So many of the comments and observations are digital that I realize they are just thoughts in the wind. They disappear like milk weeds blown off a dandelion. And since I have this blog printed at the end of every year, these thoughts and observations will be "memorialized" in print for whomever decides to open the 2020 volume. A deposition for he record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It had to happen. My wife noticed someone at the supermarket on Saturday wearing a military gas mask. Perhaps they just watched the movie 1917 at home.
@bklynbckstretch, Teresa Genaro, an English literature teacher at Packard Academy and a horse racing journalist, Tweeted: "T. S. Eliot was wrong." This of course refers to how Eliot imagined the end of the world coming in his poem Hollow Man, "not with a bang but a whimper." My own thoughts are he's wrong. It ends without a haircut.
The media loves numbers. Thus we have a stat on the number of deaths attributed to the virus worldwide, and domestic. Death is an easy number to understand. It's absolute. A person as counted as dead on Tuesday, is still dead on Wednesday.
But "cases" of the virus is a little more nebulous. This one right now is topping 300,000. But what constitutes a "case." As soon as there is a confirmed positive test of the virus, you are a "case." You may be asymptomatic, you may be really sick, you may be in the hospital—even the ICU—you may be any number of things, but to the media you're a "case" And part of a large number. The media loves a large numbers.
But a case is not irreversible. A positive test on Tuesday may not be positive in two weeks. In fact, you could have recovered from being a "case" and volunteer to give plasma because your body now contains the antibodies to fight the virus. Antibodies that can be used on others. This is being called "convalescent plasma."
Cumulative numbers might gives a sense of the breadth of the disease, but they are not anchored in time. Does the media subtract those that are no longer "cases." Of course not. No way to do that. So, once smitten, you are a "case."
More telling might be the number of people in the hospital vs. the number of beds available to treat those people.
The whole numbers things reminds me of the reporting the nightly news gave us on the Vietnam war. Every night it was reported that we killed x number of Vietcong. Certainly dead Vietcong are countable, but how many are there still alive?
It was absolutely stupid reporting and reflected the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara's obsession with numbers. Dead, rifles seized, number infiltrated. One evening the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.commented on the Johnny Carson show, "my God, you'd think we've got turnstiles on the Ho Chi Minh trail."
McNamara was of course recruited from the auto industry, and was used to counting things in terms of production. Numbers are just that. Numbers. You need context. I still hate McNamara, and he's dead.
Studio sports. Sports of course are pretty much non-existent around the world. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are cancelled, as well as a raft of other events. Horse racing—where it is still being run—is only at a few tracks across the country, and then in front of empty stands.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Spring Arkansas, Tampa Bay Downs and Gulfstream in Miami are the only major tracks operating right now.
The Kentucky Derby has been postponed until the first Saturday in September, with the dates for what would be the other classic races, Preakness and Belmont Stakes, not yet announced.
Some tracks are planning to come on board with racing by the end of April, but with no one in the stands. Belmont, set to open April 24th, is still planning their spring meet.
Myself being a NYRA racetrack habitué would have naturally gone to Belmont this year on April 25 with The Assembled. This of course will be postponed as well. But "social distancing is never a problem at Belmont on any day other than Belmont Stakes Day. There is pretty much only 2,000 people strung out all over the place. Fire a cannon and you might take out some pigeons. We should be allowed on the grounds. Free of charge, of course.
A NYT metro reporter, Corey Kilgannon Tweets (@CoreyKilgannon) out nuggets from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily coronavirus reports. Guv Andrew has become a celebrity, praised for his frankness and inspirational support. Without even trying to be the Democratic nominee for president, he is favored by many to be drafted for the nomination.
The Guv steadfastly denies he'd like to run for the Oval Office. At least not now. He's only 63, and since he's not yet in his 70s it is understandable why he might think he's too young to run. Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie sanders are all in their 70s. And now with Biden probably locking up the nomination, it's clear the nominee, as of this writing, will be in their '70s.
Joe Biden is of course seen as a liability since he can be malapropism Joe, stumbling and seeming to have trouble articulating contemporary culture. His recollection of thrashing Corn Pop is priceless.
Guv Andrew takes questions from the scattered assembled news people in front of him. Someone, I don't know who, must have asked if there was any truth to the rumor that NYC was considering burying the dead in city parks.
NYC does have a Potter's Field on Hart Island, and uses inmates from Rikers to bury people there. Hart island in not inhabited by anything other than the dead, and sits in the East River under a flight pattern for LaGuardia airport. Certainly the noise from the aircraft doesn't wake the dead.
Guv Andrew responded to the city parks burial question that there were no plans to bury people in city parks.
"I've head a lot of wild rumors, but I've not heard about the city burying people in parks."
Guv said this despite the fact that such burials could add a great amount of phosphorous to the soil and would undoubtedly be good for the grass. Decaying bones are natural source of fertilizer. Go green. No chemicals.
The park burial rumor gained such traction that @MarkLevineNYC, Chairman of NYC Council Health Care Committee issued the following statement:
"I have spoken to many folks in City gov’t today, and received unequivocal assurance that there will be *no* burials in NYC Parks. All have stated clearly that if temporary interment should be needed it will be done on Hart Island. 1/2...
"And that of course if such burials are required they will be done in a dignified, orderly, professional manner. Let’s all keep working hard to slow this virus so that such steps are not in fact needed. 2/2"
End of story on a Central Park burial.
Turns out cats can get the virus from people, but the animal cannot give it to a human. All are doing fine.
Of course the joke became how did the tiger get tested ahead of so many others? Who wouldn't let a tiger jump the line? You tell them no.
So intense and prevalent is the news for the coronavirus that barely noticed by any branches of the media, particularly the print media, was the disappearance of a granddaughter of RFK and her son who went missing when they climbed into a canoe in Maryland to retrieve an errant ball and instead of returning safely were both victims of accidental drowning when their canoe capsized, probably 30 minutes after they set out to retrieve the ball.
The victims were the mother, Maeve Kenedy Townsend McLean, 40, a granddaughter of RFK and his wife Ethel, and her son, Gideon, 9. The canoe they set out in was likely pushed by the wind into the wider Chesapeake Bay where the water was much rougher than that in the cove they set out from.
Several days after April 2 the bodies have been recovered, Maeve's first, then Gideon's. How many more funerals can the 91-year-old Ethel Kennedy attend?
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment