March 24,Dispatches from SIP, First Week: A Fugitive Spring:

In an odd fugitive spring, an odd, topsy-turvey kind of day with rain and sun in almost equal measure. 

It's been a full week of Shelter in Place. We have hunkered down. We have ordered groceries and supplies online. We've gone out to storea as infrequently as possible. We are stocking up on basics - flour, rice, sugar, coffee, beer.  We make dinner every night and eat it together, because, well, what else do we have to do? Who else do we have to see?

This was a day of two walks out on the marsh, one in the morning wet and windy, the other in the evening with high puffy clouds, deep bright slant of sun and only a touch of rain. We live out in an odd corner of the world, a kind of a backwater, a bit forgotten, without much foot traffic or visitors. We had only just moved here about six months ago, not long before the fires and outages that ravaged Northern California again.  Although I miss my old town of Petaluma dearly,  I now appreciate this sense of distance, tucked out at the end of East San Rafael. While we have plenty of neighbors and most are around for most of the day, we sure do keep our physical distance.

I think about the kids, no longer in daycare, no longer in school, no longer going through the dance of socialization, of friendship, of physical playtime together.  What is this like for a four-year-old, a five -year-old?

It reminds me of those summers when I was four and five and polio was alive in the world. There was a kind of terror that underlay almost any sickness. Especially in the summer. One girl in my kindergarten class wore braces as a result of polio; those of us sitting by her would loosen and tighten the little wing nuts by her knees that allowed her to sit or stand. Spasms would rocket through her legs sometimes and she'd claw at the braces, in tears. She was only five, too.

I remember the delirious freedom associated with the polio vaccine. It wasn't just the sugar cubes it was administered with. It was being able to swim again in the ponds and streams, because the bacterium was most often contracted in water.  My mother was in tears, bowing in gratitude for the scientists who had worked so hard to find this cure; we had escaped, we were protected, we would live.

It was reported today that it had taken 67 days to reach 100,000 cases of COVID-19 in the world - and only 4 days to go from 200,000 to 300,000 cases. Not all, of course, are deadly, and for sure not all have been counted. By tomorrow morning, March 25, we will have surpassed 400,000 cases*,  present in 175 out 195 countries. By April 1, I imagine we'll have racked up a million cases world wide.  And this President seems to think we should all get back to work in early April, because, you know, the economy sucks and business is flagging. Never mind that every advisor with a medical background or brains in their head has told him that relaxing our safeguards now would allow the virus to run wild and ransack the population. That in fact, our economy would suffer far more in the long run, taking even longer to recover.

All this President can think about is getting re-elected. The loss of civilian lives in this war against the virus is just collateral damage to him. If he pursues this plan of action, we will have an even longer and more protracted slow-down of the economy as communities sicken and collapse, as hospitals fail to keep up with the onslaught of the desperately sick.

 If he pursues this plan of action, I think it behooves the legislators in Washington to enact The 25th Amendment  and remove him from office for recklessly endangering the lives of the citizens of this country.  For willfully and recklessly endangering the lives of doctors and nurses fighting this pandemic when he refused to take this seriously when he was first informed about it in January. For  causing deaths of civilians by thoughtlessly promoting cures that don't work and dismissing practices that do in his woefully ignorant tweeting, his reckless, rambling press meetings full of misinformation and downright lies.

Personally, I wonder if he has lost his mind.

Meanwhile, we take our walks, we relish our meals, we crack bad jokes. Because we can. For now.

*UPDATE:  Global numbers for reported number of cases of COVID-19 surpassed 400,000 before midnight of March 24th.