A Spring Diversion

            We may not have major team sports to entertain us these days. But sometimes Mother Nature provides a bit of diversion to remind us that television is not the only source of visual pleasure.

            On a bright, sunny morning in last week,l I had what you might call a David Attenborough moment.  As I was walking up the driveway to my house, a flurry of activity on the top of a carissa holly caught my eye. Two adult brown thrashers were attacking a green snake the size of my thumb.  I’m guessing the snake had discovered a nest inside the holly with freshly laid eggs in it, but the birds were not about to let the slithering menace dine on their embryonic offspring.

            The birds performed a perfect tag team assault on the little reptile whose valiant defense was futile.  They were relentless, first one and then the other attacking ferociously from either side.  The battle lasted less than a minute, ending with the snake withdrawing to the interior of the shrub for protection.  The thrashers continued to flit around, looking for their foe, all the while chattering scouting reports to each other.

            Unlike David Attenborough, I didn’t have a camera to record the episode. But I took as much pleasure in the moment as I would have cheering for the home team Red Sox against those invading Yankees.

           

Indefinite Confinement

            In his Perquimans Weekly column last week, my friend Billy Rowell had a number of suggestions to relieve the monotony of sequestration. I had already done most of them: clean out closets, pull out old photo albums, weed the flower beds, get in touch with old friends. But there was one suggestion that made me nod in agreement: read that novel you’ve been putting off reading.

            That novel, for me, was “A Gentleman from Moscow” by Amor Towles. It turned out to be the most relevant work I could ever have read. It’s about Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a Russian aristocrat in his 30s who returns to Moscow in 1922, only to be arrested for writing a seditious poem and condemned to house arrest in the city’s Metropol Hotel for the rest of his life. There he remains for the next 32 years, a span beautifully chronicled by the author.

            My goodness! Are we condemned to be under house quarantine for the rest of our lives like the Count? Admittedly, The KGB was a fearsome enforcer of Soviet conformity. But aren’t Americans being threatened these days to stay at home…or else? If not for the rest of our lives, how long?

            Here’s where I stand. I believe that President Trump’s instincts were correct in wanting to end mandatory confinement by Easter for those parts of the country where COVID-19 has not taken hold. He was talked out of it by his advisers who peddled panic at the possibility of victims falling by the hundreds of thousands unless Americans cowered in their homes in fear of that invisible enemy. There would be briefings every day, but no mention of the tens of thousands who are killed every year by the common flu, the opioid epidemic, cancer, heart disease, suicides, and automobile accidents. The only possible focus would be on the coronavirus.

            Meanwhile, the country is headed for economic disaster. People living in places like Perquimans County where there is virtually zero chance of infection cannot go to the bank or the library, eat inside a restaurant, go to church on Sunday, or get a haircut.

People who normally look forward to going to work every day now must sit and wait for the promised unemployment check.

            So, what’s the solution? The geniuses in Washington are now cooking up another multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation that will in part provide work for the unemployed. On infrastructure projects. What nonsense. How many waitresses or hair stylists will applaud the opportunity to fill potholes or scrape rust from the nearest bridge?

            It’s time to let people who do not live in the so-called “hot spots” go back to work. They should do all those things health specialists recommend to minimize exposure to the virus. Sure. But shops and offices should open their shuttered doors to let people go back to work. That’s the best thing they can do for this country and for themselves.

            And another thing. With rare exceptions COVID-19 only kills older people. Kids who catch it recover in no time. So why not let them go back to school instead of barricading them at home where they waste their time playing video games and annoying their parents who have to stay home to watch them.

            Whoever said that the cure is worse than the disease will be proven right if we let this shutdown go on much longer.

Andrew Cuomo - Savior

            What’s with all the media slobbering over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo? There’s even talk of pushing Joe Biden aside in favor of Cuomo on the November ballot for president. There is no surer sign of Democratic panic at the prospects of pitting senile Joe against a Trump who mounts the bully pulpit every day. Polls show that even a buffoon like Trump can prevail, given the daily exposure. The mainstream media is trying its best to counter the president’s advantage by interviewing Cuomo every day and making him out to be New York’s savior in the Covid-19 crisis.

