Soapbox

What if you held an election and nobody came?

Anyone who knows me knows that voting is basically my jam. Friends and family call me with questions like “Hey do I have to register here at school?” or “What if I want to change my party for this primary?” I want everyone to vote. Even the idiots who vote for things like Walls and ‘putting God back in our schools’.
So when I tell you that I was afraid to do my part running the primary this year, you know it was a big deal.

I went out 2 weeks before and bought 4 big tubs of sanitizing wipes (back when you could still find them in stores). I also got ingredients for hand sanitizer and made up a big batch (it was already too late to find that in stores). I had plans to pu only 1/2 as many ballot markers per table as we usually did, to keep people farther away from each other. The Board of Elections sent out emails assuring us that they were going to provide sanitary supplies to each polling station and they would let us set up our polls the evening before. That would allow us to really wipe the place down and start off as clean as possible. I had an anxious stomach all the day before but I packed my bags, double-checked my supplies and was ready to go do set-up at 6 PM Monday night.

Ted stuck his head in the room where I was sewing masks that afternoon and said that the governor had just said he was going to postpone the primary because he wasn’t convinced that the polls could be kept clean and social distancing maintained.

I was relieved. I really hadn’t been convinced that going ahead with the primary was a good idea, but felt it was my job. First I got a text cancelling early set-up. My courrier delivery of the thumb drive to update my list of who has voted early in my precinct never arrived. That told me the election was indeed off. I kept checking my email and finally got a message: the Governor has officially stopped in-person voting until June, but mail-in ballots can still be requested and sent in. Whew.
I unpacked my election bags, showered and put on my PJ’s and finally admitted to myself how worried I had been about going ahead with the election.

But people on Facebook started saying “No, the Governor tried but a judge ruled that we have to have the election tomorrow”.
No. Surely that’s wrong! Rumor! Specu-
Then an email from the Board: a judge over-ruled the governor. He can’t just postpone an election. Report to your polls at 5:30 AM tomorrow.

No. Are they nuts? We don’t have our data updates! We now have to set up AND SANITIZE the whole area in just an hour! Half my normal election crew is over 65 and two of them had heart issues last year! They have no business being out in public during an epidemic!
I felt a headache start as I reluctantly started re-packing my election supplies.
“Ted, I’m scared” I admitted. “I don’t feel safe”.
“Just don’t go” he said.
“I’m the Location Manager! I have the keys! If I don’t show up, nobody votes in precinct 1129. I have to go. I guess I just hope nobody in the precinct comes out to vote… which feels wrong. But the whole world is wrong right now.”

Finally around 11 PM it was resolved. The director of Public Health declared a health emergency and that gave DeWine the authority needed to postpone the primary. “Stand Down” messages were sent out to poll workers.
I still didn’t sleep well. I stood looking out the window the next morning and thought What about voters who didn’t have their TV’s on and don’t know it’s all been cancelled? What will they think when they show up at the church and the doors are locked and the lights are off?

It seemed to me I had a responsibility to ‘my’ voters, who depend on me to get their votes on record. I typed up a quick notice on my computer explaining what had happened and urging them to request an absentee ballot and vote now instead of waiting for June (because who knows what the world will be like then?) I drove to the church where I taped it to the front door and felt a little better as I drove away. Because voting is still my jam, folks.

It’s like living through an invisible hurricane, or blizzard.

You look out the window and you don’t see any snow. Can’t feel the cold or the wind. But everyone tells you that its there. People are in danger, people are dying- but you can’t see where the danger is. Can’t see the snowdrift right in front of you that you could fall in and freeze. To death.
That maybe you already fell in and have started freezing, but you can’t tell yet. And since you can’t tell- are about to pull someone else into the drift with you, and they might freeze too?
You don’t know how long the snow will last, either. A month? Six? Forever?

And since it’s an invisible blizzard, a lot of people don’t believe that it’s happening. OK sure some people are falling into snow drifts- a LOT of people- but that’s 2000 miles away. 200 miles. 20 miles.
The President said the blizzard is a hoax. There’s snow falling, but democrats are just *pretending* it’s a terrible blizzard to make him look bad. And anyway the blizzard will stop when the weather gets warm. And there will be a thaw any day.

And every meterologist on the planet says No, the blizzard is real, and bad, and getting worse. Schools close. Concerts and festivals are cancelled. Sporting events. Grocery stores and drug stores are sold out of mittens and hats and bottled water.
People can’t go to work now- for how long? How will they pay their mortgage? Feed their kids?
The safest thing is to just stay in the house anyway: hunker down and wait for it to pass- but when will it pass? WILL it pass?

And yet it’s so surreal because YOU CAN’T SEE THE SNOW.
The sun comes up. The birds are yelling at each other in the trees. You take a shower, run the vacuum, walk the dog.
Go to work- and eye everyone you see. (Are they gonna throw you out in the cold?)
Go to the hardware store for lightbulbs. Wash the dinner dishes. Watch TV, still full of ads for cruises and colleges that are closed, shows with people walking around doing things that we’re not supposed to do any more because of thte blizzard that’s outside.
Reach desperately for normalcy in an utterly abnormal world- because what else can you do?
And everything looks fine.
But it is so, so NOT fine.

We knew this storm was coming.
Epidemiologists have said for years that a global pandemic might be a bigger threat to the human race than even our reckless global warming. We couldn’t have prevented this storm.
But we could have protected ourselves.

Obama tried to protect us.
He set up a Global Pandemic response team dedicated to watching for the first signs and co-ordinating with military and scientists to know how best to fight its spread.
And that disgusting, self-obsessed ape in the White House FIRED THEM all.

