The war on coronavirus

The last time events led to sweeping changes in our culture was nearly 20 years ago when terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

We’re still involved in one war, and fought another, and have myriad “actions” taking place in the name of the War on Terror. Our politics seem to have more fractious since that time, a small percentage of the population has borne the lion share of the fighting and dying, and if nothing else has as obviously changed for the bulk of the population, our traveling culture has been put through the ringer of security theater. Our country sits in the world differently now.

The death toll of the Covid-19 as I write this is nearly 15,000, worldwide nearly 90,000 (source: Wikipedia). The number for the United States is a greater than those who died in 9/11 and subsequent combat deaths in the wars that follow.

Unlike the war on terror, a greater part of the American population is involved in this. Our duty is to sit tight and do nothing. The scenes here are not ash fall on streets, fierce battles in far away streets, but empty streets and overwhelmed hospitals. A holding action that might seem silly, if one hasn’t paid attention to what the virus has done when it has been unfettered.

Some right wing pundits think even now that it’s still silly, an affront to freedom. They think that we should let the virus run free and let people sacrifice themselves for the larger economy — not weighing at all what massive sweeping death might do to the economy anyway, how that would batter the health care system.

I sit here comfortably in my living room, listening to the birds chirping, and thinking about these numbers (every day as I’ve edited this, growing yet again), and how to grasp what is happening, to get beyond just a low level dread of what is still yet come.