So much is going on...

There are so many things going on right now that it’s hard to keep them straight.

The world is going to hell, the economy is crashing. Bodies are piling up in New York City, and the death toll across the nation is over 60,000. Worldwide, it passed 220,000.

Yet, there are signs the worst of it is over, and warnings that the virus will be coming back in the fall.

Our government is going on a spending spree that has made some millionaires a lot richer, saved an airline industry that people may no longer need, and we all wonder what the next Congress will do about the rest of the financial mess.

Lots of us think the President is an idiot. Yet he still has strong support from a lot of people - maybe a third of the country. And, they watch the news they like (just like we do) and they think we are the idiots.

So, I am going to tell you how this all came about. How we got to where we are, and how to get out of it.

Who am I to have all the answers? Well, I am a journalist. Or, I was one until I retired a few years ago.

Interesting question, though. Retired doctors are still called doctor. Retired judges are still called judge. Convicts released from prison are still viewed as criminals. So, can you someday stop being a former reporter, or are you always considered a journalist?

Or, as President Trump might call me, an unemployed dispenser of fake news.

But, I digress.

What is happening to nearly everyone - liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican alike - is that we have lost our sense of perspective, and are violating an important rule of logic.

What rule? Let me tell you. In short, we have fallen victim to false dichotomies. Many false dichotomies.

Huh?

Let me explain. But, first, a definition. And thank you, Google, for providing one. “A dichotomy is a set of two mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive alternatives.”

Huh, again.

It means that people have the remarkable ability to hold two ideas in their head at the same time, even when those ideas contradict each other. And both the ideas are extreme. Want an example? - I think the government has too much power, and they should leave me alone. Don’t you dare cut my Social Security.

Or how about these. You need a good education to get ahead in life. It doesn’t matter what you know. It’s who you know.

Get the point?

Politicians like dichotomies. They always put themselves on the side of right, and their opponents on the side of wrong. You have to open the economy, or people will lose their homes. You have to keep the country shut down, or the virus will kill thousands more.

Just pick a side. It doesn’t matter which one. Sadly, both those things are true. And, you can’t have one without the other. The more you relax health standards, the more people will be able to go to work, and the more people will get sick. It’s sad but true.

Now, some more cold hard truths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread across the world. It got here from China, from Europe, from international tourists and from business travelers, from college students and from our own vacationers.

For a lot of people, the symptoms are mild or at least easy to manage, things like a mild fever. Because they have never been tested, we don’t know this for sure. And it is because so many people have only mild symptoms, it has spread massively.

The consequences for the unlucky people who do not have mild cases are really bad. We know of 220,000 cases in the U.S. so far - the numbers are updated daily - and about 62,000 deaths.

But, again, we haven’t tested everyone who died, and we certainly haven’t tested the families and friends of the victims who sought out medical care.

Even if we had enough tests to check out everyone - they’re talking about a million tests for a nation of 330 million - we would have to check some people every day, just to make sure they haven’t caught the disease before they go to work in a hospital.

We know closing down much of modern life, keeping people six feet away from anyone else, wearing a mask and washing our hands a lot has resulted in slowing down the rate of infection.

We also know it has been expensive. Hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to businesses, workers and seemingly any firm or group that has good lobbyists, lawyers and accountants.

Now, there is a great demand building up to open up the country again, to get business moving, to get back to normal. And, we still don’t have nearly enough tests to check out what happens when we do it.

What we do have are hospital beds and respirators, and undertakers.

So, what to do? Should people go through their life savings, then lose their home because they are out of work? Is that the price we pay for keeping our nation closed down, or should we do all we can - a very expensive alternative - to slow down the spread of the disease. Let’s open up as fast as we can. Let’s do it in states or counties where there hasn’t been an outbreak of the disease. That way, people will die. But, a lot of them will die somewhere else. Is that the price we are willing to pay?

Well, guess what. You have to do both.  Our nation will do it. Every nation will do it. And we will all pay the price.

