Tag Archives: health care

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Tuesday Musings (Yeah, I Know…): Another (Brief) Update

I’ve started this post several times, only to flame out after a few lines. The truth is, I have nothing I want to write. I am in New York again, staying with my older daughter, doing what I can to help her through this most difficult time. That includes little things — shopping for her, keeping the apartment clean, cooking, doing small repairs on stuff that’s been broken for too long — and bigger things, like taking her to the hospital for small procedures and scheduling appointments with various doctors (Nancy or Erin or I will be taking her to those as well).

And I am also here to sit and talk with her, to keep her company, to do whatever simple things I can to make her comfortable and allow her to focus on healing and coping.

She has remarkable doctors and remarkable friends. Her support system is wonderful.

And so is ours. Nancy, Erin, and I have been so grateful to the many caring, loving friends and relatives who have done what they can to ease our burden. And I so appreciate the support I feel and see on my social media feeds, in my email inbox, in my snail mail postal box.

I don’t know how much I will be posting in the days and weeks, to come. I want to maintain the blog, but I also know that my focus right now needs to be elsewhere. So, thank you in advance for your understanding. Trust that I am doing as well as I can. I am taking care of myself, even as I also minister to my child. I am seeking out the help I need when I need it.

Wishing you all the best. Hug those you love.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Our Best Former President

Carter-Mondale 1976 Campaign pamphletIn 1976, I was thirteen years old. I couldn’t vote, obviously, but I could work for candidates I liked, passing out pamphlets and such. That’s what I did in my little (at the time) moderately conservative (at the time) hometown in suburban New York. I stood on street corners in the commercial district of our village and I handed out leaflets for the Carter-Mondale ticket. “Leaders For A Change,” they read. A message that resonated after Watergate and the hapless administration of Gerald Ford.

Four years later, as a more rebellious seventeen-year-old, I made phone calls for the insurgent primary campaign of Teddy Kennedy. My father didn’t approve.

I would be the first to admit that Jimmy Carter’s presidency was not a successful one. I won’t go so far as to say he was a bad President, because he did some very good things while in office, including trying to move the country toward energy independence and setting aside huge swaths of wilderness for preservation. He brokered the Camp David Accords with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, ending the state of war between Egypt and Israel. And he created the Department of Education, which, despite right-wing complaints, has done much in the four decades since to improve education in the United States.

But Carter could be prickly with the press and with other politicians. He refused to play the sort of games Washington likes to impose on new Presidents. Unlike Ronald Reagan, who defeated him, and Bill Clinton, who would win back the White House for the Democrats in 1992, Carter could be pedantic, taciturn, moralizing. Rather than being a happy warrior, he was more a grim crusader, deeply convinced of his own righteousness and uncompromising in his principles. In a way, he was too honorable a person, too unwilling to mince words, and also too nuanced in his thinking to be an effective leader. He came to office in the midst of an economic crisis that he was unable to ease, and he could do nothing to prevent the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran, Iran. The subsequent hostage crisis really wasn’t his fault, but it made him appear weak and ineffectual. It’s not surprising that he lost the 1980 election in a landslide, nor is it surprising that he’s remembered as a failed President.

Carter only began to flourish as a national leader after he left office. First, it should be noted that he never disputed his electoral loss or attempted to subvert in any way the transition to the Reagan Administration. A few years ago, that wouldn’t have been noteworthy. Now . . . .

More to the point, freed by his defeat from the constraints of electoral politics, he was able to focus on what he did best: advocating for social justice and casting himself as the moral conscience of an increasingly divided nation. The Carter Center, a non-profit founded after he left office, has worked across the globe to alleviate poverty, advance health care in under-developed economies, and advocate for human rights. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have been steadfast supporters of Habitat for Humanity, working tirelessly to build homes for those in need. And he has helped several of his successors in the White House by serving as a roving diplomat.

While many (but not all) of our ex-Presidents have spent their post-Presidential years playing golf or painting or burnishing their legacies or even trying to redeem themselves and repair their reputations after repeated failures, ignominious electoral defeats, and illegal and immoral assaults on our republic, Carter has devoted himself to the humane causes in which he believes. He is a crusader for social and economic equity. He speaks his mind, calling out those in power who fail to live up to their oaths of office. He carries himself with dignity, humility, and grace. And he has set an example every day, showing us all what it means to be a public servant.

