Seeing The Forest And The Trees

“If you cling too tight to failure. You lose the ability to see success.”

Living in the middle of nowhere (and being comfortable viewing society at a distance) gets trippy. Add a global pandemic (or an election that nudged cognitive dissonance into mass hysteria) and it gets damn near surreal. One sign of weirdness; the inability to see good news.

I’m not making it up. Compare my observations to yours. See if you’ve noticed it too. Step back and run through your memory of what you’ve just experienced.

Wuhan Flu kicked in the door like Godzilla with a tire iron. Right? Wrong! It did nothing of the sort. It was potentially Godzilla but nobody was sure. Every bit of that Godzilla arrival was potential, predicted, modeled, conjectured, and possible. There wasn’t a mass die off at every airport. Italy had issues and so did Iran, but neither is depopulated. Godzilla was envisioned but not a sure thing.

I couldn’t determine how it would impact me personally. Nor could you. You might have had opinions, but you lacked knowledge to be certain. That doesn’t bother me, life entails uncertainty. It simply is what it is.

Regardless, if something looms on the horizon only an idiot would stand at the ocean’s edge waiting to see if it’s really Godzilla. It would be equally foolish to pray for salvation from politicians. They are men and not Gods.

Within uncertainty, we each made choices.

I took what news I could glean, percolated it through whatever knowledge was available (no testing data and ceaseless lying from the Chinese government), and took what action I could. Did I make the perfect choice? Probably not. Perfect is for fairy tales and political speech angling for your vote. We live on earth and muddled through.

I hunkered down. If you’re properly prepared, hunkering down ‘aint that hard. Others made other choices. I don’t give a shit what choice you made and I expect the same from you in kind. Everyone did what they chose to do… a statement that is true in all times.

I suspect most people started out with rationality and confidence. There was the usual pants shitting hysteria on social media but they’re always hyperventilating. Entities formerly called journalists tried to hype the misery but that’s all they know how to do. A shockingly large portion of the populace adapted like intelligent adults. It seemed a generalized basic “might as well wear a seatbelt because we don’t know where this trip is going” situation. I was actually sort of impressed.

So far so good. Some, perhaps most, made wise or at least deliberate personal choices in uncertain times.

Where did it go wrong?

It started going wrong when folks in power clung too tightly to failure. They became that which they fear.

Recall precisely what you heard when this all started. Don’t filter it through what you know now. Forget what is being retroactively inserted into your mind. What did you hear in Mid-March?

What I heard was; “All hell might break loose, or it might not. If the shit hits the fan, it’ll happen soon and you don’t wanna be in it.” Fair nuff. Search your memory, is that about right?

They created the phrase “flatten the curve” as a useful, if oversimplified, explanatory. It’s not a deep thought. It’s almost common sense. If you’re dealing with an unknown illness that emerged from mysterious conditions you’re better off avoiding the great miserable overwhelming mob of humanity that may be the form of the first wave. Everyone who removes themselves from that uncontrolled situation makes it that much easier for society overall.

We all get it. Nobody wants to be the surgeon’s first patient. Fresh out of med school and still wet behind the ears? Fuck that! You want to be his 10,000th patient, after the dude has built up plenty of experience. Nor do you want to face dire need in times of shortage.

Everyone sought to hold out (if they could) until hospitals figured out what to do. Hopefully, ventilators and treatments and whatnot would have have been sussed out. Ideally, pharmacies would be restocked with just the right meds and materials. With luck, your doctor would be rested, the hospital in order, and everyone would have learned what to do.

Everyone worked on this. It was a time of shared purpose. Humanity versus the germs. We really did try to work together. Meanwhile talking heads in suits promulgated regulations and slung money about. What else could they do? They have no abilities but speech, regulation, and pissing away money. Each and every decision made to top down enforce “solutions” came with a cost. Cost benefit analysis is too complex for weak minded politicians and it’s a dimension beyond “journalist” airheads but all things have costs and benefits. Some regulations had great enough benefits to make it worthwhile. Some were counterproductive. There is no solution in which nobody dies.

At first I was willing to grant the benefit of doubt. After all, there was so much uncertainty. Now, there’s less uncertainty and more knowledge. Subsequently the time for wild ass top down pronouncements is over.

The process took several weeks. When it was right to pop my head out of my foxhole, I did. I didn’t ask some vote farmer in a suit for permission. Why would I?

Now it’s the third month. We have more ventilators than we need; most remain unused. Hospitals aren’t overcrowded; they’re empty. Impressive floating hospitals were available but never used. Hastily constructed tent cities to hold millions of dying patients remain unused. For the most part, Godzilla didn’t show.

No death is irrelevant but look at maps of deaths; the vast majority are limited to New York City and a few counties near Detroit and Chicago. For the vast majority of America, this is the bullet that didn’t hit. For that, I’m thankful.

Because they have no other skills, politicians continue to boss people around. The media is still hysteric; seeking every last reason to foment misery. But “flatten the curve”, that quaint logical idea? It’s long forgotten. It’s replaced by “we need a vaccine” or “there will be a second wave” or “things will never be normal again” or whatever makes them feel good. The goal posts move so often they have wheels.

So… ask yourself, what would “winning” a global pandemic look like? Because this looks something like winning to me. I didn’t expect a ticker tape parade. A fade is plausible.  The first wave has swept across the world; the hospitals are empty, there aren’t corpses stacked like cordwood, we stand here and realize we are still standing.

In this situation, that’s what winning is. It’s that you’re still standing. The vast majority of us are still on the proper side of the grass. There’s no participation trophies, no fanfare, just the basic realization that the hospitals didn’t crash and burn.

Godzilla didn’t arrive. Be happy. For tomorrow we roll the dice all over again.