People like these protesters in Huntington Beach last month aren't going to go peacefully into their homes if a rebound of COVID would call for a second lockdown. Photo by Stephen Carr.
It was winter when I first went into coronavirus hibernation, and now we’re well into spring. I’ve gone from jeans and flannel to shorts and T-shirts, firelogs to A/C while I watch 16% of the year wander by through my front window. Grass has grown, roses have bloomed, my gardener had to cut back the tree in the front yard that was a four- or five-leaf sapling when Hannah was born and now has grown taller than the house and throws shade over half the yard.
I’ve binge-watched streaming series, I’ve read eight books, eight Sunday editions of the New York Times, spent (wow, can this be true?) more than 10 hours a day on my smartphone, eaten more restaurant food than I ever did when you could actually go into a restaurant, plowed through dozens of bags of groceries, struggled and fretted at home over my sister’s bout with COVID in the ICU at Memorial, missed family get-togethers on Easter and Mother’s Day, bought a new car, and gone for brisk walks around the neighborhood with my dogs.
I’ve read innumerable conspiracy theories regarding the disease and waded through the mire of social-media comments, op-eds and real-life ramblings from people who don’t believe the virus is a threat to them—old people, the infirm and otherwise vulnerable, sure, but otherwise healthy people should be allowed the God-and-Constitution-given rights to congregate at the beach, parks and elsewhere with minimal risk. I’ve watched as America has gone from a country united against COVID to a splintered society divided by people who think the science is bogus, uninformed and malicious, to those who (to use a phrase that has fallen from the ubiquitous use that it enjoyed back in March), out of an abundance of caution, continue to believe that staying safe at home and obeying the rules of social distancing remains the best way to keep the casualties down.
So, today is Day 57. “What are you gonna do?” asked a friend of mine. “I mean, this thing could go on for months! Are you gonna have a Day 400 column?”
Truth is, I don’t know. The situation, on one hand, seems to be thawing out some, with people carefully tip-toeing out into parks and the bike path. There are more cars on the street. I don’t know if it’s blissful freedom or if it’s even the right thing to do. Are we rushing back to our old ways of non-essential driving, socializing without masks, demanding more easing of restrictions, throwing open restaurant dining rooms and barbershops and hair salons (and, for God’s sake, bowling alleys)— are we doing it all too soon?
The likelihood of a profound rebound effect is nothing to lightly dismiss, and that’s what scientists, medical experts and a handful of politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom are most concerned about.
Act II of the Spanish Influenza of 1918 was far more severe than the initial blast, and some of the causes for that don’t apply here, because a big part of the rebound of that pandemic, at least in America, was the return of soldiers from the war in Europe. But a serious rebound, especially when many restrictions are being lifted while the numbers of cases and deaths continue to rise, will be nothing, you should pardon the expression, to sneeze at.
The prospects of going back to Day 1 — a column for which I already have written, as well as the subsequent 56 (to repeat a line more or less, from Day 37; see, I’m already recycling)—is not only daunting, but I doubt if many people in America will even do it.
It’s a different and more selfish country now, a century after the Spanish flu, during which the citizenry obliged for the most part and were unified in closing businesses and schools to kill the disease once and for all. If a call for a second lockdown ever has to be made, as the number of deaths in the U.S. gallops unstoppably toward 100,000, it’s not going to be easy to get the deniers of science, the people who believe that flu shots exist to give you the flu, those who think that it’s all a plot to destroy the world’s economy and, what the heck, take all our guns away while they’re at it, back into their bottle, because they know they’re right and the rest of us are just suckers skipping happily into the apocalypse.
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
Quarantine Chronicles Day 57: How long, oh Lord, how long?
It was winter when I first went into coronavirus hibernation, and now we’re well into spring. I’ve gone from jeans and flannel to shorts and T-shirts, firelogs to A/C while I watch 16% of the year wander by through my front window. Grass has grown, roses have bloomed, my gardener had to cut back the tree in the front yard that was a four- or five-leaf sapling when Hannah was born and now has grown taller than the house and throws shade over half the yard.
I’ve binge-watched streaming series, I’ve read eight books, eight Sunday editions of the New York Times, spent (wow, can this be true?) more than 10 hours a day on my smartphone, eaten more restaurant food than I ever did when you could actually go into a restaurant, plowed through dozens of bags of groceries, struggled and fretted at home over my sister’s bout with COVID in the ICU at Memorial, missed family get-togethers on Easter and Mother’s Day, bought a new car, and gone for brisk walks around the neighborhood with my dogs.
I’ve read innumerable conspiracy theories regarding the disease and waded through the mire of social-media comments, op-eds and real-life ramblings from people who don’t believe the virus is a threat to them—old people, the infirm and otherwise vulnerable, sure, but otherwise healthy people should be allowed the God-and-Constitution-given rights to congregate at the beach, parks and elsewhere with minimal risk. I’ve watched as America has gone from a country united against COVID to a splintered society divided by people who think the science is bogus, uninformed and malicious, to those who (to use a phrase that has fallen from the ubiquitous use that it enjoyed back in March), out of an abundance of caution, continue to believe that staying safe at home and obeying the rules of social distancing remains the best way to keep the casualties down.
So, today is Day 57. “What are you gonna do?” asked a friend of mine. “I mean, this thing could go on for months! Are you gonna have a Day 400 column?”
Truth is, I don’t know. The situation, on one hand, seems to be thawing out some, with people carefully tip-toeing out into parks and the bike path. There are more cars on the street. I don’t know if it’s blissful freedom or if it’s even the right thing to do. Are we rushing back to our old ways of non-essential driving, socializing without masks, demanding more easing of restrictions, throwing open restaurant dining rooms and barbershops and hair salons (and, for God’s sake, bowling alleys)— are we doing it all too soon?
The likelihood of a profound rebound effect is nothing to lightly dismiss, and that’s what scientists, medical experts and a handful of politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom are most concerned about.
Act II of the Spanish Influenza of 1918 was far more severe than the initial blast, and some of the causes for that don’t apply here, because a big part of the rebound of that pandemic, at least in America, was the return of soldiers from the war in Europe. But a serious rebound, especially when many restrictions are being lifted while the numbers of cases and deaths continue to rise, will be nothing, you should pardon the expression, to sneeze at.
The prospects of going back to Day 1 — a column for which I already have written, as well as the subsequent 56 (to repeat a line more or less, from Day 37; see, I’m already recycling)—is not only daunting, but I doubt if many people in America will even do it.
It’s a different and more selfish country now, a century after the Spanish flu, during which the citizenry obliged for the most part and were unified in closing businesses and schools to kill the disease once and for all. If a call for a second lockdown ever has to be made, as the number of deaths in the U.S. gallops unstoppably toward 100,000, it’s not going to be easy to get the deniers of science, the people who believe that flu shots exist to give you the flu, those who think that it’s all a plot to destroy the world’s economy and, what the heck, take all our guns away while they’re at it, back into their bottle, because they know they’re right and the rest of us are just suckers skipping happily into the apocalypse.
Tim Grobaty
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
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