Change, Please
A few things have happened in the past few days, none of which were expected. My router appeared to go out which resulted in a frustrating few hours working with my subscription tech support which assured me that all was fine on their end and that it wasn't my router at all but rather a faulty transmission signal; this meant a follow-up call to my carrier (only during business hours, mind you) whose automated line did several "transmission" checks (which failed) and then relayed me onto a live tech person. A few more checks on their end and it was discovered that a network adapter had gone out and had basically blanked out the neighborhood for a day (one would think a text or phone notification of such would have saved me a lot of frustrating hours). Lesson one, sometimes it's easier to check the simplest solution first, that is, start from the beginning vs. starting at the end. This would seem to be a no-brainer (i.e. if there's a power outage do you check to see if something is wrong with your appliances first?...no) but somehow with this age of rapid communication and streaming and having every sort of online device strewn around your house, there's a tendency to check the tail end first...your router went out, your modem went out, your satellite signal went out. After all, how often does the actual internet provider go out? So that was a lesson...some things that we've come to rely on as too big to fail can indeed falter.
And while our "web" was down for gasp, an entire 24 hours, I also realized how semi-dependent I had become on it, not only in accessing my emails and online banking and updated appointments and on and on, but on such simple things as just catching up with the times. We were one of the few in our entire block (that we knew of, anyway) that had kept a landline despite having our cell phones, and we still had our now-antiquated collection of CDs, DVDs, and hard-copy books! The horrors! But it turned out that with the internet out, the tech company still had to rely on my 4G smart phone (basically, everything at that point ran checks and synched through the smart phone app). No big deal you say, but for me it was an awakening of how we have the tendency to make small things seem monumental. After all, losing access to the Web was far from the disaster of people watching their home being swept away in a flood, or being trapped in a collapsing building, or realizing there's been a massive fire where you lost everything, but all you could think about was how happy you were to just be alive. What would we do if power --actual power to the house or neighborhood or city-- did go out and things such as refrigerators and lights and garage doors didn't work? Could we get by? Let's say that you've planned ahead for such an oocurance and that you have everything --important papers, food, batteries, medicines, water, pet carriers, all those "emergency preparedness" items you're supposed to have gathered up-- ready to go and sitting in a box in the garage or the back bedroom...only that structure has now collapsed from an earthquake. Granted, the possibility of such things happening is rather small but my point was that my tiny one-day disruption of getting on the internet was pretty insignificant overall. Maybe it was this stay-at-home, lock-down, quarantine thing making me think that way and that it was time to get out a bit...so let's look at that.
No matter where you are in the world, or what your physical or financial status, let's say that you've been given the all-clear and that now you can resume your life as normal. No restrictions, gather with as many people as you like, jump on a cruise or head to a concert or go back to church or dine out at a restaurant...whatever. The question is, would you? Here's what National Geographic had to say on May 19th: Only 2 percent of 2,200 Americans polled by National Geographic and Morning Consult said they would jump on a plane right now, and only another 8 percent would consider doing so this summer. The results come from a poll taken this weekend...The poll shows broad no-fly sentiment among Americans of different political persuasions and regions of the country. Nearly 4 in 10 of respondents simply said they didn’t know when they would be comfortable flying again, with nearly a quarter saying not until 2022 (6 percent) or only when a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available (17 percent). Younger Americans are more than twice as likely to say they would plan on traveling this summer or fall compared to older Americans, with 11 percent of younger Americans (18-34) saying they would consider flying in summer 2020 and 11 percent saying they would fly in fall 2020. Comparatively, just 4 percent of older Americans (65 and older) said they would fly in summer and 5 percent said they would fly in fall. Add to all of this the possible nightmare of just being at the airport, said Bloomberg Businessweek: Keeping 400 people—the capacity of many jumbo-jets—two meters from one another “means a queue of close to a kilometer, which fills up the departure hall and out into the car park,” says John Holland-Kaye, CEO of London’s Heathrow airport. Enforcing a two-meter rule could reduce the airport’s capacity to 20% of its usual level, he says. “That’s not something we can keep doing until a vaccine comes along.”
