Day 36: The Horror Comes Home

	Cases	Deaths
Global	2,658, 387	186,434
National	855,869	48,061
Michigan	33,966	2,813

As of April 23, 12:26 pm

	Cases	Deaths
Global	2,707,356	190,743
National	889,568	50,177
Michigan	35,291	2,917

As of  April 23, 11:07pm….

In Detroit, there are now 8332 cases and 786 deaths

Last night, my husband lay crying and shuddering in bed.  He spent too many hours reading pandemic stories.

Today, our award winning and trusted journalist broke down crying while he was broadcasting, as he remembered the Covid-19 death on a longtime listener.

Two days ago, I ranted in my journal:

I cried today reading the New York Times.  It was all too much. I had been reading stories about people who keep working because they can’t stop-even if endangers their life and the lives of their children.

I cry because the list of the dead and hospitalized read during on online Mass is long, but even so, incomplete.  Name after name is typed into the chat scroll at the same time.

I cry because the Free Press has page after page of obituaries, and these are almost exclusively European-American and I know that 75% of the people dying in Detroit are African-American.

I cry when I read about a son grieving the loss of his step-father and grandfather, and his worries about his hospitalized mother and sick baby brother.  He tried and failed three times-to get his stepfather hospitalized, but in the end, he died in his recliner at home.

I am furious that my bank (Comerica) never even got their Payroll Protection Program started before the funds ran out.  Big corporate hogs like Ruth’s Chris Steak House got $20 million, but the little Coney Island diner down the street got nothing (Facing a backlash and a Change.org petition with 250,000 signatures, the chain decided to return their loans. (https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/facing-furor-ruth-s-chris-high-end-steak-chain-returns-n1190606

I am angry and upset and fearful because only some people get protected.  And if you don’t, too bad.  So now we watch beautiful, loving, giving, smart, ethical, courageous, generous people being sacrificed to the gods of money and self-interest.

I am angry and sad and grieving.  I don’t know what to do with these emotions.

We dream of running away.  We would only have to travel 1.5 miles to be someplace more humane, more fair, more just.  In Canada,  6 million people have already begun receiving their $2000 month stimulus check, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/economic-response-plan.html#individuals

In the US, millions struggle to apply for their much smaller unemployment check. https://www.brookings.edu/research/unemployment-insurance-is-failing-workers-during-covid-19-heres-how-to-strengthen-it/

We are stuck with incompetence and corruption making an already unfair system even worse. 

As David Frum puts it: “In pandemic as in prosperity, the Trump way is to punish opponents, reward friends; accuse victims, protect culprits; demand credit, refuse accountability; protect preferred classes and groups of Americans—and sacrifice the rest.”    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/trump-trading-lives-poor-economic-growth/610264/

George Packer offers an even harsher analysis in “We are Living in a Failed State.”

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/

So here we are, hoping that the upturn at the far right of the following chart is an upward blip on a downward trend.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/04/16/detroit-covid-19-data-tracking-cases-deaths/

That’s all we have: a shred of hope.  

Is that enough to keep our friends A, B, C, and D healthy and whole? (see my previous post)  A now has the virus, but is not very ill.  B is very ill, but received a negative result from his COVID-19 test.  C has been released from the hospital and moved to an unknown location.  D is holding on.   Is it enough to keep safe the sister of friend who is in a nursing home where 75% of the residents have the virus?   

It’s not enough.  

Hope is not enough when the horror is all too much.