Coronavirus: Juxtaposing Perspectives and Glimpses from the Frontline

Preface:  After his bitcoin trends technical analysis in his 3/24/2020 YouTube video post, Crypto Jebb did a good job of summing-up not only why we not only should make the best of our quarantine during this pandemic, but also why we need to be grateful for what we have regardless (a similar message on gratefulness is also deliver very well in this video by Jack Chapple).  The other night I came back home from a 20-hour work day.  It was 1am and I did what I normally do.  Stood in my room which was heated by a mini-heater, ate some food that my wife had prepared, turned on the shower so as to warm up the water, ate some ice cream while looking at news on my phone, and then took a hot shower.  I don’t own a house, I don’t have big bank account, I’m always hustling, working two jobs (which I’m grateful for and provide me with exactly what I signed-up for), and considering all the shit going on and that has gone on in the world, as I crawled into bed with my beautiful wife, I reaffirmed that I am one of the luckiest men alive.  

Coronavirus timeline:
- January 19: 100 cases
- January 24: 1,000 cases
- January 28: 5,000 cases
- February 12: 50,000 cases
- March 6: 100,000 cases
- March 14: 150,000 cases
- March 18: 200,000 cases
- March 19: 225,000 cases
- March 20: 250,000 cases

— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) March 20, 2020

While it remains to be seen how bad the Coronavirus (“corned beef-19”) shitstorm will become – and before we rationalize it as something that is actually beneficial for the natural world (which I plan to do soon) or write it off as a problem that has been blown out of proportion – it’s worth taking a look at some of the more distressing realities that people are facing in the places hardest hit by the pandemic.  In doing so we can at least do some justice to the victims and healthcare workers who are on the frontlines fighting this pandemic and desperately warning others about its ferocity and tenacity.  Ultimately, even if this thing is being blown out of proportion, it is better to take these people by their word and prepare for the worst.  Overreacting and over-preparing is better than getting caught with our pants down.  

But before we do that, let us first examine at two different viewpoints that I feel people mainly hold about this pandemic.  To be sure, these are not the only perspectives (there are those who find themselves in the middle, indifferent, or oblivious to these perspectives – which is fine and arguably healthier that trying to keep up with all the news and formulate an opinion about it), but nevertheless here are the two most common camps that I find people park themselves in amongst my social network.  

1) “Fuck You.”  “The case fatality rate is low, the virus only affects old people who were on their deathbeds anyway, you have to have one or more underlying health issues (hypertension, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease) to die, most people get it and recover, some people don’t even know they had it, it’s not as prominent in latitudes with warmer climates, it has already come and gone in China and Wuhan has lifted its lockdown, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have flattened the curve and are now doing fine, death and infection rates in Italy are dropping, Germany is handling this thing fine, chloroquine can be used to treat and recover victims, worst case scenario we’ll adapt and live with it and sooner or later herd immunity will be established and a vaccine will be widely available, ya’ll are freaking out over nothing because there are many more threats to humanity which kill many more people, marital law and an economic depression would harm and lead to the deaths of many more people than the Wuhan.”

2) “We’re Fucked.”  If this is like the flu then why the hell are so many people dying and why did China (whose numbers and word can’t be trusted and which is now facing a resurgence of cases) have to quarantine it’s entire population to reduce to transmission rate to a reasonable level, why are hospitals in Western Europe totally overwhelmed, a mutated and more resilient strain of the virus could be on the loose in Italy, millions could die in Iran, due to lack of testing we have no idea how many people actually have this, people can be asymptomatic for weeks while spreading the virus, there are many young and healthy people appearing to die from this, they can get the virus again after recovering, we can get it from our dogs, homeless and refugee populations will be ravaged, judging by the spread in Australia and South East Asia the warm climate theory is bunk and even if that’s not the case the summer will only offer a breather before next winter, no one’s taking quarantines seriously, no one’s wearing masks, infection rates are growing exponentially and when this thing peaks there will be millions infected, and by that time all the ICU beds will be taken, we’re gonna soon run out of hospital beds, ventilators, masks, and will have to use trash bags as PPE, CDC models predict 214 million Americans infected and 1.4 million dead, the pandemic is expected to last for over 18 months and will come in multiple waves, people will find ways of dealing with a depression not so much a pandemic.”  

