Category Archives: disasters

The Future of Water

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A good part of Missouri has gotten an excessive drenching in the past few days.  But we—and perhaps you—have friends to the west who are being baked well-done by record heat and who are watching forests burn and water reservoir levels drop and disappear.

We might think we are glad we don’t have their problems—although our monsoon week is hardly without problems of its own.

For several years, Nancy and I enjoyed going to the Four Corners area for a week each fall to do archaeological work on or near the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park. We first recorded rock art from the days of the Anasazi (a Pueblo word meaning “ancient enemies”—we don’t know what those people who lived in the area until the 1200s called themselves because they left no written language). Although popular telling of their story has it that they just suddenly disappeared 750 years ago or so, archaeologists and anthropologists think they know where their descendants are, and they have developed some theories on why they fled the Four Corners area.

It’s thought they are the ancestors of the present Hopi people. One of the factors—the final straw—leading to their departure from the Four Corners area is believed to have been a 45-year drought that left them without the food and other resources needed to survive.

All of this has been brought to mind by recent reports that Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, has declined to its lowest level ever because of a drought that is now in its 22nd year. The condition is critical for 25-million people including the cities of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.  The lake has hit a record low, down 140 feet since 2000, creating the bathtub ring you can see in recent pictures. One-hundred-forty feet is about the height of the Statue of Liberty from base to torch tip.

Some states already have imposed water rationing and they expect to tighten restrictions as conditions worsen. Agriculture is in dire straits. Adding to the awful conditions is the rise in major fires in forests that haven’t seen protective rain for years.

It’s hard to understand that green and verdant Missouri faces some water shortages of our own. Today.  Right now.  And stewardship of our water will become more critical as our population increases, as agriculture is under increased pressure to produce more and more food in an increasingly populous world, and as our economy grows.

The Department of Natural Resources 2020 update to its Missouri Water Resources Plan warns, “Although Missouri is fortunate to have rich water resources, localized shortages do exist because of the distance from adequate supplies, insufficient infrastructure or storage, water quality constraints, and other limiting factors. In many areas, surface water supplies are subject to seasonal fluctuations; supplies are frequently at their lowest when demand is the highest.”

Farther into the study we are told, “On average, the 6.1 million people and numerous businesses in Missouri consume 3.2 billion gallons of water each day. Of that demand, 78 percent is supplied by groundwater, while the remaining 22 percent is supplied by surface water.”  Three fourths of our water comes from under our feet.

We often heard testimony in legislative committee hearings on the dangers of agricultural runoff or industrial pollution going into our streams and rivers, our surface waters. A major concern, yes.  But that’s only one-fifth of the water we use or think we need to use.

Studies indicate our population will rise to about seven-and-a-half million people by 2060, well within the lifetimes of some who read these entries—them or their children—putting more pressure on water, a finite resource.  The report suggests a number of policies and practices that need to be started now in anticipation of that growth.

We need to do more than read about them. Our generation has to start something that later generations can continue to meet Missouri’s water needs.

The greatest pressure on our water supply is agricultural irrigation—65% of our water withdrawals go to farming. Major water systems (that provide us with water to drink, to bathe in, to do our dishes, and flush our toilets) are another 25%.

The study says the agricultural counties of Butler, Dunklin, New Madrid, Pemiscot, and Stoddard Counties—all in the southeast corner of the state—are projected to have the greatest growth in demand in the next four decades. High demand also is expected as our metropolitan areas become more metropolitan.

DNR says the state “generally has plentiful water sources.”  Now, it does. But the report also says, “many supply-related challenges exist.”

Much of the groundwater originating from bedrock aquifers in northern and west-central Missouri is highly mineralized and unsuitable for most uses. In northwestern Missouri, precipitation is generally the lowest in the state, and the lack of surface water availability during prolonged droughts can result in water shortages. Timing is also important in determining the availability of water, since peak demands often coincide with the driest times of the year and multiyear droughts can lower aquifers and drain reservoirs that typically provide ample supply. Even when available, the quality of the water may not be suitable for all intended uses without treatment.

We already are facing a critical problem in dealing with our water supplies. The DNR report says, “More than half of the state’s community public water systems became active prior to 1960, meaning that without repair or replacement original water pipes, mains, and equipment are nearing or exceeding their average expected lifespan…Many small drinking water utilities have indicated that they lack the funding not only to proactively manage infrastructure needs, but also to meet current water quality standards and adequately address water losses.”

At the other end of the process (to coin a phrase): “Similar to drinking water infrastructure in Missouri, a significant portion of wastewater infrastructure may be approaching the end of its expected life.”

Need an immediate reminder of how precious Missouri’s water supply is and how carefully we must use it and prepare for its future use is no farther away than the greatest of our rivers?

This past April 7, the Missouri River Basin Water Management Division for the Corps of Engineers noted the snowfall in the upper basin had been poor.  “We expect upper basin runoff to be below average,” said Division Chief John Remus. The Corps thinks the snowmelt runoff into upstream reservoirs to be 83% of the annual average this year.

Water is going to become more precious.  You and I might not notice it.  But our grandchildren could.  We aren’t going to turn into the Southwest by the end of the week.  But we have to understand that the way we use water today can’t be the way our next generations will use it.  And we need to prepare for those times.

Unlike the ancient pueblo peoples of the Colorado plateau in the 12th and 13th Centuries, we won’t have anyplace to go when the great drought hits us.

If you want to read the entire 2020 Missouri Water Resources Plan you can find it at:

https://dnr.mo.gov/mowaterplan/docs/2020-mo-water-resources-plan-highlights.pdf

The Pandemic re-defines work

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Most of us probably have pondered what kind of permanent changes will remain in our society when the Coronavirus pandemic is finally considered vanquished.  With variants emerging and some of them appearing to be causing a bump up in our health statistics this month, we might not be learning the answer to that question for a while yet.

Clearly, the idea of “work” has been altered by this pandemic.  What will “work” look like when this finally blows over?   A few days ago, National Public Radio ran a story focusing on how the pandemic has changed, is changing, or will change the workplace.  Audie Cornish, the host on the afternoon news show, “All Things Considered,” interviewed three people, one in particular.  NPR was good enough to provide a transcript of that interview on its webpage. We thought the discussion worthy of passing it along to those who might have missed the broadcast or who don’t listen to National Public Radio.

CORNISH: Why and how to bring employees back into the office – those are the kinds of decisions company leaders are having to make. And they’re thinking about how to give employees flexibility, how the pandemic has impacted innovation and company culture. We spoke to a variety of CEOs – Christina Seelye, CEO and founder of video game publisher Maximum Games in California, was one of them.

CHRISTINA SEELYE: Innovation’s a big one. I think that innovation – I haven’t seen the technology yet that replicates what it’s like to be in a room with people and bounce off of each other.

CORNISH: And Dan Rootenberg, CEO of SPEAR Physical Therapy Company in New York.

DAN ROOTENBERG: I do believe that people learn from each other more. There’s more collaboration. There’s Zoom fatigue. I mean, I’m on so many Zoom meetings. It’s, you know, it’s really exhausting after a while. And so there’s a totally different feeling when you get together.

CORNISH: Those at the C-suite level, they turn to experts at places like McKinsey & Company.

SUSAN LUND: So we’re getting calls from executives and chief human resource officers to say, OK, we’ve now gotten used to everybody remote. But how do we bring people back? When do we bring them back? What protocols do we need?

CORNISH: I spoke with Susan Lund, a partner at McKinsey & Company and leader of the McKinsey Global Institute. They put out a report in 2020 that was updated this year looking at the lasting impact of the pandemic on the workforce.

LUND: If you had told any business leader a year and a half ago that we were going to send the whole workforce home – at least the ones who could work from home – home for more than a year, they would say this is going to be a disaster. And, in fact, it’s worked out quite well.

CORNISH: But brass tacks, were we all more or less productive when it comes to remote work? What did your research find?

LUND: So what we find is that in the short term, people are definitely as productive, that it looks like they’re spending more time at work, in part because they don’t have the commute. They don’t have to go out necessarily to get lunch. They don’t even have the office chit-chat. So on one level, it looks like the number of hours that people are working is actually up. But long term, there are questions about innovation and new products and new ideas are going to be as forthcoming because of the remote work setup.

CORNISH: I want to dig into this data more. But first, who do we mean when we say we? Who’s been able to work from home? What portion of the workforce are we talking about?

LUND: It’s really office-based workers who are able to work from home. Overall, we found that 60% of the U.S. workforce doesn’t have any opportunity to work from home because they’re either working with people directly, like doctors and nurses or hair cutters, or they’re working with specialized machinery in a factory or in a laboratory. So it is a minority of people who even have this option. But overall, so 40% of the U.S. workforce could, in theory, work from home one day a week or more. And about a quarter of people could spend the majority of their time – three to five days a week – working from home.

CORNISH: When we talk about that 40% of people who do computer or office-based work, now a large number of them have had the experience of remote work. With that experience in mind, what are people learning about what a post-pandemic scenario could be for them?

LUND: So when you look at employee surveys, you typically find that the majority of people say, going forward, when we’re vaccinated, when it’s safe to return to the office, they still would like the flexibility to work from home a few days a week. So that’s a hybrid model. But then you do have a segment of people, maybe a quarter, who say I want to be in the office full time. Now, maybe they don’t have a good home working setup. It’s often young people in their 20s who are starting out in their careers. They want the mentorship and the camaraderie. And then you have another small portion who say I would like to work remote 100% of the time and work from anywhere.

CORNISH: There have been CEOs out there quoted here and they’re saying things like, well, we’re going to know who’s really committed to the job.

LUND: Yeah. So there is a lot of issues. So for companies going down this hybrid approach, there are a lot of pitfalls to watch out for. And one is that you end up with a two-tier workforce, that the people – it’s always the same people in the room making the decisions and other people are on Zoom or video conference, and that those on video conference end up being passed over for promotion, not considered for different opportunities because they’re not there. So companies are being thoughtful. The ones who are pursuing some kind of hybrid approach are thinking through these issues. And how do we avoid that to keep a level playing field?

CORNISH: We’ve been talking about this idea of who comes back, whose decision it is, that sort of thing. Legally, what do we know? Can employers force employees to come back? Can employers gently encourage employees to be vaccinated? What have you learned so far?

