Yesterday I started keeping a journal for the first time in about 20 years. And now that I have a blog, I figured I might post some of it here. The first entry is a bit long and a bit rambling, but it's my attempt to capture some of what I've been doing and thinking in the unprecedented times of the previous week.
Wednesday 18 March 2020
Morning
I woke up with an idea today to write down a little bit about what’s going on during this global pandemic. As a way to document it, process it for myself, work through ideas… I’m not sure.
Anyway, here it goes.
The story so far: Sometime last year (maybe December 2019) a novel coronavirus arose in Wuhan, China. There were news stories about it. We knew it might be coming, but I didn’t worry too much about it. After all, the flu kills a lot of people every year. I get my flu shot every year and try not to spread it to vulnerable people. How bad could this be? We still don’t really know, but it is almost certainly worse than most of us thought a few months ago.
Unfortunately, the US government (led by President Donald Trump… who was elected in a bizarre and nightmarish election in 2016) was unprepared. Perhaps deliberately so, as Trump disbanded the pandemic preparedness team in 2018. A lot of other governments were also unprepared. The virus has hit Italy pretty hard. Iran’s preparedness was perhaps limited due to economic sanctions. China was hit hardest, but their cases seem to be leveling out due to measures like quarantine and closing off Wuhan and other cities. South Korea was also hit hard, but their cases seem to be leveling off. Things have gone better in Taiwan and Hong Kong (two places I visited many years ago). So, the US can probably at best hope for South Korea and at worst Italy. A lot of people are worried we’ll be more like Italy.
So far there have been about 200,000 cases worldwide, with about 8,000 deaths. I haven’t said this to anyone, but so far that’s not actually that bad out of a population of 7 billion. I guess the fear is that it will continue to get worse, maybe exponentially. We’re preventing a possible future disaster of epic proportions, not stopping a current relatively minor disturbance (I mean, not minor to the people dying, obviously, but you know, in the grand scheme of 7 billion humans and all). Also, these are reported cases based on testing, which has been scarce in many countries (including the US). Apparently some people can have the virus with mild to non-existent symptoms. It also seems to have an incubation period of 2-14 days, much longer than most other viruses (regular flu is more like 1-2 days). So I see why people are worried, and why drastic action is required.
Which brings me to some of that drastic action. As of this week, the remainder of the spring 2020 semester will be taught entirely online where I teach (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga – UTC) and most colleges in the US. K-12 schools are also mostly canceled for at least the next few weeks.
Last week was our spring break. My wife and I didn’t get to visit family in Minnesota for the winter break, so I figured I’d use my spring break to go to Minneapolis and have some quality time with family and friends. The funny thing is that I almost never actually go anywhere for spring break. Funny? Maybe not the right word. Ironic? Who knows?
Anyway, my union (United Campus Workers!) was having a lobby day to lobby the Tennessee State Legislature in Nashville last Tuesday (was it really just last Tuesday? Huh.). So I figured I could go up to Nashville and then later in the day fly out of Nashville for Minneapolis. The CDC still wasn't recommending against travel in the US as of last Tuesday, so I figured it was okay with precautions.
The lobby day itself was interesting. We met with some legislators (including my state representative Yusuf Hakeem), and saw a committee. The legislative building was really crowded with various legislators and their employees along with other groups (including some 2nd Amendment types … look for the white dudes in camo, that’s them). In retrospect, the crowds of that day are a bit terrifying, exactly the kinds of crowds we’re all being told to avoid this week. Strange how quickly this all went down.
(For the record, I feel okay. I have a bit of congestion, but that’s not supposed to be a symptom of this virus. According to the CDC, the typical symptoms are dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath. I read a twitter thread the other day from a doctor who had COVID-19, and he couldn’t walk more than ten feet without being out of breath. But then again, apparently you can have it with few symptoms, so you never know.)
I got a ride up to Nashville with some of my colleagues. They dropped me off in downtown Nashville, where I went to a couple bars before getting a Lyft ride to the airport. The Nashville airport wasn’t terribly busy. It was a Tuesday night, and some people had already started canceling flights. My flight was only about a third full. I sat in the back and there was nobody either in my row or the row in front or behind me. It may have been the most empty plane I’ve flown on since 9/11/2001 (after that airlines made flights perennially full and generally made airline travel shittier for everyone so the executives could get bigger bonuses… I predict similar shittiness ahead for all of us, probably worse this time. I’m sure corporate CEOs, high level university administrators, and the like are already thinking of ways to screw over everybody else, especially the most vulnerable people in our society… sigh).