            But what has Cuomo really done to save New York? The real issue is not what he’s done, but what he hasn’t done.

            The media will not tell us that it was Cuomo who rejected a recommendation to stockpile ventilators when he had the opportunity and the money. Instead he spent the bucks on what has been described as a solar-panel boondoggle called Buffalo Billions.

            Also rarely mentioned is the role New York governors, including Cuomo, have played in reducing by 20,000 the number of beds in New York hospitals. The latest reduction of 500 beds occurred in Brooklyn when the Long Island College Hospital fell victim to budget cuts. New York could use those beds now, couldn’t it, Governor?

            And let’s not forget that the governor’s love affair with renewables is consistent with his war against fossil fuels. When President Trump proposed to allow offshore drilling along the East Coast, Cuomo signed a bill to ban drilling off Long Island, New York, even the Hudson River.

            This is the same Governor Cuomo who caved to environmentalists in 2014 by banning hydraulic fracking in New York’s depressed southern tier counties, an area shared by Pennsylvania and proven to be rich in extractable natural gas. Instead of giving New Yorkers a badly needed economic boost, he let Pennsylvania reap the bounty.

            If Andrew Cuomo can’t make decisions that are good for the citizens of his own state, why should we believe he can do better for the entire country?

           

Reordering Priorities

             It’s simply amazing how much of an impact a tiny bug can have on our lives, witness the reordering of priorities for everyone, from the leaders of the world to the common man on the street.

            At the top of the political food chain we have seen how far Chinese leaders have gone to lie about China’s responsibility for the coronavirus epidemic. We will never know how many lives have been lost in Wuhan, because China’s communist leaders will never permit the truth to be told. The expulsion of western reporters is only one of the measures China has implemented to avoid accountability for the spread of the virus.

            Here at home we have turned to our leaders to save us from this awful contagion. President Trump’s poll numbers have risen for his handling of the crisis. For all his inept and often incoherent responses to reporters at his daily briefings, people at least appreciate his stepping forward to explain his decisions and to cede the microphone to others who have the expertise that he lacks. In dire situations like this the people want leadership. Right or wrong, the president is providing it.

            The multi-trillion-dollar relief bill passed by Congress and signed by the president is an unprecedented effort to help businesses and individuals survive the crisis. The road to passage, however, revealed the true priorities of the Democratic Party as defined in its slogan, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”

            While Senate Republicans were trying to negotiate a bill that would be acceptable to both sides of the aisle, Speaker Pelosi was busy fashioning a bill of her own, a 1,440-page socialist wish list. Vote-buying pork for everyone, including odd payouts to casinos, travel agents, sunscreen manufacturers, harbor dredging, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And let’s not forget goodies for unions, migrants and asylum seekers, the Green New Deal, and, of course, Planned Parenthood.

            Pelosi was not actually reordering Democratic priorities but responding to what Majority Whip James Clyburn saw as “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” For Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez it wasn’t enough: we forgot to include illegal immigrants who should get the same as everybody else.

            Meanwhile, ordinary Americans have different priorities. They want to avoid getting the virus, but they like the one-in-a-thousand odds of getting it. Instead, they worry about the long-range future: recession, followed by another Great Depression, small businesses closing up forever, lost jobs, the next rent payment.

            But, want to know what Americans really fear?  Look at the people sitting in their cars in the Food Lion parking lot awaiting the next delivery of toilet paper. The panicked response to the coronavirus tells us everything we need to know about people’s priorities and their worst fears. In a country with an abundance that we take for granted, that fear is symbolized by something they likely have never seen in their lifetimes: empty shelves.