I believe a case can be made that regardless of who the best President in our nation’s history might be, Jimmy Carter has been the best former-President we’ve ever had.

Last week, the Carter Center announced that Carter, now 98 years old, was going into Hospice Care rather than continue to pursue medical treatments for his various ailments. He has lived a full and incredible life, realizing lofty ambitions, traveling around the world, and touching literally millions and millions of lives. In the time he has left, I have no doubt he will continue to speak on behalf of those whose voices don’t reach the ears of the wealthy and powerful.

And when he is gone, when we no longer hear his gentle Georgia drawl speaking truth to the better angels in each of us, he will leave a void in America’s ongoing political and social dialogue.

Wishing you all peace, the comfort of loved ones, and a good week ahead.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: My Covid Booster

Nancy and I received our Covid boosters on Friday. Saturday, we took naps, huddled in blankets (in addition to being without power due to powerful storms, we were both also dealing with low-grade fevers), and (once the power returned) watched a bunch of TV. By Sunday, we were feeling far better. As the week begins, we are back to ourselves, albeit with a twinge of lingering soreness in our arms.

We weren’t the only people at our local CVS receiving the booster, but we were depressingly close. Now, I know there are those who argue we should not be giving boosters to people in developed countries who are already vaccinated, when there are far too many nations in which vaccination rates remain well below 50%. It is crucial, these people say, that we get vaccines to the countries that are lagging behind. They are being devastated by Covid, and since new variants are most likely to develop in places where the virus is thriving, shifting resources to those nations protects all of us from the next Omicron.

All of this is true. But it only works as a strategy in a macro sense. Nations like the United States and our allies in Europe need to make a decision at the federal level to shift strategies and send more vaccine doses to under-served countries. You and me refusing to get the booster as a statement on national policy accomplishes nothing, and allows perishable doses to expire and go to waste. So as long as booster doses remain available, we should take advantage and get the damn shot!!

I have received the Moderna vaccine all three times now. The first shot left my arm sore. The second shot knocked me flat. Fever, headache, exhaustion. I was utterly useless for a full day and took a couple of days to recover entirely. Friday’s dose (the Moderna booster is actually half the volume of each of the first two shots), as I said above, left me tired and with a low-grade fever. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the second dose.

I will admit to being a bit reluctant on Friday. I didn’t want to be sick again, the way I was after vaccination #2. And I understand that lots of people who claim they are not worried about Covid, or who say they place their faith in God rather than vaccines, are actually just scared of getting the shot. They don’t want to be in pain. They don’t want the side effects. They would rather take their chances with the illness than deal with the certainties of the vaccine. (There is much talk about religious exemptions for vaccinations, but in the United States, only two major denominations expressly forbid their congregants to get vaccinated: The Church of Christ, Scientist, and the Dutch Reformed Church. Those are the only ones.)

Yes, the shot will hurt a bit, not just in the moment, but for a day or two or three after. And some people do feel puny for a day or two after getting the vaccine. And, yes, a very few people have even had more serious reactions to the shots. Such dangerous side effects are incredibly rare — less than one tenth of one percent of vaccine recipients reported them — but they do happen.

That the disease itself is far more dangerous, far more likely to cause long-term health problems, and exponentially more likely to prove fatal, goes without saying. Every study by every reputable institution, private and public, has come to that conclusion. Opinions to the contrary are just that: opinions — unsupported, unproven, likely unhinged. I am not going to catalogue the perils of Covid. I haven’t the time and space, and frankly, if you’re reading this now, and you haven’t yet chosen to be vaccinated, nothing I write is going to convince you.

Here’s the thing, though (and I understand some people CAN’T be vaccinated for medical reasons — this is not directed at them): Refusing the vaccine, like refusing to mask, has nothing to do with “freedom” or “liberty.” American freedom, while rooted in individual liberty, has always been an expression of community values, and refusing to take proper precautions to prevent the spread and mutation of Covid is an assault on the public good. Anti-vaxxers and mask-phobics are putting other people at risk. That’s NOT an opinion. That is fact, supported by medical professionals across the ideological spectrum. Vaccines save lives. Masks save lives.

