MOUNTAIN JAM - (A SNEAK PEEK)

This is a sneak peek at a portion of a book I'm working on chronicling the members of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.  This particular excerpt is the entry planned for The Grateful Dead - each of the other members will get an entry as well.  This section tries to emulate the well-known extemporaneous nature of the Dead's concert stylings.  Hope it works.  

The Grateful Dead   - Inducted 1994 – Representative Song – “Bertha” (Live, Watkins Glen - 1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sntaQxf8I00

The Grateful Dead are as much an experience as a band and, through the years, the principal manner in which their devotees shared that experience was via concerts.  The Dead played long, improvisational songs in a set list that changed, not just from tour to tour but from night to night.  Because the way a song was treated may be completely different for any given show the band’s fans, affectionately known as “Deadheads”, would trade copies of tapes made of the individual performances (allowed and encouraged by the band), with everyone having a favorite which they would expound upon at length to anyone who evidenced the slightest interest.

“Man, I’ve got a copy of Springfield 1979 where they do an incredible “I Need a Miracle” that goes into “Shakedown” – awesome – Jerry was flyin’”.

“I got Springfield from ’78 where they do Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” – wild”.

Conversations like that could go on for hours.  That was kind of the point – the Dead would play a song like “Not Fade Away”, which was 2:21 in its original Buddy Holly version, and riff on it for 35 minutes.  Fans would then talk for three hours about how that 35 minute version compared to a 27-minute effort from six years previously, what they were doing during the weekend of that concert (and the one following, which they would travel to with four guys who they just met at the first one), and then they’d play the tape of the concert which would include a bit of a jam session that they’d had in the parking lot of the stadium afterwards.

I’m no exception – I have great stories about the run of six shows in Boston from 1991 when the Dead filled the Garden every night and the Deadheads would spend the nights before and after the shows jamming on stage at a local Irish pub called “Paddy Burke’s” where the house band would play with the various fans for hours on end.  I’d go in right after work (I worked in an office just next door to the pub and knew the owners) simply to hang out and listen to the music. How were the Dead shows themselves you might ask?

I don’t know – I never went.  It helped, but wasn’t really entirely necessary, to actually get in to the venue to experience a visit from the Grateful Dead.

I had other times where Grateful Dead concerts impacted me without actually, you know, being there.  One of them is the concert represented by the attached link, the Watkins Glen festival of 1973.  I could give you the short version of how that touched me – but that wouldn’t be representative of the Dead, so we’re gonna improvise a little. 

I can’t tell you what parts of this are 100% verifiable, and which parts are conjecture, but like Huck Finn’s description of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, there’s a few things I’ll “stretch”, but I’ll tell “…the truth, mainly.”

(Now listen, this will be about the Grateful Dead, eventually, but we’re just gonna go with this for a while.)

To know about Watkins Glen, you gotta know about New York.  Specifically, you gotta know about where people from right around New York City go on their vacations. 

I’m not talking about world travelers here, or “favored tourist destinations” like Disneyworld.  I’m focusing on the places where working people in New York, back from around the 1920’s through the ‘70’s, (after which air travel started to get much cheaper), hopped into their cars and went to get away from the city for anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. 

Because New York was the cultural center of much of what was going on in America through that time, these places have, to a certain extent, all become engrained in the American psyche.  Radiating out to the east, south, west, northwest and north there are five main destinations for NYC vacationers to be considered (for the purpose of this exercise we’re ignoring the close by “day trip” spots like Coney Island, Far Rockaway, Jones Beach or the Pallisades). They are:  Long Island, the Jersey Shore, the Poconos, the Catskills and the Berkshires.  People will argue that “Connecticut” or “upstate” destinations like Lake Placid should be included, but further upstate than Albany was not as easy a place to get to as you might assume, and the Connecticut towns like Greenwich and Mystic, along the Sound, were less vacation spots to spend a week than bedroom villages to aspire to someday get a house. No, I think you can safely confine the list to those five.

Each of these places had their own characteristics.  Long Island, while physically the closest, was, (until Robert Moses began his building program and opened the Parkway to Jones Beach), one of the more difficult to access.  Once it did open up it became a sliding scale of economic status, with the closer places (such as the aforesaid Jones Beach) being largely working class, and Bayshore, Sayville, Bellport, etc. becoming increasingly exclusive until you get to the Hamptons and Montauk, which are largely play areas for the super-rich and the Gatsby-type crowd.

From early on the Jersey Shore was serviced by trains and roads (such as the Jersey Turnpike from the late 1930’s) and was easy enough to get to for college kids, young singles and family’s looking for weekly rentals to which they could make a relatively quick and painless trip.  It was built up fairly rapidly with numerous cottages and bungalows and the shore towns became famous for amusement parks and seaside bars.  The RRHOF has a good few members who cut their teeth on the Jersey shore.

The Poconos somehow became the preferred destination for honeymooners.  Known as the birthplace of the heart-shaped bathtub it might actually have been easier to get to the Poconos than some of the other places on this list.  The roads leading out to this area in Pennsylvania were good enough (and still relatively uncrowded) for much of the 20^th century, which has led to the region now being more of a commuter center for the greater NYC area than a current holiday destination.

The Catskills were the home of the family resort and the dominion of comedians and established music acts.  Known as the “Borscht Belt” or the “Jewish Alps” the area thrived on the sort of “return every year” clientele that eventually gave rise to remembrances like those reflected in “Dirty Dancing” or large parts of shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.  Other ethnicities may have derided the Catskill tradition but they can only wish to have the kind of cultural memories that were built up in those retreats.

Then there were the Berkshires.  Not quite as easily classifiable as the other destinations, New Yorkers would go to the Western Massachusetts idyll for culture (Tanglewood opened in 1938, numerous writers from Edith Wharton to “Ball Four’s” Jim Bouton decamped there, while Jacob’s Pillow hosts the country’s premier dance festival.  Additionally, numerous actors cut their teeth in summer stock plays in town’s like Stockbridge).  You might have also gone there for fishing, golf, skiing or other outdoor sports (my older cousins still talk of running in to Babe Ruth at a local store when they were young). Summer camps and Catskill like resorts thrived for much of the mid-20^th century.  The Berkshires were a noted spot for the beginnings of “Bed & Breakfasts” or, more likely in the earlier days of the century, country inns, where licit or illicit weekends could be spent.  This kept a fairly steady flow of people, largely from New York, coming into the region, either up the Henry Hudson Parkway or I-84.

By the 1920’s this influx had started to fuel an actual “tourist industry” in the Berkshires.  Because of all the resorts, ski areas, summer camps, inns and restaurants that were opening there was a need for trained chefs to manage the kitchens associated with each.  “Trained chefs” meant more than just the ability to cook.  There were plenty of people who could cook.  It meant being able to control a kitchen, hire help, handle multiple seatings, feed huge crowds of people, know where to access food at a rate that kept the offerings profitable, build a reputation in a business where that was everything and having a calm enough personality to deal with difficult management or customers in a way that did not involve the illegal use of a meat cleaver.

 (Yes, this is a piece on the Grateful Dead, we are getting there, trust me.)

 Now, along about this time my grandfather was growing up in Pittsfield Massachusetts, one of nine children in a typical Irish-Catholic family.  A household of that size, back in those days, in that area (where the “Roaring Twenties” and the Great Depression weren’t really separated by that much) everyone needed to chip in.  All of the kids brought different skills to the table and one of the things that my grandfather could do exceptionally well was organize and cook the meals when needed.  It was just something that seemed to come naturally.  There would be eleven people, plus probably a few friend or cousins, and they would need to be fed. He’d get it done – and not just “get it done” – but manage to make something very good out of the ingredients at his disposal.

 That “at his disposal” part is key.  As the twenties ended and the depression afflicted thirties took hold the ability to manipulate scarce ingredients – and to stretch them – became even more critical.  Families had to be fed on less, so things like French toast, meatloaf, Salisbury steaks, macaroni and cheese, creamed beef on toast, franks and beans, fried bologna, stews of all kinds, and pasta combinations that went by different names everywhere, whether “American Chop Suey” or “Hungarian Goulash”, became the stuff of budget meals.  These survive as near gourmet quality “diner food” these days – but the ability to take lemons – and make “lemon stew” out of macaroni, butter, milk, some cheese and lemon slices – was really important back when nothing could be wasted.

 My grandfather was evidently an expert at these concoctions and just about every other dish that could be imagined.  That eventually led him to the hospitality trade, where his ability to turn out all kinds of dishes and manage a kitchen (a skill honed with the busy kitchen he grew up in) gave him what amounted to a profession in the Berkshires, where the tourist trade from New York, while significantly diminished, still existed.  There remained good (actually very good) restaurants in the area that needed chefs who could run the kitchens in towns like Lenox and Stockbridge - places where visitors from the big city would come to dine.  Charlie Higgins quickly established a reputation as one of the best at the trade.

 Don’t get me wrong – no one was getting rich doing this – but back in the day someone who knew how to handle a kitchen, run staff and keep things purring could make a living, eventually buy a house and raise a family off the work. In an era when any kind of a job was like dragon’s teeth – that was much better than many people with an “education” could even hope for. There was a lot to learn, but my grandfather was not a lazy man, and he set about mastering his craft.

