I have been wearing my mask whenever I go to the grocery store and I practice social distancing. I don't go out much - I walk my dog around the neighborhood and I try to limit my visits to retailers for supplies. I have not had a restaurant meal indoors since early March. So I should be safe from da 'Rona, right?
Nope.
On Sunday, October 10, I got stir crazy and invited a couple of my former bandmates to sit with me on my front porch and play some blues for the neighbors. Everyone was practicing good pandenic hygiene - lots of space/outdoor setting/masks - so it felt safe. We had fun and it was good to see the top half of the faces of my friends and neighbors.
I had a minor outpatient surgical procedure scheduled for October 14, so I had to get a Covid-19 test two days before the appointment. I went to the drive-through testing station on Monday. On Tuesday, I got the call. I had tested positive. Surgery cancelled, to be re-scheduled when da 'Rona leaves me. I was in quarantine with even my limited mobility eliminated.
I am a lucky guy - I had almost no symptoms of the disease. I had a slight headache and some minor dizziness. My groceries came via Instacart for a couple of weeks. I called everyone that I could remember that was close to me recently and told them of my status. My two adult kids that live with me in my two-flat tested negative (twice). I am out of quarantine now. Da 'Rona was gentle with me.
But it wasn't gentle with my friend, Hecky Powell. Hecky died from complications of Covid-19 back in late May. He was a giant of a man, so important to Evanston IL as a community activist, advocate of at-risk youth and an entreprenuer. He is one of the 230,000+ folks taken by this virus. We were roughly in the same age cohort - Hecky was 6 years older than me when he died. So why was I spared but Hecky was not?
The novel coronavirus is a sneaky bastard. It is a brand new pathogen, it operates in ways that are not yet fully understood. It is bad news for older folks and people with compromised immune systems, but it also seems to be deadly at random, snatching away people that had many years of productive life ahead of them.
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan have controlled this bug. South Korea has less than 1 Covid-19 death per 100,000 people. The U.S. has over 66 deaths per 100,000 people. The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University estimates that as many as 210,000 of the Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. could have been avoided with a more robust and focused public health response.
The Trump Administration bears most of the responsibility for this horrific failure. Donald Trump indirectly killed my friend Hecky Powell. This is what is uppermost in my mind as we approach election day. Forget about every other bad thing this charlatan, Trump, has said and done - the incompetence and callousness of his administration has led to over 200,000 unnecessary deaths. What a tragedy and waste of human potential!
I hope Trump is defeated and faces consequences for what he has done to our country.