There’s clearly a sense of uncertainty and dread pervading through society nowadays (as if there wasn’t already enough).  I think there are many other things we should be focused on other than this virus, and we should not be consumed by it.  We are constantly smothered by the pandemic.  But we cannot let that prevent us from doing the work that makes us whole and completing the projects that we find meaningful.  If you let it absorb all your mental space and time, permeating and altering your mental landscape and physiological sanctuaries, then it is beating you.  It can win by taking either your life or your time.  Don’t let it do either.  Having said that, it’s important to know what you’re in for, and these are some of the things I’ve seen which provide a sneak preview of what may coming to a theater near you.

Spain:

Italy:

The Italian army takes coffins away in Bergamo as morgues and cemeteries struggle to cope with the number of #coronavirus deaths.
Latest in Europe: https://t.co/sAASNXPTjz pic.twitter.com/qaIcXgpXSj

— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) March 19, 2020

Compounding is the Problem:

The Coronavirus Circus, A Blast from the Past

Disease sneaks into the body invisibly, cunningly, through the air, water, or even – and here she gave me a wary look – from a pair of black eyes set close to a hawk nose.  Such eyes, known as Gypsy or witches’ eyes, could bring crippling illness, plague, or death.*

                                                                                                         -Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
   
                                                                                                         -T.H White, The Once and Future King

Once again, a virus has taken the world by storm.  Our media feeds are filled with (largely unconfirmed) footage of coronavirus victims dropping dead in the streets, convulsing under blankets in hospitals waiting rooms, and being transported in plastic tubes and boxes by medical workers in hazmat suits.  The Chinese government has taken the unprecedented step (unless you count the clampdown on the one million Uighur Muslim minorities in East Turkestan or Xinjiang– depending on who you ask – in western China, a region where the virus has also spread and could devastate the vulnerable prisoner and detainee populations) of quarantining over 40 million people in 14 different cities including Wuhan, the progenitor city of the outbreak (which just happens to be the home of the Medical Research Institute at Wuhan University, one of China’s few “biosafety level-4” labs that has been cleared to work with the most dangerous pathogens on Earth).  

Image: Train to Busan

While fumigators disinfect ghost towns, Chinese people are covering their heads, their cats, and entire domiciles and offices in plastic bags and sheets, which is not unlike what many do when they head to the beach. 

Image from Amusing Planet

#Chinese ppl maskedly playing #mahjong while there are thousands dead bcz of #Coronavirus.
وقتی #ویروس_کرونا هم نمی‌تواند جلوی بازی #چینی ها ره بگیره! 😁😁 pic.twitter.com/nnoztgGup5

— 夏金 (@AHakimNazari) January 25, 2020

This #coronavirus is definitely not a joke and I’m in the heart of Wuhan🥺 pic.twitter.com/x8jm5mSB57

— Fafa_Fadzai (@fadzai_mangwiro) January 23, 2020

My friends’ apartment complex getting disinfected in Wuhan yesterday #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/6jH3shTkOb

— mxmbt2 (@mxmbt2) January 22, 2020

But other than the supposed increased transparency and proactiveness of the Chinese government to counter the spread of the virus, the skyrocketing popularity of  app game Plague Inc. that allows players to become a virus and wipe-out humanity, and Disneyland being closed, what’s the difference between the current outbreak of Coronavirus and the various other epidemics that have emerged from China in the past?  In terms of contagion rate and incubation time, it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before. The Sun reports that ‘Professor Neil Ferguson, an expert in mathematical biology at Imperial College London told reporters in London the death rate for the new strain of coronavirus is  "roughly the same as for the Spanish flu epidemic, at around one in 50."  The 1918 outbreak is the most severe pandemic in recent history, wiping out an estimated 50 million people across the world.’ (Peak Prosperity CEO Chris Martenson, who holds a PhD in Pathology from Duke, took a captiously rosier perspective on the crisis in an informative video update.)