 That meant taking many jobs, in many areas, and it was in the course of such employment that he met my grandmother, Catherine Prescott.  They married and moved back to Berkshire County, where, in 1941 my mom was born, followed in short order by two more girls, my aunts Kathy and Helen.

 (I assure you – this is leading back to the Grateful Dead – we’re just going to do so in a bit of an “improvisational” manner).

 My grandfather continued to work at a number of establishments, getting to know the ropes.  Part of that was learning who to hire for the short-term.  Back in those days, and really for some time after the height of the depression, “kitchen staff” meant hiring from what would be considered a “transient” population.  These type men (and they were all men) were sometimes called “hobo’s”, “tramps” or “railroad bums” but they called themselves “Knights of the Rails” or “Kings of the Road”.  Their numbers had swelled in the 1930’s, and they were experts at hopping freights, avoiding the railroad police, hitching rides and knowing where to go for a meal or short-term job.  Many of those jobs came from restaurants, where there were potatoes to peel, pots to scrub, kitchens to mop – for off the books payments before moving on.  Back then restaurants didn’t hire people full time for those jobs, it was cheaper to see who was around and pay them.

 The responsibility for knowing who to give a job to fell to the head chef – and people like my grandfather had to know who could be counted on to show up if they said they would, who would drink (most of them) and how to pay them so they didn’t blow everything in one day, which ones were hot-tempered and how to talk them down without getting a kitchen knife thrown at you, where they gathered, what you could (and could not) ask of them - generally becoming trusted in their unique fraternity.

 This he did, and the extent to which that took place is something we’ll explore in a bit more depth later, but first there was the matter of that house that needed to be purchased as the Higgins family expanded.  That was on course until the Emperor of Japan put himself squarely in the way.

 Yeah, I know – the Grateful Dead – we’re getting there.

 The general supposition is that following December 7, 1941 all able-bodied men in the United States went straight to their recruitment office and signed up.  That isn’t quite true.  Many did exactly that – but they were mostly single and/or childless.  Those with families knew they were going to enlist (or be called up) – but there were matters to be put in order first.  For large families, like the extended Higgins clan, the sharing of living space became almost communal as brothers, sisters, cousins, and in-laws planned amongst themselves where everyone would go once the various fathers, sons and brothers had joined the service.  My grandfather was 33 years old when the war started and it took the better part of a year and half for him to assist the rest of the family and get everything sorted.  Then, in 1943, after affairs had been put in order, he was ready to enlist in the Army, which he did.  My mother, grandmother and aunts stayed in a few different places while he was away – but there were always family members to take care of the clan as a whole. That’s just what people did back then.

 While that was taking place on the home front Grampa was adjusting to Army life.  You might think that knowing of his civilian expertise the military would have immediately made Private Higgins a cook – but from what I understand it didn’t quite work out that way.  Instead, he had to actually get to Europe before reality kicked in and someone set him up in his main area of expertise, but once there he quickly rose to the rank of “Technician 4” or “T-4”, which is where those with specialist skills were ranked in WWII.  This immediately bumped you up to the equivalent status of a Sargent (which is how you were addressed) and your job, in addition to toting a rifle at or near the front lines, was to be ready, every day, to set up a mess operation on the run, scrounge whatever you could in the way of food, feed scores of famished soldiers, break the damn thing down, get it moving and do it all over again somewhere else when required.  All while not getting shot or blown up.  It was enough to make you long for the days of New York tourists.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the supply operations implemented by the T4 specialists in World War II constitute one of the great military miracles of history.  Stephen Ambrose, who chronicled the European campaign in such books as “Band of Brothers” and “Citizen Soldiers” has stated that the movement of U.S. troops across Europe has never been equalled in war.  From a June 1944 landing in Normandy the Allied Army on the western front found themselves in the area of Munich just ten months later.  Along the way the troops remained well fed and supplied and this was done without terrorising the local populations.

It’s probable that his training in the kitchen of a huge Irish-American family and helping run depression era restaurants staffed with drifters prepared Grampa for the tasks he now faced. Whatever the cause he was, by all accounts, very, very good at this job. By the end of the war he would have to be, for on the 29^th of April in 1945 the infantry unit he was assigned to was nearing Munich when it entered an outlying town with the name “Dachau”.

(Yes, this is still a post about the Grateful Dead, but we’re just gonna go with this for a while.)

On the outskirts of the town the approaching troops discovered three rail cars filled to overflowing with dead bodies.  Following the tracks they came upon the main concentration camp, which was quickly surrendered to a contingent of American soldiers who entered the grounds.  What they saw there shocked them to such an extent that several men went mad and gunned down the SS guards who had surrendered the facility.  This is obviously not to be condoned, but if there were ever “extenuating circumstances” for a war crime, this was it. 

Dachau was not a “death camp” in the same sense that word is used to describe Auschwitz or Treblinka.  Instead, it was the earliest example of a Nazi “forced labor” camp, where internees were essentially worked to death.  In many ways the lack of an organized “extermination process” created more suffering for the prisoners.  The internees were only fed enough to keep them functioning and had become living skeletons by the time of liberation.  Without adequate nutrition disease ran rampant in these camps (a typhus outbreak was underway at the time of liberation) and thousands died even if that wasn’t the main “function” of the camp. The Nazi commanders in charge of the operations still butchered people, particularly as the war ended and they attempted to cover their tracks.  The rail carriages that were found in advance of the camp’s liberation evidenced one such attempt.  Another took place at a Dachau “satellite” operation in Landesberg, where prisoners were packed into a shed which was then set alight, roasting the captives alive.  This was the hell that the troops encountered in late April of 1945.

Shortly after these original troops entered the camp medical and food provisions were requested.  I don’t know if this happened, but I imagine someone who knew of my grandfather’s expertise pointing to an aide de camp and saying “Get Higgins up here”.  Then, once he arrived, that same person would turn to him and say “Feed these people”.

I do know that Higgins got "up there".  My grandfather was one of the initial relief troops in Dachau.  I also know he helped feed the starving internees of that camp, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.  He never told anyone about the medal, it was found out by someone who saw his name listed in a newspaper back home. 

You had to be very careful about how you fed the survivors of the forced labor camps.  In addition to typhus other diseases ravaged the victims and giving people who had starved for so long foods that were too rich could kill them.  The American troops, my grandfather amongst them, worked doggedly to save those that they could, feeding them in a manner designed to return them to strength.  I don’t know if Charles Higgins killed a single enemy soldier during the war, but I’m pretty damn sure he saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent lives. 

While he didn’t talk about the medal, he did later on talk about the camps.  His children, when old enough, would be shown pictures of the internees, both those dead and the living skeletons who survived.  That presentation would be accompanied by words to this effect: “This is what human beings can do to other human beings if they let themselves forget how they are supposed to behave.  Never let yourself forget”.

Tech 4 Higgins stayed on in Germany for a time after the war as part of the Allied occupation. (Most of the enlisted men fully expected that they would next be sent to Japan – only the events of August 1945 eliminated that possibility).  He continued to feed people – soldiers, camp survivors – and the post-war German population as well.  It seems that, in his view, all people needed to be kept alive if there was going to be any end to the madness he had witnessed.  There are two primary “war souvenirs” that came back from Europe with my grandfather.  They are artwork.  One is a painting of the alps that was given him by a German family to whom he had shown kindness.  The other is a sketch done by a grateful camp survivor.  Both hang in his children’s houses today.

This is the sketch done by the internee and presented to my grandfather.  The use of the Roman numeral “V” for the month of May may very well stem from the use of that letter as a symbol of resistance – the “V” sign was everywhere in those days.  The fact that the date reflects the latter part of May, post VE Day, and a location of Dachau – means that my grandfather was clearly in the area for the relief and support effort and not just the liberation (the liberating troops had moved on within days of the 29^th of April).  There is a possibility that the artist was a Croatian architect who went on to continue a distinguished career after the war.  It’s quite a keepsake and is obviously a great family treasure.

Then the war stopped and everyone went home. 

The end.

 

Well, not quite.  There was still the matter of getting enough money together to buy a house and get the family going again.  It took a while for the house to get sorted (the kids started up fairly quickly) but on the 21^st day of February, 1949 the Higgins’ closed on a property in the Berkshire County town of Sheffield, Massachusetts.  It was a big, rambling five-bedroom affair with a wrap-around porch, big garage and barn out back.  It still is.  This is what it looks like now, and that’s pretty much what it looked like then.

 

 

 

My uncle owns the house these days, but the time has come for him to sell it.  For me, given that I remember things like being allowed to “drive” a car up that long driveway, and planting that large birch tree on the right with my grandfather (over 50 years ago now), the asking price would be approximately, I don’t know,… $5 billion.  However, if you make my uncle an offer, he's a good guy and he’d probably consider taking less. 

I still think you’d be getting a bargain at $5 billion. 

The best part about the house, and something that I think should really be appreciated these days, is that in addition to providing a safe place to raise a large family (one of whom was my mother – that’s her playing with the yo-yo in the homecoming picture), all those things could be done on a cook's salary.  Don’t get me wrong – my grandfather was exceptionally good at what he did, and worked in some fine establishments, but he was not a sous chef with a degree in restaurant management.  First of all – I don’t even know if that degree existed back then, second – while he may have done some cooking in France it was probably of the “Man, that guy can sure do some amazing things with Spam” variety.

