March, Stall, Stumble, Red Light, Green Light

The month of March, this past month of March, should be renamed Stall.  Perhaps Stumble.  Perhaps we should rename this past month after the child's game Red Light, Green Light.  Do children still play this game?  One child stands at the end of the driveway, with the others at the top.  When the child turns his/her back to the group and yells "Green Light!," the group runs as fast as they can until the child turns around to yell, "Red Light," which means the runners stop.

It seems unreal that just a few weeks ago I was packing for San Antonio to go to the AWP conference.  It seems even more unreal that a year ago, we'd be doing AWP stuff in Portland.  I am certain that we will remember those events as a before, if we ever get to the land of after.

It's been a month of reversals, in so many ways.  It's been interesting how many things have happened that we once were assured could never happen:  working from home, moving classes online, seeing both houses of Congress act together to pass legislation.  We've had years and decades of being told that there was no money to help people, and now, suddenly, trillions of dollars.

We are seeing field hospitals being installed in outdoor areas and civic centers.  What is about to come is staggering.

A week ago, we had 35,224 cases in the U.S.  Now we have at least 143,055.  I can hardly fathom these numbers.  I am terrified to think about where we're headed.

I am interested in how people have shifted position.  I have colleagues who fled Venezuela--they are expecting something different than I am, more societal collapse.  And then there are people who are thinking about other sorts of takeovers, dark webs and dark governments and currency being seized while the internet goes down.

My spouse spent part of the month saying this would be no worse than flu, even though we both know that flu can be pretty bad.  Now my spouse is looking at our supply of bleach and hand sanitizers and looking up recipes for them.  He spent part of Sunday sanitizing all sorts of surfaces.   I don't remember ever seeing him clean more than 1 surface at a time ever. He sees clutter, but not gunk and grime. I'm just the opposite.

We are all washing our hands more.

I do wonder where we'll be when this is all over.  I've done a lot of reading about plagues and pandemics in history. The bubonic plague that wiped out 1/4 to 1/2 of Europe's population gave serfs all kinds of opportunities in the post-plague world, and many historians see the end of feudalism happening because of the pandemic--in fact, the roots of the Renaissance probably happened because of the pandemic, which led to the loss of lots of beliefs (in the Catholic church, in rulers, in ideas that made no sense post-pandemic).

But before we get to post pandemic times, we have to get through the pandemic, and I think it's going to be very bad. We've waited and waited, and I am expecting lots of death, along with economic upheaval. I hope that post pandemic, we will be a changed humanity, but we could be changed in ways that aren't good--instead of keeping our social connections, we might just become more fearful.

I think that officials aren't giving us the right message. We will likely need to have rolling shutdowns for the rest of the year. Here's what I predict: we will go back to regular life in May, in June and July, we will see an increase in infections, we will go back into shutdown mode in August or September, we will come back to regular life in November and then we'll start to see an increase in infections around Christmas. Until we have a vaccine or some immunity from exposure (and right now, we don't know if exposure gives immunity), we will see all sorts of impacts we can't predict right now.

We aren't planning for rolling shutdowns. I'm glad that we were able to get trillions of dollars in aid to everybody, but it won't be enough.

It is interesting to see that we can get stuff done in a crisis--which makes me wonder why we can't do that when we're not terrified. I do hope that people will be asking these questions about why our health care system is so insufficient, why our preparations have been so inadequate--in my hopeful moments, I do think we might achieve some societal transformation, transformations towards a better society, not the opposite way.

Let me keep focused on that vision, through whatever is about to come.