Two of my oldest friends live on and run a vineyard on the Delaware River in New Jersey called Villa Milagro. I have delighted in watching Steve's and Audrey's modest slice of paradise grow and green over the last two decades. Although they don't entertain overnight guests from the public, they frequently have friends and family by; such a stay at the Miracle House is a retreat into repletion and quietude, one that I seem never to take advantage of as often as I'd like. The proprietors, however, are almost ceaselessly active in their efforts to care for their vines and their workers, refine their product, expand their business, and enrich their quality of life. To visit their farm is like taking a summer afternoon nap beneath a hive of benevolent and generous honeybees: the hum of productivity floats through your dreams, carrying you gently off like a magic carpet. This piece is dedicated to my restlessly loving friends.
This was initially conceived during my last stay with Steve and Audrey, sitting up late in their dining room while the rest of the house was asleep. While I love asymmetrical time signatures, I often struggle to write for them in ways that sound natural; I was very pleased with how perfectly this 5/4 time expressed the sense of graceful busyness that I often feel at Villa Milagro. The piece was constructed on four five-note runs, introduced and repeated by the piano. I used them a little like tone rows, where each run defined the allowed notes in the four measure section in which it plays. Given that the runs have only five pitches, building chords was challenging and provided opportunity for some fun experimentation.
The instrumentation arose organically as well, but possibly more intuitively; I selected the sounds I heard in my mind as I wrote. I have not written exclusively for non-electronic ensemble in quite a while, so the fully "acoustic" voices surprised me, even as it seemed right. Indeed, as I was tweaking the final mix, I found myself visualizing the musicians on stage, with the piano and glockenspiel on the left, alto flute and oboe on the right, and the women's choir centered behind, an image that supported the balance I tried to strike.
I am still in the midst of a larger project -- a collection of works for viola -- that I've been struggling with somewhat and this piece initially seemed like a distraction from that. In fact, I think it was, but one that turned out to be as welcome as it was unexpected: I feel reconnected to the juice of inspiration and play that is both the source of and reason for my music making. And, while my productivity overall has been slowed by our current shared stressor, I can feel myself re-engaging in the viola project like returning home after a renewing visit with friends.
Monday, March 30, 2020
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Days of the Virus: The Wait
By the end of the first week of quarantine, my family and I had handled and set up most of what was needed for the near term. Both my and my wife's businesses had been ported to online-only, as had her and the girls' schools, as well as my mom's social life. The girls were each settled into their respective spots to ride out the pandemic, distant from us but safe. Delivery of food and other necessities seemed reliable enough. It felt strange, but it all seemed to be working and we had most of the details sorted. We felt ready as we could be.
Sitting inside our bubble of preparedness, watching the numbers climb, it seemed to me that any day now we would be overwhelmed by stories of hospitals swamped with patients and stacks of bodies exuding viruses, inner cities collapsed into riots, governments paralyzed as leaders fall to the disease, and the sick and uninfected alike plunged into poverty. I looked out to the horizon and could see the tsunami rolling toward our shore.
Except that this week has not been like that. Unquestionably, the news has been terrible: we're now over 100,000 cases and nearly 1,700 deaths nationally and some hospitals in New York City, the most affected region, are close to capacity. The economy has taken a hit as this week's number of newly unemployed leaves all other records in the dust and the federal government's ineffectuality continues. But these numbers, while horrifying, are not yet overwhelming; in a country of 330,000,000 people, less than two thousand deaths means only a small fraction of us will know anyone who's been killed by the disease and even 100K cases means that, although I personally know of one person who has tested positive, I suspect most folks still don't.
This week, I felt a gap between the relative mundanity of my day-to-day life and the sense that a tidal wave hung over it, ready to flood everything at any moment. After the press of the previous week to get everything working and everyone settled into safety, life has seemed oddly quiet, even as we watched the pandemic grow. I think that there is an emotional-fueled expectation that the storm will begin as soon as you close the shelter door, but that's not how it works if one has attended to the signs and gotten into the shelter in a timely way. The storm moves how a storm moves.
And the COVID-19 pandemic is moving how a pandemic moves. It is nonlinear, exponential -- but it's not magic. It can't go from infecting a few hundred people to hundreds of thousands overnight (if it did, the story would have been entirely different from the start). This week we've watched the number of cases triple in Maryland since last Sunday, which is a frightening rate, but it's still a small fraction of the people living here.