The fact that someone who worked hard and did a good job could make a decent living and provide for a large family - even in a field that (to put it mildly) was not known for high wages – speaks well of how the country distributed its wealth back then.  Not through direct government intervention but because there was simply less disparity between what people and professions earned in those days.  The local lawyer or doctor might do well – but they lived cheek to jowl with the policeman, teacher, or, indeed, chef, in the same community.  Right now, when I look at some of the towns and (in the case of a city) neighborhoods in America I don’t know if that is at all the case.  How many Brookline cops live in Brookline, Mass.?  How many Greenwich teachers live in Greenwich, Connecticut?  Do the people serving your food walk home after their shift is done or take three buses to get somewhere they can afford?

But this is not a political discussion – this is a post about the Grateful Dead.  (Remember the Grateful Dead? I just want to repeat, this is an entry about the Grateful Dead). 

My real point is that my grandfather continued on in his chosen field and did so successfully.  One of the reasons he achieved his success is because he also maintained a good relationship with the kings of the road who would stop in to wherever he was employed looking for a bit of work, a chat and maybe a bite to eat on a cold night.  Now that he had a house there were times when those same type of people might show up at the door, in various states of sobriety, looking for the same sorts of things. There were few to none that were ever turned away.

That sort of thing did not go unnoticed in that particular brotherhood of transients.  Just as when he was in the service – my grandfather (and grandmother in this instance) developed a reputation of dignity and respect amongst the hobo crowd.  This was evidenced most directly by a series of symbols discreetly left in front of the Sheffield house, in a place where the travelling crowd would know to look.  They were done in a secret “language” shared amongst the members of that group, one that is now largely lost but which you can find described on a number of internet sites.  The symbols outside the house, I am told, looked like this:

This is said to mean “A good gentleman lives here and will give you food and work”.  There may be no better thing to have people say about your home.

My grandparents lived in that home for twenty years, raising eight children, before a particularly harsh reality kicked in.  When I was five years old, just after planting that birch tree, Grampa was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.  I wasn’t yet seven by May of 1970, when it claimed him. I have strong memories of looking at the hollow left in his favorite chair, where he had to spend most of his last days, because that awful disease robs you of the ability to move while leaving your mind sharp and aware.  But I have even stronger memories of the man who put mud on my first bee sting, let me run around in the middle of a downpour like it was the world’s biggest sprinkler, who cooked the Sunday dinner and would let you pick the cucumbers out of the garden.

He was a good man who would give you food and work.

This is a post about the Grateful Dead.  We’re getting there, but we’re gonna improvise and ramble a bit more yet, sort of like a Dead concert. But, yes, we are getting closer.

The period during which my grandfather passed away was a turbulent one.  Both of my uncles were off in Vietnam (there is a story in that as well, I shall spare you), people were landing on the moon and it was the heyday of the “rock festival”.  Most everyone knows about Monterey, Isle of Wight, Woodstock and Altamont – but fewer know of Watkins Glen.  That’s unfortunate, because if there was a contest ranking festivals based solely upon musical merit – Watkins Glen might just win it. 

Held on the 28^th of July 1973 at a speedway in the reaches of western upstate New York the Watkins Glen festival was attended by an estimated 600,000 people, dwarfing Woodstock in terms of numbers.  For a long time the Guinness Book of World Records listed it as the largest audience of this type and it may still qualify as the largest single gathering in U.S. history. The average age was put at between 17 – 24 years old, which meant that one out of every three people of that age group in the region stretching from Greater Boston to New York were in that single small town listening to music.

The music that they listened to was the stuff of legend.  Unlike some of the other festivals named above – there were only three bands at Watkins Glen.  Those were The Allman Brothers Band, The Band and The Grateful Dead (see, I told you we’d get there).  Each of those groups is in the RRHOF and, in 1973, each was arguably at the height of their powers. 

The concert was scheduled to be held on a single day but the fans started arriving the day before and the bands needed to do a soundcheck.  The Allmans and The Band did a few numbers, to the delight of the assembled crowd.  The Grateful Dead then took the stage for their “soundcheck”, which proceeded to go on, in much the tradition of this entry, for nearly two hours over two sets, including one extended, wholly improvisational jam.  It is not an exaggeration to say that, of all the Grateful Dead concerts, the one bootleg recording that may have been most sought after was not a concert at all, but this soundcheck.

The next day the Dead opened the concert proper with the version of “Bertha” that can be heard in the attached link. The concert itself disappointed no one – with historic sets by each band (The Band followed The Dead and then The Allman Brothers closed the show).  After the Allman’s set an impromptu encore took place with members from all three bands on stage for an extended jam – probably one of the greatest collections of rock talent on one stage ever. The event is described in this Wikipedia entry:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Jam_at_Watkins_Glen

The festival was indeed historic – but like all such events it had to come to an end, and that meant that approximately the entire population of Detroit hopped in their cars to return home.  The result was a traffic jam of historic proportions.  The route directly back to New York was jammed solid, so a number of cars, vans and pickup trucks full of fans headed east towards the Berkshires (where many of the concertgoers had, in all probability, vacationed with their families).  They did this thinking to take a route around the worst of the traffic and then head due south towards New York along Route 7 (which goes right through Sheffield) or along other back roads.  That sounds like a good option, until 35,000 cars get the same bright idea.

So it was that on a weekend in July of 1973 I was witness to thousands of hippies slowly parading past my grandmother’s house.  I was on summer vacation and spent much of that time in “the country” (which was a bit misleading since we had just moved to a town that was even smaller than Sheffield).  In addition to longer hair than the norm these kids in the stop-and-go caravan had a few common characteristics – they hadn’t slept much all weekend, they had little money, what they had they needed for gas – and they were hungry. 

My grandmother had shifted houses just a bit since my grandfather’s passing, but she was still on Sheffield’s Main Street, and she still lived up to the standard posted in front of the old house:

So, she started making, and my aunts and a nine-year old me started bringing, sandwiches to the hungry fans of the Grateful Dead.  Bologna, peanut butter, cucumber, tomato and cheese, ham, tuna fish – whatever would go between two pieces of bread.  When the bread and fillings ran out someone went to the local store and got more.  There was no shortage of takers and I think we lived up to the hobos’ version of Michelin stars that day. 

So, that was another Dead concert that I experienced without ever having actually seen the band. There is no other phenomenon quite like them in rock history – of course their music is of paramount importance, but “their music” is so hard to de-couple from the experience of listening to it, being around it, meeting other people who listened to it and re-hashing (that word was chosen for a distinct reason) what it means. 

What it means is letting it take you where it will, even if that means long discourses on New York City vacation destinations, depression era foods, World War II, concentration camps, hobos, income disparity, sandwiches and grandparents.

Just go with it.

(As a bonus here’s a link to a place that includes the full two days of Grateful Dead music at Watkins Glen in 1973, including their concluding jam with the Allmans and The Band.)

https://www.jambase.com/article/600000-people-see-grateful-dead-allmans-band-summer-jam-watkins-glen-1973

GROWING UP - (Revisited)

 

Back when we were well in to the initial stage of lockdown during the first part of 2020 I posted the “Random Ramble” set out below which addressed the steps taken to deal with the pandemic and tried to cut through some of the “myths” that were arising in connection with the same.  I thought it would be useful, as we in Ireland sit through another lockdown, to go back through and try to figure out what was right and what was wrong in that original post, to see what had stood up to the test of time over the past months and where various parties may have fallen short of the mark.  These comments will, like this section, appear in red. There are a few assumptions I’m going to make going into this – so it’s only fair to set those out beforehand:

1.      I am not going to be proceeding from the assumption that, in Ireland, “we opened up too soon”.  I actually am one of the few who do not take issue with the fact that for much of the summer and autumn the country was operating within much looser parameters.  I happen to feel that the numbers fully justified opening up and that there would have (justifiably) been wholesale rebellion if that path had not been followed.  I do feel that the re-opening and subsequent monitoring, while not “wrong” in itself – was handled exceptionally poorly.  I’ll set out why in the text below.

2.       I will not assume that anyone knew or could have known when the vaccine’s that were being developed would be rolled out.  Yes, in retrospect, people may have done things differently if the fact that a Q1 2021 vaccine would appear – but there is no way to fairly penalise anyone for failing to be clairvoyant.

3.       The situation in the United States will be treated as something of an anomaly – it would be unfair to saddle the current administration, in office for only three weeks, with any blame for the idiocy that came before. This won’t always be the case – but for now they get a pass while we see how things work out in the coming months.

So – here’s the predictive grades for Covid 101.

The Ramblings turns 21 with this post and so it’s time to be a bit more adult about things. 

Don’t worry, this won’t last long.

Nothing is more frustrating, I’m sure, than looking at something on the internet, whether it is on a social networking site, a video, some random tweet or a (supposedly) legitimate media outlet and seeing something that you know is either (1) wrong; (2) misleading; (3) uninformed; (4) inciteful; (5) just plain stupid or (6) some combination of all of the above. 

Each of those sorts of infuriating characteristics has its own reason for being infuriating.  For example, something that is inciteful (as opposed to “insightful”) is designed to provoke – so it doesn’t necessarily even have to be wrong – it could just be phrased in such a way that is designed to get a response out of people – like “anger”, at a time when “angry” might be the least productive thing to be.  How about this excerpt from a recent news story:

He said: "It’s not only China, you take a look at Ireland. They make our drugs. Everybody makes our drugs except us."

He then repeated his promise to move US pharmaceutical manufacturing back to America.

