MIKE'S AT THE BEACH: March 2020

I haven't posted much on this whole crazy Coronavirus pandemic. And it's not that I haven't had time to put some of my observations and thoughts into a post. I mean, all I have is time these days. Really it's just a combination of so much info being out there and that my contribution certainly wouldn't add anything, especially from a professional perspective. No way do I know anything about infectious diseases or pandemic response. However, I have been observing human behavior, economic impact, government preparedness and responses, our political representatives, and the media response. I also have a few thoughts about what all this looks like on the other side. Because there will be an other side. Those things compel me to put pen to paper, so to speak, to offer some thoughts.

Human behavior is always an interesting subject. A friend of mine once said, "it may not take all kinds, but we got all kinds". That observation has never been truer than in watching people's response during this crises. You've seen it as well as me. People are all over the map. Most have gotten the message about avoiding crowds, washing hands, practice social distancing, being patient, not hoarding food or supplies, and staying home. Most understand that it's not about protecting individuals as it is about buying us time. Time for the medical community to stock up on supplies, modify their facilities and develop lifesaving treatments and vaccines. So many parents are rising to the challenge of home schooling their kids and providing a good role model for them. Working from home has taken on a whole new meaning for people who never imagined that they could accomplish anything in that environment. A lot of people, including me, are using humor to help myself and others cope and put things into perspective. Listening to and following the direction of our medical and public health professionals has been something that most people buy into and have incorporated into their daily lives. But not everyone. Not everyone by a long shot. There are anecdotal instances of people behaving like idiots in every part of the country. The most notorious is the students on spring break in Florida when this whole thing started. They clearly blew off all the warnings. You've probably seen some of the videos of interviews with some of these students and they make you cringe. Not only did they come off as ignorant their uncaring attitude was distressing. Here in SoCal after the Governor asked everyone to stay home as much as possible, we saw a ton of people at the beach this weekend ignoring the warnings. Again, you have to wonder about their intellect. So what happened? The beaches are closed. But the knuckleheads ignoring the warnings seem too shallow to realize that while they are not worried about getting the virus, it is a great threat to the elderly and those with underlying conditions. I won't go into all the statistics and warnings, but clearly the response needs to be across the board compliance or it will lose a measure of effectiveness. So the next time you hear some young person voicing disdain for the rules or nonchalantly claiming to not be afraid of the virus, it might be worth a minute or two of your time to educate them a bit. But some won't listen. That's because its very difficult to fix stupid. And they are just stupid. Speaking of stupid, you've seen the crazy, out of control hoarding of toilet paper and all kinds of other things. This is the epitome of stupidity, especially when it comes to TP. The idea that this country is going to have supply chain issues or food production issues that will result in long term shortages is laughable. I think that anyone who participated in this hoarding episode, ought to be embarrassed.

The Coronavirus panic has obviously had a devastating impact on our economy. It's almost unprecedented in the swiftness with which it hit and the impact is and will be monumental. Again, I won't detail the statistics but you can't have missed the stock market drop, the closing of businesses, the virtual stoppage of many production areas of the economy. The good news? From my view the government is doing everything it can to respond logistically, medically, and economically. The Fed has acted rapidly to enact programs to ease the economic impact. And perhaps most importantly, the American people for the most part have embraced the need to stay home and engage in social distancing. It's not easy nor fun, but it needs to be done. School districts, schools, and teachers are responding rapidly to ensure that our kids aren't too damaged by this sudden stoppage of their lives. Grocery store workers find themselves on the front lines of this battle. And they are uniformly stepping up. And on and on and on.

