Am I crazy? Finding reality in a pandemic
Lisa Falkenberg says it’s hard to tell who’s overreacting and who’s acting stupid.
Surreal is one of those great misused and abused clichés of convenience. But maybe for good reason.
Right now, I can’t think of any other word to describe the feeling of trying to process another day of discordant messages and disparate responses to this pandemic.
Each hour of coronavirus mayhem and social distancing, reality seems to shift and warp. One talking head says the spread of a deadly virus is hastening and we should stay hunkered down. Another points to a $17 million tent hospital sitting empty at NRG as proof of overreaction.
One minute, I look around at my kids in masks and the Subaru gathering dust, and I think, “enough of this!” The next, I’m calling my mom in Seguin to tell her we can’t be with her this Mother’s Day. Sorry, Mom.
Navigating the headlines is a balancing act through uneven footing of varying perceptions, experiences and motivations.
I find myself asking: Am
I crazy? Are they? Who’s overreacting in this outbreak and who’s acting stupid?
Quick, somebody! Throw me a rope of sanity, of normalcy, of precious nonchalance. No, wait. Don’t. We might hang ourselves with it.
In today’s Chronicle alone:
We’ve got bikini-clad tubers floating carefree along the Guadalupe, apparently throwing caution and social distancing to the wind and the whim of the river’s current.
We’ve got two Houstonarea state representatives — Briscoe Cain and Steve Toth, not particularly known for sophisticated reasoning on a good day — directly thwarting Gov. Greg Abbott by getting haircuts when salons are still ordered closed. No one was arrested during this courageous stand, er, swivel, for two precious American principles: civil liberty and vanity.
And, oh look, President Donald Trump is disbanding his COVID-19 task force, due to, as Vice President
Mike Pence put it, “tremendous progress” in fighting a virus that continues to claim lives with ravenous zeal. Then the president backtracked. The task force stays.
On the very same page of Wednesday’s paper, another headline announces that a popular model used — even by the White House — to forecast COVID-19 deaths has dramatically adjusted its outlook on Texas, raising projected deaths from 1,288 to 3,632 by the first week of August.
There’s Lake Creek High School Principal Phil Eaton emerging in a wheelchair after 51 days at Memorial Hermann in The Woodlands, 21 on a ventilator, thanking his team of doctors and nurses for saving his life from the clutches of COVID-19.
There’s this disturbing paragraph in a New York Times piece on the national outlook: “More than a month has passed since there was a day with fewer than 1,000 deaths from the virus. Almost every day, at least 25,000 new coronavirus cases are identified, meaning that the total in the United States — which has the highest number of known cases in the world with more than 1 million — is expanding by between 2 percent and 4 percent daily.”
Meanwhile, the Chronicle’s map of Texas counties, updated daily to reflect the virus’ stampede across the state, seems to be throbbing deeper red each day — giving the once-benign political mantra “keep Texas red” a morbid new meaning.
How are we supposed to process these competing realities?
The Trumps and Pences,
who tour hospitals — indeed, even a mask factory! — while refusing to wear a mask. And the Lina Hidalgos who never leave home without one.
The upscale Houston restaurant, Steak 48, already booked two weeks out, whose chief branding officer Oliver Badgio told the Chronicle that prioritizing comfort meant a conscious decision to forgo masks and gloves for service staff: “The governor’s order didn’t require it,” he said.
Compare that to the third-generation deli man, Ziggy Gruber of Kenny & Ziggy’s Delicatessen Restaurant & Bakery, who, out of concern for his customers and staff, decided his conscience wouldn’t let him reopen this early.
Gruber, in his op-ed, likened the situation to a Ray Bradbury novel.
That’s as fitting as surrealism and Dali’s melting clocks.
But this science nightmare isn’t fiction. And no matter how much we want to stop the clock on COVID-19 cases, on illnesses, on death, the reality keeps on ticking.