LUND: Well, it’s a complicated question. So on vaccination, it looks like it’s a bit of a gray area, but it looks like under federal law, yes, companies can require employees to be vaccinated if it impacts the health and safety of their workforce. On coming back to the office, I think it’s a little bit more clear. Companies can require people to work on site – right? – as a part of the employment contract. But what they risk, especially for talented professionals, is that people will go to other companies that do allow more flexibility on some remote work or work from home.

CORNISH: When people look back at this time, will it be considered a reset in some ways when it comes to work, or are we going to be back to where we were in 2019?

LUND: Well, my crystal ball is broken, but I think it will be a reset. I don’t think that we will go back to the same pattern of working. I think that the forced pause for everyone to spend more time at home with family and friends has really caused many people to rethink. I think that this really has been a reset.

Incidentally, Audie admitted that she was conducting this interview from a temporary studio in the attic of her house.

If you’d like to listen to the entire piece, including comments from others, go to:

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004862350/-why-do-we-have-to-go-back-to-the-office-employees-are-divided-about-returning

 

The Constitution and the vaccine: and the danger of selfish people

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Drew Vogel was one of my early reporters at the Missourinet.  He has had a lengthy career as a nursing home administrator in Ohio and since his retirement from a fulltime directorship has held several interim positions.

There’s a special place in my heart for people who work in nursing homes.  And for those who have been working in the industry during this COVID era, well, I’m not sure I can measure the depth of my admiration. Drew has a blog, too, and last week he let off some steam about people who think it is their constitutional right to refuse vaccinations and put others at risk.

Drew has been on the front lines in the fight against disease.  And we all know that THE front lines have been our nursing home.

He doesn’t mince words about vaccinations and the selfish use by some of the Constitution to avoid the responsibility all of us have to each other.  Listen to this good man.

I have just ended an interim (temporary) assignment as administrator at a nursing home Near Dayton, Ohio.  I have done, without bothering to count them up, something like 13 interim assignments the past seven years.

 I joke that interim work is great because you don’t stay around long enough to get fired!

 In reality, I am lucky enough that I don’t need to work a permanent fulltime job.  But I do need to work – especially since my wife passed away last September.  Work is good for my psyche, my emotions – good for my soul. There is a dignity element also – although no one has ever accused me of being very dignified.

 This recent building was one of my best interim assignments.  The staff was great, hard-working, friendly and fun.  I feel like in those 3+ months I made some friends for life.

 The guys were very positive in their approach to long-term care, in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that they had been through some adversity.

 The facility was COVID-free in the early stages of the pandemic last year until around Thanksgiving. Then there was a major outbreak.

 Ultimately, 75-100 total people – staff and residents – contracted the disease.  By the end of the year about 15 residents had died.  No staff died, but some got very sick.

 When I arrived in January two employees were off sick with the coronavirus, but the outbreak was pretty much under control. Temperature checks, questionnaires and masks were required to get in the door.  Only people with a purpose could come in. Vendors dropped their goods outside – food, oxygen, supplies – and the staff dragged them inside.

 When visitation resumed, visitors were first tested, masked and confined to a room that did not require entry into the building proper.

 In January, the first week I was at the facility, I received my first vaccination shot – Pfizer – and in February I got the follow up injection.  I was happy to receive it.

 However, even though it was free and had been proven to work, not everyone took the vaccine. 

 It is voluntary almost everywhere in America. In my facility some staff and some residents – or their families – said NO!

 The month of March went pretty well.  Then in April, over a couple weeks’ time, a housekeeper, a cook and a therapist tested positive and were sent home to quarantine. 

 Yesterday, my last day, a nursing assistant tested positive – with symptoms.

 The COVID-19 protocol was immediately initiated.  A text was sent to all staff to come in immediately to be tested; all residents were swabbed.

 As of when I left yesterday afternoon, two more cases had been discovered – both residents.  There may be more by now.

 Six cases in April and NONE OF THEM HAD BEEN VACCINATED! 

 No cases in April among people who had been vaccinated – people working side-by-side in exactly the same confines as the people who developed COVID-19.

 As the saying goes, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist ……………..

 I’ve always believed our Constitution is the world’s greatest document – at least the greatest created by a government.  It contains enumerable individual rights.  But those rights cease at the point they infringe upon the rights of others – like the right not to die because of another’s misconceptions, fear and/or puffed-up ego.

 In other words, I am an advocate of MANDATORY vaccines.  Don’t give people a choice.

 Think about it, we need a license to drive a car.  We need a license to cut hair, catch fish, or be a nurse.  Nursing home administrators must be licensed, so do stockbrokers, real estate salesmen and ham radio operators.

 The licensing list in unending.  So why not issue a license to people to go out in public only if they have been vaccinated.

 Radical thinking?  Damned right it is. And I’m aware it will likely never happen.

 But dammit death, like ugly and stupidity, is forever.

 Amen, Drew.  Perhaps one or two self-righteous defenders of their right to privacy at the expense of the right to life of others will read your words and recognize the selfishness of their attitudes.

 

 

The First Day

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This is the first day of the week for most of us after the day of rest on Sunday, the seventh day, in the Christian tradition.  This week will have two “first” days.

Nancy and I will get our first Pfizer COVID-19 immunization shots Thursday morning.