            I must confess I experienced a mini panic of my own this week. Our household supply of toilet paper down to two rolls, I began a search to restock. I failed everywhere I looked. Until a lady in line at Dollar General told me to go to the end of aisle 4 and look all the way in the back of the bottom shelf of the end cap. I did. And I found eight undiscovered rolls that I carried pressed to my chest as I hurried back to the check-out counter. I had learned something about reordered priorities.

The Real Heroes

            Peggy Noonan wrote last week about her experience with testing for the coronavirus. She said that we are surrounded by nobility. To illustrate the thought, she pointed to a Mike Luckovich cartoon of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. “Only it wasn’t Marines—it was a doctor, a scientist, a nurse and a first responder anchoring Old Glory in this rocky soil.”

            Noonan’s experience mirrored mine. When I developed multiple symptoms—headache, fever, sore throat, head and chest congestion—I went to Carolina Family Practice to ask to be tested. When I told the receptionist why I was there, she quickly stepped away and summoned a physician’s assistant who came right away and questioned me from a distance. “Have you recently been in contact with someone who tested positive or someone who returned from travel abroad?”  When I said yes, it put in motion a process that I’m sure has since been repeated many times.

            The assistant (who shall remain nameless for reasons I will explain later) burst through the door to the inner office and gave me a mask to put on. She stood no more than three feet from me when she did that. She then ushered me inside.

            At this point I’m sure I had the full attention of the dozen or so patients in the reception area who were waiting their turn to be treated.

            Once inside, another assistant, wearing her own mask, wasted no time in taking me to a room to be tested, first with nose swabs for testing on site and later with throat swabs to be sent to a lab for further testing. I also had blood taken from a finger for additional tests. I was then interviewed at length by a doctor who made copious notes on my case, including a list of all the people I had been in contact with since my contact with a person who had recently returned from Europe. He later returned to inform me that the nose test proved negative and the blood sample showed no infections. All to my great relief. But I would still have to be sequestered until results of the lab test came in.

            Testing over, I was asked to keep my mask on and was ushered out the back door to avoid passing through the reception area.

            I have not named the receptionist, the assistants, and the doctor who treated me, and the many who would come in great numbers after me. They, and the many thousands like them across the country, are the real heroes of this epidemic, heroes on the front line who care for the health of others at the risk to their own. And, as we’ve seen in Italy, have a much higher infectious rate than the general public. They are the ones who deserve our praise and admiration. They are not looking for glory, only to care for us in our time of need. What they earn is our gratitude for their dedicated and selfless service. We are so fortunate to have them. Bless you all.

Humanity Responds to COVID-19

            Create a panic and watch people respond. Wars bring out the best and the worst in us. This one, the coronavirus pandemic, is no different in that respect. Only the actors and the scenes are.

            COVID-19 may have been born in a Wuhan lab or perhaps a food market. We may never know, or even want to know, especially if it was the result of an experiment in germ warfare gone wrong. What we do know is that any chance it had of being contained was destroyed by a massive cover-up by a Chinese government concerned more about its mage than the lives of its own people. The story of Communist China’s mendacity is now an open book, and the world will not soon forgive the merchants of evil in Beijing for the death and destruction they have wrought.

            The pandemic is peeling away the pretensions of players on the world stage. The weakness of the European Union cannot be denied any longer. When poor Italy whose government-controlled health system proved incapable of caring for the victims of the virus, its appeal to the European brotherhood for even the most basic supplies fell on deaf ears. The EU response was the sound of borders slamming shut, effectively destroying Italy’s faith in the shared benefits of continental solidarity.

            Here at home, President Trump is getting a 55% approval rating on his handling of the crisis, even as his critics in the media continue to find fault with his leadership. Trump, of course, gives them plenty of ammunition in his overbearing press briefings, which would best be handled by Mike Pence and his team of scientific advisors.

            On the political front, clueless Joe Biden has continued to accuse the president of hysterical xenophobia in taking quick action to prevent travelers from China from entering our country. But Democratic leaders in Congress are cooperating with the administration in crafting legislative solutions. Even a persistent Trump hater like Representative Ilhan Omar has praised Trump for his response to the pandemic. Give Trump credit for bringing industry leaders together on testing, finding drugs to treat the disease, and accelerating the development of vaccines.

