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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.

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Short Days—Long Nights

Mid-December days in Ferndale, stranded on the northern edge of the continental U.S., sunlight is in short supply. When Albert, the border collie, takes me out around the Gardiner pond in the morning, the sun is barely risen, and he has trouble herding me out there before sunset in the afternoon. In all this gloom, I was looking for adventure last week, so I drove to Montana and back again.

Our daughter completed her first semester of law school in Missoula last Friday. She and her sons could have traveled by train or airplane, but I was in adventure mode, so at 5:30 am Friday the 13th, I fired up my wife’s SUV that wouldn’t make it up the little hill to our house in the snow last winter and went off in the darkness to pick them up and bring them back for Christmas. December isn’t the most interesting month to drive I-90, but it gets close.

In these short days, the trip began and ended in the dark, both coming and going. That’s about how I feel in 2019 in general, so there was nothing special there.

The path from Ferndale to Missoula threads over three mountain passes: Snoqualmie, Fourth of July, and Look Out. Our house on Vista Drive in Ferndale is 154 feet above sea level; downtown Ferndale is only 36 feet. Snoqualmie summit is 3,022 feet, Fourth of July pass in Idaho is 3,081, and Lookout Pass on the Idaho-Montana border is 4,711 feet. Missoula is higher than the Snoqualmie at 3,209 feet. In other words, I had my ups and downs last weekend.

The adventure was tame, as befits an arthritic geezer. Both Snoqualmie and Fourth of July were bare wet pavement both coming and going. Mid-morning Friday, the sunshine revealed two beached and dug in semis that must have slid off the road on ice around Cle Elum, but that happened hours before I sailed through. Lookout Pass eastbound was slushy and busy. No real danger. Coming down Lookout, boxed in by big trucks front and back, squeezed between the concrete jersey barrier and another truck, and dirty slush flying everywhere, barely evoked philosophical thoughts on the fragility of these carcasses we carry around. It was snowing hard when we left Missoula, but Montana snowplow crews know their business. Maybe next time will have more adventure.

I like the freshwater flyover country, as the vast tract of the U.S. that is not on a seacoast is called by disrespectful coastervators. I’ve always liked it, and I like it better now. My Dutch and German ancestors established themselves in Michigan and Minnesota before coming to Whatcom County. When I was growing up, I heard stories about “Back East,” which referred to the Midwest rather than the east coast. When neighbors got together to talk, the east coast, New York, New England, the southern eastern seaboard were seldom mentioned, but the conversation often drifted into reminiscing on life in the Midwest. People occasionally took trips to see relatives back east, but seldom did that mean seeing the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve been on the east coast many times because I worked for a New York company, but I still get north and south confused when the ocean is to the east.

Fifty years ago, I went to college and graduate school in the Midwest and I soon noticed that Midwesterners were behind the west coast, even dear old Ferndale. The fonts on street signs were not as modern. The buildings were older, stores were laid out like throwbacks from decades in the past. I knew nothing of New York then, but a lot of New Yorkers were among my fellow students, and they all said Chicago was way out of step. Of course, there never has been and never will be anything as in step as New York, in the opinion of a New Yorker.

I think it’s the internet.

I poked around Missoula during my one day there. I discovered that Missoula has more local breweries than Bellingham or hop city Yakima. I sampled several Missoula IPAs that proved that their brewers know distinctive hop flavors and how to blend them. A far cry from the watery “fire brewed for the flamin’ a—” Stroh’s and Iron City Pittsburgh beer that I remember from college.

I visited the University of Montana Law Library and the Missoula Public Library. The law library was sleek and new; the public library was nice, but crowded, the carpets had seen better days, and the furniture was worn. However, the staff pointed across the street to a large new library under construction. Missoula’s computer network is fast. I was told that they are almost entirely fiber. A city on the move as fast as New York or San Francisco.

I am getting old, but I think something is happening in this country that has not been noticed. Computer networks and the social media, other new forms of communication, have been excoriated for causing divisiveness and polarization, but I have begun to suspect that these vicious trends are being whittled away from the ground up by the very means of communication that are condemned as the cause.

I remember how isolated I felt before computer networks connected everyone. Today, no one has to wonder what is going on with the hipsters of Brooklyn— you can easily find out firsthand by following them on Twitter, Instagram, reading their blogs, or friending them on Facebook. (And see how silly they can be.) Like the proverbial canine, on the internet, no one knows you’re from Ferndale, Missoula, Austin, New Orleans, or NYC. In Missoula, people on the street, the streets themselves, could have been in New York, or the Bay Area, Boston, or Austin. I discussed hops with bartenders and library trends with Missoula’s library staff; we shared a base of knowledge that would have been impossible even ten years ago. This was not bland leveling, more like everyone being their best selves.

The days are short now and the nights are long. But winter solstice is close. The days will get longer; we will see more sunshine. Winter won’t be over, but spring is on the horizon.