* * My coronavirus lightbulb moment

It was a conversation I’ll never forget.

I was riding shotgun in Margie Lee’s van as she drove us to Greensboro on a cold day in early February to pick up her new motorcycle. She’s my frequent riding partner, an avid sport-bike rider with a penchant for fine wines and exotic Italian machines. Her day job is Professor and Department head at Virginia Tech’s Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology, and she has a string of academic letters following her name.

I had just returned from my first trip to Asia where I visited friends in Taiwan, an island nation off the coast of China, where we were hearing about this “novel” disease, a coronavirus, emanating from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Knowing Margie was an expert, I grilled her with questions about it, and got an earful in return. Even aware of my ignorance in biological sciences, being the academic she is, she spared me no technical details, explaining how viruses attack, commutate, and mutate, and why they are so dangerous and difficult to control.

The gist of the danger was essentially three aspects: contagion, bodily impact, and mutability. For example, measles are highly contagious but seldom fatal. HIV is often fatal but not readily contagious. Polio is contagious and debilitating but not mutable, making it easily controlled by a single vaccine. The new virus coming to be known as COVID-19 was not the worst in any of the categories, but nonetheless quite high; it was contagious, severe and sometimes fatal, and quite mutable.

As I wrapped my head around the implications of this terrifying new knowledge, my mental lightbulb came on, and I blurted out the childishly naïve observation, “This is really serious.”

She turned her gaze towards me and deadpanned, “Ya think?” as if she should be amazed by my grasp of the obvious.

Even when armed with this comprehension, I look back retrospectively and conclude I had no idea how uniquely susceptible our USA was to this rapidly emerging threat, and how badly we managed, and are still managing, its ravages. By late March, the USA already led the world with over 80,000 infections and 1000 deaths, a mere precursor to the carnage to come.

The President, who had already waste-canned the 69-page National Security Council guidebook “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” prepared under his predecessor, bowed to personal political exigencies, downplayed the threat, and began filling the airwaves with a series of  insulting misstatements, factual errors, and pan-fried baloney. For example:

(January 22) “We have it totally under control.” They didn’t.

(February 10) “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” It didn’t.

(February 27) “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” It hasn’t. It won’t.

(April 23) “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute.” True. It will also kill you.

Weeks later, I spoke with a friend in Taiwan where life had returned to normal. She said, and I’m paraphrasing, “We had a bad SARS outbreak a few years ago and we learned how terrible viruses can be. Our government is studying COVID-19, is devoted to our health and safety, and is directing us what to do. We care about each other. We trust the scientists and the media. We are an obedient society and we do what we're told.”

When was the last time you heard anyone in America say any of those things?

We’re Americans! We have FREEDOM! Our freedom is killing hundreds of thousands of us.

Today we have a staggering 4 million cases and 150,000 deaths, leading the world in both categories. In at least 40 of our 50 states, cases are showing an upswing, with the worst to come. More people have died in the last 3 months than in any other similar timeframe in our history. Most Americans have no idea how poorly we’re fairing compared to the rest of the world. We are a pariah nation whose citizens are forbidden to travel to most other countries.

In Blacksburg where I live, there is a palpable sense of disquietude and fear as students returning to Virginia Tech will invariably bring more cases with them. Universities seem to be ideal breeding grounds for disease transmission, with tight living, recreating, and studying conditions and mindsets of invulnerability that come with that demographic.

Tragically, we may need to shutter the economy again to stem the spread, given our botched response the first time. Human tragedy aside, it is impossible to rebuild the economy when vast numbers of citizens are sick and dying.

Perhaps if we’d all had lightbulb moments back in February, we could have avoided this terrible anguish.

* * My gig with the News Messenger is over

For the last eight years I have been a recurring columnist in the local bi-weekly newspaper, the News Messenger. I have submitted and they have printed over 260 essays for which I was paid $40 each.

