Too-Social Media

Governments have a tendency not to solve problems, only to rearrange them. 

Ronald Reagan

My wife and I have spent the better part of our adult lives engaged in service of local government. She, in particular, dealt closely with municipal officials of one stripe or another for several decades. Both of us worked on local election campaigns. While there is much we don't know, there are some things we know all too well.

Mug of coffee in hand, most of the morning news digested, I set about to see if there was anything on social media worth exploring. My wife signed me up for the "Album Cover" challenge (today - Tapestry), I think I'm caught up on pictures of the grandkids and the Global Cycling Network workout wouldn't start until ten thirty. So far, so good.

I happened across a live feed of a virtual Ft. Myers Beach city council meeting. Why I enabled the speaker to listen in, I'll never know. One of the talking heads - I'm going to assume the City Clerk - was reading an email from a constituent, a restaurant owner. The writer was explaining that they derive little enough from their establishment as it is, but what with the shutdown and all...

The email's author went on to wonder out loud what the benefit was for the shelter-in-place, close the beaches and breathe through a bandana orders? He wondered why he/she was being pushed to (over?) the brink of bankruptcy when things didn't appear as dire as they'd once been represented. He/she went on... Well, they did go on. Finally, in what had all of the appearances of a remake of Hollywood Squares, a guy in the lower left square, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Charley Weaver, signaled for a time out - literally forming his hands into a T. Or, he was calling a technical - I suppose that is open to interpretation.

At that moment, a well dress, impeccably groomed older gent with a pure white goatee evidenced assent and called a halt to the reading. I assume this is the mayor. They'd all gotten this email, and read it themselves, right? They all got the gist of it, right? Moving along...

Some hours later, this august and important deliberative body issued their latest missive on battling the 'Rona. People could return to the beach between 7AM and 10AM. They must be residents of Ft. Myers Beach, and carry proof thereof. They must enter and exit the beach area via the public ingress/egress points. No beach parking was available. No tarrying, no congregating, tread no higher than the high water mark. Etc.

It is axiomatic, to the point of near unanimity among scholars, that Americans voluntarily follow the law because that makes sense to the stunning majority of them. This can be further broken up into a subset of notions, all of which are subject to some discussion and dissent. For example, someone who believes a law idiotic and arbitrary may nevertheless obey it because the penalty for obedience is small. Others - there's a video of a man testifying before a city council who says "I'm a law-abiding citizen" with an authority that caused most of America to take notice.

Here, we come to a conundrum. If the beach is safe for individuals residing within the city limits of Ft. Myers Beach, why is it not safe for others? Have the residents on Estero Island acquired some form of immunity? Are they uniquely qualified to judge social distance? What is magic about the permitted timeframe - is COVID-19 asleep? Can the locals view the beach, instantly assess the numbers present per square meter and resign themselves to heading home? Do they buy their grits from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?

Sorry.

Most - one would hope all - of the Q-rules that brought a stunning number of businesses to their knees and threatened otherwise solid citizens with arrest are based on known threats and unknown, but potentially substantial outcomes. Clogged ERs, overflowing ICUs, bodies stacked like cordwood; all reasonably foreseeable outcomes based on what was known seven weeks ago. Flattening the curve seemed prudent, even imperative. Most people recognized the need for drastic action.

That was then. The balance of information has shifted, the curve well and truly flattened and now... The legal justification - a dire emergency requiring sweeping governmental powers - has passed, to be replaced with vigilance involving enhanced PPE, a greater role of cleanliness and continued social distancing strategies. 

That's not the present justification used by government, who have shifted their focus to present (and less deadly) vulnerabilities. Now we hear about target rates. Contact-mapping. Herd mentalities...er, immunity. Insufficient bureaucratic structure. These governmental agencies have supplanted the urgency of life and death exigencies with an array of arbitrary rules and restrictions carrying the weight of law totally unteathered to objective data or solid medical evidence. Because five elected officials in a city raised their hands, their citizens (only) may tread the sands of their community three hours a day, in a manner prescribed by law, without bothering to justify the laws they enacted as objectively necessary, or even suggest they are authorized by the statutes and caselaw pertaining to emergencies.

The interesting thing, from a governmental standpoint, is that there is no one, even their own citizens, who can tell them no.

The Permissions

The Saudi Colonel, who looked like a cross between Omar Sharif and Mr. Potato Head, had a group of soldiers line up and level their rifles at us. "YOU DO NOT HAVE THE PERMISSIONS! HOW CAN YOU BE COMING HERE WITHOUT THE PERMISSIONS WHEN I AM THE PERSON MAKING THE PERMISSIONS FOR YOU TO COME HERE!? YOU MUST GO BACK TO DHAHRAN  AND GET THE PERMISSIONS FROM ME THERE TO COME HERE AND GIVE ME PERMISSIONS!!!" shouted the Colonel.

