Running amok

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Running amok
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 5:42 PM
To: "editor@telluridedailyplanet com" <editor@telluridedailyplanet.com>
CC:

    " It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run 'amok' against society, but I preferred that society should run ' amok' against me, it being the desperate party . "
     Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

      Here in New Jersey, the second hardest hit state by covid-19, there seems to be a lot of civil disobedience going on. A lot of people are ready to come out in the open again. The roads are full of cars. People who haven't seen family or friends in many weeks,  are seeing them now. You can only keep people apart for so long. Sooner or later the dam  bursts. Pennsylvania is undergoing a similar transformation. Many local officials are announcing that their towns and counties are coming out of lockdown despite state orders. Many businesses are opening up again in defiance of the governor and his henchmen.
     Maybe those ruled  possess more wisdom than their rulers. I say rulers, because that is what many governors have become . Their power is near absolute. When did you ever imagine that some day elected officials and state health bureaus would ban all church services, all businesses from operating except a chosen few, bar public gatherings and close public land, or surveil our movements, order us to disperse with talking drones.  I'm guessing you could never have imagined it until now. The list of grievances drawn up by the American colonies against king George in 1776 reads like a ledger of trivial complaints in comparison.
     Nobel prize winning chemist and professor of structural biology at Stanford, Michael Levitt, has said " There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on the damage done by lockdowns it will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor ". Dr. Levitt has studied the data coming in from all around the world that indicates  that the virus follows a consistent pattern of growth and decline that is independent of our attempts at intervention. He recommends a Swedish style approach where the most vulnerable isolate themselves while the bulk of the population gets on with living and working. Sweden will very likely achieve herd immunity sometime this summer with 60-80% of their population infected. If you are sceptical of the Swedish experiment just wait a while. Viruses often come in waves. A second wave could ravage nations on Sweden's borders while Sweden is spared the worst.
     I don't know if he's right. At least one experiment in loosening the national shutdown seems ,so far ,to be vindicated. You may remember that three weeks ago Georgia was out ahead of the rest of the country in allowing businesses to reopen . At the time there was universal condemnation, even from the Whitehouse. Georgia was said to be headed for disaster. They hadn't even bothered to wait for caseloads to decline . Despite all the dire predictions Georgia has done very well . Governor Kemp announced last week that the number of new cases requiring hospitalization was falling.
     I know that most experts were wrong back in March. Their understandable ignorance led to the shutdown. There was so little reliable data available then.  They were wrong about mortality rates. Back then it was assumed that there was a 4% or higher chance of dying if someone became infected. In fact the chances of dying are low unless you are obese or suffer other co- morbidities . Antibody testing has revolutionized our understanding . Among the general population the mortality rate ( deaths per infection ) appears to be far less than 1%. If you are healthy your chances of dying are tiny, far less than .1%.
     We've faced pandemics with similar lethality before. Like this one they've all been terrible, none were cataclysmic. Forget the Spanish flu, which carried away tens of millions. That flu arrived before the advent of modern medicine and antibiotics . More comparable viruses arrived here in 1968 and 1957. They are estimated to have cost around 100,000 American lives each. The current virus will soon match that death toll and will certainly exceed it ,but keep in mind the population at nursing homes was only a fraction of what it is now, and nursing homes are kindling to the covid-19 lit match. Nursing homes contribute 40% of the deaths in some states . We're living longer. We're an older, frailer population.
      Why haven't you heard about the pandemics of 1968 or 1957 ? It may be because ,despite their lethality, no nation thought to close itself down until the virus had run its course, or was reduced by vaccination. The world was a saner place back then. We've begun an unusual experiment; can a nation ,can a planet ,shut down this thoroughly for weeks or months and still survive? Can we invite depression and costly disruptions without lasting terrible consequences ? I'll be interested to see.

Chaos and order

     On my way from Grand Junction to Philadelphia by Amtrak last fall I met a gray bearded Amishman while waiting for transfer at Union Station in Chicago. He introduced himself as a blacksmith, kept busy by the ever growing demand for buggy parts. This led to an explanation of why Amish folk shun modern improvements like automobiles and cell phones. He said that sticking to the old ways promoted cohesion and harmony in the family and community, and most modern innovations did the opposite. He said that new ways and new inventions were often considered and sometimes adopted, but each congregation decided how far to go in that direction. 
    It's funny, but after all these years of meeting the Amish on busses and trains, or seeing their buggies rolling down rural roads, I'd never thought to ask why they choose to live the way they do. The blacksmiths explanation was a good one. I'm sure it will do. I imagine it's sufficient for most Amish people but I can't help wondering if there's more to it.
     In my last column I talked about the bushcraft movement, and how I was spending some of my time in confinement watching bushcraft videos on YouTube. Since then I've  seen more and thought more about the values they express. They're really not far from the values practiced in Amish homes. The society that a modern bushcrafter comes from, and is still lives in, is the same as mine. It's the same as yours. It's not much like Amish society at all. If you asked a bushcrafter why they carry an axe around in the woods, or pitched a tarp for sleeping under instead of a nylon ,fully bugproof tent  I doubt they'd say it is because tarps promote social cohesion. They might say something about harmony, but the harmony they'd be talking about is with nature, not a congregation. 
    I'm so happy some of these traditional methods of accessing nature are still around and gaining traction with a new generation. I'm so happy some are still going out in the woods despite of the lockdown, maybe even in answer to it. One bushcrafter with a  camera and a YouTube channel went out for a night to sleep beneath a tarp and enjoy a late season snowstorm. He talked about how happy he was to get away from all the pandemic pandemonium and spend a little time again in the real world. While snowflakes brushed his camera lens and built up on the tarp overhead he made a toast with his " bushcraft Tom Collins " , " To the unrivalled human spirit to overcome adversities ".
    A marine who calls himself " the Corporal " slept a rainy night on ( not under ) a broken tree. Before the rain began he made dinner and talked about the forecast. " If it ain't rain'n ,it ain't train'n " was his catch line. He had a lot of those.  He cooked a spectacular meal with a large baked potato stuffed high with bacon ,sauteed onion, shredded cheese, and sour cream, inspired by something he once had at Wendy's, then proclaimed it OUTSTANDING! Then came a bite into a raw onion as if it were an apple. " Take that Coronavirus" , then confided that this was his way of ensuring social distancing.
    When it comes to defeating the virus with treatments and vaccines we'll have scientists to thank. In the meantime we're grateful for the selfless work of the doctors and nurses in our hospitals, aids at nursing homes working extra shifts, volunteers at food pantries, national guardsmen, and many other front liners I forgot to mention. But when it comes right down to it it's the population at large that determines how well and how soon we dig ourselves out from all this. It's not the disease I'm thinking of ,it's all the numerous knock- on effects of the virus. Over the coming months and years we'll inevitably be dealing with the aftermath of covid-19, not the epidemic but the measures taken to deal with it . Things may get ugly. We're being tested. Some of that gung ho, come what may, can do attitude of folks like the Corporeal will be crucial now and in the future. It has everything to do with what that future will look like.
   In thinking about what binds the Amish world to the bushcrafter I believe the word is order. It's a keen sense of order that drives one person to live outside modern consumerism and another to revive old ways of camping. In their own ways they manage to keep chaos at bay; the chaos inherent in the modern world  exposed by a tiny virule germ