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Optimistic Pessimism

Today, I expect the worst from the covid-19 pandemic and look for the best. Nearly a million and a half confirmed cases and ninety thousand dead, fourteen thousand dead in the United States, twenty dead in our own rural county. And more to come.

For whatever reason, our wealthy and sophisticated country is not responding well. We don’t seem to be able to organize ourselves. Shortages and gaps in medical supplies are appearing in the country that invented supply-chain management. Testing is faltering at the source of testing technology.

As a world leader, we are stumbling. What else can be said? The number of cases in the U. S. is more than double that of the country with the second highest count.

The only way we have to stop the deaths is to shut the country down, and we struggle to do it. Americans cherish their freedom and do not take kindly to interference. Some insist on their right to assembly when not assembling is to avoid the death for themselves, their loved ones, their neighbors, their countrymen. In the country that is of the people, by the people and for the people, the people cannot save themselves.

What do I see that is good in this? Yes, healthcare staff, nurses, and doctors are valiantly giving their lives to save the victims of the virus, but sacrifice is not bright hope. Volunteers distribute food to the distressed and help in many ways, and philanthropists donate billions, but this is only more sacrifice. The necessity of sacrifice drives me to despair, not hope.

Then what good do I see? Change. Change for the better paid for with staggering suffering and cost. Hundreds of thousands of good people forced to die alone with a tube jammed down their throat. Myriads of others who will survive with lame spirits and weakened bodies.

You may lament the shattering of the economy, but I see an economy that was already broken with unseen cracks. We were living in a condition that we now know humans cannot survive. The death toll from the virus testifies to this. If we lived differently, flew around in airplanes less, did not live in cities stacked in layers, looked out for our neighbors instead of competed with them, used computer networks, the mark of the new century, to protect ourselves from pestilence and bring us together instead letting them divide us, the emergence of the virus would have been a minor event. A temporary statistical variation that only epidemiologists and public health specialists would notice.

But the pandemic isn’t minor. It is a catastrophe because we have been doing it all wrong.

Now we know.

Will we have a better world when this is over? I think so. World War II was a horrible event, more destructive than the pandemic. After the war, many people were dead like today, but cities were also flattened, industrial facilities devastated, and resources destroyed.

Yet, the world that emerged from the war was more prosperous, more pleasant, more humane than ever existed before on the planet.

After the pandemic, we will have the dead to bury and grieve, but our resources and infrastructure will be intact, and we will have learned much about the weaknesses in our old ways. We will know new ways to work, to live, to cooperate.

Already, the network has been strengthened in just two months to support the new loads and will continue to get stronger. We’ve learned to get together electronically in ways that the virus can’t disrupt. And we will learn more. New ways to work and distribute goods. Our communities will be stronger and more resistant to stress.

Rebuilding will be rapid because we will have so much to rebuild with, and like the aftermath of the war, the world will improve in ways we do not yet comprehend.

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How Will the Pandemic Feel?

Today, I am trying to grapple with how the COVID-19 pandemic will feel here in Ferndale. The schools and the public libraries are closing. The stock market is thrashing. But the sun shining. It’s a loser’s game because predicting the future has never worked out well for me, but I keep trying.

People are confused by large numbers. I see this when I talk to people about computer security and I see confusion in the way people talk and react to COVID-19. And I feel it in myself when I look at the numbers on the Johns Hopkins dashboard. Hoard toilet paper? You gotta do something. Right?

No. Calm down.

Look at the coronavirus numbers. They are terrifying. I’m looking at 162,687 confirmed cases and 6,065 deaths. 3,244 cases in the U.S., 40 deaths in Washington State. By the time anyone reads this, those numbers will almost certainly be much higher. They grew in the hour I took writing this. The president has called a national emergency. The administration, congress, states, cities, and local health departments appear to be struggling to respond.

To get a sense of perspective, I have turned to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919, a century ago. Spanish flu is a misnomer. No one knows where it came from. Xenophobia is nothing new.

Remember that in 1919, DNA and genetic sequencing were unknown concepts, penicillin was 20 years in the future; scientists would not discover that the flu was caused by a virus until the 1930s. They were guessing at how the disease moved from person to person. Although epidemiologists today don’t have all the details on COVID-19, we know so much more than we did in 1918 when the Spanish flu first appeared in the U.S. Vaccines and medicines to control and treat COVID-19 are not available yet, but the tools scientists have today to develop these remedies would not exist for 90 years after the Spanish flu appeared.

We are in a world’s better position to respond to COVID-19 than Spanish flu. When it appeared, the Brits were still launching cavalry charges. It’s no stretch to say that the 1919 pandemic response compared to the science of 2020 epidemiology in like matching a horse charge against a squad of Humvees backed by drones. A different world. That is not to say COVID-19 will be a walk in the park, but the 1919 pandemic is a worst-case, not an inevitable reality. It tells us about what could happen if we ignore the science.

What did happen in 1918-1919? The Spanish flu was first detected in the U.S. in March of 1919. By the spring of 1919, a little over a year later, April 1919, President Woodrow Wilson collapsed at the Versailles Peace Conference, presumably from the flu. He recovered but 675,000 American died in the pandemic. That’s roughly 600 per 100,000 people.