I don’t think I’ve written much personally about this pandemic in all these months but as I went back and looked at the first few entries in what I call “The Journal of My Pandemic Year,” starting in March that it’s obvious this has been a tense time because of the uncertainty that has pervaded our lives—what do we dare do about relations with friends and relatives; when can we go without masks (never, when we‘re going to be indoors with others), a daily  unspoken question about whether we might have picked up the virus somewhere and were soon to be sick, the whole business of—in effect—living only with ourselves day in and day out, week in and week out, month by month as we watched the calendar change and saw only chaos in our national leadership on this and other subjects.  And now we’re only days away from becoming immune.

We’re not down to counting hours yet; that won’t come until we near the date for our second shot. But making it to that first shot after all this time, all this uncertainty, all these days with all spontaneity removed from life, all the game nights we missed playing Five Crowns, or Rummikub or Labyrinth, or Quiddler, or something else with friends; all of the fellowship from church and other events gone—-just getting here while 400,000 other Americans didn’t—

I suppose some folks might feel almost guilty that they made it and so many more did not. I don’t think we do.  Asking, “Why me?” is, I think, a waste of time.  Why NOT me?  I don’t think the uncertainty of life has ever been more present, other than for a few minutes at a time, than it has been in these ten months when it has been part of every hour of our day.

And now I have “Pfizer shot 945 Cole Cty Health Dept 3400 Truman Blvd” written in my Day-Timer for next Thursday, February 4th.

All we have to do is just hang on for a few more days.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Thursday morning, 9:45.

And then the other shot on the 25th.

That shot Thursday morning will be part of what truly will be the first day of the rest of our lives.

 

 

 

Us vs. It—part XII What’s next?

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It’s been a while (August) since we had a Us vs It entry but with vaccines starting to go into people’s arms, we have reached a new stage in this siege.

Even as we remain absorbed by the fight against the Coronavirus, we must start thinking of what comes after.

We will be different when we emerge from this plague. We will see in a glaring spotlight the shortcomings in our American system of doing things.  The list of issues, which must be addressed in ways that bridge a chasm of partisanship, will be long and should be inescapable.

Tough and thorough evaluations need to be made at the federal and state levels of the conditions of our readiness in the current situation and our preparations for readiness for the next wave. The evaluations are too important for Congress or for state legislatures. We need the brutal honesty of something like the Kerner Commission of the late 1960s.

Given social unrest that has flared during this time of the plague, it is good to recall the Kerner Commission not only to prove the point of this post but to highlight what it said more than fifty years ago that is tragically too close to life today.

Many, if not most, of those who read these entries might be too young to remember the commission appointed by President Johnson and headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. It was formed after disastrous racial violence in 25 cities that far exceeded anything we saw in Ferguson a few years ago or that we have seen in some cities more recently.  The commission’s final report was brutal. It warned that this country was so divided that it was on the verge of becoming two “radically unequal societies—one black, one white.”

We won’t discuss here how accurate that forecast might still be—because we are talking about a different issue that deserves the same tough examination and, if necessary, the same brutal honesty in its assessment.  There are many who think the Kerner Commission’s report, and its severe final assessment, fell on deaf ears. The assessment of what our state and nation need to do in the face of massive threats to our health and to our economy deserves the same severe approach but certainly not the same outcome.

We might need new laws and new regulations to make us better prepared in the public and the private sector for the next pandemic.  It would be unwise to dismiss such things as once-in-a-century events.  Our world has changed and is changing and it’s clear that nothing seems to be constant anymore. And we do not know if our changing world produces a climate more susceptible to new and deadly viruses.

Even now, we recognize the failure to find ways to keep rural hospitals open and the inadequacy of internet communications in many areas (that provide telehealth services, in particular) can no longer be ignored and tolerated.  We are learning that science cannot be dismissed and that those whose roles involve anticipating the next sweeping illness or the next world outbreak must regain their numbers and their status.  We are learning that our healthcare system always must be prepared, staffed, and equipped for the worst—and must not be in a position of determining who lives or dies based on personal financial standing.

We need to be ready at the state level. But pandemics have a tendency to overcome even the best state preparations and financial capabilities. A national crisis requires national leadership, national empathy, and national cooperation with states. It is unfortunately true that states can’t print money but the federal government can and money is a gigantic factor in fighting pandemics all the way down to the smallest communities.

Our experiences might teach us new things about distance learning and suggest some significant changes in our country’s elementary and secondary (and collegiate) education systems.

The economic paralysis should teach us to look more closely at a trend in jobs that we have noticed but to which we haven’t given enough attention—-the growing tendency to use independent contractors instead of having fulltime employees.  The independent contractors often get no fringe benefits and that can have some long-term impacts on retirements but especially (as in times like this) on healthcare.  The number of people who live on commissions and tips who have neither opportunities to create retirement plans nor the money to buy health insurance will grow as our economy changes and their lives should not be imperiled when our country is next ravaged by a new pandemic.

Likewise, the pandemic-caused work-from-home operations will have taught us things about large offices and the need for them.  The entire business model of large buildings for a single business, or single floors in a large building for one company might change because of what we have learned about working away from a central headquarters. The sweatshop still exists in our country but it is rare because of labor laws, fire safety codes, unions, and minimum wage laws that have curtailed those conditions.  Will the Coronavirus doom cubicle farms tomorrow?  Will is lead to a rise in union activity?