The issue of speed of response, government preparedness, and across the board leadership in a crises such as this is constantly in the news. And it's usually negative. The media has taken a fine toothed comb to our government and attempted to portray them generally as incompetent, uncaring boobs. There are so many issues that it's difficult to keep up. First was the speed of response. The conventional wisdom is that Trump and his team were clueless early on and in denial. Of course there is no or at least little assessment of the Chinese coverup of the disease. I've heard it said that our intelligence agencies warned of the disease early on but no one heeded it. Anyone who believes that or embraces it as a reason to vilify Trump has never been in an intelligence brief. They are not directive, but rather informative. They provide info and assessment. And the info isn't perfect. In my experience, any leader I have ever known went into an intelligence brief with a skeptical eye. Taking radical action on the basis of an intelligence report alone is a recipe for failure. I've also heard it said that Trump disbanded the NSC's Pandemic response unit and cut the CDC's global disease funding by 80%. They say this as if Trump sat in the oval office with a U.S. Government budget and a sharpie and slashed things he didn't like. No. Just no. The budget is a humongous and complicated document that is created and executed by the various departments. In the case of the NSC, it underwent a major reorg under Bolten because it was a bloated, bureaucratic, largely out of control entity. Bolton rightly set about streamlining it. I don't know what happened to the Pandemic response unit but the people who are paid to work the organizations in their responsibility obviously thought it could be cut. I don't know why but I suspect the capability is resident somewhere else in the behemoth of government. Or maybe some other reason. And here's the other thing. These things don't just happen. They are proposed, reviewed, discussed, modeled, discussed again, reviewed again, etc, etc, etc. A decision like organizational restructure is not done lightly. Let me stress. It wasn't Trump with a pen, it was an agency decision. As for the CDC, that too was a Departmental decision. I'm not sure which Department it resides in, but it's competing for funding just like every other organization. Priorities drive funding, not the whim of Trump or anyone else. Been there, done that. So if they took a budget cut they either didn't make a sufficient case against it or someone made a value judgment based on cost/benefit. But it wasn't Trump. He didn't have a vendetta against CDC. It was a budgetary decision and I'm sure a tough one. The other interesting thing that is fading from memory is Trump's decision early in this crises to ban travel from China. At the time he was vilified for it. The media went apeshit. But now? Now it turns out to be a crucial and wise decision but is not getting much play. The other thing is testing. Trump has personally been vilified because the testing was initially inadequate and slow to materialize. Of all the unfair things this is right at the top. The system this administration inherited was woefully inadequate and they have done an amazing job getting it up and running. The rest doesn't matter. So I've been watching the daily press briefing when I can. How you can watch that impressive team coming together, working their asses off to beat this thing, and see the President's leadership without being impressed I just don't know. I just guess its a Mars/Venus thing. I've not liked politicians in the past but I've not hated them with the passion I see from otherwise rational people. And this is like an iceberg. There is a vastly large team of impressive and dedicated people working hard to beat this thing. And the respect they are due is non-existent by the media because of their hatred of Trump. It's an amazing thing to see.

The politicians whom we employ have failed us. If we ran a business and an employee was failing as badly as them, we'd fire them. It became clear early in the response that there was going need to be a massive response by our government to assist many people. So a lot of agencies turned to and did the best they could in a very difficult situation. Some of the accomplishments have been eyewatering. Have there been problems? Absolutely. But I for one am impressed. But our politicians have so far let us down. They can't stop the partisan bickering. They came up with the humongous stimulation bill which was a good thing and then some of them started loading it up with special interest pork. And then they started sniping at each and it does nothing but delay the process. As of today, they are still bickering. Shameful.

The media has shown their true stripes in this crises and it is disgusting. You won't find a bigger advocate of the First Amendment and freedom of speech than me. And I would never advocate any kind of restrictions on the press or free speech. I don't want to paint all of them with the same brush but it is undeniable that cable news channels, blog writers, opinion writers, and anyone else whose livelihood depends on telling the most sensationalistic story to attract readers/watchers have generally coopted their ethics by overly playing to their audience. What we have evolved to is that so many people just watch the cable news channel or read the news that caters to their beliefs. If I had one recommendation to anyone who is going crazy watching the news, it is...turn if off. Just don't watch. Stop reading the far left or far right blogs and propaganda. Tune out. Ration the amount of information you consume every day. Get what you need and go to something else. Focus on the local news and see if there are some places you can help. Here in San Diego we have a local non-affiliated channel, KUSI that offers a couple hours of local news in the morning. After catching up on what happened overnight on one of the national channels, we usually switch to that. They've got great human interest stories that are relevant to the life you are living, here and now. This is what you need. What is happening here and how in your sphere. You don't need to know all the crap that's going on inside the beltway. You don't need to get in arguments with friends on social media about how good or bad something that neither of you fully understand and can do nothing about is. And speaking of arguments on social media, don't do it. And don't post a rant about something you believe is good or bad about what's happening and expect it to just sit there. It's like a fart in a church. It's gonna stink up the place and someone will respond. The result will be bad feelings all around. So don't do it. I used to be guilty of this sin thinking that I would impart my wisdom and beliefs on everyone reading so they would be enlightened. Guess what? It doesn't work. In fact that's why I started this blog. If you're here reading you want to be. And if you don't like it I don't really care. It's my blog. So just don't do it. It's not good for any of us. So just stop. Turn it off.

When I can stomach watching the daily news brief, the predominant attitude of the media in attendance is to try and ask a gotcha, accusatory, or disparaging question. They appear to be mostly young, inexperienced but aggressive reporters who are trying to get noticed and make a name for themselves. I frankly don't know how President Trump doesn't blow his top every day. But he deals with it day after day. I don't like some of the battles he gets in with news representatives, but I understand it. The networks are a bit better but not much. The big papers like the Washington Post and the NY Times openly hate him. They write opinion pieces and foist them on us as news. It's disgraceful. I think deep down they realize that they should be the purveyor of unbiased, factual reporting but they also get caught up in the need to gain viewers. I don't know where we go from here but I really can't see how it gets better as long as Trump is in the White House. And since he's likely to win reelection, it's gonna be a long five years listening to this bullshit.