Thus this paradoxical experience of seeing the tidal wave arching over our heads* but yet it moves more slowly than an hour hand. We look up and can see the sun through the water, refracted light scattering strangely, and know that disaster is upon us and that we are as prepared as we can be. And yet we still breath, the birds still twitter and court in the arriving spring, the magnolias blossom and litter the ground with their gentle and generous petals, and children pass the days playing in the shadow of the tsunami.
*Yes, I know tsunamis don't actually do that. Work with me here.
Sitting inside our bubble of preparedness, watching the numbers climb, it seemed to me that any day now we would be overwhelmed by stories of hospitals swamped with patients and stacks of bodies exuding viruses, inner cities collapsed into riots, governments paralyzed as leaders fall to the disease, and the sick and uninfected alike plunged into poverty. I looked out to the horizon and could see the tsunami rolling toward our shore.
Except that this week has not been like that. Unquestionably, the news has been terrible: we're now over 100,000 cases and nearly 1,700 deaths nationally and some hospitals in New York City, the most affected region, are close to capacity. The economy has taken a hit as this week's number of newly unemployed leaves all other records in the dust and the federal government's ineffectuality continues. But these numbers, while horrifying, are not yet overwhelming; in a country of 330,000,000 people, less than two thousand deaths means only a small fraction of us will know anyone who's been killed by the disease and even 100K cases means that, although I personally know of one person who has tested positive, I suspect most folks still don't.
This week, I felt a gap between the relative mundanity of my day-to-day life and the sense that a tidal wave hung over it, ready to flood everything at any moment. After the press of the previous week to get everything working and everyone settled into safety, life has seemed oddly quiet, even as we watched the pandemic grow. I think that there is an emotional-fueled expectation that the storm will begin as soon as you close the shelter door, but that's not how it works if one has attended to the signs and gotten into the shelter in a timely way. The storm moves how a storm moves.
And the COVID-19 pandemic is moving how a pandemic moves. It is nonlinear, exponential -- but it's not magic. It can't go from infecting a few hundred people to hundreds of thousands overnight (if it did, the story would have been entirely different from the start). This week we've watched the number of cases triple in Maryland since last Sunday, which is a frightening rate, but it's still a small fraction of the people living here.
Thus this paradoxical experience of seeing the tidal wave arching over our heads* but yet it moves more slowly than an hour hand. We look up and can see the sun through the water, refracted light scattering strangely, and know that disaster is upon us and that we are as prepared as we can be. And yet we still breath, the birds still twitter and court in the arriving spring, the magnolias blossom and litter the ground with their gentle and generous petals, and children pass the days playing in the shadow of the tsunami.
*Yes, I know tsunamis don't actually do that. Work with me here.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Days of the Virus: Creativity (and Not)
It's not a new thing for me to feel torn between the relaxation of sitting down at my DAW or picking up my viola and creating anything from bizarre noises to (hopefully) transporting music and the relaxation of sitting next to my wife on our couch and taking in a movie (or, let's be honest, bingeing on some series on Netflix). No, that is not at all a problem unique to quarantine. Yet, for some reason, it has seemed more challenging recently than usual.
I think part of it is that the stresses of setting up to work from home and getting my daughter's settled into their own quarantines (or worrying about them when someone else is helping them do it) and the almost inescapable fire hose of bad news has simply left me more drained at the end of each day, such that I often could do little other than be a couch potato. And it's typically the case that my creative projects suffer when I end the day feeling really drained.
This is understandable, but also moderately frustrating. Prior to the outbreak, I had been working on an all-viola album, something I anticipated would take me most of this year to do, but that I felt moderately optimistic that I could complete. Suddenly, I found myself with next to no patience nor even physical strength for practicing. In the last few weeks, most of the work that I've done -- which is little -- has been on the computer, transcribing pieces, experimenting with effects, etc. I feel disappointed, even as I admit how drained I am.
Yet, it's hard to get too worked up about it, given how fortunate my circumstances are. So far, anyway, the evidence is that my family will be able to ride this out fairly safely. My wife and mother and I have little need to leave our house and are all good at keeping our risk low when we do. Our daughters are safe and in good hands. My wife and I can make our livings from home and my mother's savings are likely to be robust in the long run to the short-term ups and downs of the economy. Hardly an hour passes when I don't feel momentarily gobsmacked at our good luck, especially when it was not long ago at all that we were much more vulnerable.
