Math Block

I was a social studies teacher, not a math teacher.  And, to be honest, math was never my strongest subject anyway.  I might blame my teachers – Mrs. Hibberd at Van Buren Junior High, who shoved me up against a locker for reading in her math class instead of doing homework, or that fateful junior year at Wyoming High School when the Algebra II teacher had a breakdown, and a series of substitutes left me with a ‘C’ in class and bereft of skills.  But really, I just wasn’t a math guy. 

So when I start calculating, it always deserves intense scrutiny and some skepticism.  There’s the fair warning.  But I have found some disturbing numbers, that don’t require skill in calculus to understand.  In our current era of fake news and obfuscations, statistics are being used to cloud a whole range of issues.  

Foggy Math

For example, the White House claims to have created the greatest number of jobs in American history.  And it might well be true.  In January of 2020, 132 million Americans had full-time employment.  In April during the “shutdown”, that number dipped to 114 million, a loss of 18 million jobs.  By August, 123 million Americans had full time jobs (Trading Economics).  So the White House can claim that nine million jobs have been “created” in just the past few months.  That’s as long as they don’t take any blame for the eighteen million lost.

But jobs numbers are always tricky; full time, part time, gig work, folks not working but still receiving pay, and on and on.  While figures may not be lying, they certainly can be twisted and misleading.

Butcher’s Bill

COVID numbers are also not as simple as they appear.  Today’s “butcher’s bill”:  6.46 million positive tests in the United States, and 193,253 deaths (Corona-Virus).  Just on that number alone, three percent of those diagnosed with COVID-19 die.

But we know that testing figures are low, and that the rate of infection is probably much higher.  So here’s where the “figuring and lying” comes in – but I think it still has validity.

Let’s say that the testing figure is off by an order of 3, meaning that at least 20 million Americans have been infected with COVID.  And while it’s likely that many more people have died of COVID than just the 193000 listed, let’s simplify that figure.  20 million infected to 200000 dead – or 1% of those infected have died.

Herd immunity is when enough of the population has been infected or immunized with a disease that it no longer spreads from person to person.  It assumes that you can get a disease once and then have immunity from that disease for a long time.  While full “herd immunity” is in the ninety percent plus range, generally gaining “herd immunity” for the COVID-19 virus is considered to be around sixty percent of the US population.  That’s roughly 200 million folks infected (or vaccinated if and when a vaccine arrives). 

If the policy of the United States of America is to get to “herd immunity”without a vaccine, then we have to let at least 200 million people become infected.  If the death rate remains at 1%, that means 2 million people will die from COVID-19.

Debate

As we approach 200,000 deaths in the next week or so, we need to have a discussion about what America wants to do.  We can “go back” to the “good old days” of just eight months ago, let COVID spread quickly, and suffer the consequences.  Or we can try to maintain control of the spread and hope that a vaccine will allow for a less fatal way of reaching some kind of “herd immunity”. 

It’s not just an academic debate topic. What the US should do about COVID is a real life decision, with moral and real life consequences.  It’s one that needs to be discussed in “the clear”, not quietly decided by a few advisors in the White House.  And it certainly shouldn’t be a result of incompetent governing.  If the US is going to allow the deaths of millions of its citizens, at least we ought to know it’s going to happen.

Track Coach

If you’ve read Trump World very often, you’ve read about the experiences of my life.  One of the great adventures and honors of my career was to be a high school track and cross country coach for forty years.  It’s not an unusual thing.  There are thousands of high schools, and thousands of coaches at those schools.  And I didn’t coach by myself.  I always worked alongside other wonderful coaches.  As coaches of young people, all of us took on a responsibility of leadership.

Our athletes looked to us to develop their abilities.  Sure they wanted to run faster, jump higher, and throw farther (citius, altius, fortius).  We had a duty to train them physically, and give them the physical and technical abilities to perform.  But that was just the basics.  As a coach, if you couldn’t do those things, the “Dummy’s Guide to Coaching” stuff, then you shouldn’t be out there.

