YOUR SAY: PANDEMIC LESSONS
Too many did not take crisis that seriously
The folk wisdom that it is darkest before dawn could characterize the situation we find ourselves in a year into the lockdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears that there is daylight on the horizon as the number of infections trail off, but we have to be patient.
Former President Donald Trump sat on his hands well into the deadly onslaught, pooh-poohing the crisis as an inconvenience that would disappear when the weather warmed up. Well, it didn’t.
Individual states stepped into the breach. However, the dalliance resulting from human error, disparate responses and simply the logistics of confronting an unfamiliar menace has cost more than 530,000 lives nationally and as of this week, more than 3,400 deaths in San Diego County.
Deaths are easy to tally. Less precise are the concomitant lost jobs and business failures that number in the thousands. Businesses that can operate do so under restrictions.
As of this writing, San Diego County is in the rock bottom (purple) tier of California’s four-level rating system determined by the number of daily COVID-19 outbreaks.
It is easy to see why we fail to climb to the higher red, orange or yellow tiers. Looking around one sees people going about their business without a mask and not staying 6 feet from anyone except family members. These scofflaws would be at home in at least 16 states that have no mask requirement.
The urging of health officials to observe simple life-saving measures falls on deaf ears. If someone lops off a finger with a table saw, treatment and advice from a medical professional is sought. Why not in the case of the virus?
The number of daily COVID-19 infections is dropping, offering hope that the dawn of normality as we knew it is near. Be patient. The rooster still has not crowed.
We asked: The one-year anniversary of California’s pandemic lockdown is fast approaching. How do you feel the state and the nation have handled the crisis and what lessons do you think we have learned, or not learned?
Lou Ottens, the Dutch inventor of the cassette tape, the medium of choice for millions of bedroom mix tapes, has died, said Philips, the company where he also helped develop the compact disc.
Ottens died Saturday at age 94, Philips confirmed.
A structural engineer who trained at the prestigious Technical University in Delft, he joined Philips in 1952 and was head of the Dutch company’s product development department when he began work on an alternative for existing tape recorders with their cumbersome large spools of tape.
His goal was simple. Make tapes and their players far more portable and easier to use.
“During the development of the cassette tape, in the early 1960s, he had a wooden block made that fit exactly in his coat pocket,” said Olga Coolen, director of the Philips Museum in the southern city of Eindhoven. “This was how big the first Compact Cassette was to be, making it a lot handier than the bulky tape recorders in use at the time.”
The final product created in 1962 later turned into a worldwide hit, with more than 100 billion cassettes sold, many to music fans who would record their own compilations direct from the radio. Its popularity waned with the development of the compact disc, an invention Ottens also helped create as supervisor of a development team, Philips said.
The cassette tape’s success stemmed from its simplicity, Ottens said in an interview published by the Philips Museum.
“It was a breakthrough because it was foolproof,” he said, adding that players and recorders also could run on batteries, making them very user-friendly and, ultimately, portable.
“Everybody could put music in their pocket,” Ottens said.
The prototype wooden block never made it to the company’s museum. Ottens used it to prop up his jack when replacing a wheel with a flat tire and left it by the side of a road, Coolen said.
“Lou loved technology. When he talked about that, his eyes began to twinkle,” museum director Coolen said.