Today’s poem is dedicated to a special demographic. For those unaware, Accomack County is one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in Virginia. Tangier Island, one of our treasured communities, is safe, but if the pandemic reaches its shores the results could be devastating. I’ve been a Bull Islander and a Shoreman, and by that, I am blessed.
We go out in boats Catch the sun’s morning rays In nets and crab pots Tossed over the sides Into brackish green depths These channels – our roadways Through marshes and creeks The bay feeds our veins Where we have sewn seeds Young oysters – new reefs Repairing pollution To save our way of life Our houses on stilts (As sea levels rise) Overlook a world over water And ospreys laugh songs We bring in our bushels To markets by shores Sell seafood by dozens No quotas or weights And pray to a God For mercy and hope In the next hurricane There never been Noahs In the many Great Floods But still, we are People of faith
Thank you so much for reading my poem today! If you found its words meaningful, please consider liking, commenting, and/or sharing it with others. Truly, I am grateful for the time you spent reading my work.
In my personal life, I’m trying to focus on sanity and reframing my life in light of new information. I’m not ready to disclose this because the world circumstances caused a lot of things to take a nosedive into the land of waiting in uncertainty and self examination. For those within the #WritingCommunity that know more, I appreciate the privacy and support you have provided. I’m sure I will open up in time once more things come to light.
What stage of Social Isolation Insanity are you at?
In response to this picture a couple people asked if I’m okay. I promise this is me having a great time while alone and is a preview to an upcoming shenanigan.
This other picture, however, is talking about something else. I recently started feeling homesick for where I grew up. I replay the echoes of seagulls laughing off the Chesapeake Bay as skates taste my feet with confusion as they glide along the sandbars while I rake clams. As the warm waters returned with the shift in the gulf stream, so did the early morning rituals of waterman life. Standing on the back of an aluminum boat, bracing myself against the wake, I dropped crab pots off the side, each one tied to their own neon float with our family name and number marked. As we returned to the creek, the sulfur smell of estuaries warms the chest and the sea spray settles in to the early stages of sunburn this time of year. Oh, there’s that sticky, nasty, painful emotion again. I think I’ve felt it since 2011 when I moved away from the area permanently. Since then, I beat it down until I couldn’t hear that inner voice anymore and thanks to isolation it’s bubbling up. I kept following “opportunity”. Then I got married. For some reason, up until now, I always thought I’d go home.
Now, I live in Missoula, Montana in the middle of a global pandemic. Living in the middle of nowhere is a blessing. It means that besides working from home and isolating, our family spends a lot of time on our property or out and about. Montana never closed the hiking trails or parks and the campgrounds have reopened in most places. Heck, We tried to go camping this past weekend and Chief Looking Glass campground was packed!
There weren’t any camping spots available since spacing is different.
Montana is requiring a 2 week quarantine for everyone entering the state, plus we’ve been social distancing since before it was “cool”. We are one of the few states that seems to be holding things together pretty well. We have 21 active cases in the whole state and we have expanded testing. That 1 new case is in Jefferson County.
So what happens next? Well, hopefully I’m going to post fun content that will make people smile and laugh. Maybe I’ll post something that will upset someone and that will either make me care or it won’t. We’ll see. I’m a little weird when it comes to detecting the emotions of others – sometimes they confuse me more than anything else and I need help. With that in mind, consider explaining to me what you find upsetting before jumping down my throat. I may be completely oblivious. I’m not saying you have to do this – it’s a suggestion because I promise I don’t intentionally go out of my way to upset anyone. Be gentle with each other in a time of social isolation – we’re not getting a lot of practice interacting when we live alone or live with a limited set of people.
And with that, I’m going to wrap this personal update. Thank you for reading. Without you this would be text sent into the void of space. If you haven’t heard it today: you are loved. You are a human of value and you deserve to be here. You have something to contribute no matter what that mean voice in the back of your head says and I hope you share it with me someday.
I posted this on twitter last night after the briefing.
Remember how we were projected to have 2.5 Million cases? We have reduced the projected number of infected Americans by 1.5 Million to only 1 Million. 1 Million is not great, but that’s a big change. That is called flattening the curve and everyone should be thinking that is really amazing (I know I am). They did not mention the number in the briefing (frustratingly). But forecasting has gotten a bad rep in the past.
For those who are math nerds – that’s a linear fit to 1,000,000 (switch from exponential), which some dude in the early 20th century proposed was when the growth in the number of reported influenza cases was hitting it’s predictable rounded peak forecasted the maximum cumulative cases (the limit). I’ve been trying to go through my notes to remember more about how this all works because I don’t remember the name of who came up with all of this and I’m trying to find the paper. I will update this and replace this rambling text when I do.
Recovery in the US
Recovery is not a guarantee that you will not get SARS-CoV-2 again. There are recorded cases of reinfection internationally. We do not have enough data to know if this is reactivation of latent virus or if this is true reinfection. That said, we are finally looking for asymptomatic, both recovered and not, individuals.
A vaccine would be able to address this by using adjuvants designed to induce helper T cell immunity in addition to antibody based immunity. Vaccines take time. Realistically a good vaccine will be on the market in March 2021 at the absolute earliest. Anything before that and I will be floored if it has sufficient efficacy to help.
At each of these state clusters there is at least one urban center that has the dominant reservoir population. Once movement between urban centers (New York -> Chicago -> Houston -> Miami -> Atlanta -> Boston -> Dallas -> L.A. -> San Francisco -> Chicago -> Orlando -> Pittsburgh -> (etc. etc. etc.)) stops then there will no longer be additions of infected individuals into the populations. This is why non-essential planes need to be grounded.
I live in Montana. I am so blessed. I want to make it clear that we still need to behave. It only takes 1 person to infect 10.
My family and people I love live in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, California, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arizona and Maine. I’m terrified for everyone.
We’re going to gradually come to a new normal. Ask me questions and I’ll eventually address them in updates on these original posts.
As a change of pace, I’m going to stop writing about the coronavirus for a while unless there’s something people specifically think of graphs or other things that would be useful questions to be answered in something new instead of an update. I still have a backlog of a couple posts that will still get done though.
I will be starting to write short stories and weird little memoir style posts so people can enjoy my writing separate from the reviews.
Thank you for reading. Without you this is a shout into the void.