I got a note from the editor telling me that the publisher, given the financial situation of the paper, will no longer be paying me and the other columnists. This newspaper, like many others, is struggling. The newspaper includes not a single paid advertisement. Its very survival is imperiled. So I fully understand the publisher’s decision as purely economic.

That said, it would’ve been nice if that note had included words of thanks or encouragement to continue to write, even without compensation. But there was nothing included like that. Sigh!

Fortunately, I never had to rely on the money to put food on the table, but the money said something about the perceived value.

I appreciate the bandwidth the paper gave me over these years. I wish my readers Good luck during these perilous times.

* * Freedom, American style

* Item: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine rescinded his statewide order mandating face masks be worn in stores to prevent the spread of COVID-19, saying, “It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do.”

* Item: Last week in Michigan, belligerent and heavily armed “protestors” or “terrorists” (you pick) bearing swastikas descended on the statehouse to protest Governor Whitmer’s partial shut-down of their state economy due to the pandemic.

* Item: My friend Jennifer in Taiwan wrote to me about her fellow Taiwanese, “We do what the government tells us. They have the experience and the scientific knowledge and we trust them to do the right thing to protect us.”

Taiwan has 24 million people, 439 infected people, 6 deaths and is stable.
USA has 330 million people, 1,230,000 infected people, 75,000 deaths and climbing rapidly. Our USA has had the worst reaction to the COVID-19 in the world and we’ve suffered more deaths.

Our reaction was bungled from the beginning. The core responses to an impending pandemic are scientifically based: national strategy for testing, tracing, and where necessary, quarantining. Instead, our president for the first critical six weeks consistently downplayed the severity of the problem with such ludicrous statements as “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” (January 22), “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” (February 28), and “We’re doing a great job with it. Just stay calm. It will go away,” (March 31), during which time the virus made a critical toe-hold.

Friends, it is here now, and not going away.

Lacking any national strategy, states have been forced to take measures on their own to protect their citizens, closing schools, restaurants, hotels, conference centers, spas, gyms, theaters, and generally any places where people congregate in large numbers.

While many folks are complying, understanding the serious health implications, others are seething over the restrictions. Because as Americans, we have freedom, blessed freedom! We feel the right to do as we please, unimpeded by heavy-handed governments. 

We boldly and defiantly reject orders telling us what to do. Our forefathers and foremothers fought and died for that freedom, on the battlefields of the American Revolution, on the blood stained soils of Gettysburg and Antietam, on the beaches of Normandy, and in the churches in Birmingham. Generations of families sacrificed bodies and souls so we could be bathed in sweet nurturing liberty that we feel as a birthright.

From ev'ry mountainside, let freedom ring! We’re free! We're free to be entitled, selfish, and righteously angry.

With that freedom, we intimidate and denigrate. We rebel, defy, and disregard. We kill ourselves and each other in massive, appalling numbers.

As my friend in Taiwan pointed out, it’s not that they don’t have freedom. They just view it differently. Their freedom walks hand-in-hand with responsibility to each other, to the shared future of their country.

The motto of our own Montgomery County is “Freedom Increases Responsibility.” How many of us believe that?

Whenever we reopen all businesses and begin gathering again, as at some point we must, coronavirus infections will rise and deaths will mount. This is not opinion or speculation, but inarguable, irrefutable biological fact.

When I wear my mask, it doesn’t protect me from you, but instead it protects you from me. I may be an asymptomatic carrier. Your mask protects me from you. Wearing my mask doesn’t rob my freedom, but instead gives you the freedom to not be infected. It’s what I do for you and ask you to do for me.

What does freedom mean to you, and what responsibility do you feel?

* * Rainbow Riders prepares children for life

Unless you have a pre-school child, you probably don’t think much about early childhood education. Kristi Snyder, administrator at Rainbow Riders Child Care Center in Blacksburg, thinks about it every day. “I’ll spend my entire working life at Rainbow Riders. It’s in my blood. I eat and sleep it.”

