yoyo. in the hospital til 5, but should be back home by 6pm EDT for an update.
couple of things i would like to remind people. first, this is a very contagious disease that is continuing to spread. now is not the time for victory laps, nor to emerge even if you are tired of this routine. i know you are. so is everybody. our hands are raw, our faces too. we hold steady until new cases become intermittent, which can happen if everyone remains committed and careful. the vibe of “oh, i’ll just go hang out with friends because its just me, and if everyone else is loosening up, then….”. it’s whack. until another strategy emerges that is as safe for your loved ones, vulnerable family and friends, this is what we stick to. the virus needs larger circles to spread, so we keep ours tight. sorry.
second, my greatest fear is not this virus, neither getting, nor succumbing to it, though it would be sooner than I would like. my greatest fear is that after we figure out our winning strategy, we go to back to the “business as usual” that allowed this thing to emerge in the first place. the homeless we housed get moved to the street when higher paying customers bid for their bed. we coop animals in cages, smaller and smaller forests, eating them as we go because we like the taste even if it hurts our body, and they live in such constant stress that viruses pass between them and then to us. the masks we started to make in canada, that so many of you offered to send me and still do, get ignored, and instead of growing our capacity to produce our own, get them shipped across oceans again, the sound of the ships making whales so deaf and frantic, they continue to beach themselves while smoke pours into the sky. instead of learning how to create/mend/reuse the things we have, we jump back on amazon because its easier, and our dollars flow to people who already have so much they couldn’t spend it in a hundred lifetimes. lebron james makes 100 more million playing a game while the long term care worker takes 3 buses to be able to afford traveling to the nursing home to take of your mom. people take planes for an afternoon meeting, and the myth that a growing economy, despite its destruction, is a sign of healthy one, rather than the malignancy it represents, continues as dogma.
these things are viruses too. covid didn’t come from nowhere, and it won’t go anywhere until we work on the conditions that led to it, and support the strategies that mitigate it. forever. caring for the vulnerable, forever, supporting health for all people, forever, refusing to sicken the planet in order to temporarily soothe ourselves, forever. peace, forever. sounds like a tall order, i know, but we’ve never been collectively closer to change than we are now, so nows the time to create a world we most want to see on the other side of this.
how? i don’t know. i’m no doctor. oh wait. i am. so i’ll stick to that, and let you figure out what you’ve learned from this time in isolation about what you need, what you don’t, and how to carry it into the months and lifetime that will follow this time. i must go back to work. see you soon.
pics: 1) india from above (me!)2) mitosis of human endothelial cells(https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2019-photomicrography-competition/bpae-cells-in-telophase-stage-of-mitosis