So if you refuse to be vaccinated because you’re scared, or you’ve bought into foolish conspiracy theories, or simply because you can’t be bothered, so be it. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve taken a stand for “liberty.”

If you HAVE been vaccinated, thank you. The closer we get to full vaccination, the more likely we are to prevent, or at least slow, the spread of future variants. And if you wear a mask in public, thank you for that as well. I just got a new set of masks — best I’ve had in the past two years. So I’ll be styling this holiday season…

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Radiants, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Monday Musings: Easing Back In

Dear Friends,

About five weeks ago, I announced on various platforms that I would be withdrawing from social media for a while, and would also be delaying the releases of some upcoming projects. My announcement prompted expressions of sympathy and friendship from so many of you and I am deeply grateful for the love and support I have received since then.

I am, at this point, beginning once more to dip my toes in the social media waters. The family health crisis that prompted my pull-back from various platforms continues and will be on-going for months to come. I ask for your patience, your understanding, and your respect of our privacy as we cope with the issues at hand. Nancy, our daughters, and I are fortunate in so many ways. We love each other, we communicate well, we support one another. We also have at our disposal resources — stable finances, excellent health coverage and health care, mental health support — that too many people in this country — in this world — don’t enjoy. And we have marvelous friends and loving extended family who are bolstering us and helping us in every manner possible. We will get through this.

In the meantime, as I have seen to my own emotional well-being, I have learned a great deal, confirming things I thought I knew about myself, and discovering other things that have surprised and even shocked me. I am 58 years old, and I am still growing and deepening my understanding of my own mind and emotional history.

One discovery that probably surprised me more than it should have is this: A quarter of a century plus into my literary career, the simple act of sitting down each day to write is still both a boon and a salve for my tender emotions. Day after day, I have immersed myself in my current world and narrative and character arcs. And not only has working been good for me, it has been gratifying. I can’t always tell while writing a book if the finished product is going to be any good. Often, I’ll finish my first draft and then start to read through the novel, expecting to be horrified, only to find instead that what I’ve got is decent. And it’s possible that with this book, since I think maybe it’s pretty good, I’ll read it through and find that it totally sucks.

But I don’t think so. I am enjoying it far too much. I am 80,000+ words in at this point, shooting for a finished product of 90-95K. I expect to complete draft number one by the end of this week.

As to my pending releases, I hope to release the first of the Thieftaker novellas, “The Witch’s Storm,” within the next six weeks or so. Two more novellas, “The Cloud Prison,” and “The Adams Gambit” will follow. I hope that RADIANTS, my new supernatural thriller, will be out sometime late this summer or early this fall. And I know that DERELICT, the anthology from Zombies Need Brains that I have co-edited with Joshua Palmatier, will be released late this spring or early in the summer.

In short, while my family and I are weathering a difficult stretch, life — professional and personal — must go on. I am not yet ready to resume my three-blog-posts-a-week social media regimen, nor do I expect to be as active on Facebook and Twitter as usual. And my plans in terms of convention appearances remain uncertain.

But I will be more visible in the weeks and months to come than I have been since mid-March. Again, I am grateful for your support, your patience, and, most of all, your continued friendship.

Be well, be kind to one another, and find joy in the love and companionship of the people who mean the most to you.

David

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Covid-19 and America’s Character Flaw

Many of you know that I have a Ph.D. in U.S. History. My years of studying America’s past have taught me a lot and left me fully aware of the dangers inherent in making broad, sweeping generalizations. And yet…

I believe our nation is failing so completely in combatting Covid-19 at least in part because we, as a society and as a nation, are not capable of doing what we must to succeed. The ethos of American culture, such as it is, revolves around “individualism” and “personal liberty,” values that are fundamentally antithetical to communal sacrifice and collective thinking. The pandemic was bound to hit us hardest, because we are not wired for the sort of social solutions needed to combat it.

Right now, the United States, which accounts for about 4% of the world’s population, has seen approximately one quarter of all reported cases and deaths worldwide. Yes, there are legitimate questions about the accuracy of the figures released by a few other countries, but there can be no doubt that the U.S. is faring far worse against Covid-19 than it should, and far, far, FAR worse than the countries we consider our peers and closest allies. Some of the blame for this falls squarely on the Trump Administration, whose response has been scattershot, ineffective, and deeply irresponsible. Some of the blame falls on local politicians, who have parroted Trump’s denials and lies. Some of the blame can also be tied to the size of the United States, and the diffuse nature of our various levels of government.

