thoughts on COVID-19

April ends tonight, one third of 2020 is finis, but the word of the year, according to my wife Gilda, will be #socialdistancing.

While on the subject of end of year accolades, the current choice for Time magazine’s Man of the Year has to be Dr. Anthony Fauci as a representative of the scientific and healthcare communities fighting COVID-19 based on science and facts, not pseudo science and mindless hunches.

Garden Party: Gilda is a frustrated woman. Not that way—get your mind out of the gutter!

After a mild, mostly sunny March that allowed her to get a head start on her flower and vegetable garden, Gilda has been stymied by a cold, wet April. Every day she checks the weather, multiple times, looking, praying actually, for a break when she could put seedlings out overnight without fear they will wither from the chill. 

Nurseries haven’t ordered vegetable plants because of the cold. What started out as an auspiciously good spring has turned into a downer. 

Zoom Golly Golly: Like most houses of worship our synagogue has suspended in-house services during the coronavirus pandemic. Lay and clerical leadership are now discussing implementation of Zoom-enabled virtual services, normally a non-starter in Jewish circles because of the requirement for a physical presence in one place of 10 adults for several vital prayers including recitation of mourner’s kaddish. 

Our ritual committee, of which I am a member, met by Zoom Tuesday night to begin the process of initiating a virtual sabbath service. It will happen, but only after technical issues are resolved, prompting me to send a note to our current and former rabbis wondering if in addition to conferring a divinity degree to new rabbis the Jewish Theological Seminary might also need to confer a degree in computer science. 

No Sweat: Even if you’re not a sports fan you no doubt know that professional sports leagues and their college counterparts have shut down in fear that fans packed together in stands would be excessively vulnerable to virus transmission. Athletes, as well, had to be concerned their sweaty contact and close proximity to each other could be a link to infection. 

It was not the first time athletes harbored those same worries. After Magic Johnson revealed he tested positive for HIV in 1991, basketball players wondered if his sweat, and that of any other player who had not divulged their HIV+ status, could infect them. 

They needn’t fear. One of the first studies Gilda ran as the then research coordinator of the Division of Infectious Diseases at NY Medical College/Westchester County Medical Center found that HIV could not be passed by sweat. 

Johnson could continue his Hall of Fame career. He became the face of HIV and its successful treatment. 

Spitting Distance: Spittle, on the other hand, is most definitely a carrier of coronavirus. For that reason I was intrigued by a story in Wednesday’s New York Times that a small theater in Pittsfield, Mass., the Barrington Stage Company, is planning a scaled down summer program.

It will remove 70% of the 520 seats in its main theater. All ticket holders will be required to wear masks (https://nyti.ms/2yMZZe3). 

I was interested in the story because of my experience at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan almost seven years ago. 

Sitting in the first row I was shocked by one of the actors standing on the lip of the stage right before me. He was particularly energetic in his vocalizations. He projected more than just words. Had I an umbrella at hand I might have opened it up in self defense. His “reach,” so to speak, exceeded six feet. 

It’s an unfortunate byproduct of elocution for some actors. Indeed, in one scene where the sprayer and another thespian held drinks as they stood face to face, I observed the second actor place his right hand across the mouth of his glass to shield it from any more liquid enhancing his drink.

Many a time I’ve done the same—cover my glass, that is—at parties and cocktail receptions. Who knew I was in COVID-19 social protocol training all those years. 

Day 40 of Nat'l Emergency: Turning Governors Into Actuaries

One of the benefits of keeping a kosher home is our immunity to product scarcity now that the new coronavirus has temporarily closed down the Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota that processes five percent of the nation’s pork products. Smithfield meat processing facilities in Missouri and Wisconsin also have been shut down. Another five percent came off line when three JBS meat and pork processing plants shuttered indefinitely because of COVID-19 infestations among workers.

Outside our home I am not strictly kosher, though I try to avoid foods that outright say they are pork or ham. I fudge the truth when it comes to wontons, sweet sausage topping for pizza and the occasional side dish of bacon. Don’t ask me to justify my choices. They cannot be rationalized.

Kosher adherents shouldn’t feel holier-than-thou to pork eaters affected by plant shutdowns. Empire Kosher Poultry closed a Pennsylvania chicken plant because workers have been infected.

One cannot confine blame to the plants, kosher or not, nor the workers. Workers commonly live in perfect breeding grounds for virus transmission—multiple beings to a residence in densely populated areas with less than optimum sanitary conditions. Workers often do not have health insurance nor do they have sufficient cash reserves to stay home from work. No matter how a plant might try to safeguard its employees it is inevitable that contamination will surface at some point, especially since workers cannot maintain safe distances from each other in many facilities.

It can be expected that similar exposures will occur in all types of workplaces across the country if governors lift shelter in place orders to regenerate economic activity, as aggressive protestors have been demanding over the last week, with support from Donald Trump. 

We will be turning governors into actuaries, weighing the number of acceptable deaths against the financial benefit of business as usual. We are pitting love of cold cash against the more-than-common cold. 

In whom shall our governors place their and our trust, in Trump-aligned corporals of industry or in teams of infectious disease epidemiologists who warn that a premature lifting of quarantine measures could boomerang into a second wave of epidemic? 

We already have examples of businesses trumping safety. Car companies and the airline industry in the past dispensed with product recalls for inexpensive individual safety fixes—but costly if done systemwide. They chose to accept some injuries and even fatalities from crashes, and pay out reparations but only if successfully sued. 

They followed what actuaries do—they weigh the financial consequences of risk. In deciding when and how much to reopen their states to commerce, governors will be forced to risk the lives of their respective citizens against the possibility of a resurgence of the pandemic. 

Let’s hope intelligent reason prevails.  

In Case You Didn’t Know: In an example of truth being stranger than fiction, guess who owns Smithfield Foods? The Chinese. Smithfield sold out back in 2013 (https://mol.im/a/8223423). JBS, by the way, is owned by a Brazilian company. 

Spoiler Alert: Lest we forget, in our obsessive-compulsive washing of hands to destroy all germs, it was bacteria that killed the alien invaders in H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds.”

Common Sense: Aside from respiratory deficiency, does the coronavirus also affect one’s intelligence, at least as it pertains to members of the Trump administration?

An example of brain lock came last week from presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway. She asserted COVID-19 was named thusly after 18 other viruses had been exposed to mankind. Her point was the prior 18 viruses didn’t trigger a pandemic and economic catastrophe so why have we locked down for this viral iteration? 

She was arguing in support of Trump’s push to speedily reopen the country’s slammed economy despite warnings from medical experts of insufficient capacity to safely monitor the spread of the disease.

You can’t fault her for trying, but you can chastise her accuracy. COVID is an acronym for COronaVIrus Disease. The 19 refers to 2019, the year when it was identified. It does not mean there were 18 prior viruses.

All of a sudden Republicans may be seeing the light. They are aghast that a hands-off-business government posture that encouraged profits at all costs including shipping manufacturing jobs overseas while failing to protect American workers was bad policy. Or so it seems if a New York Times Op-Ed from Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is any indication. Rubio advocates for “rebuilding a more productive and pro-worker economy” (https://nyti.ms/2VITjFw). 

Rubio in the past has said quite a few progressive ideas, but when it has come down to voting he has hewn to the Trump line.