covid diary: day 126

It's Jeffirs beach vacation time, and I'm not there.
Photo by Matt, stolen from his IG without remorse.

Dire warnings from Italy this week. You'll remember that Italy was one of the first countries hit very hard by COVID-19, and now that case rates have gone down there (another reason to be jealous of Italy!), they're starting to really look at the long-term effects of COVID.

Even in people who have recovered, they're seeing lingering issues like insomnia, kidney disease, spinal infections, strokes, chronic tiredness and mobility issues. Concentration and physical stamina are affected long after the virus runs its course, and could be permanent. The Italian doctors (and a similar study conducted at University College London) are warning that even if you don't show symptoms with the initial infection, you could face long-term disabilities later on. And yes, this includes children. They're saying that this could change people's lives forever, and that the full extent of the damage might not be known for years.

And within the United States, dire warnings from four former directors of the CDC, writing together in the Washington Post that this administration's politicization of the CDC and deliberate denial of science are going to have grave consequences for the nation. On schools specifically, they write:

Sadly, we are not even close to having the virus under control. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s what makes it hard to plan for schools. Any parent with a young child knows that classrooms, cafeterias and school buses are petri dishes for the common cold and the flu, even in normal times. And although children are at lower risk for serious illness and death from COVID-19, the same is not true for the adults who work in schools, nor for the families children and school staffers go home to each evening. We must pay careful attention to safer school policies, including those the CDC released, to do everything we can to reopen our schools — and our economy — as safely as possible. This cannot happen equitably without additional federal and state resources to ensure that every school district — no matter the ZIP code — can take the necessary measures to protect children, teachers and staffers. Black, Latino and Native American communities have suffered disproportionately during the first six months of the pandemic. We cannot let this same tragedy unfold this fall in our schools. The CDC’s guidance is a call for all of our nation to work together so as many schools as possible can reopen as safely as possible. This will mean wearing masks correctly, increasing distance — including by closing bars and restaurants in many places — and tracking and stopping the spread of the virus by supporting patients and protecting contacts.

Trying to fight this pandemic while subverting scientific expertise is like fighting blindfolded. How well and how quickly we adhere to the advice of public health experts at the CDC will determine whether, how soon and how safely our schools can reopen.

It is not too late to give the CDC its proper role in guiding this response. But the clock is ticking.

Yes, CDC directors, you're absolutely right! Good job! Too bad the very day you published this piece, the administration made the absolutely disastrous and 100 percent nefarious decision to bypass the CDC completely, forcing states to submit their reporting on coronavirus to the administration-controlled HHS instead. (FYI: Hiding information like this is very, very, very bad. Without transparency, there's no way to know what's happening or how we can protect our families, our communities, our nation. And that, apparently, is the entire point.) Also too bad that Mike Pence actually said, with a straight face, "To be very clear, we don't want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don't reopen their schools."

Memo to Mike Pence: CDC guidance SHOULD be a reason why we don't open our schools. Because we don't want our students and teachers and school staff to die.

And in case you were wondering, here's where we're at in the world of mainstream conservative talk radio. Let me quote directly from longtime asshole and recent Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Rush Limbaugh:

[The 1918 flu pandemic] was just the next in a long line of things that happened to people that they dealt with, like the Donner party. You’ve heard of the Donner party. Maybe some of you haven’t.

The Donner party, the Donner family and a bunch of travelers trying to get to California over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They made the mistake of trying to make the trip in the middle of winter. We’re talking the Lake Tahoe region. They get to the peak. It was so bad that they had to turn to cannibalism to survive. That’s what’s noteworthy about the Donner party.

If you read the diaries written by the leaders of the Donner party, the only reference to how cold it was was one sentence: “It was a particularly tough winter.” It’s just what was. They didn’t complain about it because there was nothing they could do. They had to adapt. This is what’s missing. There seems to be no concept of adaptation. There seems to be no understanding in the Millennial generation that we can adapt to this and that we’re gonna have to. Because there’s nothing stopping it right now.

Yes that asshole just said we need to be more like the DONNER PARTY. But as historian Heather Cox Richardson (one of my favorite people because she does a daily series called "Letters from an American" chronicling these trying times) points out:

Interestingly, Limbaugh left out half the story of what happened to the Donner Party. After it was rescued and news of what had happened to the members of the group raced back east, Americans were horrified. Determined to guarantee that no other travelers would ever have to endure such a fate, Congress backed government policies to place army guides on the route to California and Oregon. The government did its best to make sure that those crossing the dangerous mountains would arrive safely at their destination.

I'm sure that omission was deliberate. No way does Limbaugh or any member of this administration want to acknowledge the simple truth that problems like these need to be handled at the national level. Then they would also have to admit that they've utterly failed.

In Florida, there are reports that almost one-third of children tested are testing positive for coronavirus. Alina Alonso, the health department director of Palm Beach County, told reporters, “They are seeing there is damage to the lungs in these asymptomatic children. ... We don’t know how that is going to manifest a year from now or two years from now. Is that child going to have chronic pulmonary problems or not?”

It's all terrifying.

To end on a happier note, today Henry discovered that you could make brownies without using a mix that you buy at the store, so he put himself to work. He thought the results were a little bit bitter (we didn't have any unsweetened chocolate, so we subbed a mix of cocoa powder and oil), but I thought they were great. All the brownie goodness, but not overwhelmingly sweet.

Nationwide cases: 3,491,936. Deaths: 137,277.