But that is also where we start to see the impact of our obsession with “liberty.” Months ago, the Federal Government should have issued an order requiring the use of face masks in all public places. But many state leaders would have screamed bloody murder at such “Federal overreach.” Localities, they would argue, ought to have the final say in what sort of dictates are imposed on their citizens.

Unless those dictates are deemed too onerous by the Liberty Junkies. Brian Kemp (Moron — Georgia) has sued the mayor of Atlanta, Keesha Lance Bottoms, and the Atlanta city council, because they dared to issue a mandatory mask order, in violation of his ban on such orders from all localities in the state. Kemp claims to believe that people ought to wear masks, but he is adamantly opposed to making this mandatory. Similar debates are taking place all across my state of Tennessee. A coalition of doctors here asked our governor, Bill Lee (Spineless — Tennessee), to issue a mask mandate. He refused, instead authorizing county mayors to issue such directives if they so choose. Too many have chosen not to, including one who said explicitly, “We were debating masks when we should be discussing liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility.”

I want to ask these people if their belief in personal responsibility extends to driving 100 mph on their county roads, or if their troopers will still be ticketing for that. To my mind there is little difference between speed limits and mask requirements. Experts tell us that filling the roads with drivers who drive at excessive speeds will lead to property damage, injuries, and deaths. Controlling speeds is a matter of public safety. Experts tell us that the spread of coronavirus will be slowed by people wearing masks that protect themselves and others from the spray of infected liquids that results from human respiration and conversation, not to mention coughing and sneezing. It, too, is a matter of public safety.

Will wearing masks prevent all new infections? Of course not. Nor will speed limit laws prevent all accidents. Is it possible that someone not wearing a mask will manage to avoid getting sick and infecting others? Sure, it’s possible. And it’s possible that some asshole driving 97 on a twisty county road will reach home alive. That doesn’t make it a good idea.

The problem is, the Liberty Junkies have never gotten over being nine years old and shouting “It’s a free country!” every time someone tells them to do something they don’t want to do. Honestly, I don’t understand the vehement reaction of mask-wearing. It’s just not that big a deal. Even if it were more onerous, though, that wouldn’t change the essential facts: Wearing a mask makes each of us less vulnerable to the disease. It makes it less likely that we will spread Covid to someone else. And, by keeping us healthy, it also protects our friends and loved ones from subsequent infection. That, to my mind, should be the end of the discussion.

In New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and many European countries, infection rates spiked and then subsided because people took quickly to masking, to social distancing, and to complete and prolonged economic inactivity. And, actually, those steps briefly worked here, too. For just a moment, we had started to get a handle on this thing. The advice of the experts worked. (And, I’ll add, it also didn’t hurt that all of the other countries I mentioned have universal health care coverage, making it easier for the sick to get the treatment they needed.)

But here, too many people still refused to wear masks and to distance, and attempts to close down the economy were met with impatience and outright resistance. It doesn’t help that many in Congress have been unwilling to extend the sort of financial relief that would make a lengthy economic shutdown less destructive. That’s part of the American obsession with individualism as well. As a nation, we don’t want “socialized” anything. We don’t want to give people “handouts,” even when such benefits are precisely what circumstances demand. Because somehow catering to the public welfare in such a way is equated with “weakness” and moral turpitude.

Lots of factors have contributed to our country’s disastrous response to the pandemic, and I believe the Trump Administration bears much responsibility. But I would argue as well that Trump and his lackeys couldn’t get away with their demonization of experts and their rejection of masks and other simple, proven methods to contain the virus, if our national culture didn’t make such tactics so easy. For too long, we have idolized America’s “rugged individual” and fetishized “personal freedom.” Is it any wonder that so many in this nation find it perfectly acceptable to ignore the common good?

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Covid-19 Anger Redux

Back in mid-April, I wrote a post about the pandemic that drew a bit of attention. In it I expressed a good deal of anger. Anger at claims that the virus was not as bad as some were making it out to be. Anger at people who were calling dire projections of high fatalities a “hoax” because the CDC had lowered some of its worst-case estimates. And anger at government leaders who were calling for an early re-opening of the economy because, really, how bad could the virus be compared to a steep recession.

