Fall on the farm is a reckoning and an endpoint, a closing of the books like the end of the corporate fiscal year. When fall arrives, you measure up the year’s crops and projects, report to the stock analysts gathered around the kitchen table, and look at what you have to work with for the year to come.
This fall, the analysts, Rebecca and I, recommended planting a few trees.
There are two fall seasons. One is astronomical. It arrived on Tuesday, the 22nd when, for the second time in 2020, night and day were equal. The other fall season is meteorological, usually starting weeks after the arrival of astronomical fall. This year, it arrived only a day later, or at least it felt that way to me. My grandparents used to say that when the weather changed, their rheumatism warned them. My joints ached when I got up on Wednesday morning and they reminded me of my age all day. I got a flu vaccination on Tuesday, so the aches could have come from the shot. I’ve had a day of aches after a flu shot before. Maybe it was the shot, maybe it was the weather, and maybe it was 2020 taking another swipe at all of us.
Whatcom County summer wasn’t bad. Our rain gauge has been off-line since we moved back to Waschke Road, but our neighbor near Deer Creek hauled in bale after bale of second crop hay this month. A good second crop always signaled a good year on the farm. Several deer have been stealing our son’s apples this summer and Albert the border collie has had more than enough squirrels to keep in line. Life thrives. After a peak following the 4th of July, the covid-19 infection rate has stayed relatively low in Whatcom, although we have had a late summer flurry of infections this month.
The wildfire smoke last week kept me indoors, but the gloom blew away over the weekend and we had blue skies and sunshine until the rain arrived. Still, fall and winter 2020 don’t look to me as if they will be much better than the spring and summer. The covid-19 pandemic has been brutal, possibly the worst year for death in this country since World War II. As I am writing this, we have close to 202,000 dead. The death rate in Whatcom County is not as high as it was in April and May, but it has held fairly steady through August after it plummeted in June and then rose in July. Many scientists predict covid-19 will flourish again in the fall like the flu does when we are driven inside by cooler weather.
There is talk of a vaccine soon, which I balance against equally credible talk that a vaccine won’t arrive until the grass greens up again in spring. A vaccine, or a dozen, will no doubt eventually arrive, maybe even in the next month or two. I’ll jump in line to be jabbed when a vaccine comes, but I liken it to the flu shot I got day before yesterday.
I am not optimistic.
I’ve been getting flu shots every year for fifty years. During that half century, every three or four years I’ve experienced head and chest congestion, body aches, and fever. Flu-like illness, if not genuine influenza. The vaccine doesn’t always work. I read the scientific literature on vaccination now as diligently as anyone. I don’t have a degree in epidemiology or virology, but I used the same types of statistical analysis on digital equipment performance that the medical people use on vaccines, so I have a passing understanding of what I read.
The experts talk about efficacy versus effectiveness. Efficacy measures the theoretical success of a vaccine in preventing disease. An efficacy of 60% means that under carefully controlled conditions and testing, 40% more unvaccinated people will get the flu than an equal number who are vaccinated. Put more practically, you roughly double your chances of avoiding the flu by getting vaccinated against it. Flu vaccine efficacy varies each year, but it bounces around 60%, which is a good enough number for me.
Vaccine effectiveness is a slightly different. It’s more realistic, but less precisely measured. Effectiveness gauges how the vaccine works in a real population where people have underlying conditions, vaccines are not always stored or injected properly, and not everyone gets vaccinated. These conditions are hard to control and compare, making the measurement less precise.
You can’t hold it against the vaccine that medical personnel sometimes make mistakes and people are sometimes sick and don’t always follow advice. Those circumstances increase the probability that you will be exposed to the virus and become infected. Therefore, effectiveness is generally lower than efficacy, but the data shows your odds of staying healthy are still far higher if you get the shot. That doesn’t mean you won’t get the flu, but instead of a yearly ordeal, the flu becomes about as intermittent for you as the Olympics.
Therefore, each year, I roll up my sleeve, look away, and am pleasantly surprised at how little the needle poke hurts.
But I still get the flu sometimes. Some years the vaccine works for me, some years I’m dealt the losing hand.
We know by now that covid-19 has sharper claws, bigger teeth, and jumps from person to person more easily than the flu. Influenza virus, when it kills, almost always asphyxiates its victim. Lungs cease to supply adequate oxygen and death follows. Covid-19 hits the lungs, but it also attacks the heart, veins, and arteries, the liver, and the brain. Autopsies of covid-19 victims show that they can die from harm to any of these organs.
Death tolls are not the only hurt. Covid-19’s damage can linger after recovery. Some victims who cleared the virus months ago still have heart or brain dysfunctions. Young athletes seem especially vulnerable to lingering heart problems. No one knows when or if they will recover or if they will die suddenly on the playing field in years to come.
If I were to get covid-19, my chances of survival are relatively low. I’m obese, I have type-2 diabetes, a heart condition, and I’m old. I expect to see spring 2021, but, realistically, I have to consider death by covid as a possibility.
Of course, I will get a vaccination as soon as one is available to me, but I still remember the many times that I ached with chills and fever from the flu I was vaccinated against.
Even with a vaccine, I plan to wear a mask, avoid indoor gatherings, keep socially distant, and amp up the air purification system in our house.
We’re planting a few trees in the yard this fall. I want to be around to prune them when they need it.