WELCOME TO THE THIRD WORLD

By Susan Bergeron

May Day 2020: Just after dawn I'm struggling to strap my blood pressure cuff onto my bicep for a reading while I do a temperature check. I have a telehealth appointment with my primary care doctor this morning. Thermometers are scarce, so I'm very careful not to break mine. I also have a stethoscope---real, but used as a prop from theater days. Ron and I don't know how to use it except that if we hear crackling noises in one of our chests it is not good. And there's one of those pulse/ox devices on the way from Amazon---a cheap medical device that checks for a drop in your lungs' oxygen level---an early silent harbinger of Covid disease. Many people report no chest pain until they're in full-blown pneumonia. These are the folks who often end up on a ventilator and often die; New York reported an 88% ventilator death rate for ICU Covid victims.)The average death rate for patients over 65 years old who are intubated is 97%! Welcome to the Third World, America. This America is slipping down the rabbit hole of disease, economic collapse and civil unrest faster than a banana republic during the Cappy Weinberger years.

My husband and I are in our mid 60's. We know that if we leave home in an ambulance it will be only because we no longer can breathe. And if that happens we probably won't return home. We know elderly people who won't even go to hospital if it comes to that. They say they will take their chances and die at home because a hospitalized death in isolation is a sad and terrible way to go. They say that now, but pneumonia is an awfully painful way to go, too. I looked after my grandmom at home when she had pneumonia. I remember her suffering. At least they can keep you comfortable in hospital.

Ron and I suspect he may have already had Covid-19 back in February, before the pandemic was declared. He came down with a terrible brochitis type illness that caused constant dry coughing. It would ease and then return in a cycle that lasted for weeks. The coughing was so bad I lost sleep for days and finally had to wear earplugs. Sleepless and miserable, Ron began to have trouble breathing and went to an Urgent Care Facility. The doctor said it wasn't Corona or pneumonia but didn't know what it was and sent him home with a bottle of Musinex. (There was no testing yet.) Why didn't I catch it, then? I discussed this during the telehealth visit. My doctor concurred with me that maybe I'm one of those "asymptomatic carriers." I may have passed it onto Ron. I was travelling all over New England at the time (which is now infested with about 100,000 cases). I don't remember being sick. So we are now on the waiting list for the antibody test. We will donate blood plasma if we're positive. But will it mean we'll be 'free to move about the country?" Not so fast. Some of the tests are unreliable. And the scientists don't really know how long people are immune to the disease once they've caught it. Primates who were re-challenged had immunity for up to 4 months so far. But that's monkeys, not people. Only a vaccine will truly free us.

I keep a contact diary in case I'm exposed or test positive for Covid. Our governor has asked that we do this. She said she will do contact tracing on all positive patients and quarentines. My diary is pretty slim. We shelter pretty cautiously. Groceries are procured through curb-side pick-up and banking and medicine is drive-through only. I make masks for us and we use disposable gloves. We avoid people and crowds, and rarely order take-out for food. Contact tracing is not the privacy invasion that right-wing extremists are trying to make it out to be. Health departments have been doing it for decades and, pre-Trump, no one has ever attacked the army of tracers as some kind of government conspiracy to steal your privacy. The CDC has done it as a matter of course for STD's like syphilis and gonorrhea, for generations. The CDC funds states' and local governments' health departments' use of Disease Intervention Specialists. These are the original "army of contact tracers." The STD DIS have been around since the 1940's, helping to eradicate infectious sexually transmitted diseases. Today they also track viral hepatitis, Ebola, HIV, antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, and outbreaks of head and body lice. Think about it: Assuming you are fortunate enough to have never gotten that knock on the door from the health department in the past, wouldn't you want to know if you'd been exposed to any one of those awful things? You'd want to get treatment. And you sure wouldn't want to spread it. Why should it be any different with Covid-19? It's a potentially deadly novel virus that we are helpless against if we catch it. 

These clowns, "The Great Unmasked," who clamber up the steps of their statehouses, threatening their state leaders with weapons, in full paramilitary regalia, are ignorant selfish undisciplined cry-babies who act big and tough but fall apart when they can't get a fucking haircut! I just knew the shelter-in-place guidelines would eventually devolve into another civil war between the Trumptards and the Thinking People. Here we go again. Mind you, I'm not saying it would become a war between the North and the South or the Blue and the Red. This time it's worse than that. It's the same brain cell deficient crowd---who rub elbows with the "Creationists"---who honestly want us to believe man is only a couple thousand years old---who are railing against facts and the scientists. It's a war waged between people who see what is the hard truth of what they must do to survive and protect their loved ones and neighbors, and those who must bow down to Dear Leader and jump to his pathetic dog whistles, fearing that an end to his reign would mean an end to exercising with impunity their open racism, their religious extremism, their open hatred and oppression of liberated women, and the worship of unbridled greed.

They are throwing us old people under the bus---these "Open Up The Country" war mongers. They gather in mobs, spittle flying as they shout their hate-filled nonsense into the air and wave it about, distributing the droplets of possibly passive poison with their "TRUMP 2020" flags.  They call for "herd immunity." Just let the disease run its course, racing through the population killing all the weak in a perfect display of survival of the fittest (and, ironically, offering up more proof of Darwin's theory of natural selection). Yes, Bill Maher, you irresponsible asshole, species of homo sapiens will adapt to these novel viruses of the modern era. But not without first thinning the herd through massive unnecessary deaths. But such "genocide by apathy" needn't be! With patience and faith in our scientists to create yet another life saving vaccine, we will once again be set free, but without the massive needless piles of bodies littered about in unrefrigerated U Haul trucks and Potters fields. These pigeon brains endorse a kind of "Children of the Corn" answer to our dilemma. The virus targets the old and, up until recently, has spared most youth. 

Confinement and quarantine is certainly not easy. Meat and food shortages, and rationing is a pain in the ass. Loneliness hurts. It's tragic that we as a nation would have to be visited by this terrible plague while having the worst "leader" ever at the helm of what was once the most powerful nation in the world. We, who once pitied the downtrodden and poor and sent aid all around the globe must now beg for help at a time when few countries have any to give, as they are all suffering from the same terrible plague. What we need now more than anything is an empathetic and wise human being to stand before us in the TV lights and push us to be strong and courageous---to drill down deep and mine the hidden steely core of strength within that allows people to do things they didn't know they were capable of, like a 150 pound man lifting a 2000 pound car off of a child who is lying under its wheels. But that someone is anyone but our president. Governor Cuomo of New York is the closest we have to such leadership in this crisis. A stalwart leader inspires the people to reach deep within our hearts and minds to find that ingenuity and that thing that makes us unique to all others in the world---our unconditional love.  We love our family and our friends, no matter what. We help others all around the country and the world, no matter what. Not just those who agree to pay for it. Because we're Americans. Thatis our collective soul. 

If we can hang onto this one shining principal it will lead us out of this dark time and back into the light and return to everyone, both young and old, their freedom once again.