"We’re bringing that whole supply chain back," he said.

(The “He” who said this is, of course, Donald Trump.  When he says Ireland manufactures a lot of drugs – he’s not wrong, and when he says China is also in the drug manufacturing business, he’s also not wrong.  But to mention those two countries in the same breath, while technically not “wrong” is inciteful.  He’s just trying to rile people up - and not for any particular purpose.  China wants to manufacture drugs in order to compete with the United States, Ireland manufactures drugs in order to help make the United States competitive.  Here’s a description of the REAL reason U.S. companies establish themselves in Ireland:

“19 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies are based in Ireland for a good reason. By establishing their manufacturing here, this industry has great geographical proximity to the mainland European markets. Easy international shipping across the Atlantic is very beneficial for pharmaceutical exports to North America. Five of the world’s eight top-selling drugs are produced in Ireland, making it the world’s largest net exporter of pharmaceuticals and a globally recognised centre of excellence in pharma.”

So, what’s the real reason drug companies locate in Ireland?  Turns out it’s not so that American companies can go somewhere and cheaply manufacture drugs to ship back home - it’s so U.S. companies can go somewhere to manufacture drugs which have proximity to OTHER markets, like continental Europe.  If they did not have that foothold in a geographically advantageous spot there would be lots of other countries that would then gain that advantage – and one guess as to which one would benefit the most.

Ding! You got it in one – China

So, stating something like this just serves to incite – rile people up – without really informing them.  Those sorts of things are bad.  However, when it comes to getting under my skin nothing tops the “uninformed” opinion.  Mind you – I have split “uninformed” off from the category of “wrong” because, while someone can be informed but draw an incorrect conclusion – at least they tried.  An uninformed person just has no fucking clue what they are talking about, but they will happily tell you how certain they are with no constraints. 

Also – they must come from a place where everyone oversleeps because they seem to always be telling us all to “WAKE UP PEOPLE!”.  Here is a video of uninformed people proving my point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYi4fkmyIP4

I don’t know how we will EVER fight off the great conspiracy of 5G, crypto-currency, radiation poisoned, new world order driven conspirators who are doing this all with a virus THAT HASN’T EVEN BEEN PROVEN TO EXIST! (Said through a mask).

Look – it’s not all one way either.  Slate magazine, increasingly the purveyor of National Enquirer like stories such as “My Sex Resort of Choice Has A Racist Themed Night” have decided that they know the only way to recover from the lock down – which in an enormous coincidence happens to line up almost exactly with the economic agenda they have been trying to sell for years.  Goodness, what are the chances?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/covid-19-recession-new-deal-plan.html?via=homepage_recirc_engaged

No – a new New Deal isn’t the ONLY way to recover – but using the crisis as a way to insist upon advancing your own agenda is one sure way to get more people to buy in to those ideas because of the crisis, not because of the value of the idea itself.

There are, of course, attempts to combine elements of the above – for instance, you can be both uninformed AND inciteful.  Here’s a dead give-away.  If the content you are reading seems to follow the same path as an urban myth – it’s not to be trusted.  For instance – when you see a post about how “I know someone whose mother-in-law’s friend had a husband who died of a heart attack, and the hospital insisted on listing it as a Covid related death in order to keep this FAKE pandemic going” you have essentially just been fed the equivalent of the following stories:

·       The Vanishing Hitchhiker

·       The Mexican Pet

·       The Choking Doberman

·       The Guinea Pig in the Microwave

The person or persons who are feeding you those stories are doing it because they are not taking the time to check whether what they are saying is true.  There is a very simple reason for that – they could not care less about whether the story is true – they are trying to provoke and incite.

So how do we cut through the bullshit?  The best way is to just deal rationally with what we actually know.  Not what we think we know, what we wish we knew or what “someone’s mother-in-law’s best friend’s uncle” says they know.  Let’s just take a deep breath and take stock.

Wow – maybe I was clairvoyant.  I don’t think I need to remind anyone how dangerous perpetuating an ongoing lie turned out to be in the United States.  The “election fraud” debacle perpetrated by the disgraced former President makes his lies about the Irish pharmaceutical industry pale by comparison, but this is not, primarily, a political review.  Let’s just say this section turned out to be pretty spot on.

1.        THERE IS A PANDEMIC. IT IS CAUSED BY A VIRUS.  WE KNOW WHAT THAT VIRUS IS. THIS PARTICULAR STRAIN IS NEW AND SO IS DIFFICULT TO DEAL WITH THROUGH THE EXISTING MEDICAL TOOLS AT OUR DISPOSAL.

 

This pandemic not “made up” and it is not the result of 5G technology being beamed into our skulls.  It is from a virus designated Covid-19 and we know the family of viruses from which it springs.  Unfortunately, this is a “novel” virus, which in this case does not mean it is a long piece of prose written by Stephen King (again) but is “novel” in the sense that it is “new”.  This means that when treating or coming up with ways to treat the virus science and medicine are starting from further back in the field than they would like to.

 

As hard as it is to comprehend there are still people who insist that the pandemic is largely a media creation, that the whole crisis was a “plandemic” and that we would have been better off just going about our lives without acknowledging the virus’ existence or making any changes.  To those people I only have one thing to say:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd-Sa_3iBVA

 

2.        THE VIRUS IS ONLY LIKE THE FLU IN CERTAIN WAYS.  IT IS UNLIKE THE FLU IN TWO EXTREMELY IMPORTANT WAYS.  FIRST – IT HAS A HIGHER TRANSMISSION RATE OF INFECTION.  SECOND, IT HAS A LONGER INCUBATION RATE ONCE IT HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED.  BOTH OF THOSE THINGS ARE NOT GOOD.

I debated whether to use numbers in this section but, in looking them up, I realised that they often varied from source to source.  Not enough to undermine the basic statements above but enough to make it deviate from the basic premise of this article, which, you’ll remember, is to talk only about WHAT WE KNOW.  We know that, like the flu, this is a virus – and in real terms that’s about as far as the comparison should go in terms of trying to understand things about what we’re facing.  Oh, sure, you could get into how the virus attaches to a cell and replication rates – but that is like knowing the theory of relativity as opposed to Newton’s physics.  Einstein’s is correct but for everyday life Newton’s is more useful.  Let’s stick with the useful.  So, both are viruses – important to know for some basic approaches – like antibiotics aren’t a primary way to fight the illness.  Antibiotics are primarily for bacterial infections.

Otherwise this virus is more infectious than the flu, meaning that it’s going to spread more rapidly.  You know how those charts show how quickly one pair of breeding rabbits can quickly become thousands?  This virus breeds like a rabbit, while the flu breeds like – well, like cats.  Don’t get me wrong- there’s a hell of a lot of cats out there – but put ten cats in a field and ten rabbits in the field next to it – as long as the goddamn cats don’t eat the rabbits there’s gonna be a hell of a lot more rabbits when you come back in six months.

The second part of the above statement is even scarier.  When you catch the flu you typically get sick in a day or two.  You then stay at home (or you should, cuz, dipshit, you’re sick) and remove yourself from the population for the time that you’ve got the bug, and then go back out when you are no longer transmitting the disease.  Sure, for a half day or maybe a couple of days at most you’re infectious and out in public, but that’s a transmission rate that the medical system can absorb if someone gets really sick from catching the flu. (I’m not talking mortality here yet – that’s coming up). 

But with Covid-19 you can be infected, transmitting the disease and SHOW NO SYMPTOMS for up to about 6 days. That’s at least three times as long as the typical flu case – so you’re a walking petri dish of disease for that whole time – and – remember, it’s with a disease that’s more infectious than the flu to begin with.  That’s why this is worse than the flu – people who are transmitters are generally walking around longer, thus infecting more people - at a higher rate – and this is something that medical systems CANNOT handle.  This will come up again in the section about what “flattening the curve” really means.

Not really much to say about this other than to point out that as the variants of the disease become known the factor of enhanced transmissibility becomes even more important.

Before we go there however – let’s talk about what we can do to stop a disease like this and what each one of those options means,

3.       THERE ARE BASICALLY THREE WAYS TO FIGHT THE DISEASE, ISOLATION, IMMUNIZATION OR MEDICATION.

OK – the first of those is easy to understand – you’re probably already doing it right now.  Isolating people from each other is a way to fight ongoing transmission and people have been doing that for centuries.  Back in the middle ages, during the plague, towns would be quarantined for months – sometimes it worked, other times when people went to check there would be no one left in the town.  The concept is easy to understand – if you keep people from contacting each other in ways that spread infection – you slow the spread of infection.  This is even better in these days when we know about such high tech things as “washing your hands” and “don’t throw your feces out in to the middle of the street”. 

Ain’t science wonderful.

But look – even if it traces back to the dark ages isolation remains a vitally important part of this effort. Remember how we said at the beginning of this article that medicine and science were starting from about the two yard line because this is a novel virus? That’s true – which means that in many ways isolation is the best weapon we’ve got right now.  It’s like a fighter who doesn’t have a great left, and doesn’t really have too much of a right either – the best strategy is to stay the hell away from the other fighter until he’s tired enough to not need a great punch to knock him out.

(Note to reader – in this case the “other fighter” is Covid-19).

This section remains true – isolating populations and “lockdowns” are an important aspect of containing the disease.  However, further along we will talk about over-emphasising lockdowns as a means of excusing ongoing ignorance – that is where things get complicated.

