A few thoughts on this nasty virus. Thoughts about scavengers. Grandmothers. And stocks.
First, a gentle message to our politicians. Unless you have something helpful to say, please shut up!
You are vultures that swoop over and peck away at carcasses. You make political points off death and disease. You attack every step large and small this administration makes to deal with this contagion. When you do, the President – as is his habit and instinct – attacks you in return.
All of you need to shut up.
This is a time when our people need unity from our leaders. Instead, you are lusting for another New Orleans-Katrina. At this moment we need to hear encouraging words, comforting reassurances. Your message should be that we all will fight this together. We will set aside politics and help this president. For the people. We will free up the money. We will allow regulations to be set aside during the crisis.
Instead of such, you bicker and point fingers. Those of you who do are despicable. Just plain despicable.
There will be plenty of time to level blame and take political advantage when this is all over. Until then, how about you act like our leaders and pitch in.
Next thought is about my grandmother. My mother’s mother. She died in the horrendous flu epidemic of 1917-19. Her death left my young grandfather and three young children. It inflicted wounds that needed years to scar over. And some wounds that would never heal.
My mother and her sister suffered a series of housekeepers. I say suffered because they never spoke of them in my presence. I grew up with half a mom. That is, she fell short in several motherly duties. Enough so that my teachers and neighbors intervened. I felt those shortcomings. Did then. Do now.
I will forever wonder if the problem was that she never saw, never experienced how a mother was supposed to be. She knew her mom not through comfort, caresses, and encouragement. But only through fading photographs. And momentos tucked away in dresser drawers.
Meanwhile, my widowed grandfather was overwhelmed. He was forced to surrender his sickly son. He turned to his brother and sister-in-law, 100 miles away, to raise his boy. This surely added pain to his grief. The result, predictable, was that he never bonded with his son.
We grow alarmed today when thousands lose their lives to a disease. Thousands. My grandmother was one of millions who perished in what was called the Spanish flu. Millions. Low estimates are 30 million. High estimates, 100 million. Nearly 2 percent of all the people on earth died. Entire Inuit and Alaskan communities were wiped out. About 22 percent of Iran’s population perished.
Try to imagine living in that era. You would have already known of massive numbers of deaths from typhoid, yellow fever, diphtheria and cholera. You would have known that 40 million people died in the just-ended world war. (Many from the influenza epidemic just begun.) And, of course, you would have known that tens of millions were maimed for life in that war.
One hundred years on, I feel in my heart the sufferings of my grandfather and his family. Yet their travails pale when I compare them to those of so many millions of families.
On to the stock market.
Stock prices have fallen around the world, no secret. This time there is an ingredient that is often missing in stock market declines: Reality.
We see many big declines sparked mostly by emotions. The emotions are set alight by events that barely affect business. I think of assassinations, big storms, governments collapsing. After the smoke clears investors realize that big companies are going to be just as profitable after the event as they were before.
With the emotion squeezed out of the markets, prices usually climb back to where they were. Stock prices are directly connected to profits, current and projected.
This time around, the recovery may take a while. Because the reality is that the profits of many businesses will suffer from the epidemic. Already, people are traveling less. They are cancelling vacations.
Every business in the travel industry will take this on the chin. Hotels, restaurants, tourist destinations, cruise ships, airlines will show fewer profits. Professional sports will see ticket sales drop. Conventions and conferences will shrink in their numbers. Various companies will be forced to lay off staff.
It is certainly possible that the world could suffer a recession. If we don’t get control of this virus, that is.
The epidemic is not without its encouraging notes. One is the speed we see in the work of medical sleuths here and abroad. Our politicians could learn from how closely they co-operate. They are sharing what they know, across borders at all the speed our modern computing allows. They are deploying the artificial intelligence we fear in the abstract. To confront a disease so many of us fear in real terms.
Of course they need to work with such speed. The virus has traveled the world by jet. Literally and figuratively.
Thank God we have the medical knowledge to gradually contain this virus – and contain it we will. We contained HIV SARS and Bird Flu. We won’t have to watch this virus wipe out communities. We won’t helplessly witness millions of kids sentenced to grow up, deprived and damaged, without their dads. And without their moms. Especially their moms.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Find Tom at tomasinmorgan.com. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.