Living Here In COVIDtown

Well we're living here in COVIDtown
And they're closing all the businesses down
In ER waiting rooms they're killing time
Filling out forms
Dropping in line...

In 1982 Billy Joel introduced Allentown, what would become "an anthem of blue-collar America, representing both the aspirations and frustrations of America's working class in the late 20th century."   I heard it the other day on Sirius Channel 8 and have not been able to get it out of my head as I read story after story of where we are in the pandemic.

We are at once a populace aspirational about the vaccines, yet frustrated with the lack of a coherent, cohesive system for delivery.  Aspirational about taking precautions, yet frustrated with the continuing glut of dullards who subscribe to Qanon bullshit rather than science and facts.  Aspirational because millions of us know how it can be, frustrated because millions are hellbent on preventing any progress.

Well our fathers fought the Second World War
For us quarantine was just too much of a bore
Ignore the fact that out we shouldn't go
Take off our masks
Watch our spittle blow.

We are where we are because of the obscene selfishness that has become a hallmark of this nation.  No longer a country where self sacrifice, the greater good, and looking out for our neighbor hold any sway, instead we are a self indulgent, selfish, narcissistic, excuse making, hubris laden people.  Think not? For the fourth day in a row, Universal Studios in Orlando has hit capacity within TEN MINUTES of opening.  Because we simply refuse to stay put and work towards a brighter tomorrow TOGETHER by staying apart.  We want what we want and we want it NOW.

This morning we blew past the 20 million mark in terms of positive cases.  That puts us at twice the number of the 2nd place contender in this world, India.  And yes, I am well aware that testing is a logistical nightmare in a country with over a billion people, but the numbers still stand.  And ours are abysmal.  We have lost 347,713 people.  Since the morning of December 1, we have lost 71,065, nearly 20% of our total.  In the past week, we have set two records:  highest number of airline passengers since the pandemic began and most COVID deaths in a 7 day period.  That owes to our intentional, willful decisions to ignore all warnings and travel for Thanksgiving, thus condemning family, friends, and complete strangers to death because we just had to share a pumpkin pie.

That is not hyperbole.  Every thoughtless action taken in the time of COVID has an unequal and opposite reaction.  Think you are only one person, so what's it going to hurt to go hang out maskless around a table of your relatives?  Think again.  All it takes is ONE asymptomatic person - you, someone you traveled next to, someone in the next bathroom stall, Aunt May who promises she is healthy.  They exhale, sneeze, cough.  You inhale.  Two days later you travel back to your hometown, back to work, to the grocery store, unaware that you have contracted COVID, yet spreading its microscopic confetti to all and sundry. 

And then people die.  Again, not hyperbole.  How many weddings do you need to read about where people partied, went back to work, and killed multiple coworkers, friends, strangers who did not know the bride and groom?  The glut of Thanksgiving tales of happy times and then two days later 17 people come up positive?  Just a Google away.  (Yet another hospital story today - a husband and wife both died of COVID - they had hosted 30 people for Thanksgiving.)  Cautionary tales aplenty that should have been enough to keep people in place for Christmas.  Instead we saw the greatest numbers of fliers since March - 1,284,599 on Sunday alone.  Willful idiots who, when interviewed, spun in place justifying their actions.  They are different.  Or they trust Jesus will protect them.  Or the rules simply don't apply to them.  Or worse, they still don't believe COVID is worse than the flu.

News flash for those of you who still spout that garbage:  Our December death toll, which is still mounting, is greater than the flu's death count for both 2018 and 2019 combined.

Well we're waiting here in COVIDtown
For the herd immunity never found
For the promises our leaders gave
Rounding the curve
Right into the grave.

Since last night much attention has been being given to a 41 year old man in Louisiana as his COVID death was announced.  Poised to take his place in Congress, Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died Tuesday.  Only 41 years old, leaving a wife and two tiny children behind.  My heart breaks for the children.  My sympathy ends there.  Letlow was a Republican Trump lackey whose Twitter feed is filled with pictures of both indoor and outdoor campaign events where masks are nowhere to be seen.  Like Herman Cain before him, he courted COVID with his hubris and willful ignorance, and COVID laughed in his gasping face.

We are not "rounding the curve" as Caligulump likes to promise.  We are neckdeep in a nightmare of our own making.  And Letlow is just another cautionary tale.  A tale of arrogance and ignorance.  A healthy, younger man with no pre-existing conditions or comorbidities, he contracted COVID, was hospitalized, and 11 days after announcing his positive status, died of a massive COVID fueled heart attack.  His children are only 3 and 11 months old.  

Again, I save my sympathies for his children.  His wife Julia, who appears in many photos with him at events, maskless, is a PhD who should have been smart enough to follow guidelines, but did not.  I am not heartless, but I will not cry tears for someone who went out of his way to contract the virus, infecting God knows how many people along the way.  I save my sympathies for those who have done everything right, yet have still succumbed due to the behaviors of the Luke Letlows of this world.