What will all of this mean in terms of society—-social gatherings, organizational memberships, business-employee relationships, civic clubs, churches?

We will be remiss if we do not anticipate tomorrow’s society based on what we are learning from today’s pandemic.

Our world is changing in so many categories—climate, economics, education, health, communications—that we cannot continue to have society as usual.

If it takes new laws and new regulations to do something as simple as making sure our healthcare institutions and services maintain adequate supplies of protective apparel, equipment and facilities for treatment,  let’s have them.

To those who would say such positions represent government overreach, there is a basic response.  Government has a role when the private sector abuses its liberties or fails its responsibilities. There is no lack of discussion in these times that such things have happened.  There also is no lack of discussion about how government, itself, has failed to meet its responsibilities to the people who entrust it with their well-being.

All of these issues and more need to be addressed so we know what will come after the virus has gone away.  That’s why new Kerner-type Commissions are needed at the state and federal levels. We are at a point in our existence where the blunt findings are needed and cannot be put on a shelf.  And we, as people, cannot be afraid to address the issues that will be forcefully put in front of us.

Here is a key point:

These commissions should not include elected officials as members.  Partisan Foxes do not belong in Pandemic Assessment Hen Houses.

We appreciate the work our public officials are trying to do in difficult times. It is time to work on the instant issue without wasting time casting blame.  But it is time also to start thinking of what comes after, and what comes after must be an unblinking hard assessment of what is present and what is needed to deal with the next health or economic or health/economic crises that will visit us. We cannot be afraid to do what is needed.

It might make no difference to our generation if we fail to act.  But other generations will sicken and die if we don’t.

We are all one big county

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(Normally, we try to have some positive thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane on Mondays but some recent comments on the pandemic seem far more important today)

I suspect the people in this house on this quiet street are not the only ones who are scared today. We responsibly wear our masks whenever we leave the house to go anyplace where there are other people—the YMCA, the grocery store, the bookstore downtown, church (we are back to watching services on the First Christian Church webpage now that the weather has cooled off enough we can’t meet in a park pavilion or in our parking lot and services have moved to our gymnasium).  We wash our hands.  We’ve been “nosed” twice.

But every day we look at the Health Department’s COVID dashboard and we see the numbers of new cases and deaths and the daily record hospitalizations.

Last Friday, Dr. Alex Garza, the head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force pleaded for state officials to go beyond asking citizens to be individually responsible. It is time, he said, for a statewide mask mandate and other steps because this virus is pushing our healthcare system to its breaking point—not just in the St. Louis, but everywhere.  “We’re at war. And right here, right now, the virus is winning that war. It will take significant and decisive action through individual acts and determined public policy to get us through,” he said.

The Post-Dispatch posted a video of his remarks with its web story.  We found his thoughts so important that we transcribed them because we are, frankly and honestly, scared about what is and what is likely to be, we hope you will read what else he said:

For months we have talked about a time, a time when we would run out of options, a time when we would run out of space to care for sick patients and our options would be limited when the virus is hitting us so hard that the healthcare system that we have would be unable to address the people’s needs. That terrible time gets closer with each passing minute, each passing hour, and each passing day.

 The number of people with the virus is skyrocketing in our region. The number of people so ill that they have to go to the hospital is nearly three times what we described as a sustainable level. The number of people with COVID in our intensive care units is higher than ever.

 The real peak of this pandemic has yet to come. At the pace we’re on right now we could easily—easily—double the number of COVID patients in our hospitals within about two weeks. At that point we will not have the capacity we need to sufficiently care for our patients, not just COVID patients but all patients.

 Unfortunately, as has been painfully obvious to even the casual observer, we are past the time when individual behavior alone can address this disaster. Healthcare systems across Missouri need Governor Parson and the state to take additional actions to prevent unnecessary illnesses and deaths.

 When it comes to the virus, we are all one big county now.

 Every day COVID patients are crossing county lines to go to hospitals.  The lack of a mask mandate in one county has implications for residents and healthcare professionals in other parts of the state. The spread in cases is blanketing the state and no locale is safe anymore.

 Secondly, let me be really, really clear on this. A statewide mask mandate is needed to save lives across the state. 

 Secondly, we are also asking the state to work with our system’s emergency managers to start planning for what will happen WHEN the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed. 

 Our healthcare heroes have fought valiantly day after day but we have no reserves. We have no backup that we can suddenly muster to come in and save the day. If we stay on the path we’re on, even just two more weeks, we will not have the staff we need to care for patients. It’s now just a numbers game. We are danger-close.

 Finally we are asking for a statewide safer-at-home policy. Such a policy would limit the face-to-face interaction and decrease the spread of infection. This policy would instruct residents to stay home except for specific things such as schools, going to the store, seeking medical care, among other things. This would greatly help slow the spread of the virus by eliminating social gatherings that we know continue to be the avenue for sustaining this great pandemic.