And, if you use a false dichotomies - like President Trump and a lot of his supporters - you will be paying twice as much, and get a lot less for it. Sadly, some people in the media have been doing the same thing. They should know better.

What do I mean? Well, when someone in public office says we have to keep the economic and social shut-down going, they reflexively ask “what about the people who need to work?”

 When those office holders talk about bringing people back to work, some reporters automatically ask “what about public health?”

Do it once, and maybe you have a point. Do it every interview, and it gets old really quickly.

Now, time for some hope. But, first, some unpleasant facts.

There currently is no cure for coronavirus. There is currently no mass testing for it. And, it is very efficient in spreading. The best guess from scientists is that we will have to live with the threat for another year or longer.

Still, there are things we can do, and things we will do.  We have already started to do better, and things are getting better, although frustratingly slowly.

So, why am I hopeful?

Well, this disease has pointed out some real flaws in our economy and the way we do things. It will no longer be a virtue to squeeze every last cent of profit from a company for fear it will be bought up by a hedge fund and ignore any long-range planning.

We are already starting to ask fundamental questions like “why are we supporting all those farmers and none of those restaurant workers?”

People who have been living on the edges - you know, the ones who live paycheck to paycheck - are starting to realize that isn’t good enough any more. And, they will have long memories, and vote against any politician who refuses to help them get things like health insurance and a living wage. Not just the one politician, mind you, but their whole party. Over and over again.

We are also getting a good look at ourselves. Are we the kind of person who hoards 30 six-packs of toilet paper when there are long lines of people waiting to buy just one?

On the other hand, we are beginning to understand all those relatives we made fun of for so many years because they kept beans and pasta and cans of soup in their pantry, just in case.

And, I suspect that the people who listen to cable and think this is all a hoax may be getting a little smarter. It’s fine to yell you want your job back and to open up your state. You can even be from a state in the middle of the country and think coronavirus is just a disease of the east and west coasts.

But, suddenly, you have no baseball and no basketball. At least none that you will be able to see in person. And if you make things or sell things or do anything else for a living, you are probably coming to realize that most of your customers are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Those farm products have to be sent to cities where a lot of people have lost their jobs, and opening up your state won’t change that. Or, hey, maybe you work in the tourist industry and you need big crowds in the summer to get through the year.

Guess where those planeloads of tourists will be coming from. Not many people from Iowa regularly go on vacation to North Dakota.

A Pop Quiz for You.

Here’s a pop quiz for you. Who is Alex Azar.

Need a hint? A few weeks ago, he was arguably the most important man in the country. Rich, successful. Respected by his peers.

In private business, he ran one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Then, he held one of the most important jobs in the federal government. He was in the President’s Cabinet. And lately, he seemed to have vanished.

So, who is he?

Well, if the biggest threat to our nation is Coronavirus, and we have to organize a way to deal with it, it would probably be good to create a high level cabinet post dedicated to protecting us from pandemics, and to work to improve medical care for everyone across the nation.

We could call the man to head such a department our Secretary of Health. Oh, wait, we already have one. That’s who Alex Azar is.

So what’s he been doing lately? Well, his department’s own web site tells us. He’s been “facilitating patient-centered healthcare markets, protecting life and lives, and promoting independence.” That would be independence from things like mandated federal health insurance.

A key part of his agenda, the website said, “has been protecting the nation against infectious disease threats such as Ebola, influenza, and measles, ensuring the United States is prepared for manmade and naturally occurring disasters and threats, and leading global efforts to protect public health.”

So, how’s he doing?

Well, it may be hard to feel sympathy for a Yale-trained lawyer who made millions of dollars running Eli Lilly and then went on to regulate drug costs. But, according to news reports, he is suspected of leaking information to the media that was critical of the way the president was handling the coronavirus pandemic,

We do know that the White House gave his a new public spokesman, making Michael Caputo  assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for public affairs.

Caputo’s qualifications? Well, the President likes him, and he recently wrote a book “The Ukraine Hoax,” revealing the conspiracy that was behind the President’s impeachment.