If you think I was pissed off then, how angry do you think I am now?

Let’s start with those fatality projections. Here is what I wrote in that April post:

“How many of you have heard people claiming that, because the national death toll is now projected to be lower – ‘merely’ 64,000 rather than 100,000-240,000 – the more alarmist projections were a ‘hoax’ and symptomatic of panic and overreaction?”

First of all, how quaint that experts were projecting a death toll of 64,000 in April. We’re beyond twice that number now, and deaths in the U.S. are rising again. We’re over 135,000, heading toward God-knows-what. When I wrote that piece, the U.S. had 682,000 Covid-19 cases (we’re over 3.2 million now) and 23,000 deaths. And we thought things were terrible. It was a crisis. We took solace in that 64,000 death projection, horrible though it was.

As I said at the time, those who were shouting, “Hoax!” because the projections had gone down, ignored the reason those estimates fell: namely that the country had adopted safety measures recommended by health experts. We were washing our hands, starting to wear masks, distancing ourselves from the people around us. And we cut way, way back on our economic and social activity. The popular phrase was “we closed the economy.” Those measures worked. That’s why the death toll seemed to be falling, why the outlook improved so markedly.

Let me pause here to say this: The pain of a recession, particularly one that begins so abruptly and dives so deep, is no trifle. People are hurting. Those who have lost jobs are in danger of losing their homes as well. They may lose access to health care, in the short term at least, and in the long-term as well if the Trump Administration’s attempts to destroy the Affordable Care Act finally succeed. I do not mean to ignore the suffering caused by this economic downturn.

But the fact is, we opened up too soon. Here’s something else I wrote back in April.

“…The President’s talk of opening up the country before his own health experts deem it safe is a recipe for disaster. We are in the first wave of this pandemic. More waves will come. Flattening the curve now does NOT mean we have won. It means we have bought ourselves a bit of time.”

Look, I’m not trying to engage in a gotcha game of “I Told You So.” I’m not a medical expert, and I don’t claim to be. Everything I said in that first post I learned from others, from reading articles and listening to reports from respected news sources. Anybody could have written that post, if only they had been paying attention. Anybody should have been able to see coming what has happened in our country over the last month. Cases are spiking all through the South and the Sunbelt. All those states that looked at New York and New Jersey and said, “Well Covid-19 is their problem,” are learning now what they should have understood then: New York was not the exception, it was their future.

It is too simplistic to blame one party, much less one person. But let’s be honest about this, too: Donald Trump helped set the stage for this by engaging in wishful thinking, by downplaying the danger of the virus when all his medical advisors were telling him how bleak our future might be. And people like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey (the governors of Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona respectively) were all too happy to parrot him.

As a result – and this is the truly tragic and infuriating element in all this, as pointed out recently by Rachel Maddow – the sacrifices we made back in March and April, when we did close the economy, when millions upon millions of people lost their jobs, when social distancing denied so many grieving families the opportunity to mourn properly for lost loved ones, have turned out to be for naught. We sacrificed so much, and because we were careless and impatient and overeager, we are suffering mind-numbing losses anyway.

And still people don’t get it. Every day throughout the country, people whose definition of “liberty” suddenly means “not having to protect themselves and others from infection by wearing a mask” are making matters worse. They have decided that being “free” is more important than being part of a community. They have decided that their right to risk their own health is more important than your right, and my right, not to be placed at risk. Pardon my bluntness, but fuck them. We wear masks to protect ourselves and to protect those around us. We wear them to protect our families and friends who might be at risk if we contract this vicious disease. We wear them because smart people, qualified people, people who are experts in medicine and epidemiology, tell us that doing so is the prudent thing to do.

Those same smart people are now trying to warn us, to warn our President and the political sycophants who run so many states, that reopening schools without taking extraordinary precautions could put our children at grave risk as well. The President is having none of it. Same with too many governors.

Are we willing to see tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of school children infected with Covid-19? We have already seen this sort of scenario play out. We know how this could end. We have gotten so much wrong since this pandemic began. Our leaders have failed us in so many ways. We cannot take this chance.

Please.