Now let’s talk about the second weapon – immunization.  There are two classic ways of gaining immunity.  One is by getting the disease in the natural course, not ending up dead, and coming out the other side with the anti-bodies to fight off any further infection. Let’s call that “natural immunity”.

The other way is to trick your body in to doing that very same thing.  That’s “vaccination”. Here’s the dirty little secret – it ain’t that different from natural immunity other than there is supposed to be a much better chance of you not dying.

I hear all those people in the back row jumping up and down and saying “Wait dummy, you’re forgetting “herd immunity”, what about “herd immunity”?” (not “heard immunity” as I’ve seen some on Facebook refer to it).  No, I’m not.  Here’s another dirty little secret “herd immunity” IS natural immunity.  It’s just another way of referring to it.  The idea of “herd immunity” is that if you had a herd of cattle, and they come down with a disease, the best way to get them immune in a hurry is to let the disease race naturally through the herd, accept the inevitable fatality rate (as long as it’s not inevitably fatal for all) and then, once the disease has gone through everyone, the herd is immune and life goes on.  Sounds really easy.

It’s not – we’re still not at the point where we talk about mortality but let’s at least think about the concept for a bit.  Letting immunity “come naturally” is the way to go if you are willing to simply accept that people will die in increased numbers and that doesn’t cause you undue concern.  No lock down, no “social distancing”, you’d probably still wash your hands but why wear a mask?  And listen – I’m not saying that this shouldn’t even be considered – in fact I believe it to be something that HAS to be considered.  Moreover – I will tell you right now that it is an option that is reviewed almost every year by the various agencies like the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control when deciding how much to spend on that year’s flu vaccine program.  If they think the strain they are going to face is not that bad – they will channel some of that money in to other projects,

Happens every year.

What I am saying is that for a disease like what we are facing now the inevitable decision should be to not just allow herd immunity to proceed.  This pandemic is too deadly and we are not set up as a society to allow for the number of deaths that will result.  Other societies might be, but not anyplace where this post is likely to be read.  We care too much about people to just consign them to death.

Britain actually considered the herd immunity approach for a period – not because they are heartless bastards capable of turning out the likes of Martin Johnson (see one of my prior posts) – no – they care about their people as much as anyone.  It was because they wondered if the disruption might be worse than the actual rate of infection – maybe, could be – let’s just see…

Then people started actually getting sick – including the Prime Minister.  Herd immunity experiment over.

So, it was back to isolation – but here’s dirty little secret number three – all natural immunity, even if you apply other methods of control, eventually becomes “herd immunity”.  The herd just gets there over a longer period of time.

Now, about that other type of immunity – vaccination.  If I was really trying to torture you I would go in to the history of vaccination and Edward Jenner and how his greatest work other than vaccination was to write the first explanation of how the cuckoo hijacks other bird’s eggs and how the first vaccinations probably took place in Turkey anyway – but no, I won’t do that. Instead, I will simply say this – vaccination has probably saved more lives than any other medical advance in history.  Anyone who is a straight out “anti-vaxxer” is an idiot.  There is always a case for exercising substantial care before proposing a vaccine as safe – but there are safe vaccines and if they find one for Covid-19 we should rejoice. 

The complication arises from that “substantial care” bit.  You gotta be careful with a vaccine, and even if you stretch the rules you have to cover off at least three big, time consuming, concerns:

1.        You have to be sure the vaccine won’t kill more people than it will save.  A “cure” requires that taking it isn’t like asking for a hit when you have 15 and the dealer is showing 6. It takes some time to figure this out.

2.       You have to be sure the vaccine will actually make you immune.  You must check the reactions of the people who have been tested with the vaccine.  It takes some time to figure this out.

3.       You have to be sure that the immunity will last a reasonable period of time. It takes some time to figure this out.

Sensing a common theme here?  Yes, it’s TIME.  Vaccines don’t just pop up and get thrown in to the market.  That’s why you keep hearing about the “18 to 30 month” period for an accepted vaccine – people who know how this stuff works know how long this takes.  People who know how this works are doctors.  They are not real estate developers.

A vaccine would be great – but it is (hopefully) not the option that will most effectively get us out of the current pandemic state.  That is going to take a couple of things.  One is re-defining what “effectively” means (that’s when we’ll talk about mortality).  The other is the third leg of fighting the disease – medication.

By the term “medication” I mean something that fights the disease or its impacts without imposing immunity.  We all know a classic example of how this can work – his name is Magic Johnson, and the disease is HIV.

There is no HIV vaccine, and Magic has been diagnosed for decades.  When I first heard that he had HIV I remember thinking “Oh my God – Magic is gonna die”.  Everybody loved Magic.  I’m the biggest Celtics fan in the world, and I loved Magic.  This is how Larry Bird reacted to the news about Magic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JWQoZNQ-Gs

We all thought Magic was gonna die, because HIV/AIDS back then was, in the public’s eyes, a death sentence. 

Magic is still alive.  Thank God. 

And medicine.

He is alive because of the creation of a “cocktail” of medications which reduced the impact of the virus and the viral loads in his body.  He is alive not because of any isolation or immunity but because even though he has the virus he can live with it. 

That’s what the proper medicine can do with any virus – it can allow the body to fight off the worst effects and thereby increase survival rates until the body fights off the disease and becomes immune or it is time to take the next round of meds.

To be clear – in the short term this is the thing we should all be rooting for.  There are some encouraging signs in certain areas – for example, Remdesivir is one of the drugs showing some positive results (and why you see lots of articles like this:)

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01295-8

The idea here is to make Covid-19 a disease you can have but, with medicine, you can walk in to the hospital, be given a prescription for a drug or cocktail of drugs that makes you less sick, keeps you out of the ICU, keeps you off a ventilator, gets you the hell out of the hospital quicker (if you even have to check in) and makes way for the next person to be treated.  The drug doesn’t “cure” you, you’re not vaccinated, whatever immunity you get comes from having survived the disease – but less people will die and the strain on the health system is less.

Downsides?  Well, there are a few – some quite concrete, others more abstract. The most immediate problems are these:

·       Ummm – there is no such drug or combination of drugs yet.  They’re working on it – but nothing yet.

·       Once you find the drug you have to make it, and sometimes there just isn’t the capacity to make it fast enough.

·       Not every story will be a Magic Johnson happy ending story. Sometimes the drugs don’t work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQ0n3itoII

 The more “abstract” problems are these:

·       Drugs are typically owned by the company that makes them, so someone is likely going to get filthy rich off this disease if the drugs to treat it are ever invented.

·       The transport of drugs might not be that easy – there is no guarantee that the breakthrough won’t come from somewhere that makes it difficult to move the drugs around.  You might think this is not an “abstract” concept – trust me, the reason for lack of mobility often stems from who is getting along with who politically at the moment.

·       The combination of the above factors can lead to the proliferation of conspiracy theories.  If drugs are found to treat the Covid-19 pandemic brace yourself for the inevitable “this was all a set-up” stories.

Still, all things considered I would be watching the medication space most closely over the next few weeks.  If there is going to be a meaningful breakthrough that has an immediate impact on how this disease is being handled I think this is the sphere where it is going to come from.

Okay – there are some hits and misses in here.  The accelerated effort to come up with a vaccine was successful – so we’ll probably get a significant number of people vaccinated before the 18 month period arrives (but it won’t be by that much).  The development of medical approaches to treating the disease has proven somewhat disappointing.  While medical procedures have improved (thanks to front line workers), medicines themselves have remained underdeveloped, expensive or both.  We know there are drugs that can get people out of the hospital in a hurry (Donald Trump’s experience is an example) – but those are out of the reach of the larger segments of society.  So – if you go in to a hospital your chances of coming out are better – but you still have to go in.  That becomes a problem when considering the ability of the system to cope with increased rates of illness, as is described further along.

4.  THERE IS A NEED FOR AN ACCELERATED PACE OF RE-OPENING SOCIETY, BUT IT IS NOT BECAUSE ANYONE’S “RAHTS” ARE BEING INFRINGED.

In the movie “Gettysburg” there is a scene where a rebel and a Union soldier meet up.  They exchange views on why each is fighting.  The man from the north says he is fighting to end slavery and preserve the union.  The southerner says that he’s fighting for his “rahts”.  Why can’t we all just live and let live he asks. It is meant to be a touching scene, but the point about “rahts” is carefully undercut when the next scene introduces an escaped tortured slave. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Fj478kozs

I get kind of the same feeling when I watch people rant about their “rahts” these days.  When I say that everyone seems to assume that means I dismiss them out of hand.  I don’t.  The scene from the movie is meant to reflect the sincerity of the soldier’s feeling about his rights, and how he does wish to be “left alone”.  The reality, however, is that his being “left alone” means someone else is suffering greatly.  He doesn’t grasp that “some darky” is an actual human being who is suffering and being hurt – and for the people currently whining about their “rahts” I think they are very often failing to grasp the same thing.

I also think they are being manipulated by others who are simply trying to self-aggrandize.  Take a look here at Exhibit A for that case.  It is a clip of journalist Gemma O’Doherty being pulled over by the Gardai in Dublin while on her way to a court hearing to secure her “rahts”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXLEiUPax2c

I cringe in embarrassment every time I watch that.  It is so obviously a planned and scripted confrontation, with lines like “I pay your wages”, “you will see who your masters are” and “you are a disgrace to that uniform” being so straight out of the cliché machine, that it’s hard to believe anyone claiming to be literate could spout them.  It’s also a perfect example of privilege masking itself as populism.

