Bob Schwartz

It is sad but inevitable to see that in America, and especially in some parts of the country, it is possible that the Covid vaccination rate of total population may barely hit 50%. There are already explanations offered up, analysis that includes pandemic fatigue, hesitancy, ideological objections, and so on. In the end, if the number of the vaccinated is that low, we may find ourselves saying: Oh well, we tried everything, we fought the good fight. That’s unfortunately how it goes in America.

This doesn’t mean we’ve given up. Now that vaccine supply is adequate and distribution points are expanding, there are three paths available.

The path that has been promoted almost from the first of the pandemic is messaging. The right people saying the right words and showing the right pictures about the right behavior for personal and public well-being. Unless you slept through the first pandemic year, you will know that among a large number of Americans, for various reasons, this proved ineffective.

Then there’s the incentive and reward option. Dunkin Donuts, for example, has offered to give every vaccinated American one free donut every day for the rest of the year. (My favorite snack food and a favorite bright spot in an otherwise dark time.) Should we be paying people to get vaccinated, thus saving some of the enormous public health costs that endemic Covid will later burden us with? It’s a thought. For some people, money trumps ideology.

Finally, there’s the path that is not about persuasion or incentive. It is about, not to sugar coat it, coercion. Maybe soft coercion, but sticks rather than carrots. If people choose to be public health menaces, which unvaccinated people behaving in pre-pandemic ways are, they may lose privileges enjoyed by their more responsible neighbors. “Freedom loving” ideologues object, since the freedom to infect others with a strange and deadly disease is said to be an American right, if you properly listen to the Founding Fathers and read the Constitution.

Words are powerful, and good words can do good. So can good pictures and good videos. Messaging does serve. But that power is limited. When the words fall on deaf or hostile ears, when anyone can conveniently get a vaccination but fewer and fewer do, when it is summer 2021 and only half of America is fully vaccinated, what do we do then?

Oh well.

Morse bird

That bird insists
on dots and dashes
u then u then v
v then v then u
a message not discerned
by other birds
who don’t know Samuel Morse.
I do.
Not to say know him
his being dead so long
while his code lives on
to solve the mysteries it creates.
First he was a painter
mainly of people
though he surely observed birds
placed a few in his portraits
their songs inspiring him
to devise the telegraph.
Maybe. Possible.
As it is possible
That bird telegraphing
a stream of u and v
is telling me something
vital.

© Bob Schwartz 2021

Two things for certain:

We know how to prevent many of the mass shootings and violent gun deaths, one shooting occurring just yesterday, killing eight people.

We knew how to prevent the deaths of many of the 600,000 Americans who died during the pandemic.

We didn’t and don’t do anything, even though we knew and know what to do. That’s how the two are related, almost identical. Wise and good people tell us again and again what would help. It didn’t and doesn’t get done. People stand in the way of help and just stand by and watch.

You might say shame on them. But as we know for certain, they don’t have any.

We know at least two things certainly about the pandemic in America.

Hundreds of thousands of people were infected and died, despite valiant work by so many skilled and selfless health professionals who tried to save them.

A large number of those who died—hundreds of thousands—did not have to be infected and end up dying. We look to public policy, personal behavior and of course the virulence of the virus as contributors to this.

That leads to an overriding question: How are we a nation where public policy and personal behavior allowed this to happen?

The answers are more complicated than pointing to people in power or to individuals demonstrating some combination of selfishness, ignorance or recklessness, as convenient and in some ways as accurate as that might be.

How did we become a nation with a sufficient measure of selfishness, ignorance or recklessness that lead to that outcome?

As we review what happened—and make no mistake, vaccines notwithstanding, is still happening—we should not leave that question unexamined. It belongs near the top of the list. Set aside whether we can discover the social, cultural and political preconditions that would make our response to another similar emergency equally inadequate. If there are factors in our American life and in our American psyches that are tending to move us away from an optimal level of knowledge and care for others, and we are able to look at 600,000 dead (the estimate by this summer 2021) as an unfortunate fact of life in America, as just a natural disaster like a hurricane, as much as I try to reflect rays of light, the American prospect, at least in the near term, may be bleak.

It is Passover, which means no bread for eight days. The story says that traditional Jewish ancestors couldn’t let bread rise in the wilderness, leaving them to bake dry flatbread. Leaving us, by way of acknowledging the tradition, to buy boxes of dry flatbread—matzo—and to avoid eating bread.

On the first night of Passover, tidying the kitchen, I looked at our toaster. Its four wide slots stood ready to receive whatever baked goods might need hot wire treatment. Bread, bagels, English muffins, other national muffins.

But no, not this morning, or for some mornings to come. The toaster is temporarily useless and lonely. I had never considered trying to toast matzo, for good reason. Not only is it already toasted, but it slips right through slots made for much wider slices.

Sorry toaster. Unlike other kitchen gadgets that don’t get daily or even weekly attention, you are there serving us almost every day. But not this day. Not tomorrow. Not this week.

We will be back together soon. Maybe I will pop you down once in a while anyway, just to let you know that you are not forgotten. Happy Passover, my trusty friend.

I have read a lot about Covid in the past year, both about its presence in my community, state and nation, and about its science. And why not? It is not only a defining event in our lives, but an epochal one in modern history. Above all, shaping our behavior to meet the moment seems a sound way to get through this.

One thing you realize is that this is not easy to understand. Besides all the unknowns still to be determined, grasping the basic concepts can be a challenge. Things like “testing”, “vaccine efficacy and effectiveness” and “herd immunity” are thrown around almost blithely, as if everyone understands all the nuances in meaning.

Except it isn’t everyone, or even most people. Early on I noted that you could not understand the pandemic if you didn’t understand the basic concept of exponential growth, and many people probably do not get the idea of exponential growth. And exponents are hardly the most complex of Covid core concepts.

One thing that began to be said and can’t be said too often: Covid doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about politics or ideology or beliefs or understandable frustration. The only things that matter are understanding Covid as well as possible and conscientiously taking actions based on that understanding. Understanding doesn’t necessarily require earning a degree in Covid science. But an effective response will be aided by something besides know-it-all attitudes followed by careless or contrary action. Maybe we allow children to skip classes and fail to learn because they are children. If we are adults, we should recognize the learning required to work through the most difficult challenges, or face the consequences. Which in the case of Covid, have been and will be dire.

Note: The following was drafted in early January, days after the invasion of the Capitol, days before Trump officially left office. Having just reread the draft, I believe it still has merit.

The conventional analysis of elected Republican politics goes something like this:

Most of the elected Republicans stuck with Trump even during his most heinous days—through active support or silence—because they feared the electoral wrath of him and his base. Their prime directive was to stay in office. Not a profile in courage or integrity, but a simple path anyone might understand if not condone: keep your job.

The actual story is more like this:

Many elected Republicans believe that the only future for America is one in which the forces of progressivism—even moderate moves toward equity and fairness—are turned around. They initially opposed and criticized Trump. But once they had to accept him in power, they saw that he could be useful for that plan. Yes, his behavior in office was extreme and distasteful. But it was a small price to pay for restoring America to its former glory.

So while Trump and his conduct are more reprehensible and toxic than ever, we read this headline from the Washington Post, days after the storming of the Capitol:

“Republicans largely silent about consequences of deadly attack and Trump’s role in inciting it.”

Of course they are largely silent. They are holding their fire as they wait for the emergence of a smarter, smoother, more attractive demagogue. Where, for example, is George Wallace when you need him?

So Republicans remain patient and, with some exception, silent or equivocal. They never wanted an invasion of the citadel of American democracy, nor did they want anyone to be killed. All they want is a captain to steer the ship of state in the right direction—one who isn’t quite so problematic and crazy. Next stop 2024.

This may, I think, be misunderstood or misconstrued, so I will try to speak carefully.

During the pandemic, Colorado, like many states, has seen citizens who were untested, unmasked, undistanced, unvaccinated and unconcerned, walking the streets and the aisles of their supermarkets. Each one is a potential loaded gun, aimed at anybody they come in contact with. Some of these same people also loudly denied the virus and decried any attempts at the simplest mitigations and restrictions. Do you think that any of those citizens, or all of them, are responsible for at least ten Covid deaths because of their reckless disregard? Ten deaths out of 6,149?

Gun violence, as in yesterday’s Colorado shootings, is only one in a cascade of American tragedies. The killer and the victims of course deserve our attention. But so do Americans who, out of selfishness or ignorance or both, raised a virus to a deadly scourge and who, by any definition, are killers. How about endless coverage of them and their crimes?

As the story is told in the Bible, while Moses was away on the mountain, the people crafted a golden calf to worship. When he returned, he found an abominable scene (Exodus 32):

Moses turned, and went down from the mountain, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand; tablets that were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tables.

When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is the noise of war in the camp.”

He said, “It isn’t the voice of those who shout for victory, neither is it the voice of those who cry for being overcome; but the noise of those who sing that I hear.” It happened, as soon as he came near to the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing: and Moses’ anger grew hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mountain. He took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

That same scene is made more salacious in another scripture, the 1956 movie The Ten Commandments. There Moses (played by Charlton Heston) comes upon a wild party:

The cauldrons are gone, and in their place are great spits where men and women are roasting and basting an ox as well as lamb and fowl. From the turning spits, the fires illuminate the scene with a strange and varying play of light.

An air of tense expectancy is upon the crowd now, dressed in the gay colored fabrics of Egypt and Midian. Horn goblets, clay bowls, alabaster containers are ready to be filled from wine skins.

At a signal from Dathan, ten young men with gleaming torsos thrust the Golden Calf high into the air. There is a great shout of triumph from the crowd: “Hallel! Praise to the Golden Calf!”

The light from the coals in the receptacle beneath the stomach of the golden god filters through the grille work, suffusing the idol’s underside with a flickering evil glare.

Drumbeats mingle with the clash of cymbals and the blowing of pipes and horns, and strumming of lutes. As the Calf starts to move in a great circle around the camp, a spontaneous Saturnalia bursts forth. Aaron ­ swinging a golden censer – and Miriam, dancing with a timbrel – move before the golden idol, giving praise. Elisheba circles the Calf, waving a second, smaller censer toward the idol. A dancing girl with incense weaves through the procession. Another girl, dancing before the god, dips an ivory-mounted horsetail into a bowl she is carrying, flicking perfume first upon the god and then upon the people.

A girl riding high upon a man’s shoulders, arches her tawny body to hang a garland of acacias upon a horn of the god. Still other women are borne aloft to deck the idol with their ropes of jewels and silver chains.

In complete abandonment to pleasure, men and women mingle in wild Dionysian dance, whirling around the idol and before it, throwing wine and flowers at the god.

Thinly clad girls dance with clashing timbrels, now and again seized by a man who rips away a scarf, flinging it into the litter of the god where the fire curls it in devouring flame. It is an eruption of pleasure without pattern, without form, the joyous release of centuries of bondage. A dozen or more girls with harps rhythmically swing beside the idol, filling the air with sensuous harmony.

What if the story is told differently? What if Moses, instead of angrily smashing the tablets, took a more understanding and less severe approach? He knew the people were tired and discouraged. He himself was more than tired, having climbed the mountain, encountered God, and trudged back down with the stone tablets. Might he have considered setting the tablets aside for a little while, letting the people blow off some steam, maybe even joining the party himself? Instead of making the children of Israel drink the ground up golden calf, could he, after the fun was over, more calmly explain the massive cosmic significance of his latest adventure and of the message in the tablets?

The practice of playing with (not just playing) classical music is as old as the music itself. This can include adjustments in arrangement, instrumentation and technology. An excellent contemporary example is Max Richter’s Recomposed – Vivaldi (2014).

Just as highly recommended is the recent This Is (Not) Beethoven (2020) from Arash Safaian and Sebastian Knauer:

Once heard you will not forget and will go back for more and again. Those who play with and on the shoulders of giants can shine new sound and light. Enjoy.