Monday, August 3, 2020

The Corona Isolation Diary - Day 138


Things are getting more interesting as weeks go by… and by interesting I mean weird, messed up, crazy, etc etc, of course. There is no end in sight, and things just keep getting worse… places are starting to get their second waves, numbers are spiking across the board, and India is just about starting the massive first wave we know is coming. Degrees of separation with affected people is getting fewer. From just hearing on the news we have got to a place where I personally know them, or they are a friend of a friend. This shit is real.

At the same time, “anti-restriction” protests are getting bigger and spreading. Anti vaxxers, anti maskers, idiots who think a mask will restrict their oxygen flow, and selfish assholes who simply don’t want the inconvenience and see a conspiracy in anything they are “told” to do, are out on the streets en masse, screaming and shouting about their fundamental rights to have a haircut even at the cost of hundreds of lives. Community transmission is thankful to these morons who are now the super-spreaders of the virus, they will be instrumental in bringing the death tally up to the millions and in crashing entire health care systems. I would say good riddance to bad rubbish, let them all get Corona and suffer the consequences, but sadly, thanks to these dweebs, and their idiocy, it becomes more and more likely that the bug will reach, and often kill, even people who ARE being sensible, who ARE taking logical precautions. So, we will pay for their shenanigans. And the fact that spikes in infection DO happen after every major event of this sort with people without masks completely ignoring physical distancing is no longer deniable. Recent history of aborted attempts at sports gatherings, religious festivals, and more has amply proved that whenever morons congregate in large numbers flouting basic safety in the name of “freedom”, massive spikes in numbers happen.

India is now pretty close to being at the top of the list in the matter of both new infections and deaths… and this is super scary, because given the numbers being released, and knowing how much of a gap there always is in “official” numbers and real ones, the real numbers are likely to be seriously freaky. And this means so many things. It is not just the fear and real possibility that every delivery, every trip to the grocers, every time domestic workers or plumbers or electricians enter the home, they might be bringing in disaster. It is not just the fact that although I and mine are taking all possible precautions, we are still hostage to the vagaries of fate and the actions of millions of idiots increasing our chances of being affected regardless. It’s surreal, like one of those ethics conundrums I like to pitch at my students, about whether saving a large number of people – who were doing the wrong thing - justifies sacrificing the one person who was doing the right thing.

That’s the baseline… this constant anxiety, surfacing or hidden, ignored or acknowledged about the bug coming home… me, I don’t mind so much for me, might even welcome it if I was sure to be carried off… but I do have a partner and a child, both of whom are in the high risk groups. And them being affected is NOT a pleasant thought, to say the least. But that’s just a tip of the situational iceberg – isn’t it? What about work, and money? As of now, unless something drastic happens, some sudden windfall or some amazing deal going through, not only do I not have any certainty of being able to meet bills and payments next month, I have no insurance cover of any sort – neither health nor life – meaning that in a situation of extremity, illness, death, disaster, I have zero recourse. I am not even thinking of doctors for things that ARE wrong and going wrong in the normal course of things, as of now, because I cannot afford the actions which will become necessary, as soon as I do.

And this is just the beginning. Given what the pandemic and resulting changes are going to do to global economic systems, what is the future going to look like, work-wise, when it finally happens? It seems likely that things will remain more or less this way for at least another year. This sporadic opening and closing of everything… voluntary isolations, lockdowns, and closures is unlikely to significantly change until a vaccine becomes mass produced enough to be commercially available and affordable to most people. And that does not seem possible in any way in any hurry. Under normal circumstances it takes, what, 10 years to develop, test, produce and market a vaccine. Even with the pressures of the situation, there is only so much faster that things can go… so I don’t see an effective vaccine even being discovered before the end of this year or further along. After that comes the entire process of production and distribution… with 7.8 billion people on this rock, what are the odds of a majority being vaccinated, or even vaccines being easily and readily available in third world countries anytime soon?

