The view from my world
We live in a different world. I've found a number of meanings to this phrase in recent months. In one sense I refer to what the world looks like now in the age of COVID-19. Life has changed so much in the past year, and it's not surprising that it is so hard for us to accept the world is simply different than it once was. Many of us cope with this different world but simply living as if it is not different. At first the virus was a lark, something exciting we could all rally together (apart, of course) to defeat. But even then our efforts were half-hearted and this virus is not contained with half measures. Now is we roar into a corona season that is making the spring and summer look tepid by comparison, many are worn down from the listless struggle, right when constant vigilance should be the watchword. We are "going on about our lives", eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage even as the flood of the virus bears down upon us to sweep us all away. Trying to live in a world that no longer exists doesn't work.
We also live in different worlds, I've realized. Different realities. As political unrest has replaced public unrest in the past month, it's become clear that different segments of our country inhabit different realities. There is the world in which Donald Trump, has nobly sacrificed his successful career as a billionaire businessman out of a deep love of country. During four remarkable years, he wrought the most amazing transformation of this country bringing jobs to the huddled masses and playing hardball with our enemies and so-called friends abroad, all while enduring a withering onslaught of attacks from a leftist press determined to see him fail. And yet he persisted, leading the world in COVID. .. uh. . . response and hammering the virus into submission both personally and nationally. And then, at the very apex of his success, he was shamelessly robbed of his second term by a corrupt election process. That's the world that some of my friends live in.
President Trump, laboring heroically for the nation even in the very face of COVID (Photo released by the White House)
Then there are those of us who live in a world in which Donald Trump, carelessly threw his hat into the race for president, upending the norms of what it means to be president from the earliest stages of his campaign. To the surprise of almost everyone, including perhaps himself, this cartoon candidate actually won the highest office in the land. During four increasingly disturbing years, Trump remade the Republican party in his image and committed himself to cementing a loyal following among those who had elected him, shattering norm after norm in the process. He played footsie with our enemies and openly criticized our allies, all while demonizing as enemies of the people any media entities who dared to critique his leadership. The damage he'd done would likely have gone mostly unnoticed as the economy continued to hum along. But then, a global crisis arrived, an emergency totally unsuited to the strengths of our president and perfectly tailored for his weaknesses. His complete bungling of the virus response has led the United States to be a world leader in coronavirus cases (highest number of cases and sixth per capita) and deaths (highest number of deaths and seventh per capita). No matter who was president, we would have suffered, without question. But it didn't have to be this bad*. And then at the very nadir of his presidency, he lost re-election, and has since made quite a show of refusing to accept the results. That's the world I live in.
Different worlds.
Of course the truth is there is only one world, and we are all living it. The question is who recognizes the world as it actually is, and who is living in a schizoid fantasy, detached from reality? One thing is certain, none of us are living in the year 2019 and there is no going back there. Sooner or later, reality will come crashing in and some of us will be brutally awakened to the world as it is. Only time will tell which illusory world will crumble. But crumble it will.
As for my world, the past month has been a series of COVID obstacles that so far my family and I have successfully hurdled.
On October 15, right before the current virus tsunami began to mount, my colleagues and I hosted an outdoor school day for our remote 6th through 8th graders. It was a wonderful morning with our students, some of whom were meeting each other for the very first time.
The sixth through eighth grade students socially distanced and masked for outdoor school day, Thursday, October 15, 2020
On October 26, I traveled to Indiana with my former principal Brenda Arthurs and my colleague Tamaria Kulemeka to attend the funeral of the father of my other colleague Larry Brooks. His father had died after a lengthy battle with cancer and we decided to take the risk to lend our support to him in his time of grief. Our presence ended up being more of a blessing to him than we had anticipated, and thankfully we managed to dodge the virus as well.
On November 1, I spent the day filming scenes for a short film I was in. I played a very old man, and the makeup process involved very close contact without masks for about an hour with the make-up artist, followed by a couple more hours of riding around in a car with the director and photographer (virtually all my scenes were of me behind the wheel of a car). Again, no masks. It's been almost two weeks since that day, and so far as I can tell, I'm still healthy.
In my old man makeup for my friend Jasmyn Green's short film Rear Views. See it on YouTube! It's really good! November 1, 2020
Last Sunday, November 8, we had our 10K Run for the group of students who'd been training with me since September. We took care to follow the guidance of the park where we ran, keeping our families separate and wearing masks. But by then the virus was raging through Ohio, and what a month earlier might have felt pretty safe, was starting to feel more risky. By next weekend, I should have pretty safe idea of whether we cleared that hurdle as well.