Many of the headlines and memes I see these days are variations on the theme of having suddenly too much time. That is definitely not my problem. For better or worse, I need to work at least as hard as I usually do to make time to create. On the whole, I think I'm doing okay, my predisposition to disappointment notwithstanding. I may or may not bring my auralization of a collection of viola works into reality by 2021, but I haven't quit on it. I have other satisfying side projects, too, to engage in, not the least of which is this blog. The balance of work, family, and creative time is an unstable Lagrange point, requiring constant tweaking and course corrections, as small factors have unpredictably large impacts on the system. Twas ever thus.
I think part of it is that the stresses of setting up to work from home and getting my daughter's settled into their own quarantines (or worrying about them when someone else is helping them do it) and the almost inescapable fire hose of bad news has simply left me more drained at the end of each day, such that I often could do little other than be a couch potato. And it's typically the case that my creative projects suffer when I end the day feeling really drained.
This is understandable, but also moderately frustrating. Prior to the outbreak, I had been working on an all-viola album, something I anticipated would take me most of this year to do, but that I felt moderately optimistic that I could complete. Suddenly, I found myself with next to no patience nor even physical strength for practicing. In the last few weeks, most of the work that I've done -- which is little -- has been on the computer, transcribing pieces, experimenting with effects, etc. I feel disappointed, even as I admit how drained I am.
Yet, it's hard to get too worked up about it, given how fortunate my circumstances are. So far, anyway, the evidence is that my family will be able to ride this out fairly safely. My wife and mother and I have little need to leave our house and are all good at keeping our risk low when we do. Our daughters are safe and in good hands. My wife and I can make our livings from home and my mother's savings are likely to be robust in the long run to the short-term ups and downs of the economy. Hardly an hour passes when I don't feel momentarily gobsmacked at our good luck, especially when it was not long ago at all that we were much more vulnerable.
Many of the headlines and memes I see these days are variations on the theme of having suddenly too much time. That is definitely not my problem. For better or worse, I need to work at least as hard as I usually do to make time to create. On the whole, I think I'm doing okay, my predisposition to disappointment notwithstanding. I may or may not bring my auralization of a collection of viola works into reality by 2021, but I haven't quit on it. I have other satisfying side projects, too, to engage in, not the least of which is this blog. The balance of work, family, and creative time is an unstable Lagrange point, requiring constant tweaking and course corrections, as small factors have unpredictably large impacts on the system. Twas ever thus.
Days of the Virus: Week Two
Today marks the beginning of the second week of quarantine for my family and me. The most striking thing about that is two things: how dramatically things changed in that time and how quickly it became the new normal.
In the last week, the number of cases of COVID-19 has grown an order of magnitude: from a few dozen cases to nearly 250 in Maryland and from ~3,000 to nearly 33,000 nationwide*. Some state and local governments appear to be taking the situation seriously and are responding as proactively as possible, given the late start, while the Federal government's responses continue to range from impotent to nonsensical. At the beginning of the week, droves of young immortals flooded beaches and bars as spring break erupted; this weekend it seems that at least some of them have been chastened, although I presume it's too little too late.
My cul-de-sac has been filled with cars and children playing and people walking their dogs; it appears everyone is either out of work or working from home (although I haven't actually asked, as my relationships with my neighbors has been limited to friendly waves and an occasional respectful note asking them not to park in front of our house). Normally, a drone shot of my circle would clearly indicate whether the photo was taken on a weekday or a weekend, but no more; every day is the same, with the only changes the occasional delivery van popping by.
I've been conducting therapy via videoconference since Saturday the 14th. Patients' responses to the transition ranged mostly from grateful to tolerant and everyone who took the plunge expressed surprise at how transparent it becomes even a few minutes into the session, rather like getting lost in the screen at the movies. The first week was a challenge for me, though, for two reasons: setup meant scheduling extra time outside of patients' sessions to get the system tested with each person (then there was the snafu with my original platform, prompting a last-minute port) and, unexpectedly, my desk chair proved to be problematic after an hour or two of sitting in it. This week however, neither of these should be an issue, as the former was a front-end problem now resolved and the latter was replaced by my office chair 💖 gratefully retrieved today.
By Thursday, it actually started to feel natural to sit at the computer waiting for patients to log on, to be able to replenish my drink at the end of a session simply by walking downstairs (and saying hello to my wife and mother while I'm there), to disassemble my "office" at the end of the day and return my music studio to its natural state -- and to scan the headlines in the morning and the evening to see what fresh, unforeseen horrors have arisen and how many lives have fallen since my last scan.