A note of update on this section.  One of the officers who appears in this video and who was subjected to this abuse has subsequently killed himself.  Part of the reason appears to be the enhanced pressures that this confrontation brought down on him.  Shame on the people who somehow felt this exercise in self-aggrandisement was worth the suffering it caused.  Shame on them.

Much the same is evidenced in the protests that have erupted in U.S. states like Michigan, where middle aged women lean out of their pickups and bemoan their inability to go to the hairdresser while overweight “patriots” shout “lock her up”, because, you know, that’s so original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6GvszlkR0

God forbid that something as inconsequential as possibly prolonging a pandemic should stand in the way of someone getting their roots done.  Still, I can’t see this rising to the level of the institution of a “police state” or that the measures taken are overly burdensome.  Consider the following:

·       In Britain, during WWII, people kept off the streets with the lights off or huddled with their families in the underground tube stations for months.  They did this while family members died in their thousands around the globe. That’s sacrifice.  Having to stay home and watch “Tiger King”?  Not so much.

·       In America during that same period, you were told how much and how often you could buy meat, bread, sugar and gasoline.  That’s sacrifice. Having to wait in a line five minutes to choose between 400 types of breakfast cereal?  Not so much.

·       In parts of Ireland, as recent as the late 1980’s, the announcement of a waitress job opening up would result in lines of applicants.  That’s economic hardship. To accept a furlough (with pay) in order to ensure that a nurse or doctor who is working around the clock to keep people alive isn’t put in further danger?  Not so much.

All those things are, I admit, not normal and extremely frustrating.  But they are not infringements of fundamental human rights under anyone’s constitution.  At most some legal niceties were dealt with in unconventional (but not unconstitutional) ways. 

The right most often cited as at risk as a result of the measures taken to shut things down and socially distance is the “right to assemble”.  If people had an unfettered “right to assemble” this would be an open and shut case.  But they do not.  For instance, the first amendment to the U.S. constitution states that:

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Let’s cut the demonstrators seeking to secure their “rahts” a bit of slack and skip the fact that a comma and not a semi-colon is used in that last bit.  We all know that the right of free speech, the first one enumerated in the above quote is not absolute.  You can’t yell “fire” in a Bernie Sanders rally, and commercial speech is always heavily controlled – you can’t advertise cigarettes on television or promote sugar and water in a bottle as “Grampa Joe’s Cure Fer Cancer and Warts”.  The press cannot libel someone, even if the “absence of malice” standard is pretty loose (but a good movie with Paul Newman and Sally Field).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlv5cB74KEg

Assembly?  Well, that’s pretty much the red headed stepchild of first amendment rights.  Think there is an unlimited right to assemble?  Tell that to the restaurant owner who has a fire safety limit on his head count.  Or the festival promoter who could sell 100,000 tickets and easily fit them in the field he has lined up - but is capped at 20,000 for “safety” reasons.  In the times where those limits were set the government decided what was safe in terms of assembly and they are simply doing the same thing now.  It’s just that the number that is now deemed safe is, often, zero. 

The same thing with regard to that poor Garda who stopped O’Doherty.  If that stop had been made because it was believed there was a bomber headed towards the Four Courts – no one would question the rationale behind the detention.  Right now, instead of a bomb, we are all potentially carrying what might be a lethal weapon in the form of the virus – so we all have to put up with the inconvenience.   If the measures were truly oppressive you would think the populace would voice their displeasure or at least evidence discontent – but when 80% of the people agree that the measures are appropriate – you’re not the voice of the voiceless, you’re just a feckin’ loudmouth.

The key to all this is the concept of “peaceable” assembly.  Peace in this context is not simply the absence of people throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails through windows. Instead it means “peace” in the sense that such assembly will not lead to the unreasonable or unintended but foreseeable disruption of people’s lives. It is not a peaceable assembly if it can reasonably be seen to land people in the hospital, or take away their chance to go to that hospital – or kill their elderly mother.

That said – it is time to cast a stone or two in the direction of those who are directing the shut down.  I’ve seen and heard of numerous instances where, without any concern about the facts or science behind such conclusions, people are being labelled “selfish” for doing such acts as:

·       Hiking a mountain trail (https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/people-branded-selfish-over-lack-of-social-distancing-in-mountains-1.4209793)

 

·       Jogging without a mask; https://www.outsideonline.com/2411720/mask-while-running-coronavirus

 

·       Wanting to go for a walk when you are supposed to “cocoon”; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8116899/Ministers-say-older-people-walk-dog-amid-coronavirus-outbreak.html

 

·       Not understanding why it’s okay for a restaurant that sells all sorts of drinks to open with restrictions while a pub that would agree to all those same restrictions must stay closed.  (Is being able to buy a burger that much of a reason to support such a difference?) https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/pubs-want-to-reopen-like-restaurants-but-not-with-alcohol-cap-39169012.html

 

·       Fishing – maybe the most solitary of outdoor pursuits.  Even opening it up there is a five kilometre limit imposed – is that really necessary? https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0507/1137028-anglers/

 

·       Here is a personal one – this past Mother’s Day the weather was beautiful, there were no travel restrictions in place, I thought it would be nice to talk my wife, son and dog for a walk on a beach.  For my American readers – know this is the way you usually picture what a beach is like:

 

An Irish beach actually looks like this (on a day that’s considered “crowded”):

 

 Yes, those are horses – they were probably the least socially distanced group on the beach.  Get this – the next day, when you turned on the radio, you would’ve thought that anyone who had gone out for that walk was trying to brew up some Covid soup to force feed to all of Ireland’s grannies. The overreaction was unbelievable – I can’t tell you how many fingers were sprained due to them being wagged – but it must’ve been substantial.  The real question is “why”?  That walk was fine – but people want to feel superior.

Asking questions about these matters and advocating that they should be allowed is not “selfish”.  It is simply necessary social discourse.  All of the self-righteous prissy scolds who immediately label anyone who questions the rationale behind a measure or the value of maintaining a restriction well after it has been proven to not be that effective (usually just because that is the “new normal” or “the way things need to be”) is playing right in to the hands of the conspiracy theorists.

We now know that transmission outdoors is an extremely rare occurrence, and getting people outside to walk, run, cycle, climb or kick a ball around with the kids will not bring about the decline of civilisation.  We know that the elderly need to get out and take part in that exercise.  We know that masks are good when indoors, OK when outdoors in some circumstances, but probably not so good when they can become sweaty or moist (such as when on the face of a jogger).

Here’s the thing – imagine society right now as being at a giant company picnic.  What do you do at a company picnic – you eat, you drink, you make fun of the pink argyle socks that Herb from accounting wore.  You also play games – hopefully team building games.  Tug of war – that’s kind of a team building game – but at the end the two teams are the same distance apart and one is sprawled in the mud.  But there is another game – the three legged race (or “sack race”) that does build a team.  One player can’t go faster than the other, or both fall over.  Think of what we need now as a good sack racing team – the “stay at homers” have to keep up with the “open things uppers” or things fall over.  The “open things uppers” have to slow their gallop in order to allow for the “stay at homers” or – same thing.  We need the gadflies on both sides to get to the end of the race – but we need them to act together to do so.

We also ought to know that striving to re-open things, rather than casting about for reasons not to, is and should be the ultimate goal.  This is where you say “BUT PEOPLE COULD DIE!!!”.

I know they could.

Of all the matters currently under review I think this is the one that remains the most relevant.  The overwhelming view of the press in Ireland appears to be that we screwed up the approach taken to re-opening the country and now find ourselves unavoidably back to the stage where we must fully lock down the country until we get to some promised land of “zero Covid”.  There’s just a few things wrong with this.

First – the original opening of the country was not “screwed up”.  Ireland maintained a reasonable infection rate for months following the initial re-opening.  Indeed, the country was viewed as a model case for how to deal with the pandemic in a rational manner.  There was a problem bubbling beneath the surface however – but it did not have much to do with the re-opening of the country – it had more to do with what was done while it was closed.

More specifically it has to do with what was not done while the country was closed.  Further along this article you will see a plea that was made to expand drastically the data gathering capabilities within the country.  To put those people who were out of work and collecting ongoing payments from the government back in to business collating every scrap of data that could be found on where people were being infected, what contacts they might have had and how those contacts tied together.  Exactly none of this was done. Instead, we wasted an entire period of time which could have been used to determine where and how the actual risk of infection and transmission came from and how it could be muted when it (inevitably) arose again. 

As an appendix to the original article I cited to an article called “The Hammer and the Dance” – which basically advocated for dramatically shutting down and containing the virus in the first instance (the “Hammer”) – and then taking calculated steps to shut down, re-open, shut down again, modify, re-assess and continually monitor the population following these original steps (the “Dance”).

Ireland – in its approach, hammered like this:

 

Unfortunately – it danced like this:

We’ll talk further about what this means in terms of next steps, but here are some things to consider as we sit at home.  We are told that we need to stay in a situation where the vast majority of us may not travel beyond a 5 kilometre distance beyond our home.  But does that make sense when a 5 kilometre journey in Dublin, with a typical urban population density, brings the traveler into contact with thousands and thousands of potential transmitting individuals, whereas a 25 kilometre journey in someplace like Leitrim may bring you into contact with less than 10 percent of that?