Caputo summed up his appointment this way:  “I am honored to serve the President to the best of my abilities in this time of crisis and, in so doing, the American people.”

Feel better? Still wonder why you haven’t heard anything from Alex Azar lately? Not since he tried to ban flavored e-cigarettes.

How Did We Get Here? (A home school lesson for 5th graders and their parents)

Hey, kids, it’s time for a home school lesson, and today we are going to talk about economics.

Sound boring? Well, not really. It’s your allowance. How much you get each week depends on how much your parents earn, and how they earn money is determined by economics.

(OK parents, we have some exceptions, but that’s a matter for another lesson.)

How else does economics effect you and your older sister, who probably gets a bigger allowance and gets to go out on dates?

Well, mom and dad probably work, and the money they make determines the kind of house you live in, where you go on vacation every summer, and whether you will go to camp.

So, economics may be boring, but it’s really important. Right?

(Parents should have a discussion at this point with their children about how much they earn, how much time they spend with the family, and about what their children want to buy. Don’t dwell too much on charity, but don’t neglect it either.)

Now, we get to the hard part. How did economics get us to this horrid situation that the news keeps calling a pandemic. It’s why you aren’t going to school right now, for one thing. It’s why you may not have milk for your cereal for another.

To understand how economics got us into this bad place, you have to understand two things - the Japanese economy and hedge funds.

And, you have to go back a long, long time. To the 1980’s for the Japanese economy and all the way back to 1948  - before your parents were born - for the hedge funds.

CAUTION - I am in no way charging that Coronavirus is an Asian plot against America. We created the problem here all by ourselves. BACK TO The BLOG.

Forget hedge funds for a while. No one really understands them anyway. So, off to Japan in the 80’s, when Madonna and Paul Simon and Billy Joel were popular. See, not much different than today.

What was different is that in the 1980’s, Japan’s economy was much smaller and weaker than America’s, and the island nation - whose needs for raw material started World War II - had one really good business. They made cars that were in demand all over the world.

Japanese cars even sold well in America. In fact, states bid against each other to lure Japanese manufacturers to set up assembly plants here. And, those plants were remarkably profitable.

(Parents - Here would be a good time to explain why all the Japanese auto plants went to states with anti-union right to work laws, and why none of them paid union wages. Discuss the impact that had on our existing auto industry employment. Only for extra credit, of course.)

Anyway, there was one important reason why Japanese auto makers were making more money than American ones. They were far more efficient.

How did they do it?

It takes about 30,000 parts to make a Toyota - counting all the screws and bolts - and auto manufacturers used to store them all in warehouses. Their suppliers made lots of parts - better prices for big orders, of course - and shipped them to the manufacturer when their supplies ran low.

Lots of workers in the warehouses, lots of people handling shipping and storage, lots of money spent on supplies that might not be needed for weeks. After all, you didn’t order a thousand windshield wipers, you ordered a thousand boxes with a hundred wipers in each one.

Then a manufacturer had a brilliant idea. You know how many cars you are building next week, and what parts you will need each day. So, have your suppliers just deliver the parts you need when you need them.

No expensive warehouses to operate and staff and no delay on any assembly line because you can’t find a part you need. You get all the parts you need just when you need them.

Did it work? Beyond anyone’s wildest dream. They called the system Just In Time delivery, and used it in every Japanese auto plant built in the U.S.

They were praised by virtually every right-thinking business group, who could easily see those plants were more profitable than their American competition. And how well the system could work for other things. So, lesson learned. Our manufacturers did the same thing. Profits soared.

And not just in autos. Any business that needs supplies could do the same thing. Leaner, meaner and more profitable.

It even worked for hospitals. How?

I’ll make up some numbers to make it easier to do the math. Let’s say you have 20 hospitals scattered across some midwestern or southern state, and those hospitals collectively have an occupancy rate of 70 per-cent.