Listen to Lead

But our athletes also looked to us to show them how to handle the much more difficult mental aspects of the sport.   It was the pole vaulter who lost his confidence, or the distance runner who wouldn’t risk winning.  Those were the athletes who needed more than just a workout or a technique guide:  they needed coaches to teach them about themselves.

It was knowing when to get a sprinter to relax (you run so much faster “loose” rather than “tight”) or how to fire up a shot putter to explode through the ball.  We had to listen to our charges, to hear what they were thinking and what they needed.  And the athletes would follow our lead.  If I lost my cool, they would lose theirs.  If I hung my head in defeat, they were done.  But if I took adversity in stride, and moved onto the next event, so would they. 

Leadership in our little world of coaching was apparent.  The coaches of other teams that were constantly looking to place blame, had teams that blamed each other.  And the coaches who asked their teams to sacrifice for each other, had teams that performed far above their “abilities”.   

Divide or Unite

The United States isn’t a high school track team.  But a lot of the same principles apply. The President of the United States has certain tasks that are basic to the job.  Upholding the Constitution, defending the nation, honoring those that have sacrificed:  are all part of the “Dummy’s Guide to the Presidency” stuff.  It is the level of basic competency, if the President cannot do that, then they shouldn’t be in office.

And the President, like that high school coach, leads by example.  When the President devalues a class of people, then those that follow him do the same.  And when he sees the nation as “his” country and “the other” country, he divides people so that there is no common purpose.  

Kenosha

President Trump went to Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday. He emphasized his support for law enforcement, and his sympathy for those who lost their businesses.  Then he attacked protestors, making little distinction between those that protest and those that riot.  And he built a “strawman” argument of nefarious groups, financed by shadowy sources, who come in to create turmoil.   He ignored the reason why folks are protesting or rioting:  he failed to communicate with “that side” of the issue.

Joe Biden went to Kenosha on Thursday.  He spent most of his day listening rather than speaking.  Biden listened to victims and protestors.  He listened to business owners and government officials.  And he listened to law enforcement.  When he spoke, he talked about how they could get past this moment, and find ways to work together to begin to solve the core problems.

He made it clear he was against rioting, looting and destruction.  But he also recognized that the destruction was an outgrowth of racial inequities.  Begin to solve the inequalities, and the riots and looting will also be solved.

Which Team?

Just like those two high school track teams on the field, we have two examples of national leadership.  One “coach” is exhorting his team, telling them to beat the other team, and saying that the distance runners are weak and the sprinters are strong.  The other “coach” is challenging his team to perform their best, and asking the sprinters to cheer on the distance runners as they circle the track.  One “coach” is dividing his squad, playing favorites and creating scapegoats. The other is uniting all of his athletes to achieve greater goals for themselves, and the team. 

Which team do you want to be on?

Immunity

Vaccines

I grew up in the “heyday” of vaccines.  I have a smallpox scar on my arm.  Every American was vaccinated for smallpox until the early 1970’s.  By then the disease was so rare that unless you were travelling somewhere in the world where it was still prevalent, you didn’t get it.  Today, there is no “natural” smallpox in the world.  It requires human transmission, and so many people were vaccinated, there was no one left to transmit it.

There’s still some around, in the biological warfare centers, and at the Centers for Disease Control.  But the disease that ravaged the Revolutionary Army, the frontier, and scarred and killed so many of our forefathers, is gone.

And I was a “test dummy” for the oral polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin.  He lived just down the street, right across from Mom’s good friend Maggie Miller.  The first major US test of his oral vaccine was in the Cincinnati Public Schools. I remember stories of lining up at Sabin’s back door to get it – I was four at the time though, so that memory might not be exactly true.  