Children are programmed by nature to learn. Their synapses are geared to picking up information and retaining it readily. For example, they are far better equipped to learn new languages than adults. “They are not afraid to try or sound silly,” Kristi said as we chatted in her office, “They learn to speak foreign languages and even to write in other alphabets like Chinese.

“We see two-year-olds recognizing their printed name. In early childhood, we have an incredible opportunity to provide an environment to learn.

“Children learn best by playing. Their play is their work. They see puzzles and counting and sorting. Numeracy emerges by age one or two. In infants, they babble and piece words together, then sentences. I tell our teachers that they are Webster’s dictionary for the kids, and I ask them to narrate everything. Those words become the children’s.”

Kristi started at Rainbow Riders at age 17 as a high school student and she just turned 50, so she’s been at this for 33 years. She has a degree in early childhood education from Virginia Tech. She became director at age 22 and owner at age 26.

“We’ve learned so much about how the brain develops and works since I began my career. What we know now is there is a huge amount of brain development between zero and five years of age. Researchers think that 90% of brain development happens during those years.”

Wrap your head around that: Public schools now start with kindergarten, at age 5. So 90% of a child’s mental development has happened before most kids get any formalized schooling.   

Kristi mentioned several programs like Headstart and Early Headstart, but for the most part, unless parents can afford to send their kids to a quality school like Rainbow Riders, education is often piecemeal or not at all. Children are parked in front of TV or computer screens.

In decades past, in many families, moms didn’t work. So they provided care for the children. Nowadays, it’s rare when both parents don’t need to work.

Rainbow Riders gets 96% of its income from tuition, paid by the parents, typically $800 to $900 per month per child. In the infant room, there are 3 babies per teacher, then less for the older children. And yet Rainbow Riders still struggles to pay living wages to its staff. “They start at $10/hr., and we’ve worked for 30 years to get to that. I have people who have been here for 20 years and still make under $20/hr. It brings me to tears. It’s unfair beyond belief.

“I’m looking to hire teachers that love children and have a willingness to learn, communications skill, and common sense. That’s a tall order at $10 or $12/hr.”

And schools like Rainbow Riders get no help from the governments, either local, state, or federal. This is a different model from the rest of the developed world and even much of the emerging world where childhood education is socialized just like our public schools. Consider this: Cuba is a world leader when it comes to early childhood development, with over 99% of its children under six attending a learning facility. Cuba is far ahead of the USA! We need to fix this and we need to fix it fast.

Not only are Rainbow Riders kids better prepared for academics in kindergarten, but they’re also better socialized, better problem solvers, and far more likely to be successful and productive citizens as adults. She said, “Our teachers instill in these children the value of good decisions, every day. We teach caring, empathy, and citizenship. Our children do better not just in grade school, but for the rest of their lives.”

Most kids in our area and in much of our nation don’t receive instruction from a licensed program. “We accept only 32 one-year-olds and we’re the largest facility in Montgomery County. There are thousands of young children in the New River Valley who aren’t in a licensed program due to affordability, access, or quality.  

“In many other nations, federal governments take care of people, young and old. Here it is a familial responsibility. We should be ensuring that every child should have a quality early childhood experience. Our country’s future depends on it.

“What our programs are doing well is creating innovators, problem solvers, and thinkers. The society that raises innovators will rule the 21^st Century economy.

“What we’re not doing well is involving all children. We need to have significant change. We need to elect people who put children and families first, not billionaires and corporations. Early childhood education is not political. But I want people to know that it is essential to our future, for public safety, for national security, and our economy.”

* * What then?

It goes without saying that the coronavirus pandemic has been massively disruptive to the lives of people across the land, and indeed around the world. Illness, death, job losses, company closures, and widespread misery have accompanied this microscopic killer wherever it has reached. It is surreal, the damage.

As difficult as it may be to envision now, someday this will pass. As with all prior pandemics, one day the virus will lose its ability to kill, and life, what’s left of it, will go on.

It’s my nature to think about the future, and so I thought I’d share some prognostications with you, especially as they relate to our area, specifically its economy, and guess at what we might expect.

