What to do During a Global Infection: Part 1

It's not that I haven't been reading.  I have ... I just haven't been writing.

First, some general observations on COVID's impact on me personally.

1.  I prefer not to go to the grocery store because I don't like to wear masks that make the air I inhale hot and fog up my glasses.  (I met a man at a local garden store and when I gave these reason he replied, now you know why operating rooms are so cold.)  The unintended consequence of not shopping is I really don't want to cook any more.  I make the menu that is quickest to cook and can be made with whatever spices etc that are already in the frig or on the shelves.

2.  At first, I missed "window" shopping but now I could care less whether all the malls closed.  The world now belongs to Amazon (which I can actually remember when it only sold books), eBay, and ETSY.  What I might be giving up in style, I am gaining in variety of choices.

3.  Previously I thought that the neighborhood was finally investing in property improvement when the economy was going bust, but know I think many are just hiring handymen just to have a new face to see.  I fall readily into this category:  having the side lawn replaced; getting the garage repainted; and ordering the final facade of replacement windows.  The painter has three project going within two blocks and a different firm started on the house across the street yesterday.  The window salesman had a valise full of orders from earlier in the day.

But on to the numerous reviews.

What else to read now but Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe; The Plague by Albert Camus; and Pale Rider by Laura Spinney.

Defoe's history of London in 1664 clearly shows humanity has not changed for the wiser in 300+ years.  Governmental actions were exactly the same:  banning travel, imposing sheltering; closing shops and banning plays, casinos, music halls and dancing rooms; however, government officials moved the seat of power out of the city.  The responses of the populations were the same:  the rich leaving town for less infected areas; people not wanting to touch meat from the butchers and the butches not wanting to touch money payment; still gathering in taverns and churches.  Others acted impetuously, assembling carelessly, being foolhardy and obstinate.  The economy suffered as all manufacturing and merchandising stopped and trade died as others feared getting sick from exported goods.  As a corollary, Londoners tried to track what other nation had imported the disease to England.

"Surely never city, at least of this bulk and magnitude, was taken in a condition so perfectly unprepared for such a dreadful visitation, whether I am to speak of civil preparations or religious."  "... all trade, except such as related to immediate subsistence, was, as it were, at a full stop."

And as the plague eased up, "the morals of the people declined ...were more wicked and more stupid, more bold and hardened."  "... the distress of the poor was more now a great deal than it was before, because all the sluices of general charity were now shut."  "It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection, when it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and contention, slander and reproach ..."

One of my most pronounced change from COVID is the recognition that being a nation of specialists, there are very few multi-disciplined or Renaissance people:  the public health experts seem to have never read history beyond science; politicians are doubly cursed, having neither studied biology nor historical literature.  Had someone assigned these three books as required reading before anyone tweeted or held a press conference, they could see history repeating itself, have a better understanding of how people would react, and what positive and negative effects all their decisions would have.  Or as Defoe stated this:

" I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body of the people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them, and how it was for want ot timely entering into measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the confusions that followed ... which, if proper steps had been taken, might have been avoided."

When I worked at NYSDOH, I would attend multi-agency meetings to draft State disaster plans ... they all need to be revised again, like they were after Hurricane Sandy.