It will probably be the last flight I’ll be on for a while. I was supposed to fly back to Chattanooga on Monday (3/16), but especially since that flight included a layover in O’Hare (one of the busiest airports in the world) I canceled that flight. And I’m glad I did. Instead, I rented a car and made the long drive from Minneapolis to Chattanooga (with an impromptu stop to visit my other sister in St. Louis).
Another thing about that flight: I was practicing social distancing. It’s the latest buzz phrase. Basically health experts saying you should try to stay at least six feet away from people to avoid spreading the virus. And stay home if you can.
So I arrived in Minneapolis. A couple people on the flight were wearing face masks. But it was fine. A late night flight on Tuesday is rarely going to be the busiest flight and Terminal 2 of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is rarely going to be super busy at that time (although I did once have an hour-long wait at security there on a Sunday afternoon).
My sister picked me up and we stayed up way too late. The next morning I got to see my three-year-old nephew and my brother-in-law, who were asleep when I arrived the night before. We took my nephew to his preschool, which was fun. Then we had lunch with my friend Adam. He had to get going, so we went to a cool wrestling-themed bar near the University of Minnesota campus. And then we picked up my nephew and took him to his swim class and then dinner afterwards. A pretty normal, if a bit busy, day for a visit to Minnesota for me. It would be the only normal day.
That day (Wed. March 11) the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The Trump Administration finally started acting. My university canceled classes for the week after spring break and said all classes would be online the week after that (but they didn’t make the remainder of the semester online until this week). My sister and brother-in-law were understandably worried. My brother-in-law decided to work from home the next day. My nephew didn’t go to preschool. My sister was already on spring break (she’s an academic librarian).
So I got to experience a couple days of quarantine with a three-year-old. People with small children have my extreme respect right now. I think he could tell the adults were upset, but it’s hard for a little kiddo to really understand what’s going on. Not that the adults really understand it, either. (One of the most sobering lessons I learned when I was about 12 and have been learning ever since is that most adults don’t really know what they’re doing, either).
Meanwhile my wife Beth was back in Chattanooga having long stressful meetings about what campus was going to do (she runs the writing center on campus). She wanted me to get home. I canceled my flight (I have a credit for a future flight now, whenever I’ll be able to use that again…). I rented a car for the two-day trip back. I figured in a car it’s just me on the road with occasional stops at gas stations, which is better than being crowded in airports and airplanes.
My dad and step-mom were sick, but with regular illnesses. I did manage to see them briefly on my way out of town. They wore masks. We didn’t hug or touch each other.
I didn’t get to see nearly as many friends and family as I would have liked while I was in town, but I’m glad I got to see a few people. It looks like it may be at least a few months before I’ll be able to go back. I just hope I wasn’t spreading anything to anyone.
I stopped to visit my other sister in St. Louis. She lives in a neighborhood with lots of bars and restaurants. All the bars were closed, except for one that wasn’t very busy. The restaurants had a few patrons, but not what you’d expect for a Saturday night. That sister has been ahead of the curve on social distancing. She never hugs and I always use the Vulcan salute with her. Live long and prosper.
The roads were still pretty busy. Lots of trucks. Presumably some carrying toilet paper. Weirdly, there was a run on toilet paper and a lot of stores ran out in the last week. Weird, people. Weird.
I usually like to stop somewhere and eat at a restaurant while I’m on the road, to get a break from driving and stretch my legs. I managed not to do that this time, although when I was driving through Kentucky I did go to a Taco Bell drive through and eat a Crunch Wrap Supreme in the car. I have a love of Taco Bell that I won’t try to justify or explain. That may be my last Taco Bell for a while, although I guess drive throughs will still be open so you never know.
I made it back to Chattanooga on Sunday night.
Evening
On Monday the work of catching up on email and figuring out what to do with my classes began. Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to my office for a bit. I worked with my door closed after wiping down all the surfaces. But for the most part I’ve been working from home.
Some of my colleagues in academia and other people quarantined at home have been talking about being bored or doing lots of random projects around the house. Maybe I lead a boring life, maybe I use my time inefficiently, or maybe I’m just scrambling to figure things out after not being around most of spring break, but I have yet to feel anything like boredom or engage in much more than dishes and laundry around the house. Maybe that will come later. This is really only my third day of this. And I guess I did have time to write a couple thousand words in a journal.
Yesterday was the first day I was supposed to teach after spring break. Instead I spent the day reworking my syllabi for teaching online. I thought about how I wasn’t going to have another in-person class with these students. And, although I totally understand and support the move to online instruction, this really bummed me out.
I love teaching, and I love interacting with students in person. I bring them candy, which I also eat, of course. I get paid to talk to cool, smart people about philosophy (even some of the unenthusiastic people are cool and smart if they are more challenging to talk to). I used to teach online a lot before I had my current job. It was okay. Sometimes the online discussions can be interesting. But it’s definitely not the same. Most students don’t like online courses, either. I worry that moving everything online is going to be depressing (like, literally depressing) for some students and faculty. I mean, it’s not the greatest sacrifice people could make in a crisis so I’m not asking for sympathy, but it is nonetheless something.
I’m normally a pretty calm person. And I really do think that probably things will be more-or-less okay again eventually. This isn’t an apocalypse as far I can tell, no matter the amusing/terrifying parallels with so many YA dystopias and zombie stories. But still, there’s a steady anxiety about all of this even for me. It makes it hard to concentrate on all this work I’m supposed to be doing. Teaching has become a triage situation of trying to salvage what I can of the semester by turning courses I deliberately designed to involve lots of face-to-face interaction into online courses. More time for research? Sure, I’ll have a lot of brilliant insights about ancient Indian Buddhist philosophy amidst an ongoing global pandemic…
Mostly I’m worried about more vulnerable people who get paid hourly and/or work in service jobs or other industries that depend on people going out and gathering in groups. I’m worried about my students and people who are immunocompromised. I’m worried about other vulnerable populations in nursing homes, prisons, ICE detention centers, refugee camps, etc.
I’m half-way through my tenure process (I’ve been recommended up through my dean, but the upper administrators get it next, who are no doubt busy doing other things at the moment). I’m very, very lucky to be able to work from home and it would take a lot to threaten my job, but I have to admit I’m not entirely unworried about that, either.
Another funny thing: up until a few weeks ago I was telling people that I was planning for a really busy April with bringing a visitor to our campus, participating in a conference on campus, giving a keynote at a student conference in Georgia, and then going to a conference in Utah. And there was a conference in Hawaii in May. All of that is now canceled. So, I guess I don’t have to worry about being busy anymore, at least in that way. More time to write journal entries like this, I suppose.
In a weird way, though, I’m actually pleasantly surprised that the world can come together for the sake of everyone’s health, even if we did so too slowly and not effectively enough. I could easily imagine a scenario where much of the world ignored this threat much longer, because of the economy, it’s too inconvenient, it’s a hoax, personal freedom, whatever (not that there aren’t plenty of people saying those things). In a way it gives me some hope that maybe, at least with enough pressure, the powers that be can value something other than money and power. Maybe we really do care about people behind the ideological smokescreens of profit and power.
Or maybe that’s naïve, and all of this is really just to protect the powers that be. The real response only came in the US when it started affecting the economy. It is hard to look at some things Trump is doing and not think he’s calculating how it will play out in his reelection campaign. (Ugh. It’s hard to even type that). In the past two days, he started referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” because why not get a racist dog-whistle going to motivate your base during a pandemic?
Earlier tonight Beth found out that a restaurant she likes has curb-side pick-up. I said I’d go get it. Well, it turns out they did not have curb-side pick-up, and I had to go inside to get my to-go order. It wasn’t too bad and I was social distancing as much as I could, but the restaurant had more patrons in it than I expected—it wasn’t full, but it seemed like an okay crowd for a Wednesday night. I also noticed this on my trip last weekend when I had to go into stores. A lot of people, maybe most people, don’t really seem to be taking this all that seriously. Does this mean we’re fucked? Who knows?
I’m reminded of the end of Stephen King’s The Stand. I re-read the book in December and re-watched the mini-series more recently. The disease in that story (Captain Trips) is way, way worse than COVID-19, and I think people tend to forget that. Stephen King even said so on Twitter. Anyway, that’s not my comparison. At the end of the book after all that (and I mean ALL THAT; it’s a 1400 page book packed with science fiction, horror, fantasy, and more), one character asks, “Do you think people ever learn anything?” Another character responds, “I don’t know.”
I would like to think that once we’ve flattened the curve (another nice phrase we’ve all learned recently) and maybe once there’s a vaccine and the world economy is on the road to recovery, that people will reflect on what really matters. Maybe we can make economies and political systems that prioritize people’s health and well-being, that can withstand a crisis without harming a society’s most vulnerable members. Maybe we’ll realize that wealth and work should be put into the service of life rather than life being in the service of wealth and work. Or as I put it on social media the other day, maybe COVID-19 will put the Protestant Work Ethic in self-quarantine for a while.
So, will people learn from all this? I don’t know. I’d like to think we could, but as to whether we will, I am reminded a choice quote from Douglas Adams:
“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
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