In vain it was explained to the colonel that this was an official British military convoy, the British were Saudi allies [and] this was Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia.

In the end it turned out what the Saudi colonel wanted was a sufficiently abject and humiliating apology from the British officers for, I guess, failing to fill out, in triplicate, the Request for Permission to Help Keep the King of Saudi Arabia from Getting the Holy Kaaba Stuffed up his Butt by Saddam Hussein Form or something.

PJ O'Rourke, Give War a Chance, 1992.

"You may not have done what you were asked, but you will do what you are told."

Cool Runnings

Who hasn't had an occasional opportunity to happen upon a person who, invested with some petty authority, will not let you accomplish a simple, innocuous task without getting "the permissions?" It doesn't have to be the usual suspect - DMV - it can be almost anyone who has something you want, and holds it hostage until you've admitted that only they can say yes.

Life is currently sort of like a scene in the movie Twister, where the storm has passed and everyone who made it through tentatively open cellar doors, push aside debris and marvel at their good fortune. There is clean up to be done, there are the injured to care for, the departed to mourn. But, the sun's out and we all made it.

Governor Jared Polis, at the helm in Colorado, has done well. His pressers are designed to keep his citizens in the loop, let us know why the rules are the rules and give us hope that he will trust us to be adults about the transition back to "normal." He recently announced a lifting of the "Shelter at Home" edict in favor of "Don't be a Moron" guidelines allowing some relaxation of the rules causing our favorite Mexican restaurant to have to leave the margaritas on our porch and run.

Halla-frickin'-lewya. It isn't that the virus is gone. One can still get very sick and die, especially if you are over 60 (me) and have some other malady (also me). The coast isn't entirely clear, but with rational behavior and reasonable precautions the risks are manageable.

But, wait!! Jefferson County, Boulder County and others have issued a "Not So Fast" order. Hear, again, Governor Polis:

“What Denver has done, in a very thoughtful way, is they said ‘we need a little more time to operationalize, to figure out how we’re going to enforce these health requirements,’” Polis said. “It’s completely understandable that somebody is saying, ‘Look, May 1 we’re not ready to have the inspections of the retail to make sure they are safer and all of these things. We need another week.’”

Jefferson County, where I live, jumped on the bandwagon the very next day. It isn't that the emergency is still with us. The proper bureaucracy isn't yet in place.

You have read on these pages (What to Believe) that we were, and are, on board with the measures taken at the outset. We did what we were told, in our interest and in the interest of those around us. We'll keep to the Code as it relates to safety precautions. Okay, maybe we fudged a little so we could see the grandkids. But, for the most part, we'll continue to do our part. We even have some awesome masks for when we venture out.

But... Until there are enough inspectors to give us the permissions so that we can go into a store and give them the permissions to shop, we're stuck? It's still illegal for us to drive up north to see our grandkids?

Not a fan, Jared, buddy. At all.

What to Believe

Ten Bears (Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman): [in Lakota; subtitled] It's easy to become confused by these questions. Before we take action we need to talk about this some more at another time. That is all I have to say. This council is dismissed. Dances with Wolves (1990).

We left for a cruise vacation on February 20th. When we arrived back in port on March 1st, the world had changed.

Most of us are not scientists or trained medical experts. One of my friends ticked off the prerequisites necessary to have an opinion about the Corona virus (or, COVID-19, or any of the other labels attached), mostly classes in microbiology, epidemiology or medicine. Me - I've taken a ton of law classes, so I guess that leaves me out.

Or, does it? Isn't it part of being a grown up, of seeing something happening to your neighborhood, your state, your country and trying to be informed? So...

I'm a fan of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's notion that one begins an inquiry by asking: What are the known-knowns, the known-unknowns and the unknown-unknowns? It comes from a substantially technical decision-making model, which I looked up and decided to ignore. This is easier for me to understand.

So, what did we know we knew?

The first known cluster of cases in the US was in a nursing home in Washington State. The facility wasn't really ready for something like this, and it blew through like a freight train. Some early news reports (circa March 8) had 70% of the staff infected. They really didn't have the appropriate gear, or training, and people who got it went downhill fast. The demographic of a care facility seemed to speak for who the disease's most vulnerable victims would be - 80s and 90s, with something else wrong with them. But, holy crap it seemed to get out of control quickly.