However, like most kids of my time, I got the measles, and scarlet fever, and mumps.  Those were “the risks” of growing up in those days.  Somehow I avoided the chicken pox until an eighth grader in my class managed to infect me . I won’t call him out, but he was a pole vaulter. I was thirty-one, but I managed to survive that and the rest without long-term impact.

Too Good?

Now we have vaccines for those diseases as well.  They are so effective, that the few outlier negative results from the vaccines are greater than damage from the actual diseases.  In our short-term memory society, we forget what those diseases did. Some focus only on the “dangers” of the vaccines.  We are close to wiping out polio (three nations still have “natural” outbreaks). But there are measles outbreaks, and mumps outbreaks are actually increasing in the United States after several years of only a few cases.

Today we also have a vaccine for versions of the “flu”.  But there’s a problem.  The “flu” isn’t one virus it’s multiple viruses.  So a “flu” shot might protect you from one version, but not another, and so folks say: “I got the shot, but I still got the flu”.  It doesn’t mean the vaccine didn’t work but it didn’t work for the version you got. 

But that has been the example that everyone uses to “prove” that “vaccines don’t work”.   And there is a growing number of folks who are “anti-vaxxers” who blame vaccines for all sorts of side effects.  There is little scientific evidence of that, but the seeds of doubt are sown.  Some parents are leaving their children unprotected, making the mumps, measles and chicken pox more prevalent childhood diseases again.  And while some vaccines do have side effects, the impacts of the diseases themselves can be much worse.

Rushing for COVID

Today there is a rush to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.  We are in a hurry; the disease is rampant and deadly for the vulnerable.  But there are all sorts of dangers of “hurrying” the vaccine, only one of which is that the first vaccines might be only fifty-percent effective.  That works for epidemiologists:  fifty-percent protection is a whole lot better than none.  But in a society that already questions the established vaccinations like polio and measles, a vaccine that will “fail” half the time isn’t likely to be accepted.

And there’s a second problem.  There’s a movement among some today saying that we should just allow COVID to “burn through” America.  Let everyone get sick, and those that get over it will be “done”.  It’s not unlike my childhood when we “all” got measles, mumps, and the rest.  But we are just learning the long-term impacts of COVID even on those who are “healthy”.  We don’t even know that having COVID once creates a long-term immunity.  Is it the measles, a one-time deal, or the flu? 

Herd Immunity

And if it does create a long-term immunity, then according to them, we will get “herd immunity” and we can go about our life.  Eventually there might be a ninety-nine percent effective vaccine, and that could protect the most at risk.  The big concern with this “attitude”:  to reach “herd immunity” it will require sixty percent of the population to be infected. That’s near 200 million.  With a fatality rate is just one percent (and the trend is closer to three) that would be two million dead.

The President’s newest science advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, is an advocate of herd immunity.  And while there has been no “announcement”, changes in policy from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control seems to be moving towards that strategy as well.

The alternative to “herd immunity” is what most of our epidemiologists have advised:  masks, distancing, keep places where people gather to small numbers and avoid “mass spreader” events.  This keeps people from getting COVID, and puts America in a “new reality” until an effective vaccine is developed.  And since only a small percentage of Americans would actually get the disease, a much smaller number will die.  Instead of two million, if we followed the advise, we never would have gotten to the 185,000 today, or 200,000 in the next couple of weeks.

Sacrifice

It is a legitimate policy question.  Should we work for herd immunity to regain our national economy and “life”? Or should we keep the disease in check until a viable vaccine is available?  But we do need to call it out:  getting to herd immunity means a huge sacrifice of our elderly, and our sick, and our vulnerable.  Yes, the economy will continue, and little Johnny can play soccer or football or run races and everyone can come and watch.  But many will be sacrificed, including perhaps, even little Johnny.

Hope

I’ve written a lot about the Trump/Biden race in the past few weeks.  In fact, it seems like I’ve mostly rotated between the political campaigns, COVID and shootings.  And they all seem to get darker and darker.  The campaign, as we all know, just keeps on getting ugly. No matter where you stand on policing:  someone getting shot and paralyzed or killed, is just bad.  COVID is like a thick fog hanging over all of us, all the time.