The "picture" for jumping back on a plane gets a bit worse as noted by writer James Fallows in The Atlantic...no pillows or blankets, masks to remain on for the entire flight, little or no service, no booze (what??). As Fallows looked back on the days of little legroom and jammed flights, coupled with every sort of "fee" imaginable (curbside check-in, checked bag, economy-plus seat, etc.), he wrote: I said “now,” but of course I mean then: then, as of my latest visit to an airport, in February. Then, before the lockdowns. Then, before America’s main carriers mothballed about half their fleets. Then, before the number of passengers arriving at airports collapsed from about 2.3 million each day to about 95,000. The trade group Airlines for America declined to let me speak to its head economist. I like to think that it was trying to shield him from having too many depressing discussions in a row. But they sent a fact sheet showing that in April 2020 travel bookings were down by 98 percent from last year’s levels and that the average domestic flight had 12.5 passengers on board. (Later they reported that the average passenger count had fallen to 10—and this is despite some reports of planes operating with full passenger loads.) In early May, Warren Buffett, renowned for his messages of long-term optimism about U.S. stocks during previous financial downturns, announced that Berkshire Hathaway was selling all of its substantial holdings in the four major U.S. airlines: American, Delta, United, and Southwest. A few days earlier, British Airways announced that it was laying off some 12,000 employees, nearly one-third of its entire staff. In the piece he added that pilots are close to not meeting their "required" flying hours to keep their qualifications... and fares may actually go up (as in 9x higher as hinted by Qantas) rather than down.
So jump to somewhere such as Las Vegas...all those casinos that are built around people touching and handling things: video screens, playing cards, betting chips, dice, buffets, close contact with others, smoking, drinking, pick-up lines. How do you enforce social distancing or making sure everything is wiped down and sanitized? As with the airlines or the cruise lines, do you limit the number of people allowed in; and if so would doing so cover your costs of even operating? But forget Las Vegas and just consider that commute back to work which, said National Geographic, might not be the same either: The whole purpose of mass transit is to move heaps of people, and this crowding increases the chances of spreading infectious diseases. In a study of dozens of people during the 2008-2009 influenza season, researchers in the United Kingdom found that those who rode buses or trams were nearly six times as likely as non-riders to seek health care for an acute respiratory illness. And from the opposite side, suppose you're a worker and perhaps fortunate enough to be getting over $2500 each month in unemployment (for 3 months anyway), which for many workers is more than they'd earn AT work (in my state, restaurant servers generally earn just over $2 per hour and are expected to make up the difference in "tips"); would it be worth the risk or effort to return to work for less pay and perhaps an increased chance of catching the virus? It's no different from the flu is what I've heard several people tell me, so what's the big deal? But ask yourself, have you booked a ticket on an international flight or made a reservation at a crowded restaurant, or gone to a movie theater or play? Have you reserved a hotel room or bought tickets for an arena concert or a sporting event? And if not, why not? It's no different than the flu...
The complexity of things is sometimes simple; and it is in that simplicity that we can still marvel and admit to ourselves that no matter what we believe or what our political views, life becomes more complex the more we dive into it. The picture you're looking at is not a mirror image of lungs, or a kaleidoscope of snow crytals; it is a slide of one of the "simplest" of organisms...slime. Said Discover: Individual members of Physarum polycephalum, which in nature clump together by the thousands to form a slime mold, can share information about their environment via veinlike networks...a recent study showed that a single P. polycephalum will actually absorb some of a potentially problematic substance and hang onto it like a souvenir — and use its venous networks to warn other cells to steer clear. Maybe we can learn from them, from slime. Maybe we can learn to relate as both a worker and as a customer, as a believer and as a non-believer, as a listener and as a talker, as a nation and as a world, as an individual and as a people. As the Sam Cooke song said: There have been times that I thought I couldn't last for long, but now I think I'm able to carry on. It's been a long, a long time coming but I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will. The world has already changed and is still changing; whether we decide to make the same decision is up to us...
And while our "web" was down for gasp, an entire 24 hours, I also realized how semi-dependent I had become on it, not only in accessing my emails and online banking and updated appointments and on and on, but on such simple things as just catching up with the times. We were one of the few in our entire block (that we knew of, anyway) that had kept a landline despite having our cell phones, and we still had our now-antiquated collection of CDs, DVDs, and hard-copy books! The horrors! But it turned out that with the internet out, the tech company still had to rely on my 4G smart phone (basically, everything at that point ran checks and synched through the smart phone app). No big deal you say, but for me it was an awakening of how we have the tendency to make small things seem monumental. After all, losing access to the Web was far from the disaster of people watching their home being swept away in a flood, or being trapped in a collapsing building, or realizing there's been a massive fire where you lost everything, but all you could think about was how happy you were to just be alive. What would we do if power --actual power to the house or neighborhood or city-- did go out and things such as refrigerators and lights and garage doors didn't work? Could we get by? Let's say that you've planned ahead for such an oocurance and that you have everything --important papers, food, batteries, medicines, water, pet carriers, all those "emergency preparedness" items you're supposed to have gathered up-- ready to go and sitting in a box in the garage or the back bedroom...only that structure has now collapsed from an earthquake. Granted, the possibility of such things happening is rather small but my point was that my tiny one-day disruption of getting on the internet was pretty insignificant overall. Maybe it was this stay-at-home, lock-down, quarantine thing making me think that way and that it was time to get out a bit...so let's look at that.