Then, Italy happened. One day, it was business as usual. The next, there weren't enough ventilators or hospital bed space, people were being triaged like it was a battle zone (if you were over 60, you were basically on your own) and ten percent of the folks who tested positive died. The numbers were scary for how contagious and how dangerous it seemed to be.

About this time, a cruise ship called Diamond Princess came onto the radar. It had been at sea for a while, made port calls on the "Pacific Rim" and looked like a great place to run some numbers. People were relieved that "only" twenty-something percent of the folks tested positive - meaning they were actively infectious (the final number was about 19%). Except, not all of them were sick. Whuuuuut? Only about 1.5% of those who tested positive died, and most of them were fairly old. Wait...only?

Let's see. The CDC says that between three and twenty percent of people in the US get the flu-flu each season. That's crazy, right? Don't they know?

Of course not. How many of you loyal readers got sick, stayed home, felt horrible and then got over it without going to the doctor? So, the stats are elastic. But, we have the numbers from the cruise ship, they seem reasonably related to a higher-end flu season, so let's play with them.

There are (officially) about 330 million of us living in the US. So, applying the modest numbers available from the Princess cruise ship (mumble, mumble, mumble) - holy fuck! A million people are going to die. A million people!?

Running the Italy numbers - no, I don't think I will.

So, sick people should stay home, or go to the hospital, right? That way, we can slow down the spread of... But some people, especially kids, can be asymptomatic - a fancy way of saying they look fine, they feel fine and they are little roving germ-sickles. In fact (as my daughter, who works in the international health field, suggests) 25% of people who are contagious as hell don't even know it. That doesn't count (I know, right? Common sense?) those of us with seasonal allergies saying to each other "You don't think...?" with the answer being maybe yes.

But, come on. This is America. We'll do all that doctor shit, and everything will be fine. We'll do like...World War Two. Boeing will build ventilators. Isn't that what everyone is saying? Build us some ventilators, most riki tik!

Sure. To quote the irrepressible Mark Steyn, seven out of ten ventilator patients get "carried out by the handles." That number doesn't have to be precise to be spooky as hell.

But, we have more experience with this, right? Doesn't the CDC (or, somebody) gin up a vaccine (that half of us don't take, anyway) every year? Well, what are you waiting for? Treatment - yeah, that's the ticket. Didn't President Trump say something about...well, I can't pronounce it. Doesn't that work? Let's all take that!

Where does a person turn for advice? Medical people can't agree on anything, it seems. One doctor says we're all fucked, another says "It's like chicken pox. The sooner we all get it, the sooner it will go away. This 'flatten the curve' nonsense is just delaying the inevitable." A dude who is a constitutional scholar (which should be the first clue he's clueless) said "Five hundred deaths. Six, tops," about fifty thousand deaths ago - then had the balls to write a second column explaining why his numbers were wrong, but...not his fault. 

Whew. An anesthesiologist (colloquially called a gas-passer) says it's all good, we can come out, now...but, if you actually read his essay he cherry-picks the hell out of the known data. A "former" epidemiology professor (ask my PhD wife her opinion of pure academics) says "Point zero-one percent death rate, I feel." You feel? Another guy from Stanford, who sounds like he knows what he's talking about, says antibody tests suggest maybe 50 people have been exposed and have antibodies for every 1 who has tested positive. That's great news, right? Except - "The debate is raging about whether that means a person is immune if they are positive for antibodies."

Then there is the guy who is a suspense novelist who has made all of the interview shows criticizing the CDC for being wrong about the numbers. Hey... I'm a suspense novelist! How many of you would want my opinion. And I have a doctoral degree.

Okay, it's in law.

What are Pat and I doing? Minimizing our time in the social media swamp. Wearing masks, following the rules, keeping our distance. Spending money we really don't have supporting local businesses. Trying to apply common sense and some simple rules to a complex situation. Beginning with the premise of "Assume Positive Intent" when we look at our fallible government officials and holding them to the standard of reasonableness, not perfection and certainly not clairvoyance.

And, praying. That's right. This is the first one of these she and I have sat out after four decades of public service. But, our son is a police officer. Both of our daughters work in health care - one in a hospital. All of them have young children. We pray for their safety, and look forward to the day we can hug them again.

We pray for our friends, the ones not sitting this out. Cops, firefighters, doctors and nurses. We know what you are facing. It sucks. You are in our thoughts every waking moment.

When we go to the store, when we intercept the mailman, UPS, FedEx... "Thank you for being here, for keeping it all going."

And, we pray for humanity, both the verb and the noun. Maybe, just maybe, the lesson we learn is, like the passengers on Diamond Princess, we're stuck here on this beautiful planet, together. Maybe we should start acting like that matters.