And here I am again, getting dark and sad.

So today I am going to write about hope.  As dark as things seem at the moment, there is always light, because there is always hope.  And that hope is based on people.  Regardless of how folks feel about politics, or COVID, or what’s going on in the streets, there are still a lot of people of  “good heart”.

Find A Dog 

My wife Jennifer and I work with a group called Lost Pet Recovery.  This group is a bunch of folks who gain expertise, then go out and find lost dogs to return them to their owners.  While LPR takes donations, it’s actually all volunteer and the “recoveries” are at no fee.  Jenn’s really involved (I just help out with paperwork occasionally), and has spent many nights sitting in the pickup truck, waiting for a lost dog to find its way into her trap.  

It’s a high tech operation, with cameras, computer mapping and tracing:  but in the end it’s about people who want to get dogs back to their homes.  And it can be an emotional roller coaster.  Yesterday in the wee-dark-hours of the morning one dog they’d spent weeks tracking finally was trapped and returned to its owner.  But by mid-afternoon, another dog they tried to follow for two weeks was found twenty-five miles away from where he was lost, killed on the side of State Route 23.  

The “good hearted” people of Lost Pet Recovery will mourn for one dog and owner, and rejoice for the other.  And it doesn’t matter about politics or illness.  COVID is just one more problem to work around, as they relentlessly look for the next dog.  

Bosco

As I said, my involvement is much more casual than Jenn’s.  I’ll drive, and haul traps around, but I don’t have the patience to sit all night waiting for a dog to appear out of the woods or bushes.  But I did get involved in one case, closer to home.  There was a major accident on Interstate 70 one Friday afternoon, just a few miles from our house.  A big Yellow Lab bolted from one of the wrecked cars and managed to survive running across six lanes of rush hour traffic, vanishing into the woods alongside the highway.

The driver was beat up in the crash, but checked out OK and was sent home.  But his dog, Bosco, was still in the woods, and Jenn took on the job for LPR.  She tracked Bosco for two nights, while the owner commuted back and forth to his home in Dayton, trying to take care of all the problems caused by the wreck.  On Saturday evening Jenn, the owner and some of his family were sitting in a Big Sandy Superstore parking lot near the woods where Bosco was hiding, waiting to see if he’d go in the trap.

I decided we all needed dinner, and showed up in my Jeep with pizza.  As we were all eating from the back of the Jeep, the owner and family couldn’t help but notice the “Biden” sticker on the bumper.

Pizza not Politics

We really didn’t talk about politics as we munched Creno’s pepperoni pizza.  But they seemed surprised by a Democrat, and the conversation flirted all around the edges.  We all told our stories, about growing up, work and life.  In the end Biden or Trump didn’t matter.  We were all focused on a more important goal:  Bosco.  And we got help from all sorts of people who called in spotting’s of his location, and then stayed clear of the scene.

This story has a happy ending.  The owner was able to coax Bosco out of the woods, and with some quiet conversation, the dog realized that it was his “Dad”.  While the traps were there, they weren’t needed, and Bosco went home.

Good Hearts

Bosco didn’t care about the bumper sticker.  Neither did his “Dad”.  We weren’t Republicans or Democrats, we were folks on a common mission – reunite a family.

I have no idea about the politics of the rest of the LPR “volunteers”.  I don’t care, I know they are dedicated to a good task, and have good hearts. In our partisan world, it’s important to recognize that we don’t always have to be defined by the bumper sticker, or hat, or yard sign.  In the world of dog recovery, and a lot of the rest of day-to-day life, there are still folks with good hearts, regardless of their politics. 

That’s something we all should remember in the sixty-two days until Election Day.