Now you don’t know how many patients will be in any hospital at any one time, but you do know the average weekly and monthly and yearly occupancy rates, and those pictures show a lot of money being lost. Empty beds don’t bring in any revenue, and they are expensive just to keep ready in case they are needed.

Staff not treating patients costs money. Storing supplies you don’t really need is also a waste of money. And, the next time you want to spend a million dollars on a new CAT scanner, how many patients will actually be using it?

So, government officials set standards. You can’t just build a hospital, after all. You need permission, and to get it you have to show the need for what you are building. And because you get a lot of state and federal aid to help pay for those beds, the government gets to decide if they are really necessary.

 Close some of those underused hospitals or turn them into nursing homes, and the occupancy rate for the rest goes up to 80 or 90 per-cent. In a normal crisis, you can see those rates go up to 100 per-cent or more. Just look at all the hospitals who have beds out in a hall.

I once went to visit someone in a hospital like that, and my visitor pass read “hall pass” to see the patient in bed H-7. Wow, what a lot of money was being saved. 

Of course, we now have a major And health crisis and those hospitals are gone. In a lot of our nation’s rural communities the nearest hospital is 30 or 40 miles away. And, the beds are already full. 

So, on to hedge funds, which were first traded in 1948. First, some facts. Then a story.

1 - They are often wildly successful, regularly outperforming the stock market and mutual funds.

2 - They can do it because they are not regulated as closely as traditional funds. They can short-sell stocks, they don’t need to keep cash reserves. They can leverage risk by partnering with other firms.

3 - When they crash, lots of people lose lots of money. An unscrupulous manager will buy some small companies, fire half their staff, then say they have doubled its profitability by cutting costs. Which gives him a big bonus. When those firms go out of business the next year, the hedge fund gets a big tax deduction.

4 - You probably can’t invest in one. 

(Don’t hold me to those numbers. Standards change quickly in the world of high finance).

So, kids, here’s the story.

Hedge funds are only open to "accredited" or qualified investors. What does that mean? 

 Hedge funds are only allowed to take money from "qualified" investors—individuals with an annual income that exceeds $200,000 for the past two years or a net worth exceeding $1 million, excluding their primary residence. As such, the Securities and Exchange Commission deems those people to be qualified to fork over their cash.

In return for that consideration, they get a golden ticket - a bag full of tax deductions and credits so that, whether the hedge fund does really well or really badly, they come out ahead.

What are those benefits? Too many to explain. You can look up “carried interest,” if you want to get an idea of how complex things can get with those wonderful investment tools.

So, kids, do you know now how we got here? Not enough hospital beds, not enough supplies, not enough jobs, not enough opportunities and not enough people who understand it?

Well, you’re still young. Keep studying hard, hire a couple of lobbyists, get into a good college and inherit some serious money and you, too, will know how we got here.

You just won’t know how to get out.

A Cup Of Coffee

I drink too much coffee.

I have done it for many, many years, and I come by it honestly. Let me explain.

My first job on a major newspaper - it took about four years to get there - was working night cops on a century-old daily paper that was suddenly facing new competition from a well-funded upstart.

Suddenly there was going to be a new face in town, competing with the old Long Island Press, and it would be coming out by 6 a.m. each day.

Back then, most newspapers circulating in the suburbs were delivered by kids after they came home from school. Commuters bought a morning daily on the way to work, then relaxed with their evening paper when they got home.

Morning dailies were thin on local news. You can cover one ball game or one county legislature meeting and make it look like you are on top of things, which meant the evening papers had all the time they needed to fill their pages with news no one had seen that morning.

Now things were changing, and the Press had to beef up its staff by one reporter. That was me, working night cops from 7 pm to 3 a.m. six days a week.

(I should explain the hours. Detective squads finished their tours at 2 a.m., so I could cover breaking news and not make any overtime. The cheapness of publishers is a subject for another blog.)

Anyway, I spent a lot of time in squad rooms - we actually covered things back then - and at crime scenes, and the only way to stay awake was to drink coffee.