Still, a week is nothing. I believe we are very much at the leading edge of the pandemic here in the US. The first 20, 50, even 70 miles of a cycling century, if you've trained well, feel like a breeze -- "I could do this all day!" I've thought to myself almost every time. It's miles 85 and up that are the the hard part -- and we don't actually know how many miles we have to go.
Pace yourself.
In the last week, the number of cases of COVID-19 has grown an order of magnitude: from a few dozen cases to nearly 250 in Maryland and from ~3,000 to nearly 33,000 nationwide*. Some state and local governments appear to be taking the situation seriously and are responding as proactively as possible, given the late start, while the Federal government's responses continue to range from impotent to nonsensical. At the beginning of the week, droves of young immortals flooded beaches and bars as spring break erupted; this weekend it seems that at least some of them have been chastened, although I presume it's too little too late.
My cul-de-sac has been filled with cars and children playing and people walking their dogs; it appears everyone is either out of work or working from home (although I haven't actually asked, as my relationships with my neighbors has been limited to friendly waves and an occasional respectful note asking them not to park in front of our house). Normally, a drone shot of my circle would clearly indicate whether the photo was taken on a weekday or a weekend, but no more; every day is the same, with the only changes the occasional delivery van popping by.
I've been conducting therapy via videoconference since Saturday the 14th. Patients' responses to the transition ranged mostly from grateful to tolerant and everyone who took the plunge expressed surprise at how transparent it becomes even a few minutes into the session, rather like getting lost in the screen at the movies. The first week was a challenge for me, though, for two reasons: setup meant scheduling extra time outside of patients' sessions to get the system tested with each person (then there was the snafu with my original platform, prompting a last-minute port) and, unexpectedly, my desk chair proved to be problematic after an hour or two of sitting in it. This week however, neither of these should be an issue, as the former was a front-end problem now resolved and the latter was replaced by my office chair 💖 gratefully retrieved today.
By Thursday, it actually started to feel natural to sit at the computer waiting for patients to log on, to be able to replenish my drink at the end of a session simply by walking downstairs (and saying hello to my wife and mother while I'm there), to disassemble my "office" at the end of the day and return my music studio to its natural state -- and to scan the headlines in the morning and the evening to see what fresh, unforeseen horrors have arisen and how many lives have fallen since my last scan.
Still, a week is nothing. I believe we are very much at the leading edge of the pandemic here in the US. The first 20, 50, even 70 miles of a cycling century, if you've trained well, feel like a breeze -- "I could do this all day!" I've thought to myself almost every time. It's miles 85 and up that are the the hard part -- and we don't actually know how many miles we have to go.
Pace yourself.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Days of the Virus: Random Marks
This is a place where I will put some more or less stream-of-consciousness thoughts or notes as they arise.
- First day of (effective) quarantine: March 14, 2020, starting about 4pm.
- The last day of quarantine was April 30, 2021, ending about 4:30pm.
- Etymology of the word "quarantine": The term comes from the Italian "quarantena" or 40 days, which was the length of time passengers on ships arriving in the Venetian harbor had to wait to disembark during the Black Plague.
- The R0 of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19, a.k.a., the novel coronavirus) has been estimated to be between 1.4 and 3.9, with best estimates around 2.2. That means that, on average, a person who is inoculated with the virus will pass it on to at least two other people.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Days of the Virus: The Best of Times And...
In my post on Saturday, I mentioned how much this reminded me of when Hurricane Andrew went through Dade County. It turns out, it reminded someone else of that, as well: Bryan Norcross, a meteorologist who was a high profile local figure in the lead up to the storm then. He posted this useful reflection recently. It was validating, as well as nostalgic, to hear his thoughts and comparison of our current national emergency to the disaster in South Florida in 1992. It was also encouraging in that he emphasized our collective capacities, something I remember from the days immediately following the storm: neighbors who had previously been strangers were pooling resources to help folks repair damaged homes, clear streets, and feed each other. And Baltimore has always felt that way to me, with strong grassroots organizations and neighborhood identities that seem to undergird welcoming and active communities.