As with most things, it’s helpful to put the spread of Coronavirus in perspective.  Since the year 2000, numerous viruses have surfaced, spread death and panic, only to be contained, subside, and disappear from headlines.  Such outbreak scares happen with such frequency that the average person can hardly keep track of them, let alone contextualize and compare the impact and death tolls of contemporary pandemics with those of modern and ancient history, which far outweigh any virus outbreak experienced in recent generations in terms of lives lost and duration of persistency.  Here’s a list to refresh your memory as to recent viruses and their death tolls:

1. Ebola – present – 2^nd worst Ebola outbreak in history – 350 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2. Yemen Cholera Epidemic – 2016 – 2019/present – 3,886 deaths.
3. Zika Virus - 2015 – 29 infant deaths and 2,400 possible cases of microcephaly.
4. Ebola crisis -  2014  - ‘worst Ebola outbreak in history’ - 11,315 people dead in five African countries plus the U.S.
5. Swine Flu – 2009 – Aka H1N1 flu pandemic in Asia – 3,787 deaths, possibly 200,000 globally 
6. Avian/Bird Flu – 2006 – around 100 dead.
7. SARS  - 2002-2003 – Aka Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus – 774 deaths, mostly in China.

With the exception of the 2009 swine-flu pandemic, considering how few people actually died as a result of the above outbreaks that were hyped since the year 2000, it appears that previous measures taken to contain and stamp-out viruses in a highly interconnected and globalized age were extremely successful if not borderline miraculous. There is no reason to think that the outcome of the Coronavirus epidemic will be any different other outbreaks in the 21^stcentury.  Furthermore, if you compare the death toll and impact of recent virus outbreaks to some of the most severe in history, it becomes clear that we should be giving ourselves a pat on the back for good hand hygiene and applauding the incredible work of the scientists and doctors who have carried the collective human species forward in a world brimming with microbes that are trying to kill us.  If it were not for their work, we could have ended up like the dinosaurs that Homer Simpson killed:

For comparion, here are few examples of other pandemic bullets that our ancestors unfortunately failed to dodge. 

1.  Hong Kong Flu – 1968-1969 – Over 1 million deaths in Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, and Europe.
2.  Asian Flu – 1956-1958 – 1.1 million deaths (116,000 in the U.S alone) – possibly originated from ducks in China, the least deadly of the 20^thcentury flu pandemics, perhaps killed as many as 4 million people.
3.  The Third Cholera Pandemic – 1852-1869 – 1 million dead – Originated in India and spread across the globe.
4.  Flu Pandemic/Spanish Flu – 1918-1920 – 50 – 100 million dead – Emerging after WWI, within months this outbreak of influenza killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.  It infected one-third of the world’s population and the death toll amount to almost three times more people killed than the 17 million soldiers and civilians who died during WWI; it killed three to five percent of the Earth’s population at the time.
5. The Black Death – 1346-1353 – 75 – 200 million deaths (bubonic plague estimated to have killed 30 – 60% of Europe’s population, and may reduced the world’s population from an estimated 475 million to 350-375 million in the 14^thcentury.)
6. The Plague of Justinian – 541-542 – 25 million dead – Bubonic plague, was killing an estimated 5,000 per day, killed half the population of Europe, 25% of the Eastern Mediterranean, and 40% of the city of Constantinople. 

Clearly, modern humans are doing much better than our medieval and ancient ancestors when it comes to riding-out epidemics and pandemics.  That’s not to say that we'll to continue this fortunate run of being able suppress or eradicate every virus outbreak that comes our way.   But our chances of continued success and survival may be greatly improved if we reduce the risk factors involved in incubating deadly viruses and spillover by not eating animals such as bats, which can host dozens of human-infecting viruses. Coronavirus is thought to have originated in a Wuhan seafood market that was illegally peddling wildlife and apparently selling bat soup.  Vendors there might as well have been shoving fish up their asses and serving them to customers. This penchant and culinary fetish that the Chinese have for soullessly devouring anything that moves, especially if it moves, even while it is moving (i.e ‘life feeding’) needs to stop. (To their credit, a nationwide ban on wildlife sales has been implemented.)  This pratice should stop for the sake of the animals (exotic or otherwise) being trafficked and eaten, for the sake of humans everywhere whom must contend with the viruses that spread from such practices, and for the sake of the backward people themsevles who think that it is okay to eat pest-ridden creatures and living, sentient animals.