Years later, I ended up in a bureau on eastern Long Island, run by a guy who was a swimmer for the Navy. The war in Vietnam needed people on ships off the coast, so that if a plane was going to crash in the ocean, someone was there to jump in and rescue the pilot. Because the Bureau Chief got to make the coffee - something I later did when I became Bureau Chief - he made it the way he was used to drinking it.

His idea of good coffee was black, and so thick the spoon would stand up.

Anyway, that much exposure to coffee - and a lot of meetings that ran late into the night - left me with a habit that reached 9 or 10 cups a day.

Why dwell on this? Well, it’s a window into the toll social isolation is taking on me, and it might give some comfort to others suffering in the same way.

The little things get bigger and bigger.

Now there aren’t many things smaller in life than a cup of coffee. I drink it mostly out of habit, starting with one cup with breakfast, one or two during the day, another one after dinner, and maybe one or two more at night. But, I have been working on cutting down.

As a group, Americans drink well over a billion cups of coffee a year - the figures vary according to sources. Still, even a heavy coffee drinker like me can go days or even weeks without a cup. I’ve done it many times.

Now I try to drink just thee cups a day.

My reward for this iron determination? Less indigestion for one, better sleep for another. And, since no good deed goes unpunished, the realization that the coffee cups are calling out to me more and more each day.

There is probably enough material on why people want things to fill a whole college course. Heck, there is enough even without psychiatry. Think of all the great literature - we can go back to Shakespeare or Chaucer, or even the ancient Greeks - to see just how desire can ruin our lives.

(Important exception. I desire my wife, and she is the best thing that ever happened to me.)

Anyway, I am in the kitchen a lot. You can’t go out the back door without passing it, and you can’t let the dogs in or out without going to that door.

So, I see my Keurig a lot. And, I want it.

I have a cup of coffee next to my keyboard right now. It is getting cold - it will soon go into the microwave - which means I don’t really want to drink it.

Yet, I made it. At some point, I wanted it. And, the longer I have been in my house and keeping away from other people, the more I want a cup of coffee.

The trouble with that is that, after you drink it, you will want another cup. And another. And another - as long as you walk past the kitchen.

Just imagine what kind of trouble I could get into if I had a different vice. Like the Irish Creme flavoring I can pour into a cup, or the raspberry mocha lava K-Cup, or even the Island Coconut.

They say that people feel the same way about chocolate, or heroin, or gambling. Don’t ask me who they are. If the phrase is good enough for our President, it’s good enough for me.

So they say.

Isolation

Like much of the rest of the country, I am busy staying away from other people. Consider it a shared experience with about 150 million or so others who I will never meet.

Yet, in a lot of ways, I am luckier than most.

First, I am married. Happily married. That means my wife is sharing my isolation, and she is really good company. She doesn’t complain on the days I don’t shave. When I garden in my favorite old ripped shirt, she just nods in a condescending way. Which I richly deserve.

And it’s not that we don’t see our kids. We just look at them through a car window, from six or eight feet away. The other day, she made a lot of soup, and we went on a grocery run for a couple of hours, giving it away to family and friends.

Of course we kept the soup in an insulated cooler for the trip, and called when we made the delivery, so it would be put away quickly. We got a couple of smiles, which made it all worthwhile.

Now my wife and I have been married for decades, and we have been in our house almost since the day we wed. We’ve changed it over the years, moving a door, taking down a wall, making the den into a dining room, and the dining room into an office.

Now I am getting much more intimate with our house. Tapping the banister into place because it has pulled a half inch away from the wall. Leveling the round concrete patio blocks in the back yard that mark a path into the woods. Filling up the holes in the dirt made by the dogs who refuse to use the path, and just race back and forth alongside it. There is a laundry to be wallpapered and some molding to put up, a job I have been putting off since Jimmy Carter was President.

Our dogs are another thing I have been watching. Two delightful standard poodles -  about 60 pounds each - who eat together, bark at neighbor’s dogs together, and have their favorite places to hang around with us.