Maybe it does, but we don’t now because we don’t have the data to make that conclusion – we’re just guessing.

Does it make sense to close one of the major centres of physical well-being that managed to operate all through the summer and up until the holidays – public and private gyms?  I know for a fact that these establishments monitored members temperatures, enforced ongoing cleansing, reduced capacity, established strict rotation and time limited usage rates and limited visits to no more than one per day.  Despite all of this were these establishments responsible for Covid transmissions at an enhanced rate?  Should they remain closed down?

Maybe they should, but we don’t know because we don’t have the data to make that conclusion – we’re just guessing.

We have now instituted a blanket prohibition against all outdoor sporting activities except such things as recreational jogging or cycling (within the 5K limit) and “elite” sports.  Does keeping large numbers of people circling standard paths and roadways within this confined space actually do more to shutdown transmissible events than would allowing limited numbers of people to make use of hiking trails, greenways and beaches?  Should these exponentially larger (and presumably less contact-friendly) spaces really be treated as the type of disease-ridden petri dishes that they have been.  Should people in a given household be prevented from traveling in their cars (with immediate family) to partake in these amenities?  Should they be treated as the pariahs they have been on the nation’s airwaves when they are caught and fined hundreds of euro’s for daring to undertake such egregious efforts?

Perhaps they should, but we don’t know because we don’t have the data to make that conclusion – we’re just guessing.

Does it make sense to shut down the golf industry rather than let spaced groups of up to four out twenty minutes apart? I’ll be honest – I play golf and I spend more time alone in the woods by myself on a typical round than I ever would walking the loop outside my house.  Does the number of transmissions attributable to golf justify shutting courses down and leaving scores of hackers to wander aimlessly without a club in their hand rather than aimlessly wandering with such a stick?

Perhaps they should, but we don’t know because we don’t have the data to make that conclusion – we’re just guessing.

That’s the problem – governments and experts will tell you that “best estimates” indicate that the type of lockdown we are now in is the best route to controlling the pandemic.  Really what they are not acknowledging is the fact that we should be doing a hell of a lot better than “best estimating” right now.  We had a chance to know, with a reasonable degree of certainty, what behaviours led to increased risk of transmission – and we blew it.

You might remember this diagram from the first weeks of the pandemic:

That was generated in China – before any of the contact tracing tools we now have were implemented, and it showed how a single case (A1) transmitted in one restaurant.  Have you seen anything like that in Ireland? 

Not really – but if we had been properly tracing and collating data like we should have been there would be much more knowledge of how the disease transmits than currently exists.  We are, whether we wish to admit it or not, currently flying blind – and that is why schools, gyms, parks, beaches, golf courses, restaurants, bars, shops and rest homes are closed.  Not because of what we know – but because of what we don’t know.

But should.

It is now time for us to talk honestly about mortality.

 

4.              IT IS INEVITABLE THAT PEOPLE WILL DIE FROM COVID-19.  WE CAN ONLY REDUCE BUT NEVER ELIMINATE THAT FACT.  WE WILL THEREFORE HAVE TO REACH A CONSENSUS ON WHAT LEVEL OF REDUCED DEATHS WILL BE DEEMED ACCEPTABLE. 

There have been a number of phrases that have popped up over the last few months that had not been in general circulation just a short time ago.  “Social distancing” would have previously been assumed to be the space that was required between couples at a junior high dance (known as “leaving a little room for the holy spirit” at Catholic schools).  Corona was a Mexican beer that you sometimes drank with a lime.  A “novel virus” was something that attacked your computer from that e-book you downloaded. 

And “flattening the curve” was most likely associated with a nose job.

You heard lots about curve flattening back at the beginning of this thing, and not as much since.  That’s mostly because once you’re on the tilt-a-whirl it doesn’t require anyone to give you an explanation of what the tilt-a-whirl does – you’re on for the ride.  It’s worth a refresher course, and I promise – I’ll only use one picture.

This one: (thanks CNBC/CDC)

See that red bubble?  That’s the total number of cases if we were all still going to the movies.  The blue one – that’s being stuck inside making a giant hit out of a show where one of the main characters just might’ve killed her husband and fed him to a tiger.

There are three important lines in that graph.  One is shown – it goes straight across and is labelled “Capacity of health care system”.  The other two are not shown – those are the lines depicting the total number of deaths per day.  The first would relate to the red curve, and it would start out fairly flat and then would start to go up at a steeper angle as the health care system capacity got stretched.  The other would relate to the blue curve and it would stay at pretty much the same angle – reflecting the mortality rate that we’ve established as applying to all Covid-19 related infections.

The reason for this is that if you exceed the capacity of the health care system, go beyond the number of beds, ventilators, drugs, nurses and doctors available for basic treatment, people who would be expected to live with a normal level of care will die. 

Let’s do a little math – nothing too hard.  Using this model and making some assumptions, if you had a million cases under the blue bubble and there was a 2% fatality rate – you’d have 20,000 people die from the virus regardless of how well the health system functions.  If you were to operate under the red model you might have to double the fatality rate associated with the virus, since a large chunk of people wouldn’t get treated.  So – at 4% you’d have 40,000 dead.  That’s too low though – because with the system maxed out you’d also have people dying from untreated trauma, chronic disease, lack of access to needed operations -so add another 5,000 or so dead.

That’s an extra 25,000 dead without assuming a single additional infection.  I could go in to why that itself would be unlikely, and about how the chart is a bit deceptive because the back end of the curve would never go down that fast -but I think we get the picture.  That’s a curve that wants flattening.  You do not want to follow the red model.

Here’s the part that doesn’t get discussed as much, but which we need to start talking about more.   See the word “measures” in the middle of the blue part of the graph.  If you follow that up you will see that it roughly coincides with the highest infection rates that are still within the capacity of the health system.  That higher rate (even though it is within health system capacity) does equate to an increase in mortality, both because of numbers and the fact that “capacity” is not a geographically static measure.  If you get sick in the Louisiana bayou you’re probably more likely to die than if you’re ill in Greenwich Connecticut, even if the U.S.A. as a collective shows itself “within capacity”.

The thing is – if you start opening bits of society you are going to flatten the curve in a way that probably makes it truly flat, rather than a bell curve.  The arc starts to come down, then you open up fishing, walking limits, some retail outlets, and it stays up at around where it was and then it maybe stabilises and you open up shopping malls and theatres with social distancing – and it flattens again – then after a while when immunity rates match infection rates it drops so you open up restaurants and pubs.  You see what I mean – it’s the sort of phased planning that many governments are introducing. 

What isn’t being openly said is that in doing this those same governments are accepting the fact that more people will die.  If you kept everybody shut down for months – more people will live out the pandemic and the cost – in lives – WILL go down.  The problem, of course, is that the cost in money, quality of life and public confidence will most definitely go up.

A friend of mine put it very succinctly early on in the crisis.  A health care professional, when he was asked what would have to be considered when moving towards getting things back to normal (in this particular case “normal” being playing softball) said the following:

“There needs to be a fine balance of 3 things: Viable Economy/Societal Fatigue from restrictions/Acceptable Death Toll”.

I think that’s pretty spot on.  I also think there is one thing in there that needs to be openly discussed and hard questions asked – and that is the following:

“Acceptable Death Toll”.

The questions in respect of that very scary statement have to be asked in a particular way.  One should NOT ask someone if they are willing to risk death themselves.  People can be straight out arseholes when confronted with that proposition – just drive the M50 at rush hour some day.  The other is NOT to ask the question this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9gSyku-fc

(By the way – Dukakis should have answered “Yes Bernard, as long as I could kill him myself and then rip his arm off and beat you to death with it for asking such a stupid question.”)

Of course, none of us would want to open up more of society, be it softball, or fishing, or restaurants, or “the economy” if it we knew it meant a loved one would die. The thing is – we don’t know that.  We have to look dispassionately at probabilities and the factors listed above and make a reasoned judgement as to whether the risk is worth taking as a group – and there is only one thing to say about making that kind of decision.

It sucks.

But the truth is people make those decisions all the time – increase the speed limit from 55 to 65?  Statistics show that will result in more deaths – but people will get to where they are going quicker.  Approve a drug that results in reduced pain but creates a fatal side effect in X% of the people taking it?  OK – as long as you inform them before they decide to sign up.  Not require helmets for motorcycle riders?  Mortality rates for that go through the roof – but – live free or die.

The natural inclination is for people to accept or reject that sort of decision based upon the way the question is asked.  I will demonstrate:

“Should retail store capacity be increased to 100 per hour if statistics show that chances are one of those people will come down with the potentially deadly corona virus?”

“Should retail store capacity be increased to 100 per hour if statistics show that less than one percent of all of those people will come down with the corona virus?”

See what I mean.

So here are some primary rules I think should be followed when assessing what an “acceptable death toll” should be (there would be lots of “sub-rules – but these are the four biggies).

1.        It should never be a number that exceeds the health systems capacity (no red bubble shit).

2.       The tendency should be to favour re-opening things, rather than keeping them shut down.  This does not mean the default should be to re-open something – but if you have a 50/50 call – re-open. 