At the finish line. It was unseasonably warm, and the only time in my ten years of running this race that I ran it in shorts and a t-shirt
Currently we are in self-imposed quarantine, in the hopes of being able to spend a few days with Barbara's mom at Thanksgiving. I did more than two weeks worth of grocery shopping, including all our Thanksgiving food on Monday (an ordeal I don't hope to ever have to repeat), and Barbara has started teaching from home (and not a moment too soon, as there have since been several cases of COVID in the school circle this past week and the school has decided to go fully remote through the Thanksgiving holiday). We will be hunkering down at home until Thanksgiving while the viral storm rages around us, hoping to remain untouched.
I took this photo of our street while raking leaves yesterday. It was a perfect fall day.
*Interesting side note from research I did for part of this blog. The United States is the third largest country in the world by population, surpassed only by India and China. Indonesia, with about 274,000,000 people is the next smallest country. Yet, the United States outstrips all three nations in per capita COVID cases and deaths. They are not even close. And Indonesia has fewer COVID cases than the states of Florida and Illinois!
If this rate of increase stops growing exponentially and instead maintain its current pace, I would expect 15,146,055 total cases by December 14 and a total of 278, 445 dead from the virus.
On to the states: Illinois has absolutely destroyed the scale of my chart with it's dramatic increase in new cases over the past month. It hides the considerable leap Ohio and Nebraska have made as well. Study the chart carefully and you'll note that Ohio's new cases have about doubled in the past month. Florida's new cases were high to begin with, so it's increase while appearing modest still represent large numbers--the number of new cases this week are double what they were a month ago in the Sunshine State. Ohio has quadrupled the number of new cases and Nebraska's new cases are five times what they were a month ago. Only Hawaii has shown no change since October. Its flat line is essentially accurate as the state's new cases each week have remained at an average of 610.
Total Cases:
Florida: 870,544 total cases, 141,631 new cases, an increase of 19%. This is almost 50,000 more cases than I predicted. Prediction: Florida joins the Million Case Club, more than most nations, with 1,035,947 total cases by December 14, 2020.
Ohio: 282,528 total cases, 116,426 new cases, an increase of 70%. This about 70,000 more cases than I predicted. Prediction: 480,298 total cases by December 14, 2020.
Nebraska: 94,922 total cases, 44,528 new cases, an increase of 88%. This is almost 14,000 more cases than I predicted: Prediction: 178,453 total cases by December 14, 2020. This will be closing in on 10% of the state's population that will have had the virus!
Hawaii: 16,514 total cases, 2,873 new cases, an increase of 21%. This is about 3,000 fewer cases than I predicted, and the only state of the five who had lower case numbers than expected. Prediction: 19,981 total cases by December 14, 2020
Illinois: 553,083 total cases, 232,970 new cases, an increase of 73%. This is 147,000 more cases than I predicted. Prediction: 956,834 total cases by December 14, 2020
The death rate is no longer "steady" in any of the states. This is good news for some (Hawaii, for example) and bad news for others (Nebraska in particular, but everyone else too). Florida appears to have reached the end of a long downward trend and may be at the start of another death climb. I was concerned about the rate of deaths in Hawaii last month but this past month has shown a significant decrease. It doesn't register on the graph but Hawaii is now in the single digits for deaths, with none last week and three this week. Nebraska, on the other hand has had increase in new deaths every week since October 3 and the state's 84 deaths this past week is almost four times what the number was on the week of October 10. Ohio and Illinois both registered their highest number of new deaths last week and this weeks deaths are the third and second highest respectively since I started tracking weekly data.
Total Deaths
Florida: 17,444 total deaths, 2,259 new deaths, an increase of 15%. This is more than 2,000 fewer deaths than I forecast. Prediction: 20,061 total deaths by December 14, 2020.
Ohio: 5,700 total deaths, 706 new deaths, an increase of 14%. This is 142 deaths fewer than I predicted. Prediction: 6,498 deaths by December 14, 2020
Nebraska: 789 total deaths (that's 48 new deaths in the past three days, which is almost half of the new deaths for all of the previous month!), 266 new deaths, an increase of 51%. This is 130 more deaths than I predicted. This is the third month in a row that Nebraska's death toll has exceeded my forecast. Prediction: 1,191 total deaths by December 14, 2020. For a state Nebraska's size, this is an incredibly bleak forecast. And if Nebraska continues to register 48 deaths a day for the next month, more Nebraskans will die of COVID between now and December 14 than have died from it since the pandemic began.
Hawaii: 221 total deaths, 56 new deaths, an increase of 34%. This is about 120 fewer deaths than I forecast. It's worth noting that, while the number is quite low, this is the second highest rate of increase of the five states I've studied. However, this may also simply be a function of the low numbers we're dealing with. For example when you go from one death to two, that's a 100% increase even though it's only death. Prediction: 296 total deaths by December 14, 2020.
Illinois: 10,907 total deaths, 1,673 new deaths, an increase of 18%. This about 750 more deaths than I predicted. Prediction: 12,870 total deaths by December 14, 2020.
I further predict that, with the exception of Hawaii, all my predictions are lower than the actual death toll will be.
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