And until that happens, I am not sending monkey to school, or risking any resumption of a “normal” routine. Which means, realistically, this self imposed situational house arrest is unlikely to end anytime before mid to late 2021 (if I am lucky) or later (if I am right). Given that I am barely stepping out of the house now (maybe once a month or so, more of a drive, with minimum contact with anyone, verbal or physical), I don’t see social life happening in a big way before then either. While people have been talking about having virtual “adda” through skype/zoom etc, I find myself strangely apathetic to the idea, in spite of how depressed and frustrated it makes me not to have my tribe around and not to be able to vent, bounce ideas, argue, etc. The head is not doing so well, as evidenced by the fact that I am sleeping something like 2 hours in every 24, not reading anything significant and barely anything insignificant because I cannot focus long enough to process a paragraph, mostly just feeling blank and calmish on the surface, not daring at all to look below it to the witches’ cauldron of whatever is going on just under the surface, what manifests as the regular nightmares and the extreme lack of energy for anything.

The anxiety and stress are surely not helping that situation either, for me OR for the diabetic hypertensive at home. Things can only get worse or more damaged – both physical and mental health wise – under the level of constant, low grade, buzz of worry that most of us are living with right now. The isolation, the fear, the uncertainly of what happens next, the surety that things as we knew them are gone, that normal will never be the same, the complete absence of a sense of steadiness, of continuity, of certainty, security… it all adds up to a pretty bleak scene.

And then there are the unforeseen, unanticipated effects… Recently a much loved relative, someone who was like a mother to my fellow and who loved me and showed me so much love from the day I met her, passed away from cancer. Under normal circumstances, her last month or more would have been filled with multiple visits from us. As it was, with lockdowns and such, we only managed to travel to the village AFTER we heard the news of her passing, and that was just an evening, where fellow was not even able to go to the cremation because of restrictions. Her two daughters live farther away, one in a remote part of the state and another out of state. Both were unable to travel at all, and not able to see their mother one last time or say goodbye. Sounds like not much, but the feeling of unfinished business, of an absence of closure is a burden to add to all the burdens. This disruption of the social rituals and norms we have created over time to help people deal with so much, both happiness and agony, sadness and laughter, joy and pain, is going to have some very serious long term repercussions I think, in the cumulative effect it will have on individual mental health.

Another side effect of morons and faulty systems has been the spike in deaths from other preventable causes. Yesterday a young activist in her 30s succumbed to a lung infection which could have been easily cured if there were enough beds and equipment available. This is just one of the many cases happening everyday of people being turned away from hospital after hospital until they pass away in the ambulance or at home. Or there are the cases of people dying of Covid-19 related causes, and hospitals refusing to release bodies until unbelievably exorbitant bills are met (40 lakhs in one case).
So, even if you are lucky enough to find a bed and get admitted, quality of care, affordability etc are completely arbitrary and most likely to be beyond most peoples’ means. 

So, as things stand, anything can kill you because we have for decades allowed healthcare to be unimportant, allowed conglomerates and pharma biggies to take over things and impose whatever prices they felt like, have relied on insurance (especially in the case o the employed middle classes) to happily live in a bubble of imagined invulnerability. Now we will face the consequences, and they will not be pretty. I would not be too surprised if things in developing nations at least get to the level of the plague and Spanish flu days, with bodies piling up in the streets and municipal sanitation services giving them mass burials or mass cremations.

What will be the long term economic impact, too? How many people will be laid off? How few of them will find employment again? What kind of employment? How will economic systems change and how bad will the depression get? How many will die from the virus? As likely, if most of the dead are among the middle and poorer classes, what will that do to production, supply chains, and more? What the hell will the working world even look like once this is finally over? And given that the crisis itself might take 2 or more years to pass (the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted a year and a half), and the resulting global repercussions are likely to last for up to a decade, what does that mean for monkey’s future? Hell, will I even live to see it? With the forced isolation and so on, drinking in most houses has gone through the roof, smokers are going through more coffin nails than ever before, meals are regular, and likely to be richer because you are trying to bring SOME variation to life, but exercise and activity are close to zero. All of this is bound to have a serious negative impact on health.

All in all, I am surprised at how calmly I am writing about it, talking about it with many people, while all the while being in such a major panic mode. It’s a bit like functioning on autopilot, seeing and knowing what I am doing, all the while a part of me, another me, sits in a corner shaking and screaming and tearing their hair out - having a full out panic attack.