3.       Don’t be afraid to go backwards.  I hear lots of politicians saying “We need to go slow re-opening because we never want to have to go backwards”.  Sounds good – but – here’s where I can be a real pain in the ass – I ask that most annoying of questions – “why?”.  Why can we never go back?  If you’re in a maze and find you’re going down the wrong way – would you just plow into a dead end because “I can never go back?” Of course not.  If you re-open restaurants, and things are cool – then you reopen pubs.  If things are still cool you can re-open hotels.  Should things still seem to be OK – try and re-open concerts and sporting events with less than 10,000 people.  Oops – there’s a spike there? Close those suckers back down and maybe throw a few other restrictions back in place to slow things down.  But now you know how far you can go.  Otherwise – you’re going to be creating huge pressures on two key elements (viable economy and societal fatigue) without really knowing WHY you are doing it.  Which brings us to the fourth and fifth rules.

4.       Collect data every freaking way you can. That deserves a discussion of its own.

5.       Then accept that more people will die because of what you are doing than might otherwise have died.  Accept that this does, indeed, suck.  Then move on and try to do better.

This is the section of the article that is the most disappointing to me. Not because I think any of it is incorrect (I think it stands up quite well), but because I see in the various matters discussed a reflection of the greatest failures of the past year.  In the United States the failure was obvious – it was reflected in the continuous level of deaths and transmissions well above those to be found anywhere else in the world.  The failure was shocking because it was one of denial – people absolutely refused to accept reality, and lots of other people died as a result.

In Ireland the failure was different.  The reason the social norms have been so greatly disrupted is because of a failure to prepare.  If there is one thing that should have been done, above all others, during the first wave of the pandemic it was to get ready for the next wave of the pandemic.  Instead, that line in the graph that represents “the capacity of the health care system” has never really moved here.  There was no creation of Covid centric health centres, no additional recruitment of staff, no requisition of additional ventilators, no data gathering to allow for structured response (as discussed above), no different response (other than the randomly implemented “5 kilometre” measure used previously), nothing done which indicates we have learned anything. As pointed out earlier – we hammered great but did not dance well at all.

And that is extremely frustrating.  Let’s face it – we were all caught flat-footed when this originally hit last January.  There is very little to be gained in pointing fingers, assigning “blame” or calling names.  That is why Donald Trump’s “China virus” rants appeared so silly – everyone knew that the reason we reacted as if we’d never seen something like this before was because – we’d never seen anything like this before.  But what is the excuse for not coming up with a better way of addressing the threat in the year plus that has taken place since? 

What might be even more frustrating is the manner in which the presence of a vaccine is being treated.  I have heard more politician’s pontificate about “international trade barriers”, “intellectual property rights in a time of crisis”, “temperature sensitive goods in transit” and other highly technical matters than I ever want to hear again.  There is no shortage of junior members who represent the good people of “East Inner Limerick” or “North-Central Donegal/Sligo” sagely wondering about the “genetic impact of viral variations on transmission rates”, all of whom no doubt believe that their sagacity will put them in line for a Nobel Prize in Medicine.  Unfortunately, there is a complete shortage of representatives from those same areas explaining how and when the people in those constituencies will be receiving a needle in their arm.

There is no reason why, since the pre-Christmas news of the discovery of a workable number of vaccines broke, nothing has been done to assign priorities and localities for people to receive their shots.  Note that I do not say “dates” – at least not specific dates.  There are obviously many factors that will be in play as to when a vaccine will be available – but a location, distribution process and priority grouping can be set up NOW.  Once people knew that there were vaccines on the way infrastructure for dispersal should have been constructed. (To tell the truth – this probably should have been done even earlier, but why beat an even colder dead horse).  Everyone should now be in possession of something that looks like this:

Dear [                 ] – Our records indicate that you reside in the Dublin 15 (Ongar) region, are X years of age and we are not aware of any pre-existing medical conditions that would cause a change in priority from that which would apply to a person of good to average health.  Accordingly, we have assigned you the following designation for the receipt of Covid vaccine:

Region D15 O – Week 7 – Afternoon Grouping - General Recipient Age [X to X] – Location:  [       ].

Please note this designation is subject to change and the actual date and time of the assigned week is yet to be determined.  If you have any of the mitigating medical conditions listed in the attached form please contact us at: [                       ] in order to adjust your designation.  For general information in respect of this plan please refer to the website at:       [                ].

Has anyone seen anything like that?  Yeah – neither have I.  But I’ve heard plenty of politicians tell me about the horrors of “Article 16” and why it may mean the end of civilisation as we know it.  Look, the sexy stuff is always what is going to be what gets people on the news, the useful stuff is what will save lives and get us back to normal.  No politician wants to be the one to get down in the weeds – but we need a lot more gardeners in office if this is going to work.

5.       THERE MUST BE AN ACCEPTANCE AND RELAXATION OF THE BARRIERS TO COLLECTING DATA DURING THE TIME OF THIS CRISIS.  SORRY – BUT THIS MUST HAPPEN.

Look – I understand how much people hate the idea of our lives being broken down into algorithms and tendencies by fleets of market analysts and consumer behaviourists.  I understand how the fear of governmental interference in our private lives needs to be taken seriously.  I understand how technology can easily cross the line from useful to intrusive.  But if someone gives me a choice between an old manual typewriter and this computer to compose this ungodly long post – I’m taking the computer every time.  It’s a better tool.  And we have better tools to fight this pandemic and we should be using those as well.

Example number one – there is an app which can be placed on people’s phones that traces contacts with infected people.  In one of those amazing coincidences it’s called a “contact tracing app”.  I won’t go in to too much detail about how it works, but here is an explainer:

https://tech.newstatesman.com/security/nhs-covid-19-contact-tracing-app-rollout

True, it is somewhat intrusive, but measures can be taken to limit that.  No one should be forced to download it but the following measures should be approved which will make that more likely:

·       If you have a mobile phone you will not be eligible for unemployment benefits or other government funds specifically provided for corona virus relief unless you have the app.

·       Employers should be able to bar employees who do not have the app on their phone from entering a place of work.  If working from home is not a viable option then failure to upload the app should be grounds for dismissal.

·       All government employees should be required to have the app uploaded.

·       All elected officials should have the app or they will not be allowed to vote in assembly, attend any legislative proceeding or draw their salary.  Any official deciding not to upload is free to do so under those conditions, but will be subject to a recall election. If it’s good enough for the public it’s good enough for them.

·       Any students of adult age receiving government assistance to attend college or university should have the app.  Any campus should be entitled to require having the app as a requirement for attendance at any campus event.

You want to go off the grid – fine, but there are consequences.  And more data points should be collected.  Where are people shopping, where are cars travelling, are there infectious “hot spots”, what type of payments are people making – how much is cash, what is via remote payment, how much contactless – is there a correlation with the use of any one of those and infection?  What type of HVAC units are in various buildings?  Any correlation there?  Does weather impact infection rates? Is it more or less after a rainy day/night?  We should be analyzing EVERYTHING.

Unemployed people should be offered and trained for temporary positions as analysts for the purpose of putting these numbers together.  We should try to know everything so we are less afraid to try something.  During the time of this pandemic we should be hoarders of data, tracking everything we can, not just for this pandemic – but for the next one – and it should be clear now – there WILL be a next one.

Then, after this is over – all of these measures should be subject to “sunset” – ended, hopefully never to be seen again.  Extraordinary measures should be seen as just that – extraordinary.

So – that’s it.  I have been writing shite about Hostess Fruit pies, Seinfeld fan fiction, Luis Tiant being unfairly kept out of the Hall of Fame, beginners’ guides to softball, and all the other stuff for so long in an effort to get through this that I thought it was time to actually write more about what is actually happening.  Then, 8000 words later I wonder if I’ve said enough or if I’ve just loaded on more shite.  (Don’t worry, I do know that either way I’ve said enough).  The bottom line is that, hopefully, there are going to be good people out there making the right choices for the right reasons.  For me – I think the next ramble will be about a turtle recently discovered living in the Royal Canal here in Ireland.  He (or she) must’ve been brought here involuntarily because turtles are not native to Ireland but this one seems to be taking his isolation in stride, making the best out of the situation and using it as an opportunity to lie out and get some sun. 

We all might do the same.

Oh – if only getting some sun were an option.  I don't think I'll be spotting any turtles anytime soon. The best part of lockdown last year was that, for a good, long stretch, the weather was amazing.  “Amazing” is not the adjective I have been using in connection with the last month or so when I look out the window.  I think we all need to get outside - but the contact tracing efforts that have been put in place are woefully inadequate. We still need enhanced data. We still need enhanced analysis. We still desperately need good people making good choices – and we need to make the goal of an open society “opening” society.  There are affirmative steps that need to be taken to make that happen – and we knew what they were way back when this started.  We still know what they are.  Let’s push people to do them.

Oh, and here is the link to "The Hammer and the Dance" - still think this is a very relevant discussion of how to attack pandemics:

POSTSCRIPT:  In the days since this was first posted an approach to the response to the disease that is very similar to what I set out here has become widely accepted.  Called the "Hammer and the Dance" this view of how to treat the disease essentially follows much of what is said above - that you make sure (through the use of the "hammer") that the spread of the disease is contained in a defined region, and then you begin the "dance" - the sort of well documented and observed re-opening that I advocate - without the fear of having to "go back".  "Going back" is part of the dance - just ask Ginger Rogers.  Anyway - the link to this very important and well thought out approach is attached.  Makes almost as good a read as mine...  https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56