So what does it look like on the other side. As far as the Coronavirus goes, at some point in the next few weeks or months, part of the country will be reopened and people will go back to work. This Easter thing that President Trump has been talking about is obviously aspirational and done because he's trying to project optimism to bolster the country. And it's obviously not for the entire country. New York is a mess and is likely to remain a mess for a while. I say obviously but I guess it's not obvious to a lot of the news people who went apoplectic. But anyway, we will slowly come out of it. There will be drug treatments that prove to be effective and a vaccine in the next year that will protect us. The thing appears to be seasonal so we will have some time before it comes back in a big way. Thinking people will continue to practice good hygiene and social distancing. If you're an old dude like me, you won't go to movies, sporting events, or any other venue that requires close contact until you get a vaccine. But life will return. I think President Trump is right that the economy will come roaring back. Some companies won't survive and some will be born. People who lose their jobs will find themselves doing things they didn't think they'd do. New careers will be born. Kids may start to see how fragile life is and this young generation may be inspired to work together to make the world a better place. I will finish with that. Because I think there's a real chance that this next generation is going to be shaped by these few months of crises. And they will be better for it!

The Coronavirus is an obvious disaster of galactic proportions. We’ve been a little slow to react as a people and government. But that’s just a trait of the average American. But think back to a week ago. Could you even imagine canceling the NBA and MLB seasons, canceling March Madness, delaying the Masters, shutting down schools, Disneyland and virtually every other amusement park closing, churches suspending services, and on and on and on? The obvious answer is no and yet today most Americans are taking this in stride. They’ve bought into the danger and are reacting accordingly. Regular life is suspended. I think most people are hoping for a short-term problem but know in their heart of hearts that it will last longer than that hope. Most health authorities I’ve heard predict 3 to 6 months. But we’ll see.

So I’ve been thinking about how to cope with this. First, arm yourself with information. The place to start is at the website in the image above. Most of the news sites have some good info too. There are a million sources with a million recommendations. Some seem logical and some have me scratching my head. So, I thought I’d sit down and draw up my own set. I’m in no way an expert or a doctor, but I’ve been around a long time and am pretty good at sorting the fly shit from the pepper. Here are my rules. Use them if you want. If not, that’s okay too.

My rules for coping with the Coronavirus emergency—

1. It’s a big and serious deal. The President has declared a National Emergency and brought the full weight of the U.S. government to bear to combat this virus. But…we will get through it.
2. Wash your hands…. often. I know, you’ve heard that continuously. So, it must be effective, right? Just do it. When you can’t do that use hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes.
3. Stay away from large group gatherings, especially if you have health problems. Just don’t go. Arrange for a phone call instead. For small group gatherings practice social distancing.
4. Don’t panic and stay calm. Remember Gen. Powell’s third rule: It ain’t as bad as you think, it will look better in the morning.
5. Don’t hoard or buy irrationally. Our country has unbelievable manufacturing and supply chain capability. If something is not available in a store today, it will be soon.
6. Help each other. Reach out to your friends and neighbors to make sure they’re okay. If you know someone who is a shut-in or has limited transportation capability, give them a call and see if you can help. Practice kindness.
7. Be patient. Things won’t get back to normal tomorrow or next week. But normalcy will return.
8. Don’t look back. Focus on the future. The blame game helps no one. This is a disaster of epic and generational proportions and there were bound to be problems.
9. Have faith in our government and health experts. Even if you hate Trump with a passion, realize that our state and local government mechanisms are kicking in and they are attacking the problem aggressively. They are working 24/7 to conquer this problem.
10. There is a lot of economic and personal help available from Federal and State governments. Make sure you know what applies to you.
11. If you feel ill, call your doctor for advice. If you’re told to get tested, get tested. And then follow their advice again. Make sure all your records are available.
12. We have millions of kids out of school for several weeks. Parents need to fill the role of teacher. Make them continue their studies. If you know some families where both parents work, consider offering to watch the kids while the parents are at work. Speaking of kids…don’t let this scare them. It’s a part of life. They need adults around them to be steady, serious, and calm.
13. We will all be stuck in our homes for extended periods. Keep busy. Try not to feel isolated. Do that job around the house that you’ve been putting off. Continue your exercise routine as much as possible. Get out in the fresh air when you can.
14. Turn off the news. Or rather ration how much you and your family watches. Too much will only depress you. Listen to music or enjoy the silence.
15. Same with social media. When you see people whining and bellyaching and blaming, don’t respond. It’s not your problem. Focus on the positive.
16. Spend some time with your God or nature or whatever gives you peace, perspective and forbearance. Hopefully this will help with providing calming and perspective.