*I figured I’d include this excerpt from The Painted Bird, which I recently read, since it has been reported that Coronavirus can spread “through the eyes.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – Excerpts from The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life

This audio files features excerpts from a sermon Dr. Martin Luther King’s delivered at New Covenant Baptist Church on April 9^th, 1967. Titled Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, the sermon addresses how a man can live a fulfilling life without being drawn into the trappings of modernity and superficial success.  In three excerpts embedded into the clip, Dr. King talks about how one should aspire to excel in their work regardless of their lot in life, lays out the Road to Jericho parable, and cautions on man’s drift toward materialism at the sacrifice of appreciating the wonders of the natural world.

Here’s some of the first excerpt transcribed, compliments of the Stanford King Institute (click here to check out the rest of the transcribed speech):

I remember when I was in college, I majored in sociology, and all sociology majors had to take a course that was required called statistics. And statistics can be very complicated. You’ve got to have a mathematical mind, a real knowledge of geometry, and you’ve got to know how to find the mean, the mode, and the median. I never will forget. I took this course and I had a fellow classmate who could just work that stuff out, you know. And he could do his homework in about an hour. We would often go to the lab or the workshop, and he would just work it out in about an hour, and it was over for him. And I was trying to do what he was doing; I was trying to do mine in an hour. And the more I tried to do it in an hour, the more I was flunking out in the course. And I had to come to a very hard conclusion. I had to sit down and say, "Now, Martin Luther King, Leif Cane has a better mind than you." Sometimes you have to acknowledge that. And I had to say to myself, "Now, he may be able to do it in an hour, but it takes me two or three hours to do it." I was not willing to accept myself. I was not willing to accept my tools and my limitations. 

But you know in life we’re called upon to do this. A Ford car trying to be a Cadillac is absurd, but if a Ford will accept itself as a Ford, it can do many things that a Cadillac could never do: it can get in parking spaces that a Cadillac can never get in.  And in life some of us are Fords and some of us are Cadillacs. Moses says in "Green Pastures," "Lord, I ain’t much, but I is all I got." [laughter] The principle of self-acceptance is a basic principle in life.

Now the other thing about the length of life: after accepting ourselves and our tools, we must discover what we are called to do.  And once we discover it we should set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we have in our systems. And after we’ve discovered what God called us to do, after we’ve discovered our life’s work, we should set out to do that work so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.  Now this does not mean that everybody will do the so-called big, recognized things of life. Very few people will rise to the heights of genius in the arts and the sciences; very few collectively will rise to certain professions. Most of us will have to be content to work in the fields and in the factories and on the streets. But we must see the dignity of all labor.

When I was in Montgomery, Alabama, I went to a shoe shop quite often, known as the Gordon Shoe Shop. And there was a fellow in there that used to shine my shoes, and it was just an experience to witness this fellow shining my shoes. He would get that rag, you know, and he could bring music out of it. And I said to myself, "This fellow has a Ph.D. in shoe shining."

What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill
Be a scrub in the valley—but be
The best little scrub on the side of the hill,
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a highway just be a trail
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or fail —
Be the best of whatever you are.

Jordon Peterson on Switching Jobs, Transcending Suffering, and the Moral Responsibility to Pursue what is Meaningful

Transcribed below are a two excerpts from interviews with psychologist Jordan Peterson in which he speaks about the importance of having a purpose in one’s life.  The first excerpt is from Dr. Peterson’s 2018 interview with Thorbjorn Thordarson of Iceland’s Channel 2.   I was going to stop there with the transcribing and then throw in this pertinent commentary on living as though money was no object by Alan Watts (the book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is also relevant to this topic), but I came across another excerpt which complements the first one well.  This second exerpt is from Jordan Peterson's Oxford Union’s address and Q&A.

TT:  There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. What do you say to those viewers that don’t pursue their dreams and locked into their careers because they’re too afraid to take risks and pursue something meaningful? 