 Some counties have had only a few deaths and a relatively small number of cases. Should those counties be required to do the things Dr. Garza thinks need to be done statewide?  Their experience might argue for local control, not a statewide mandate. But even in those places, if someone becomes seriously ill, where can they go if the rural hospital that served their area is one of the dozen or so that has closed in recent years, or if that small hospital remains but its small staff operates on a thin capacity margin and can’t treat them?

A vaccine is on the horizon. But we are months away from its general availability. The virus is here. Now.  It won’t wait.  And we do not know where it is lurking, despite the individual precautions we are taking.

“We are all one big county now,” Dr. Garza said. We think he’s right.

We’re too scared to think otherwise.

Journalist vs. citizen

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The criticism of Bob Woodward for not making public sooner our president’s remarks indicating he had early knowledge of the dangers of the coronavirus but chose not to tell the public rekindles an old and probably unresolvable question.

Is a reporter a citizen first or a journalist first?  The question probably has been raised most often when a cameraman or a reporter shoots video of a bad event happening without personally intervening to limit or prohibit harm to one or the other of the participants.

The issue has a broader context in the time of cell phone videos that lately have become triggers for more events. At what point does a citizen have a responsibility to put away a cell phone and step in to keep harm from happening to a fellow citizen? It’s not just the reporter who must make a split-second decision. The potential now exists for all of us.

Woodward is being criticized for not revealing the president’s (we think) terrible decision to conceal the dangers of the virus while assuring the public for several weeks that everything was under control and would be fine.  While the president claimed he did not want to cause a panic, anyone with any knowledge of history knows this nation does not panic. It has reflected uncertainty but it relatively quickly has steadied itself and acted. It did not panic after 9-11. It got angry. It picked up pieces. It mourned. It exhibited empathy and sympathy and dedication.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the nation did not panic. It gathered itself, dedicated itself to necessary steps to fight back.

In those two instances, we went to war.

Name your historical catastrophe and you won’t find national panic. We have a tendency to absorb our tragedies, mourn our losses, and take necessary steps to come back. We might hazard the observation that a president who doesn’t understand that lacks a significant understanding of his country.

If the president wouldn’t shoot straight with the people, should Woodward have stepped forward? And when?

Let’s turn to the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank if you will that studies issues within journalism—including ethics.  Al Tompkins is a senior faculty member and someone I highly respect.  He asked whether it was ethical for Woodward to withhold that information: https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/was-it-unethical-bob-woodward-to-withhold-trumps-coronavirus-interviews-for-months/

The institute’s senior media writer, Tom Jones, had his take: https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/more-fallout-from-bob-woodwards-book-on-donald-trump/

We don’t expect you to read all the way through these pieces; we present them to show that journalists face issues such as this every day, just about, and we do not treat them cavalierly.  The stories are seldom as severe as the coronavirus. But the issue of when a reporter has enough to go to press or to put it on the air is something we face a lot.

Rushing a story into print or onto the air without waiting for the context of the story to develop might do no one any good.

We are not sure Woodward should have released that first tape with our president as the president was saying telling the public that everything was under control and the fifteen present cases soon will be down to zero.  The dilemma grows as circumstances change and additional interviews are recorded with additional actions and words—or the lack of them—that make the story more important.  When does the weight of the accumulated information reach a tipping point? And as events advance, what is the best way to handle a changing tipping point?  Reporters sometimes reach a point of asking whether releasing the information will stop the story’s evolution or whether the public is better served by letting the story keep unravelling.  Does the reporter have a responsibility to a public figure to keep that person from digging a deeper hole for himself or herself? Or is it an ethical violation to tell that person to quit shoveling?   This reporter never felt he had any business telling an office-holder he should not be doing troubling acts. But there were plenty of times when it became clear that public awareness of a situation was paramount.

At a certain point, some stories move beyond the ability of the reporter to stop observing and start writing. The evaluation of when that point is reached is purely subjective. When is the time to get off the horse although the horse keeps moving?  Why not wait to see where the horse goes?

Did Bob Woodward have to sit on those tapes as long as he did?  If not, when should he have written the story?  And would writing the story have made any difference in the president’s attitude and actions?  Would publishing the story earlier have saved any lives?  Or would the president have just dismissed the story as more fake news and continued his course?

There also are times when promises are made by a reporter to get a source to divulge information. We don’t know if there was such an arrangement in this case but the reporter-source relationship is essential to the eventual flow of information and promises of anonymity or promises of holding information that is only part of a story must be honored, uncomfortable though it might be for the reporter.

We don’t know about that relationship and speculation about the potential benefits of early release of information is not our long suit. But the issue is a complicated one and it is far easier to analyze the issue after the fact than when the reporter is caught up in the events developing around him or her.

These questions however ignore the central issue and the central issue is not what Bob Woodward learned and did not report.

President Trump knew what Bob Woodward knew before Woodward knew it.  Our president knew about this virus first. He could have reacted differently and many think he should have done so. Maybe Woodward should have reported the information sooner. But the person who could have acted differently than he did because he had the information first, did not.

Which of them bore the primary responsibility for alerting the public to the danger it was going to face?

Bottom line: Actions speak louder than words. If actions had been taken by the president then, words today from Bob Woodward might not have the impact they are having.

In fact, they might not even be a story, let alone a book.

