The little virus that could - Part II

And here is a third blog I did not bring myself to publish for exactly one year.  It's as fresh today as it was 365 days ago.

The feeling of grief  permeates everything these days, but there are happy moments. Let me paint for you our act of random wildness. We were coming back from an early morning walk, when behind a road curve we heard the loud shrieks of a scared deer and the much fainter shrieks to the right. When we approached the curve, this is what we saw: On our side, a young doe was running back and forth and shrieking her lungs off. To the right, behind a wire net fence was a new-born fawn of the size of adult cat, trying to join mama. But how could she? The fawn was pursued by a large black labrador, who was visibly upset and confused, and tried to sniff her. Finally, the fawn hid behind a bush on the side on the fence with the dog behind the bush, standing there and doing nothing. We talked to the dog trying to calm her, and my wife, Joanna, was able to touch and pet the mortally scared fawn, and catch her. We worked together passing to each other the firmly held fawn, and moving her up the wire squares. After four such exchanges, the little baby was lifted up to our side of the fence and reunited with the absolutely crazy-mortified mama. We saved a Bambi today, and it felt so, so, so very good!

Here is Professor Woland speaking to a writer, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, at the Patriarch Pond in Chapter 1 of  Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, my most favorite book of all times.

" 'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? ' "

The little corona virus that could is continuing to undo our fragile, bloated civilization and our highly optimized supply chains. The cost of our collective myopia and the criminal negligence and incompetence of almost all governments on the planet will be measured in a few tens of trillions of dollars, putting a 30-40% dent in the economists' still-born child, the global GDP.   The idiot MBAs and economists, who rule everywhere, apparently saved a few tens of millions of dollars here and there by discontinuing the pandemic preparation programs.  Now they are all busy printing  in unison rivers of money and looking for the customers who might buy their paper obligations, while not delivering the promised loans to the people and small businesses who really need them. Oh, well. But not all news is bad...

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"Seeing and growing closer to God require purifying one’s heart from the sins and prejudices that distort reality and blind people to God’s active and real presence", Pope Francis said. "Dear Pope", I ask, "would it be too much to ask you to please  communicate this message to most world leaders, but especially to President Trump, the creature so coveted by the US so-called 'Christians'?"

Pope Francis just said the coronavirus pandemic is one of "nature's responses" to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis. In an email interview published Wednesday (04/08/2020) in The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, the pontiff said the outbreak offered an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. "I don't know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature's responses," he added.  I simply love this man.

Not all news is bad. Joanna, the love of my life and wife of forty years, and I have been self-sequestered on our beautiful, 16 acre property and in the surrounding rural neighborhood for five weeks.

Rainbow after a thunderstorm.  A view from our hill. I am standing just east of  the house.  April 9, 2020.

We went to the grocery store only three times, and saw our neighbors from a distance a few more times. Each morning, but Fridays and Saturdays, I start at 6 am, go through dozens of emails, reply to many, and work with my students and researchers for 5-6 hours. Then I work on other things, mostly papers. Later in the afternoon and on weekends, we both work on the property and in the house.  We have been finishing our new bathroom that was not quite finished five years ago, when we left for Saudi Arabia.  I'll post a photo or two of our achievements when we are done. Significant woodwork involves making the front wall of the tub, and frames for two doors and three windows. We are using the local, beautiful red cedar wood to fabricate them.

These window frames and the front wall of the tub were all fabricated by us from the beautiful Texas red cedar wood covered with 4-6 layers of sealing oil with ultrafine sanding in between.  The wall is clad in a single 2.5 cm thick slab of granite.

This is the other end of our bathroom. All the woodwork you see, including the pine bathroom door were fabricated, finished and installed by us.  The water-efficient Caroma toilet came from Australia.  Its water tank doubles as a bathroom sink to wash hands.

The view of the bathroom door and the southern entrance door to our house. Again, the door frames and floor boards were fabricated by us.  The cabinets were fabricated from the old barn pinewood floor boards by a carpenter friend.  The hermetic exterior door is made of insulating fiberglass.

No on to the bad news. The corona virus related deaths are undercounted in the U.S., just like everywhere else. With bodies that begin to pile up on the streets, the giant India has registered barely more CV cases and deaths than the tiny Ecuador. (How true this comment is a year later!)

In the US, in New York for example, the Fire Department data shows that 1,125 patients were pronounced dead in their homes or on the street in the first five days of April, more than eight times the 131 deaths recorded during the same period last year. Paramedics are not testing for the virus those they pronounce dead, so it is almost impossible to say how many of the people were infected with it. Some may have been tested before they died and either were not admitted to hospitals or were discharged. But the huge jump in the numbers suggests that the virus was involved in many of the recent deaths. In New York, the unclaimed bodies bodies are now buried in mass graves.

Fast forward to May 2021, and the US is the only large country that has vaccinated most of its population with the COVID vaccines that actually were produced at home and work, in contrast to the Chinese vaccines that don't.  We are a gleaming success story that shines bright light on the incompetence of most other governments in the developed countries, and - singularly - in the tragic India, where perhaps millions of people have perished.  Modi, that wannabe cruel mini-Trump, has succeeded in bringing down this great country of 1.3 billion people.