JP:  Well the first thing I would say is: you should be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful, but you should be more afraid of staying where you are if it’s making you miserable.  The first thing you want to do is dispense with the idea that you get to have any permanent security outside of your ability to contend and adapt.  It’s the same issue with children.  You’re paying a price by sitting there being miserable. You might say, “well the devil I know is better than the one I don’t.”  Don’t be so sure of that.  The clock is ticking, and if you’re miserable in your job now and you change nothing, in five years you’ll be much more miserable and you’ll be a lot older. 

TT:  But isn’t it a luxury to pursue what is meaningful?  Our viewers have mortgages, they have children, they have payments and loans.  It’s a luxury to pursue because we lack the resources. 

JP:  Remember now I’m not talking about what makes you happy.  It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy.  It’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.  And that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  It might require sacrifice.  If you need to change your job – let’s say you have children, family, and mortgage – you have responsibilities – you’ve already picked up those responsibilities, you don’t just get to walk away scot-free and say “I don’t like my job, I quit.”  That’s no strategy.  But what you might have to do is you think, “This job is killing my soul, alright so what do I have to do about that? I have look for another job.  Well, no one wants to hire me.” Okay.  Maybe you need to educate yourself more.  Maybe you need to update your curriculum vitae, your resume. Maybe you need to overcome your fear of being interviewed.  Maybe you need to sharpen your social skills.  You have to think about these things strategically.  If you’re going to switch careers you have to do it like an intelligent, responsible person.  That might take you a couple years of effort to do properly…  I’ve dealt with hundreds of people in my clinical and consulting practices and we set a goal, we develop a vision, and work towards it and things inevitably get better for people.  So, it’s not a luxury, it’s difficult, it’s a moral responsibility – and it isn’t happiness, the pursuit isn’t for happiness.  

TT: It’s a moral responsibility to pursue what is meaningful.

JP:  Absolutely.  

JP.  You have to move from point A to point B in life, but point A is often a very difficult place to be because we’re fragile and bounded and mortal and limited, and because we know that.  So one of the implications of that, as many great religious traditions are at pains to illustrate or demonstrate or proclaim, is that life is essentially suffering. And I believe that to be a fundamental truth, but perhaps not the most fundamental truth, because I think the most fundamental truth is that despite the fact that life is suffering people can transcend that.  And partly the way they transcend that is pursuing things of value.  So if there is no value proposition at hand, then you have no meaning to justify the difficult conditions of your life, and that’s brutally difficult for people.  Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can bear any how.”  And you see – and I’ve certainly seen this as a clinical practitioner – that people who have no purpose in their life are embittered by the difficulties of their life.  They become first bitter and then resentful and then revengeful and then cruel.  And there’s plenty of places to go past cruel, that’s just where you start if you’re really on a downhill.

Letters and Politics - Ancient History Pack

Occasionally I listen to lectures or watch a documentary series that I find extremely important in their educational and inspirational qualities and potential that I am moved to share the files online and via physical discs containing the MP3 files.  The first series of game changers that I came across were lectures by Alan Watts, the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan, and a compilation of speeches and sermons by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I uploaded these to my blog, Google Drive, and burned them to discs so that I could distribute them to friends and others. (In the case of Cosmos, which is a ‘made-for-TV’ documentary series, I converted the videos to audio files, and thanks to Carl Sagan’s exceptional narration and elucidation, I feel that not much is lost on the listener for want of the documentary visuals).  There are several other series that I hope to help share in this manner.  They include the ‘PBS Digital Studios’ Eons series, a compilation of Dr.  Jordan Peterson lectures, and a controversial series on Anthropogenic climate change.  With each series, I have tried to improve the aesthetic presentation of the MP3s compilations as well as become more efficient at burning and packaging them.  The latest series, The KPFA Ancient History Pack, originated from the Bay Area’s most valuable radio station – 94.1 FM KPFA. The interviews are compiled from the Letters and Politics program, and I received them as a ‘thank you’ gift for donating to one of their fund drives.  You can listen to and download the lectures by clicking here, or, if we happen to cross paths I can give you one.  Below are some photos of what I thrown together and some behind-the-scenes pictures of where all the magic happens.