But, as the daily news proceeds in its drumbeats of dire warnings, I also find myself imagining horrifying outcomes. If disaster brings out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst. Baltimore City, one of the most segregated cities in the US, has vast tracts of poverty that are already grossly underserved by the healthcare infrastructure (as well as education, transportation, food networks, etc.). Given how close to the surface dissatisfaction with support and power structures has proven to be in the past, it's very easy for me to imagine that some of the people in these neighborhoods will feel pressed to express that dissatisfaction and to demand support in painful and destructive ways, as, at the same time, the virus runs unchecked through them. Honestly, this makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is the likely response from the powers that be: rather than attempt to meet the valid demands of the underserved, they will beat them, jail them, and leave them to die -- that is the "worst" being brought out, to my mind.
And Baltimore is not the only place in the US where such conditions exist. Americans in sum tend to treat the poor badly and, at best, misunderstand poverty and what there is to do about it. In cities across our country, enclaves of the impoverished are cordoned off and ignored. Yet, from even the most selfish perspective, it is in our collective interest to attend especially closely to these folks as part of our response to the pandemic: without access to healthcare, they can easily become deep wells for incubating SARS-CoV-2. And then we will blame them for it.
Of course, at this stage, the point is almost moot. There are already fewer hospital beds, ventilators, healthcare providers, etc. than are likely to be needed. Today's situation regarding poverty in the US took centuries to evolve (one starting point that's as good as any is 1619) and it cannot be wisely resolved in a few weeks. Still, to the degree that we can bend the curve on our cultural unwillingness to see ourselves as a collective, we can have a better chance of flattening the curve on the wave of SARS-CoV-2 passing through our national corpus. May these potentially worst of times also bring out the best of us.
But, as the daily news proceeds in its drumbeats of dire warnings, I also find myself imagining horrifying outcomes. If disaster brings out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst. Baltimore City, one of the most segregated cities in the US, has vast tracts of poverty that are already grossly underserved by the healthcare infrastructure (as well as education, transportation, food networks, etc.). Given how close to the surface dissatisfaction with support and power structures has proven to be in the past, it's very easy for me to imagine that some of the people in these neighborhoods will feel pressed to express that dissatisfaction and to demand support in painful and destructive ways, as, at the same time, the virus runs unchecked through them. Honestly, this makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is the likely response from the powers that be: rather than attempt to meet the valid demands of the underserved, they will beat them, jail them, and leave them to die -- that is the "worst" being brought out, to my mind.
And Baltimore is not the only place in the US where such conditions exist. Americans in sum tend to treat the poor badly and, at best, misunderstand poverty and what there is to do about it. In cities across our country, enclaves of the impoverished are cordoned off and ignored. Yet, from even the most selfish perspective, it is in our collective interest to attend especially closely to these folks as part of our response to the pandemic: without access to healthcare, they can easily become deep wells for incubating SARS-CoV-2. And then we will blame them for it.
Of course, at this stage, the point is almost moot. There are already fewer hospital beds, ventilators, healthcare providers, etc. than are likely to be needed. Today's situation regarding poverty in the US took centuries to evolve (one starting point that's as good as any is 1619) and it cannot be wisely resolved in a few weeks. Still, to the degree that we can bend the curve on our cultural unwillingness to see ourselves as a collective, we can have a better chance of flattening the curve on the wave of SARS-CoV-2 passing through our national corpus. May these potentially worst of times also bring out the best of us.
Days of the Virus: Settling In
If last week and the first part of the weekend were about facing facts about SARS-CoV-2, then yesterday and today have been about taking action. The last 30 hours or so have been spent, apart from a few breaks for sleep and a walk outside, coordinating my practice to provide care-at-a-distance for my patients -- folks who themselves are having to respond to quarantines and quarantine-like circumstances. Despite what I consider decent planning overall on my part, it has been highly stressful: the software that I expected to use for videoconferencing turned out to be unreliable and communication with my patients about the changes has been less than perfect. The stakes for this are high, too, because of how much I care about my patients -- these are my people, it's my charge to create a space in which they have the chance to get themselves well. I know the nature of the process is that it goes up and down (I tell my patients all the time, "you can't screw this up"), but it's still a challenge to keep from feeling disappointed in myself.
Of course, from a psychological perspective, it's easier to worry about getting the telepsych software set up than about a worldwide pandemic or who among my family and friends won't survive it, so, as defenses go, it's not terrible.