Historic Loss

Deaths matter.  Over 100,000 American soldiers have died in battle since the end of World War II.  Over 100,000 American soldiers died in World War I.  In only two wars in United States history have more than 100,000 been killed:  the Civil War and World War II.  

We honor all of those deaths every year on Memorial Day.  We respect those that we have lost, and we expect that our leaders will be more than careful about putting our current soldiers in harms way.  They are our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters and our friends.  Their lives are important.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic will reach 200,000 American lives.  More Americans have died from COVID than died in every battle and war in the past seventy-five years since World War II.  More than Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the rest combined.  They died in only eight months.  And, if it were a world contest, then the United States is “the big loser” in deaths.  We’re approaching 190,000 this week.  Brazil is in second with 121,000, and India in third with 65,000.  Even though no one believes that China and Russia’s numbers are accurate, this is NOT a statistics where having “the most” is a good thing.  

Politics and Life

Unfortunately for America, COVID-19, like much else in American life, is cloaked in politics.  The US response to COVID is the crucial issue of the 2020 Presidential election.  If you’re for Donald Trump, then China “gave” us the virus, and we responded as well as we could.  Now we should just get back to living our “regular” lives, be sad for the losses, and learn to deal with the virus and wait for “herd immunity” or a vaccine.

If you’re for Joe Biden, then the virus might well have been controlled from the outset.  The US might have responded in a way to restrict the infection rate.  Perhaps many of those two hundred thousand would be alive, and the US would be on the way to recovery like many of the European countries are today.  Biden would have us re-group, gain control of the disease, and then move forward.

The Calculus

Frankly both sides are vested in what happens to COVID.  The President is doing everything he can to convince America it’s all “OK”.  He’s reducing testing (so we don’t see increases)  and claiming a miracle cure (that the FDA had to walk back in the next couple of days). And this week the CDC released a report saying that people who are already weakened die from COVID (duh). 

 (On that report, it’s important to remember that people who get COVID often die from something else – pneumonia primarily – and that is listed as a “cause of death” along with COVID.  But without COVID there wouldn’t have been pneumonia, and the patient would be alive).

I don’t believe that the Biden side wants more deaths to continue to prove Trump’s incompetence.  They are calling for a more logical approach, a proven scientific method of controlling an epidemic virus.   Yes, it works into their political calculus as well. Aren’t they lucky?

Mourning the Dead

And while COVID is a critical issue, it isn’t the only one.  We as a nation are focused on whether Black lives are valued, and how to keep order in our streets.  Our divisions are so real that there are literal fights occurring between protestors and pickup truck drivers in Portland (full disclosure, I own a pickup truck too).  So, I hope both sides are worried about the state of our nation, so rancorous and divided. 

On September 11^th, there’s going to be the usual moments.  We will all be preparing for 9-11 remembrances, minutes of silence at times that planes struck, solemn bells rung at Ground Zero, flowers laid at the Monument in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the Memorial at the Pentagon.  We will mourn the loss of the firemen, and the policemen, and the regular people working in the Towers and the Pentagon, or flying on the planes.  2,997 died that day, and we will rightfully observe the loss.

As Abraham Lincoln said about such ceremonies, “it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this”.   But while we are preparing for the nineteenth anniversary of 9-11, we should be mindful of the current milestone we will be reaching.  Somewhere around that date, the two hundred thousandth person will die from COVID-19 in the United States.

#Honor200000

Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, a Trumper, Never-Trumper, Biden fan or something else, we should all pause to recognize the loss WE as a nation, have had in our own lives in the past eight months.  We will pause at 8:46 and 9:03.  And we should pause again at 9:37 and 10:03.  Those deserved moments are the times when planes crashed into the buildings or courageous passengers flew one into the ground.  

But perhaps at noon on September 11^th, we should pause one more time, for those we’ve lost in this ongoing American tragedy.  It’s not about politics.  It’s to recognize our ongoing sacrifice, and our continuing grief.