We also knew that this s torm was coming. Watched it pop up in Chiina, then South Korea and Japan. We watched the countries who delt with it smartly & aggressively have an exponential growth of new cases for a while and then start to crest that curve and bring the number of new cases down, as they identified who has the infection, who they have been in contact with and isolate everyone until their illness has either passed or they have no symptoms and are clear. It’s tough- but it works.

And what did the mighty US do?
Did we re-instate our pandemic team (rather closing the barn door after the horse has run out but better then nothing). Of course not. Trump didn’t want to pay them when they “weren’t doing anything”.

Did we start testing everyone who came into this country by boat or plane from an area that was known to have the contaigen?
Of course not. The World Health Organization quickly developed a test that other nations used, but Someone (and it’ss always safe to assume a horrible, illogical decision from the ope levels of government was directed by Trump) decided that America needed our own test, developed independently by the CDC. Which would have been fine if, while the test was being developed and checked, we havd used the WHO test. But we didn’t: we waited and didn’t test people.
And when the first test the CDC made didn’t work right, we waited AGAIN while they fixed it.
Meanwhile people who had possible exposure to the Coronavirus but no symptoms weren’t tested, and went home to their families, their jobs, their work.

#WhereAreTheTests has been trending on twitter as weeks have gone by. Last Tuesday, almost a week after the science-denying Vice President said that the US had 1.5 million tests shipping out, we tested EIGHT people.
And everyone wants to know “Why would our government put millions of lives at risk over an issue that could be so easily overcome?” And why would they lie and continue to lie about it?
And the obvious answer is:
Because Donald Trump thought a lot of cases of the coronavirus would hurt the stock market and his chances for re-election.

That’s why for a week he kept saying:
There are only 15 people with the virus and in a few days, that number will be close to zero.
It’s basically just like the flu, and the flu actually kills a lot of people so this won’t be any worse.
When the warm weather comes, these things just disappear- they always do.
And my personal favorite,
Pretty soon- like a miracle- it will all go away.

Every one of those statements was obviously, proveably, terrifyingly wrong… but he said them. Scientists, doctors, nurses and journalists kept saying “No! Those are lies!! This will be bad and we need to take steps now to keep it from being horrible!” Virologists and national security specialists and people covering what was happening in Iran and Italy have been running around with their hair on fire screaming the warning. We have to take strong action NOW!”

So Donald Trump tweeted and told his rally attendees that the whole “the virus is really bad!” story was a hoax. A hoax, by the Democrats, and by China, because the Russia investigation didn’t work (Because the Republicans covered for him) and the impeachment  didn’t work (ditto) so now they were blowing this little virus out of proportion just to take Trump down.

Some of his supporters are actually saying that Democrats got together with China and CREATED the virus and turned it loose just to hurt him. Who thinks like that? Donald Trump does- and the lunatics who follow him.

Despite the Sociopath in the White house insisting that nothing was wrong, in 2 weeks we went from “this is a hoax” to a State of National Emergency being declared. but the poison is spreading. And I don’t mean just the virus.
This morning I went to JoAnn’s to get some narrow elastic for some fabric masks I’m making. I was chatting with a super-nice woman I know from back when I worked there. Of course we talked about “this whole thing” and she said “I mean it’s just the flu!”
“No, Deb” I said “It’s not just the flu.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “The flu kills people every year. We’ll be fine.”
I took a deep breath.
“The flu kills about 1 out of a thousand. In parts of Italy the mortality rate is EIGHT out of a hundred!!”
She shook her head at me with a some people are so silly expression and turned away.
“Deb” I said as I headed to the check-out, “In Iran they are digging trenches for all the people they have to bury”.

Colleges across the country, libraries and the entire NBA season doesn’t cancel for “the flu”! It makes no sense for her to believe that. But no matter how many times scientists speak the truth, people who don’t WANT to believe that this is serious have been given an excuse to deny reality by the greed and- dementia?- of the worst president in the history of time.
This week’s cover of the National Enquirer shouts “Coronavirus Cure found!”
I consider that kind of shit to be domestic terrorism. When people believe there’s a pill they can take to make it all go away, they won’t be careful, they won’t self-quarantine, and the virus will spread faster.

Speaking of self-quarantine…
I slept poorly last night and was too anxious to eat much today. When I started feeling just a little ‘off’ this evening a grabbed a thermometer, since they say fever is the 1st sign. And son of a bitch I had a temperature of 100.
I stood there just staring at the thermometer for a minute- then got busy.
They call it “home quarantine” and I had already throught about it. First I got clorox wipes and wiped down every surface in the bathroom, and my hands. Then I grabbed one of the masks I made and started grabbing supplies:
A large sheet (to cover the basement sofa so I can lay on it without contaminating it too badly), my pillow, phone, a book, a large glass of water, some zinc lozenges, hand sanitizer, hand lotion, my computer, toothbrush and toothpaste, my mouth guard, the thermometer– it takes a crap lot of stuff to isolate yourself!
I’ve been taking my temp every hour (and feeling a little silly because I feel fine) and after 3 hours it has gone down, not up. It feels like just a false alarm but I consider it a beta-test for my home quarantine plan for when one of us gets this damn thing- because experts say that the odds are that at least one of us will.

Something nice to end on: today we got a real snowstorm. Not a blizzard, but quiet, gray day made bight by huge, fat flakes falling gently for hours. I love that kind of snow.
I went out and stood in the front yard and started to grin. Putting my arms out, I tipped my face up and let them fall into my mouth. I started hopping and jumping up to meet them. I walked around the house and looked at my butterfly garden.
Despite a global pandemic, despite the snow, the garden is coming back to life.