My family is pretty much settled in now. My octogenarian mom, who is pretty extraverted, seems to have made peace with the boundaries needed to keep her safe. My daughter has moved back in with her mother after her dorms closed; she has her old familiar room back and her mom is always well-prepared. We get to talk frequently via videochat and text, but she decided days ago that she didn't want to risk passing the virus to her grandmother, so we're isolated for the duration. Similarly, my stepdaughter has taken the leap to stay full-time with her boyfriend; there's faith on his side, too, as their relationship, which has been flourishing in the most beautiful way, is still young. My wife's business has been conducted almost exclusively online, so that's hardly any change for her in that regard, and her school has transitioned to online classes but is on spring break now anyway. Missing her daughter is hard, as they are very close, but they keep in touch via electronic media almost hourly.
So, we're not done with the transition yet, but it's well on it's way and it's easy enough to see a routine emerging in the next few days. It's helpful to pay attention to that; again, it's a useful defense and, so long as one isn't completely blinkered, a good idea.
Of course, from a psychological perspective, it's easier to worry about getting the telepsych software set up than about a worldwide pandemic or who among my family and friends won't survive it, so, as defenses go, it's not terrible.
My family is pretty much settled in now. My octogenarian mom, who is pretty extraverted, seems to have made peace with the boundaries needed to keep her safe. My daughter has moved back in with her mother after her dorms closed; she has her old familiar room back and her mom is always well-prepared. We get to talk frequently via videochat and text, but she decided days ago that she didn't want to risk passing the virus to her grandmother, so we're isolated for the duration. Similarly, my stepdaughter has taken the leap to stay full-time with her boyfriend; there's faith on his side, too, as their relationship, which has been flourishing in the most beautiful way, is still young. My wife's business has been conducted almost exclusively online, so that's hardly any change for her in that regard, and her school has transitioned to online classes but is on spring break now anyway. Missing her daughter is hard, as they are very close, but they keep in touch via electronic media almost hourly.
So, we're not done with the transition yet, but it's well on it's way and it's easy enough to see a routine emerging in the next few days. It's helpful to pay attention to that; again, it's a useful defense and, so long as one isn't completely blinkered, a good idea.
Days of the Virus: Information
I've run across a range of information resources that have impressed me as useful and thought a simple way of sharing them is just to post them here, as a list. In no particular order:
- CDC, coronavirus.gov
- Washington Post's free updates on SARS-CoV-2
- The COVID Tracking Project
- The Economist, Anatomy of a Killer
- Washington Post, Why Outbreaks Like Coronavirus Spread Exponentially...
- Washington Post, Social Distancing Could Buy US Valuable Time...
- The Conversation, Why Are Older People More at Risk...
- The Conversation, Get Dressed and Set Goals... (on working from home)
- The Atlantic, How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe
- The Lily, How to Host a Virtual Hangout
- The FiveThirtyEight: How Coronavirus Tests Actually Work
- CNN: The Night Sky as a Shared Experience
- Washington Post: Simple DIY masks could help flatten the curve
- xkcd: Pathogen Resistance
- Longrich Paleo Lab: Public Use of Masks to Control the Coronavirus Pandemic
- The FiveThirtyEight: Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*
- Washington Post: Four Reasons the Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities So Hard
- Washington Post: Coronavirus Doesn't Discriminate, but America Does
- Vi Hart's summary of a Pandemic Resilience proposal she helped build
I'll update this list as I have opportunity to do so.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Days of the Virus: Drawing In
In the last week or so, developments around the coronavirus have gone from "a nasty thing that's happening to those poor folks over there" to "holy shit, people I know could die." It occurred to me last night that it would be appropriate and possibly a meaningful personal exercise to log some of the experiences my family, friends, and I are having in this time, unique in my lifetime. So, it is my intent that this be the first in a series of posts related to SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 disease it causes, and, especially, what's happening in my small part of the world pandemic.
This time last week, I was on day five of a particularly nasty flu. It was the first day that I could detect symptoms attenuating, although that was only the subtlest change and I was far from recovered; since the previous Tuesday, my lungs had felt like I was breathing ammonia fumes, I was coughing frequently and often painfully, and was generally achey as hell. News of SARS-CoV-2's expansion from epidemic to pandemic filtered into my bedroom only in small, disjointed pieces, peppered in between episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marvel movies, and long naps. Once I was recovered enough to be cognizant of what was happening, I discussed with my wife and business partner taking the precaution of preparing to transition my private psychology practice to telepsych -- psychotherapy conducted by video chat. It seemed a prudent thing to have as a backup.