            Outside the Beltway, panic drives shoppers to clean out store shelves of toilet paper, hand sanitizers, and other essentials; seizing the opportunity, hoarders take advantage of shortages to make a quick buck; and millennials, especially the kids on spring break, don’t seem to understand the need for “social distancing.” But those are the exceptions; the general public seems to understand that we’re all in this together and that we must all endure sometimes major inconveniences to help stop the spread of the virus.

            On a personal note, while I was quarantined awaiting the results of testing for the virus, my wife and I received offers from many friends to do little things for us, like running errands or food shopping. We even had one deliver a meal to us. We may be dismayed for good reason at the selfishness of some shoppers and the cupidity of hoarders, but it’s the generosity and care of neighbors and friends in times of need that reveal the true character of Americans and give us hope that we will get through this. Together.  

           

Cultural Immorality

            We’ve heard just about every topic debated by Democratic presidential candidates and we will no doubt continue to hear and read about policy proposals on  climate change, the economy, gun control, health care, and foreign policy, not to mention candidates’ tax returns and their physical as well as mental fitness to hold office. What has not been debated to any significant extent is the cause of this country’s deteriorating cultural and moral health.

            Take gun control. Politicians all seem to think that the solution to preventing mass shootings in malls and schools is more gun control. The enemy is the NRA, and the real target for reform is the Second Amendment. If we can only get the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, say the critics. But what they are really saying is that we will not solve the problem until the Second Amendment is repealed and all guns are seized from all gun owners. “Hell, yes,” said Beto O’Rourke.

             What we never hear from the candidates is a condemnation of business enterprises that profit from the culture of violence, of people who corrupt our youth with movies, TV shows, and video games that celebrate death and destruction, the more gruesome the better. This is nothing more than our culture’s moral rot in action.

            Underlying all of this is how our society is debasing the value of life itself. The most divisive issue of all, the one that splits our country in half, is the issue of abortion. Tthe current runs strong and deep on both sides.

            We see it in the marches and rallies. We see it in arguments in favor or against funding Planned Parenthood. And we see it in the protests against public positions taken by our politicians.

            When Governor Northam of Virginia supported not only late-term abortions but also the denial of medical care to babies who survived botched abortions, the protests were so loud they almost cost him his job.

            When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Supreme Court justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they struck down abortion rights (“You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions”), he was forced to immediately recant.

            The winds are beginning to change, I think. On February 25th two bills in the U.S. Senate failed to get the 60 votes necessary to override a filibuster. One bill would have banned abortions after 20 weeks, with exceptions for the life of the mother and victims of rape and incest. The bill failed in a 53-44 vote, even with the support of Democratic senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

            The second bill would have penalized doctors who fail to “exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” This bill failed by a vote of 56-41, with all Republicans voting in favor, and Senators Casey, Manchin, and Doug Jones of Alabama joining them.

            I can understand the defeat of the first bill; Americans are fairly evenly divided on the issue of a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, even one as advanced as 20 weeks. In fact, some even support that right up until the very moment of birth. I doubt very much, however, that a majority of Americans recognize the right of a mother, with the assistance of her doctor, to terminate the life of a baby who survived an attempted abortion. Opponents call this what it is—Infanticide. 

            By latest count there have been over 61 million abortions performed in this country since Roe v. Wade in 1973, almost a million and a half a year. That average has dropped to below a million a year, an encouraging sign.

            Over 90% of abortions are performed for the “convenience” of the mother. Supporters of a woman’s reproductive rights are OK with that. But there seems to be a growing disgust with late-term abortions and especially with partial birth abortions. But I think most pro-choice Americans hang their heads when it comes to infanticide. Are they beginning to re-examine their views on the sanctity of life? I hope so.