Like Sarah Simental, only 18, who died the day after Christmas.  A healthy young girl with her entire life ahead of her, contracted COVID and to quote her mother, “It just took her so fast.”  Only a couple days before Christmas, Simone complained of a headache and congestion. Three days later she was dead.

18 years old.  This is not just an old person illness.  We are losing people of all ages, every single day.  Between yesterday morning at 930 am and this morning 24 hours later, we lost 4,120 people.  Think about that.  I have tried using stadium analogies, airplanes analogies.  How about this?  This is Jonestown, 1979.  The ground covered with 909 bodies.  I was only 13 but remember the shock, the incomprehensible story, the number that seemed too large to grasp despite having photo after photo showing the reality.

Now, multiply that by 4.5.  Imagine that photo but almost five times larger.  That is the past 24 hours.  Now multiply that by 383.  That is our death count.  Is the jungle floor even big enough to hold them all?  Because in the Jonestown pictures, what you don't see are the horrors discovered by the Guyanese military - the bodies were two and three people deep.    

This year's graduations were virtual
Degrees, diplomas didn't help us at all
Too many not believing what is real
Q Anon quacks
Conspiracy zeal.

We now have two vaccines in weak circulation.  Pfizer and Moderna, at the ready with millions of doses.  A government that promised 20 million of them administered by year's end.  Year's end is tomorrow and we have barely injected 2 million doses of a 2 dose-required vaccine.  (And even were mass vaccinations to magically materialize there are far too many 5G-Bill-Gates-Anti-Vax-Wetbrained-Implant-Tracker mouthbreathers who are grandstanding that they will not get the vaccine.)  Over 11 million doses have been distributed across the country, but there is no plan, no directive, no leadership to follow to get it to the people.  Not surprising that the federal government has zero idea what to do.  We have never had a national testing strategy, so why would we think leadership would be forthcoming for the vaccine's distribution.  This morning, before heading again to the golf course, the Biggest Loser tweeted this:

The states have been given no direction.  Yet he is happy to place the blame on them as he waddles off to the first tee yet again.  And do not look for the revered head of the Coronavirus Task Force to be helping.  Pence is off skiing in Vail.  And while millions go hungry, their unemployment drying up, Steve Mnuchin is ensconced in his Cabo lair laughing as meager $600 stimulus checks are being begrudgingly direct deposited to the paupers.

Our reality is about to get a lot worse.  In the next two weeks, the holiday travel consequences will come home to roost.  And we don't have anywhere to put the people who will get incredibly sick, incredibly fast.  LA hospitals are overflowing to the point they are triaging people in the gift shops.  They are running out of oxygen.  ICU beds are all taken in hospitals across the country.  And they are all making plans for the fast approaching point where they must decide who gets their medical attention and who is left to die.

Again, not hyperbole to make a point.  Those death panels Sarah Palin made up one morning on the toilet?  Very much our reality as doctors must face managing the number of patients against who has the best chance to survive if treated.  That means there are people who will die in ER parking lots.  People who will be sent home to die on their couches.  Think about that.  Your child, spouse, mother or father gasping like a fish on the dock, but turned away because there just isn't space and they don't tick off enough boxes on the Can-We-Save-You checklist.

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But we allowed a failed reality star to win that race
Now death is the price we pay for that disgrace

Our country is in such peril and there is no one at the helm.  Trump has completely turned his back and is golfing away his final days in office.  Pence is skiing, as are the Kushner Klan.  Nashville sustained a terrorist suicide bomb attack on Christmas day and the mayor has still not heard from the IMPOTUS, nor has he even tweeted about the attack.  But then why would he?  The terrorist was a white male who loved the same conspiracy bullshit as Trump and his horde of red hatted horrors. 

And we're waiting here in COVIDtown
For the new administration that we will crown
And the MAGAt people will crawl away
Give science a chance
To save the day

21 days until Biden and Harris and their assembled team of Avengers are sworn in.  21 days until science and reason and math and data and empathy are in charge of this country.  21 days.  That we are faced with an Advent Calendar of sorts where each day's opening contains a new nightmare at the hands of this inept collection of criminals is sickening.  The days are creeping by, the hours filled with new outrages, offenses, and updated coronavirus stats.  We are on our own.  And for the Parler/MAGAt/lowIQs out there - no amount of treasonous, seditious acts and pants shitting by your heroes will forestall the inauguration of Joe Biden.  So, to quote you - Fuck Your Feelings. 

Every healthcare professional knows and is warning that the first months of 2021 are going to eclipse how awful all of 2020 has been in terms of COVID-19.  The virus variant first identified in the UK last week has now been reported in both Colorado and California.  Our two biggest enemies are the velocity of viral spread and our unwillingness to band together and do what's necessary to save as many people as possible.

I just hit refresh - the holiday stats are rolling in fast and furious.  349,121 now dead.  That means in the space of two hours when I began writing, we have lost another 1,408 people.  At this pace, another 5,000 will not ring in the New Year.  21 more days...

As we're dying here in COVIDtown.

Comments

[Nikki in nyc]

Wishing you and the family well in 2021