To put this in a local perspective, if the 1919 pandemic were repeated, roughly a hundred people would die in the small city of Ferndale. That’s highly unlikely to happen, but it would mean the current death rate in the U.S. would a little less than double.

Think about how that would feel. I’m old, over 70. Three people close to me have died in the past few years: a cousin and two close friends. All in the demographic most likely to die from COVID-19. I don’t think that is out of line for most people my age. How would I feel if that number doubled? Sad, of course. But terrified? No. I have many, many cherished relatives and friends. It’s the ones who survive that count.

We are likely to be in for a tough time ahead, but only a few will be taken down. Hold on tight folks. Keep your social distance. We now know that will blunt the force of the disease. It’s going to be okay.

And quit hoarding toilet paper.

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For The Birds

It’s the day after Christmas and I am asking myself why I am so dumbfoundingly optimistic.

It is no longer illegal to negligently kill migratory birds. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits killing migratory birds without a license. Up until recently, the law was interpreted to mean that birds killed as a result of oil spills, destroying their habitat, or otherwise interfering, resulted in federal prosecution and fines.

No more. You can still be prosecuted if you intentionally kill a migratory bird without a license, but not if the bird happens to be killed in the pursuit of some other goal. For example, an eagle killed by a wind turbine used to be subject to a $15,000 fine, oil spills that killed thousands of shore birds resulted in massive fines, projects that destroyed nesting grounds were subject to fines and injunctions without some mitigation such as providing an alternative nesting environment. Today none of that applies if you are operating a wind turbine, shipping oil, or paving nesting grounds into parking lots but your goal is making money rather than killing birds. (Detail here.)

This saddens me because seeing eagles turning circles over Ferndale, snow and Canada geese in the fields of the Nooksack valley and flats, and ducks in almost any body of water in Whatcom County all remind me that the world we have all been given is magnificent.

I’m not squeamish about killing birds. My dad encouraged my cousins and me to shoot English sparrows and starlings when I was a kid. He was not sympathetic toward invasive species, although we immigrant Germans and Dutchmen were invasive tribes ourselves.

Duck and goose hunting were all part of the grand tradition when I was in junior high (middle school.) In the fall, a bloodthirsty knot of boys would gather before first period and talk about who shot what that morning out at Tennant Lake and the innumerable ponds that surround Ferndale. I wished I were among the guys who were out wading in the cold and wet while hunting game birds, but my dad wanted me helping with milking, not messing with exciting and dangerous weapons.

He hunted himself when he was young. The few times I saw him fire a gun, he hit his target accurately. He was not sentimental about animals, but he was always on the watch for signs of wildlife around the farm and I suspect that, all things equal, he was on the side of the ducks, geese, and pheasants.

Think about the law for a minute. Who kills birds intentionally? These days, almost entirely sport hunters. I have nothing against hunting. It’s no longer my choice for recreation, but sport hunters guard our wildlife more carefully than a lot of sentimental enthusiasts who only think about wildlife occasionally. Hunters cull herds and keep them healthy, unlike massive collateral damage from industrial ventures that destroy habitats and wipe out entire species. The law now only limits folks who care about birds and gives free reign to industries who destroy species pursuing profits.

There’s a pond close to our house in Ferndale. Albert, The Border Collie, and I walk around the pond every morning and evening. I don’t know the history of the pond, but I suspect that it didn’t exist in my junior high school days. It has the look of a bulldozer sculpture, built for runoff control rather than a naturally occurring resting place for migrating geese and ducks. Nevertheless, I am happy to see the number of birds, raccoons, possums, deer, rabbits, and squirrels that Albert and I encounter on our walks.

The pond would have been in Allen Gardiner’s backyard. I haven’t seen or heard from Allen since high school, but I owe him a debt. One day in the Frank Alexander Junior High library, he pointed me toward a shelf of books by Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author, and started me on a science fiction binge in the seventh or eighth grade that I haven’t quite shaken yet. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Allen’s prompting. Not that I’m anything special, but I just wouldn’t be who I am.

Getting back to the pond. A few days ago, night and morning, I counted twenty-three geese, maybe two dozen mallards, three drake mergansers and I’ll bet three female mergansers were lurking and diving, a blue heron perched in a tree, and a seagull bobbing on the water. The following afternoon, I saw maybe a dozen mallards, one merganser drake, and Albert spotted a squirrel. (He keeps an exact tally of squirrels.) The heron and geese were gone.

I haven’t seen as many geese as last year this fall; I miss those noisy honkers and prolific poopers. I am not about to say that the changes in migratory bird regulation has had immediate effect, but this temporary paucity reminds me of what I will miss as wildlife disappears.

Until the community takes a stand, wildlife of all forms will become rarer and harder to experience. When there is money to be made, there is always someone willing to grab a buck and trash what other people care about. Practically, sometimes a small sacrifice may be justified, but a balance must be struck. When something dies, money can’t buy it back or fix it. Lose too much and we all have nothing.

We once cared. Raptors were rare in the skies over Waschke Road when I was growing up, but after DDT and other pesticides were regulated, the hawks and eagles returned.

So. I am optimistic. If we once cared, we can care again.