I don’t want to write another post like this three months from now. I certainly don’t want to write it about children.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Covid-19 and Hope

Last week, when I wrote my Monday Musings post, I was pretty ticked off at the world. And this week, after watching “protesters” in Michigan, North Carolina, and other states take part in the worst sort of astroturf demonstrations, one might expect that my mood would be even worse.

I mean, think about it. People in NC drove to the state capital to demand that their state be opened up because, they claim, the governor has overreacted to the crisis. Yet, many of these protesters remained sequestered in their trucks wearing face masks! You can’t make this shit up! Then there are the Michiganders who showed up for their protests carrying high-powered rifles and Confederate flags (dude, I live in the South, and the flag has nothing to do with my heritage. It sure as shit has nothing to do with yours…). One guy carried a banner that read “Trump Pence” and that displayed between their names an enormous Swastika. Yes, that ought to help their reelection chances. Hard to believe they haven’t yet turned it into a lawn sign…

Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s most visible flunkies, was on Fox News the other day trying to justify the Trump Administration’s withholding of money from the World Health Organization, and she actually said “This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks…” implying that health officials should have been better prepared. The problem with this “logic” is that we didn’t have Covid-1, Covid-2, Covid-3, etc. The disease is called Covid-19 because it was identified in 2019. But, hey, it’s not as though Kellyanne is a senior aide to the most powerful political leader… Oh, wait…

On Saturday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opened Florida’s beaches. Yep. And Floridians flocked to them, unprotected and, it seems, utterly clueless. This after DeSantis was caught on camera putting on a face mask the wrong way – he put one of the ear loops around his head so that the mask hung sideways over his face with the other ear loop dangling below his chin.

We’re fucking doomed.

Except we’re really not. And that, actually, is the point of today’s post.

My wife is the provost of the university here in our little college town, and as the Chief Operating Officer of the school, she is tasked with coordinating the Covid-19 response. The other day she sent out a message to the university faculty and staff that concluded with a personal note about how much hope and solace she took from the community’s response. And I was amazed at how similar her thoughts were to my own percolating ideas for this very post.

Let’s start with the obvious: many of the reactions we see to the crisis – on all sides – are rooted in fear. I am observing social-distancing and stay-at-home guidelines because I don’t want to get sick. I’ve read enough about the disease to harbor a healthy fear (as it were) of contracting it. In the same way, the protests we’ve seen – however wacky and misinformed and filled with rage and hate – are based in people’s legitimate fears of an economic depression. Fear is, and has always been, a powerful stimulus for political action and governmental response.

But I see more than just fear at work here. I am worried about the economy, too. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. A large swath of the population, though, has made a conscious choice – a supremely rational one, in my view – to sacrifice their short-term economic security for the health of their families, their friends, their communities. We have said, “Yes, I know this is going to be painful, but I want to keep my children safe, my elderly parents safe, my neighbors and friends safe. And I want to be safe, too.”

We have done this despite the utter absence of Presidential leadership, and often despite the absence of leadership at the state level as well. Sure, there are people who thumb their noses at safety, at community. And yes, every day we see new idiocy from our leaders and opinion shapers – Doctor Mehmet Oz telling Sean Hannity that losing 2-3% of our school children would be an acceptable outcome if we reopened schools; Bill O’Reilly telling us that many who have died from the coronavirus were “on their last legs anyway.”

For the most part, though, people throughout the country and the world have put material concerns aside in order to save lives. And that ought to give all of us grounds for hope. If we can do this to stop the spread of Covid-19, might we also be capable of doing it to curb global climate change? Might we be willing to make the far, far smaller economic sacrifices necessary to ease social inequality, combat the historical economic and social impacts of systemic racism, and find solutions to our ongoing health care crisis?

This is a rare moment. A historical inflection point. A tragic moment to be sure. We are being tested daily. Some days we are found wanting. Too often, our elected leaders and media outlets fail us. And yet, I’m hopeful, perhaps naïvely so. People keep saying that even after we emerge from this crisis, our society will never be the same. I believe that. And I believe the differences between the old normal, and what my wife calls “the next normal,” can be ours to choose. Likely we will find ourselves in a more cautious world, maybe a less physically intimate world, at least at a societal level. But I choose to believe that it will also be a world in which we will appreciate more fully the potential of cooperation, communal action, and commitment to something greater than ourselves.

Wishing you all a healthy, wonderful week.