No matter where you are in the world, or what your physical or financial status, let's say that you've been given the all-clear and that now you can resume your life as normal. No restrictions, gather with as many people as you like, jump on a cruise or head to a concert or go back to church or dine out at a restaurant...whatever. The question is, would you? Here's what National Geographic had to say on May 19th: Only 2 percent of 2,200 Americans polled by National Geographic and Morning Consult said they would jump on a plane right now, and only another 8 percent would consider doing so this summer. The results come from a poll taken this weekend...The poll shows broad no-fly sentiment among Americans of different political persuasions and regions of the country. Nearly 4 in 10 of respondents simply said they didn’t know when they would be comfortable flying again, with nearly a quarter saying not until 2022 (6 percent) or only when a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available (17 percent). Younger Americans are more than twice as likely to say they would plan on traveling this summer or fall compared to older Americans, with 11 percent of younger Americans (18-34) saying they would consider flying in summer 2020 and 11 percent saying they would fly in fall 2020. Comparatively, just 4 percent of older Americans (65 and older) said they would fly in summer and 5 percent said they would fly in fall. Add to all of this the possible nightmare of just being at the airport, said Bloomberg Businessweek: Keeping 400 people—the capacity of many jumbo-jets—two meters from one another “means a queue of close to a kilometer, which fills up the departure hall and out into the car park,” says John Holland-Kaye, CEO of London’s Heathrow airport. Enforcing a two-meter rule could reduce the airport’s capacity to 20% of its usual level, he says. “That’s not something we can keep doing until a vaccine comes along.”
The "picture" for jumping back on a plane gets a bit worse as noted by writer James Fallows in The Atlantic...no pillows or blankets, masks to remain on for the entire flight, little or no service, no booze (what??). As Fallows looked back on the days of little legroom and jammed flights, coupled with every sort of "fee" imaginable (curbside check-in, checked bag, economy-plus seat, etc.), he wrote: I said “now,” but of course I mean then: then, as of my latest visit to an airport, in February. Then, before the lockdowns. Then, before America’s main carriers mothballed about half their fleets. Then, before the number of passengers arriving at airports collapsed from about 2.3 million each day to about 95,000. The trade group Airlines for America declined to let me speak to its head economist. I like to think that it was trying to shield him from having too many depressing discussions in a row. But they sent a fact sheet showing that in April 2020 travel bookings were down by 98 percent from last year’s levels and that the average domestic flight had 12.5 passengers on board. (Later they reported that the average passenger count had fallen to 10—and this is despite some reports of planes operating with full passenger loads.) In early May, Warren Buffett, renowned for his messages of long-term optimism about U.S. stocks during previous financial downturns, announced that Berkshire Hathaway was selling all of its substantial holdings in the four major U.S. airlines: American, Delta, United, and Southwest. A few days earlier, British Airways announced that it was laying off some 12,000 employees, nearly one-third of its entire staff. In the piece he added that pilots are close to not meeting their "required" flying hours to keep their qualifications... and fares may actually go up (as in 9x higher as hinted by Qantas) rather than down.
So jump to somewhere such as Las Vegas...all those casinos that are built around people touching and handling things: video screens, playing cards, betting chips, dice, buffets, close contact with others, smoking, drinking, pick-up lines. How do you enforce social distancing or making sure everything is wiped down and sanitized? As with the airlines or the cruise lines, do you limit the number of people allowed in; and if so would doing so cover your costs of even operating? But forget Las Vegas and just consider that commute back to work which, said National Geographic, might not be the same either: The whole purpose of mass transit is to move heaps of people, and this crowding increases the chances of spreading infectious diseases. In a study of dozens of people during the 2008-2009 influenza season, researchers in the United Kingdom found that those who rode buses or trams were nearly six times as likely as non-riders to seek health care for an acute respiratory illness. And from the opposite side, suppose you're a worker and perhaps fortunate enough to be getting over $2500 each month in unemployment (for 3 months anyway), which for many workers is more than they'd earn AT work (in my state, restaurant servers generally earn just over $2 per hour and are expected to make up the difference in "tips"); would it be worth the risk or effort to return to work for less pay and perhaps an increased chance of catching the virus? It's no different from the flu is what I've heard several people tell me, so what's the big deal? But ask yourself, have you booked a ticket on an international flight or made a reservation at a crowded restaurant, or gone to a movie theater or play? Have you reserved a hotel room or bought tickets for an arena concert or a sporting event? And if not, why not? It's no different than the flu...
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| Image: David Villa/CNRS Photothèque |
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