When I call them in, the younger one always gets to the door first, then barks at the older one as if to say “I’m in charge of the door.” The older one, who is a little bigger, simply pushes him aside. Every time. They like the game.

They do it three or four or five times a day. Every day. Something dependable and predictable. That’s nice to have in an uncertain world.

I am also teaching them to play hide and seek, which they are really good at. They can smell me out, but they get a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Share the joy, I always say.

Then there are the cats - four of them, each with their own personality - who have their own hobbies. Two like to go out on the front porch and watch the traffic and the birds. Sometimes, they sit on a rail just enjoying the fresh air while keeping out of the rain.

Often, we will have two cats and two dogs in our bedroom at night, each with their own corner of our bed. They keep their places when we come in - no fighting or growling - and the 12 pound cats have no trouble pushing a poodle out of the way.

It’s their own arrangement. They made it in a shared, wordless inter-species agreement.

Sometimes, one of the cats will lay on a dog, which starts a game of musical chairs with no music - 16 legs in motion, going around until they reach an accommodation about who gets to sleep where.

Our bedroom is a kind of Switzerland, a neutral place where cats and dogs never fight like cats and dogs. Don’t ask me why. They just like it. The same way we find one or two cats and one or two dogs sitting together looking out the back door at birds eating seed from a feeder. What a nice, innocent hobby - bird watching.

Other times, they run around, dogs chasing cats and never catching them. One of the amazing things is that when a cat jumps up on a table, I never see the motion. They just go from the ground to the table top.

Other times, when they leap across the room, you can see them tense and spring and fly through the air. A different kind of jump, I guess.

If all of this sounds like a circus, I can assure you they are generally well behaved and that - as with all pets - I get much more pleasure from them then they charge me in aggravation.

I recognize that my self-isolation is probably more comfortable than many others are facing. I have a big house, a back yard and lots of things to do. I also have an addiction to television court shows, although I have to admit that a lot of the addiction is trying to figure out what cases the production staff picks and what kind of audience the sponsors are trying to attract.

There is a big conflict here. Economic demographics do not line up neatly with audience demands. So, if you are selling an expensive product, you will likely attract a different audience than if you are selling one that costs less. But we are also socially mobile. Wealthy yuppies or get Xers watch professional wrestling, or MMA. People driving cars that don’t offer a seven year pay-off are watching nature shows on BBC America.

So, how can you tell what audience the production staff is shooting for? Watch the commercials. Every advertisement for low-cost insurance means one kind of audience, while every advertisement for insurance that will keep you protected and risk-free (they rarely use the term high-end) goes after another group.

So, one judge will be hearing a case about a boyfriend who got drunk and smashed up his girlfriend’s car, while another will be about someone seeing their pool maintenance company.

But, as usual, I digress.

The point I was getting to is that I am finding little things are becoming a lot more interesting. The way clover has seeded in some of the flower pots by the front door, or the way the leaves are starting to open on the lilacs and hydrangeas. This week, the first asparagus shoots started coming up, and in a little lotus pond - actually a small plastic decorative pool - the first leaves can be seen curled up close to the pot under a foot of water.

We ordered a food delivery from a local farm stand, and it came with a bag of grapes. We already had a couple of bags, and - just for fun - I went on line looking for recipes that use grapes, figuring I would get fruit salad and jam.

Well, it turns out there are scores of recipes, more than anyone would ever want.

And, that’s my point. If you work at it, you can find something interesting almost anywhere you look.

It reminds me of an old biology teaching tool. Take a square foot of dirt in your back yard, and report on what you find. The first report will be dull, and the observation superficial. Then do it again, and again - three or four times during the class.

By the time you finish, you should have a 20 page report on weeds and soil condition, rain and a pH test, observations on ants and worms and the kinds of rocks you find - - the harder you look at anything, the more you can find.

So, how come all the politicians talking about Coronovirus seem to be saying the same thing every day, and a lot of reporters seem to be covering the same story, just changing the numbers.

But, I digress again.