Us vs. It—part IX, keep your distance

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We’re back to this series of us against the virus because the virus is coming back, too. An increasing number of states are seeing terrible eruptions of cases and deaths and some of our numbers are on the rise. Each time Governor Parson has a virus update briefing he closes with urgings that we be responsible, social distance, wash our hands, and so on. He’s leaving it up to us to decide whether to wear masks. Personally, we’re scared enough about this virus that we do wear ours. I have three in my car and one at home for formal occasions—a dignified dark blue that matches my blazer.

We’ve come across a graphic description of how social distancing stay-at-home orders, and other other measures can work when a pandemic moves in. Please look at this graph as the virus begins to return to Missouri.

An organization calling itself Quartz.com, which says it provides global news and insights, has analyzed the big difference in Spanish Flu victims in Philadelphia and in St. Louis in 1918. Reporter Michael Coren writes that Philadelphia held a big parade despite warnings about soldiers carrying the Spanish Influenza virus. Two-hundred thousand people attended. Three days later, every bed in the city’s thirty-one hospitals was filled with a Spanish Flu victim. A week after the parade, the disease had killed 4,500 people. Only then did the local political leaders close the city.

St. Louis, under the aggressive leadership of City Health Director Max Starkloff, closed all of its schools, libraries, courtrooms, playgrounds, and churches within two days of learning of its first cases. The city banned gatherings of more than twenty people. It limited the number of people who could ride streetcars, and store and factory work shifts were staggered. The National Academy of Sciences reported in 20017 that per capita deaths in St. Louis were less than half the death rate of Philadelphia, thanks to Starkloff’s quick actions and the population’s response to his leadership.

The operative phrase is “death rate,” because Philadelphia was the nation’s third-largest city with a population of about 1.8-million then. St. Louis was the nation’s FOURTH-largest city at almost 700,000.

The graph that accompanies Coren’s article makes the point well.

We had a statewide lockdown in Missouri. Governor Parson began to lift it in early May and hopes Missourians have the good sense at a time when the virus is finding renewed energy to take steps that will avoid a rollback of the reopening. If we want to keep the jobs we have just recovered, and recover more; if we want to return to schools safely in a few weeks; if we want to keep being with friends again, we must not underestimate the capriciousness of this virus that we now know can attack and kill anyone of any age or condition. Hospitalizations are on the rise in Missouri. Seriously. Deaths seem to have moderated but we’ll look at the numbers in the next week to watch for indications of what our July 4th weekend behavior meant and whether the increased case numbers accelerate our death rate.

This stuff does not play games.

Our study of the 1918 pandemic earlier this year indicated viruses such as the one in 1918 and the one now seemingly can explode, and when they do, it’s awfully late to decide people need to dig in at home or think about masking-up. We cannot be blind to what is happening in other states, including states such as Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota. We can hope we somehow escape a second surge of the first wave, but reality better be sobering to even the most hopeful.

Nancy and I try to go outside and walk a mile or two every sunny day, breathing in fresh air (hoping that walking fast enough to speed up the heart and the lungs will make them stronger in case we, unfortunately, become positive in ways beyond thinking; Nancy and I got “nosed” last week and we were negative. But this is a new week.). We miss our social circles of friends from various activities but we don’t want to give them anything nor do we want them to give us anything but continued friendship.

There are, of course, those who will say wearing a mask is a blow against their freedom. We submit to them, and to everybody else, the story often told by the Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee in the 1880s, John B. Finch, who would say, “This arm is my arm….it’s not yours. Up here I have a right to strike out with it as I please. I go over there with these gentlemen and swing my arm and exercise the natural right which you have granted; I hit one man on the nose, another under the ear, and as I go down the stairs on my head, I cry out:

‘Is this not a free country?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have I not a right to swing my arm?’

‘Yes, but your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.’

“Here,” Finch would say, “civil government comes in to prevent bloodshed, adjust rights, and settle disputes.”

Our civil government in Missouri prefers each of us understands our obligation to the rest of us, whether it is swinging our arms, or spreading a virus. But we are confident our governor WILL tighten things down again if we fail in our personal actions to be as responsible as he wants us to be.

We hope all of you will look at the chart above and understand how important it is for us to endure the slight inconveniences necessary to protect one another. If we don’t get to see our friends for several more months, the minutes we spend behind a mask and the hours and days we spend binge-watching streaming-channel programs will improve the chances they will be there to be seen.

And we will be there to see them.

Crisis Buffet

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We are trying to think of a time when a Missouri governor has had as many major issues to deal with at one time as Governor Parson has on his plate now.

We can’t think of one.

In addition to the normal burden of duties governors have, there has been added to this one’s plate the state’s response to a worldwide pandemic, the related collapse of the state’s economy and its hundreds of large and small widespread ripples to which state government is either a party or to which it must respond, civil unrest that must be dealt with on a daily—or nightly—basis at a time when the responsibility of government to restore or maintain order is under intense scrutiny, and questions about the role of government in correcting the social and political ills that are behind the disorder. So far the governor has not had to deal with major natural disasters—a devastating tornado or a historic flood for examples.

Plus—it’s a campaign year. Additionally, the instability of national leadership, legislative action to overturn the will of the people on the so-called “Clean Missouri” initiate of 2016, and the August ballot issue to expand Medicaid and the state funding responsibilities that will go with it constitute a salad bar of issues to go with the buffet of crises facing a governor who has been given an average-sized plate.

