covid diary: day 17

This morning Henry and I wandered the yard, looking for signs of spring. There are some flowers blooming by the front door, and we found some tiny flowers all the way back by the woods at the back of the pasture, but that's about it. We did see a lot of birds and hear a lot of birdsong. Some swallows are fighting the sparrows for one of the birdhouses, so Mike will be happy. (He's been quite displeased that the sparrows have displaced the bluebirds, and he's been talking about building bluebird houses of a new design to discourage the sparrows.) Two hours after we came back inside, I found a true sign of spring: a tick crawling on Henry's arm. Eeek.

Today in New York City, the 911 system became so overwhelmed that operators had to put most calls on lengthy holds. It was taking up to three hours to get an ambulance. It got so bad that in the afternoon, the city started putting out the word that only people who were having trouble breathing or having acute heart issues should call 911.

Other areas of the country continue to be hit very hard, especially New Orleans, Detroit, Washington state, and California. In despicable news, the president (yes, the same one who signed a $2 trillion relief bill, then turned around and issued a signing statement declaring that he would reject any efforts at congressional oversight of which corporations get bailed out) said that he expects all the governors to show him a high level of appreciation. In fact, he ordered members of the coronavirus task force, notably the vice president, not to return calls from governors who failed to show enough appreciation of him personally. "You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call," he told reporters at his daily briefing. He has also insulted specific governors, specifically Gov. Inslee of Washington and Gov. Whitmer of Michigan, and insinuated that their states will get no relief because those Democratic governors have been critical of Trump's policies in the past. Meanwhile, people are dying in those states, and health care workers are overwhelmed and under-protected. It's unconscionable.

Overnight, the death toll in Indiana went from 17 to 24, and the number of positive cases in our county went from one to four. Those numbers don't seem terrible, until you consider the ratios and the exponential growth curve. When you consider those factors, it seems inevitable that things will get much, much worse here. We may never get to New York levels of pandemic (let's hope we don't!) but it doesn't have to be that bad to be very bad indeed.