Over the course of the week, my RSS news feeds transitioned to nearly exclusively coronavirus coverage; even some of my favorite comics had begun featuring public health awareness topics. By midweek, both my daughters' and my wife's schools had closed or announced plans to close by the weekend and local government announcements became increasingly dire. As Italy, and now Spain and France, have gone into lockdown, the theme seems to be get ahead of the train. By the end of my workday today, it became clear that my family's best course of action is to self-quarantine.
Writing that feels a bit over the top. I'm not impulsive, at least not when it comes to big life decisions. It has taken quite a bit of steady, strong evidence to convince me that we -- my family, my community, my country -- are at significant risk, but I am convinced. The resources I respect, the science community, public health institutions, level headed friends, are fairly consistent in their assessment that we need to pay attention. So, while at this moment I can hear kids playing outside my window and the birds raucously feeding in my backyard, it feels incongruous that in a week or two my city's hospitals could be overwhelmed with people with collapsing pulmonary systems and my community could be in a police-enforced lockdown. Yet, it appears that those scenarios are not beyond reasonable expectations; thus, I act, even as it feels over the top.
I remember a similar feeling at least once before: August 23rd, 1992. Meteorologists were predicting that Hurricane Andrew would come ashore some dozen or so miles north of my ground-level South Beach apartment and the city was evacuating. Under an eerie foreboding, my brother and I picked up everything off of the floor, packed up the cats and some overnight bags, and headed to a friend's fortified apartment in South Miami, well inland and, so we thought, further from the storm. A long, frightening, largely sleepless night later, we emerged from our impromptu revetment to a changed world: the familiar neighborhood was unrecognizable, a tangled jetsam of power lines, roofing, and tree detritus.
Today feels similar, although the timeline is multiplied a few dozen times. From my experience with Hurricane Andrew, and other events, I know the world can change, sometimes in an instant. It is rare that we get warning; it is good to heed it when we do.
This time last week, I was on day five of a particularly nasty flu. It was the first day that I could detect symptoms attenuating, although that was only the subtlest change and I was far from recovered; since the previous Tuesday, my lungs had felt like I was breathing ammonia fumes, I was coughing frequently and often painfully, and was generally achey as hell. News of SARS-CoV-2's expansion from epidemic to pandemic filtered into my bedroom only in small, disjointed pieces, peppered in between episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marvel movies, and long naps. Once I was recovered enough to be cognizant of what was happening, I discussed with my wife and business partner taking the precaution of preparing to transition my private psychology practice to telepsych -- psychotherapy conducted by video chat. It seemed a prudent thing to have as a backup.
Over the course of the week, my RSS news feeds transitioned to nearly exclusively coronavirus coverage; even some of my favorite comics had begun featuring public health awareness topics. By midweek, both my daughters' and my wife's schools had closed or announced plans to close by the weekend and local government announcements became increasingly dire. As Italy, and now Spain and France, have gone into lockdown, the theme seems to be get ahead of the train. By the end of my workday today, it became clear that my family's best course of action is to self-quarantine.
Writing that feels a bit over the top. I'm not impulsive, at least not when it comes to big life decisions. It has taken quite a bit of steady, strong evidence to convince me that we -- my family, my community, my country -- are at significant risk, but I am convinced. The resources I respect, the science community, public health institutions, level headed friends, are fairly consistent in their assessment that we need to pay attention. So, while at this moment I can hear kids playing outside my window and the birds raucously feeding in my backyard, it feels incongruous that in a week or two my city's hospitals could be overwhelmed with people with collapsing pulmonary systems and my community could be in a police-enforced lockdown. Yet, it appears that those scenarios are not beyond reasonable expectations; thus, I act, even as it feels over the top.
I remember a similar feeling at least once before: August 23rd, 1992. Meteorologists were predicting that Hurricane Andrew would come ashore some dozen or so miles north of my ground-level South Beach apartment and the city was evacuating. Under an eerie foreboding, my brother and I picked up everything off of the floor, packed up the cats and some overnight bags, and headed to a friend's fortified apartment in South Miami, well inland and, so we thought, further from the storm. A long, frightening, largely sleepless night later, we emerged from our impromptu revetment to a changed world: the familiar neighborhood was unrecognizable, a tangled jetsam of power lines, roofing, and tree detritus.
Today feels similar, although the timeline is multiplied a few dozen times. From my experience with Hurricane Andrew, and other events, I know the world can change, sometimes in an instant. It is rare that we get warning; it is good to heed it when we do.
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