Some caveats:

First, I assure you I’m not being punitive towards you or your business or anybody. The virus is indiscriminate in who it infects and sickens. But like everything else in nature, the impact is greater in some realms than others.

Second, these are only guesses. Predicting is difficult, the old joke goes, especially the future. So any or all of this may prove wrong. If anything, I hope this gives you something to think about, as it has for me in organizing it to share with you.

Third, this may sound overly pessimistic. But for gosh sakes; it’s a pandemic. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed tens of millions. Pandemics are frightfully serious.

So let’s begin.

The pandemic is not over, indeed it has just begun, in disrupting our lives. As I write, the national infections and death tolls continue to rise steeply, so steeply it isn’t even worth documenting where we are today, as it will be greater by the time you read this. The spread of this pandemic will only slow through natural resistance, meaning that most people have already contracted it (and survived), or there is a vaccine, or both. Neither case appears on the near horizon, or forecast to occur in less than 12 months. This is a long emergency.

Our only defense at this point is social distancing, which is why most of the country, and indeed most of the world, is in lockdown. Any hope of a short lockdown is mere wishful thinking, as the virus never sleeps.

Meanwhile, the lockdown has been massively disruptive to business, with thousands forced to close and layoffs of employees in the millions nationwide. In a capitalistic system, profit is imperative, and for most businesses large and small, profit is a small number tucked between income and expense. When income is slashed, sometimes by 50% or even 100%, businesses fail.

So the pressure to re-open the economy is staggering.

In another 6-10 weeks, warmer weather and social distancing measures may (and I say “may” because we don’t know yet about its viral seasonality) be successful in slowing the spread. Governments may mandate a re-opening of the economy. However, towards fall, the disease, with a wider foothold, will come back with a vengeance, forcing another, even more prolonged shutdown.

Businesses most affected are those that cater to gatherings of people. Restaurants. Bars. Conference Centers. Breweries and wineries. Hotels. Theaters. Sports facilities and gyms. And of course, schools.

Between Virginia Tech, Radford University, and New River Community College, the New River Valley has the highest concentration of higher education in the state. Neither the colleges nor the public schools will re-open in the fall, and if they do, they will close again as the disease renews its spread. Distance learning will become the norm, and administrators, educators, and kids will be forces to adapt to that new normal. Parents will adjust to the constant presence of their school age children.

There will likely be no football season this fall. There may be some games held without live audiences, people only watching on TV, but these will cease when players start getting sick – there is no social distancing on a football field! The local economic impact of tens of thousands of fans arriving on multiple weekends is significant, and that will vanish. Almost every business that relies on tourism will be smashed.

As restaurants and retail stores whither, supermarkets and delivery companies will thrive. Even now, as more people eat at home, supermarkets are the busiest establishments in the region, their work complicated by hoarding. Online retailers are reporting brisk sales.

However, as the weeks turn to months, they’ll suffer too, because their customers, many long furloughed, will have less money to spend. Personal and small business bankruptcies will spread like the virus itself.

Many jobs that we’ve traditionally seen as “entry level” or “menial” and compensated accordingly, are now proving to be essential to sustain us. Store clerks, hospital orderlies, nursing home custodians, delivery drivers, and countless others will be seen in a new light, and because of their importance and risk to infection in serving us, will demand better wages and protection.

People who have successfully been able to work at home may never fully return to their offices.

Civic and social clubs, already struggling to attract new members and now unable to meet, may wither and collapse.

Dating and romance will change forever in ways I can’t even speculate, as aspiring lovers learn that intimacy with a new partner may kill them. On the other hand, married couples may provide a birth rate spike months from now. What better to do after the 8^th watching of Outlander?

Meanwhile, the virus will be lurking, waiting for the next opportunity to re-infect or worse, to mutate. And researchers frantically seek a vaccination.

We live in interesting times. Good luck to you and your family, and please stay at home and WASH YOUR HANDS.