Tuesday July 7, 2020 Although testing wait times (up to eight hours in Arizona) and lack of tests is a current problem (Louisiana ran out of test five minutes after tests began) much remains the same in regards to the pandemic. Numbers of infections continue to increase and although deaths are down hospitalizations are up. The Trump administration continues to downplay the virus amidst breakouts happening in a number of states around the United States. Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are reporting a record number of daily cases and overall the nation is averaging close to 50,000 new cases a day.
It is truly a state of emergency for some regions as hospitalizations are up and fear that hospitals will be overwhelmed is high. The nation has now seen 28 consecutive days of rising infection averages. Yet people continue to move about in public without masks and generally ignoring social distance advice. And not only is Trump downplaying the virus he is giving false information. He recently was quoted as saying that 99 percent of covid-19 cases are “harmless” and a vaccine will be available this year. This is the kind of information that is giving people false hope and sense that the pandemic near its end when in fact that is far from the truth. A vaccine is no where near creation let alone testing and distribution. Most experts are hopeful when they project a vaccine may be ready in the spring of 2021. Over fifty former government scientists and health officials recently emphatically asked Trump to stop spreading false rumors about the virus. Stating, “Sidelining science has already cost lives, imperiled the safety of our loved ones, compromised our ability to safely reopen our businesses, schools, and places of worship, and endangered the health of our democracy itself,”
If you are like me and love to read this stay at home business is good for your reading quota.
I recently discovered a book written in 1951 by Alan Watts. Watts, a writer and speaker, received a master's degree in theology and was know for his passion for teaching the ways of Buddhism, Taosim and Hinduism to our western culture. The book I am reading, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety, although written nearly seventy years ago contends with issues still relevant today and particularly now during the turbulent year that has been 2020.
He states, "There is the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. ...so many established traditions have been broken down- traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order and of religious belief. ...there seem to be fewer things we can regard as absolutely right and true..."
The book's first chapter is titled, "The Age of Anxiety" which is the title of a long poem by W.H. Auden. The poem is about man's coping with an ever-changing world of industrialization as he tries to find his identity.
The world is in a pandemic, one which may become the new normal for a time and we must adapt and overcome these restrictions and prepare to shoulder the burdens set upon us by a virus which shows no mercy or bias.
“The world needs a wash and a week's rest.” - W.H. Auden The Age of Anxiety
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