Philmont
I was thirteen soon to be fourteen in August of 1970. As a Boy Scout I was given a special age waiver to participate in a “high adventure” activity at Philmont, New Mexico. The Boy Scouts owned (still do) several hundred square miles of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near the town of Cimarron, and small groups of Scouts would backpack from camp to camp through the range. It was a ten-day adventure, taking us high above the tree line on Mt. Baldy at 12,000 feet, and exploring near one hundred miles of the world of New Mexico wilderness. We met deer, and bear, and tested our limits on the high mountain trails.
We were on the western side of the territory, miles from the headquarters and highway, when a boy died on a base camp day hike. He didn’t die of injury; he became gravely ill from an unknown cause, and then passed away. Authorities weren’t sure what caused his death, but the symptoms he exhibited before his passing resembled pneumonic plague.
Plague
Everyone knew what the bubonic plague was, the rat-borne bacterial disease that killed massive numbers of the population in the middle ages. And even if they don’t know about the plague, they probably know the signs:
“Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posey, ashes, ashes, all fall down”.
That ancient rhyme describes the ringed red pustules of bubonic plague that smelled so bad that flowers were used to try to cover the odor. Burning bodies, “ashes, ashes” and everyone dies. It seemed like such an innocent childhood song.
Bubonic plague was passed through fleas. The rats had the disease and the fleas bit the rats. The rats died, and the fleas moved onto the nearest warm bodies, humans, carrying the disease with them.
The plague still exists in some rodent populations, including squirrels in the mountains. But pneumonic plague is different, instead of passing through an insect bite; it is carried in the air by droplets from an infected source. That makes it much more dangerous, because it is so easily transmitted.
Quarantine
They sealed Philmont off. Parents drove to the camp, lining the highway at the front gate trying to reach their children. The National Guard came in to guarantee the quarantine. My group, 8-04-C2, blithely continued hiking our itinerary, actually passing off the property for half a day before reaching our next camp. Headquarters didn’t want to call everyone back in, massing the Scouts in base camp would increase risks of infection.
So, while my parents worried, and my sister had her first child, I was marching the hallowed trails of Philmont. It took a couple of days and an autopsy to find that the unfortunate boy had a congenital heart defect, not pneumonic plague. The crisis that didn’t ever exist was averted.
Coronavirus
We are not so lucky today. The crisis of the COVID-19 virus is very real. Like the pneumonic plague, it is passed through airborne droplets, or through contact with the virus on surfaces. Unlike plague, it has a much lower fatality rate, though scientists are still unsure how dangerous it may be. Somewhere between 2% and 4% of those who contract the disease die. The victims are older, sicker, or have compromised immune systems.
The disease moves from person to person, with the potential for exponential growth. I’m not a “math guy”, so I’ve stolen a graph from the Internet to explain the difference between linear growth and exponential growth.
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Known Unknowns
Now the Centers for Disease Control tell us that the United States has 164 cases of coronavirus (as of today, March 7 CDC). But the one factor they don’t mention: the tests to diagnose sick people with coronavirus are still extremely limited. If you can’t test people, you can’t know how many people have it. If you don’t know how many people have it, you can’t determine what the progression of the disease might be.
Somehow, the United States, the leader in scientific research in the world, hasn’t developed a mass test for this disease. In fact, we are told that we pay the highest drug costs in the world because we are financing that scientific research, the infamous “cost of the first pill” that drives American pharmaceutical prices. But if you go to your local doctor today, it’s unlikely he can test you for coronavirus.
Instead, you must go to a hospital emergency room, a fertile area for disease transmission pretty much anytime, and even then you may not be able to get tested. The United States is not ready. We don’t know, we what don’t know. And we don’t know how many people have coronavirus today.
What to Do
So the great American scientific community is telling us to wash our hands, stay away from sick people, and not to touch our faces. And we are cancelling mass gatherings: college basketball games played in empty field houses, the Ultra Music Festival in Miami and the famous South by Southwest Festival in Austin called off. The elderly and sick are told not to fly, and for sure, not go on a cruise.
But Disney World remains open. Orlando still beckons spring breakers. Everyone is determining how much of their life will be disrupted for this unknown disease. They are trying to determine if hiding in their home is enough to protect them, and if it’s worth it.
We need better guidance, and the government needs to get better information. It looks like we’ve missed the opportunity to “stop” anything, now we are going to have to deal with the human, medical, and economic consequences.
Maybe it’s time to head for the mountains.