Governor Henry Caulfield in late 1931 once ordered an immediate 26% cut in the state budget to deal with the depression’s major impact on state finances when retail sales were down by half and unemployment was rising toward a 1932 level of thirty-eight percent. His successor, Guy B. Park in 1933 faced a state treasury holding only $15,000 with a $300,000 payroll to meet. Central Missouri Trust Company loaned the state enough money to pay its bills and to match available federal funds for depression relief until a special legislative session could enact new revenue measures—a gross receipts tax that was later replaced with the state’s first sales tax.

A plethora of problems faced Republican Governor Forrest Donnell in 1941, the first being the refusal of the Democrat-dominated legislature to certify his election at the start of the year and, as the year wound down, putting Missouri on a war footing.

Governor Warren Hearnes faced civil unrest during the Civil Rights era and in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King, calling out the National Guard at times to maintain order.

Other governors have dealt with killer heat waves or 500-year floods. But the Parson administration will be remembered for 2020, a year in which crisis after crisis came to Missouri.

We have watched his almost-daily briefings and have watched as he and administration members and private organizations have scrambled and worked to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its myriad effects. The civil unrest in the streets will remain as extreme civil discomfort long after the streets are clear and a record is yet to be written on whether Missouri—and the nation—at last really will do something about that discomfort after decades of talk but insufficient progress being made to limit chances for the streets to blaze again.

The economy will come back although it might take years. Missouri and the country had finally put the 2008 recession far back in its rear view mirror when all of this hit but that experience should remind us that a quick fix to today’s economic ills can best be hoped for but not counted on.

A couple of times we have seen Governor Parson show some irritation with a reporter or a published story during his briefing, a circumstance that might best have been handled with a phone call rather than a public criticism. But we’re willing to cut him a little slack, given the pressures he feels, the burden he carries, and the daily stress of a job that has become far more than any governor we know about. The passage of time will evaluate whether his leadership in this unprecedented time is, or was, effective and long-lasting.

Missouri has seldom needed as steady a hand on the tiller as we need one now. Missourians viewing today’s challenges and responses through their personal partisan lenses might differ on how this governor is doing in the moment. But he is Theodore Roosevelt’s man in the arena.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Who among us would want to be carrying the burden of office that this governor is carrying? Who among us would want to be in the arena he is in?

Frankly, we think he is fighting the good fight. And we look forward to the day—as he undoubtedly does—when we can again live off a menu rather than deal with a crisis buffet.

Dr. Crane on Crisis

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(How many crises can we have at once? It seems as if the Four Horsemen are galloping through our land—Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. The economy has driven thousands to our food banks. A pandemic continues to spread in our world. There is disorder, death, and destruction in our streets. The headlines of yesterday’s crisis are pushed aside by the one of today. Dr. Frank Crane wrote of how each of us might deal with crisis in the January, 1920 issue of Hearst’s: A Magazine with a Mission. In a time of crisis, he said, it is Principles that will be to us—-)

AS ANCHOR TO THE SHIP

It is not what you can do ordinarily, but what you can do in a crisis, that counts. The crisis is the swift fire that tries men, as gold is tried, revealing the fine metal and the dross. You never know what is in a soul until you see it pass through a supreme moment.

That unmasks the hero, uncovers the god. He may have seemed a tramp, a shiftless loafer, a ne’er-do-well, but when the factory takes fire and all are paralyzed with fear, it is he that plunges into the burning building and rescues the boy at the cost of his own life.

She may have been a most drab and commonplace woman, ignorant and low, but when her hour strikes she moves towards it with the majesty of a queen, and cares for those stricken with the pest in fine carelessness for her own life.

The question is, what will you do in a pinch? Will you measure up? Or will you muff?

The fierce rays of responsibility all focused into one white hot moment have a curious effect on souls. One person will be melted to panic. Another will be steeled to unusual strength.

The merciless searchlight of danger moves over the city, lighting upon this one and that.

How will you act when it rests upon you?

What reserves of power have you? What hidden store of resources? Your final efficiency will depend upon this.

Does danger, responsibility, the sense of the fatefulness of the moment, key you up, cheer your brain to think quickly and accurately, and steady your hand to its highest skill?

All your life you are preparing for the crisis. When it comes you will see your naked soul as it is—clean and strong, or cringing and deformed. It is your Day of Judgment.

When it comes, a lot of things will not matter: your money, for one thing, and your station in life, for another. All that will matter will be, whether you are a man or a mouse.

In the crisis you suddenly become aware of the vital importance of principles. For it is these, the great, deep, subconscious convictions, the sleepers under the house of life, that decide whether you are to stand the storm or be swept away.

Your opinions may be upset, your power to think may be unloosed; but if your principles hold, you shall not fall.

Principles are to the soul what the great tap-root is to the tree, what the anchor and the cable arc to the ship, what the gold reserve is to the bank. Have you any?

Are there some things you believe in and will risk your life upon, things that lie too firmly imbedded in you for argument, too fundamental even to be taken up and examined?

Policy and cleverness, alertness and shiftiness arc very useful in everyday weather, but the man that has these only, and no fixed principles, “shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house.

“And it fell! And great was the fall thereof.”