Olvera Street

The U.S. was averaging more than 55,000 new cases a day in mid-October of 2020. According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.1 million American cases were reported and 220,000 people had died at that point. Most states reported significant upticks in case counts driven largely by Covid’s proliferation among younger Americans who threw caution to the wind and the fact more people were indoors because of autumn’s cooler weather.

Across the country we began seeing parking lot field tent triage overflow at hospitals once again. The good news was, death rates were holding in a more static range because health care officials were effectively treating the infected, and state officials were ordering more stringent statutes like the legal enforcement of public mask wearing and restrictions of gatherings.

On the global stage, countries which were getting the pandemic under control experienced new surges. Cases abroad hit a record one day increase in Europe topping 400,000 in mid-October, marking Europe as a new epicenter, averaging 140,000 new cases a day. That was about a million new infections every week. They were running hotter than the United States, South America, and India combined.

Irwin Redlener, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Sean Hansen, and Nathaniel Hupert at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness published a sobering report. They asserted 130,000 to 210,000 American Covid deaths could’ve been avoided with earlier policy interventions imposed by a proactive administration and a willingness of the American public to adhere by recommended guidelines.

“This year, American exceptionalism has manifested in the worst way: 217,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19, the highest gross numerical toll of any country by more 65,000. Over eight million Americans have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and millions more have been clinically diagnosed with COVID-19, without test confirmation. Many of the underlying factors amplifying the pandemic’s deadly impact have existed long before the novel coronavirus first arrived in Washington state on January 21st – a fractured healthcare system, inequitable access to care, and immense health, social and racial disparities among America’s most vulnerable groups.” 

As a nation, we were maxed out in our tolerance for caution fatigue. Much of America, and the world too, tossed up their hands and said to themselves, fuck it, it looks like everyone’s going to get it eventually no matter how much we quarantine, no matter how socially distanced we remain, no matter how much we mask up, so why not just live our lives?

Caution fatigue evolved into general pandemic fatigue, a society-wide weariness of all the ways of life altered by the virus, from our economics to our social circles, from our television shows and movies (or lack thereof) to our access to mobility, from our ability to freely travel or to vote.

We were fried.

Covid did not care.

I admit a degree of that fatigue affected me. I found myself going out more, getting more food to go from drive-through and curbside pickup. I entered a couple of open-air coffee houses. I even ran a rare Covid gauntlet that last week in October of 2020.

I wanted (not needed, grant you) to find a couple of talavera figurines to represent my elder dogs on the altar. You loyalist readers may recall my Day of the Dead observances. The Dia de los Muertos shrines often incorporate decorative, painted paper maché skulls or figurines called calaveras ( or talaveras for animals). I try to patronize local artists as much as possible when searching out a new addition for our altar, often in Los Angeles at stores or festivals showcasing local Hispanic and Mexican-American Dia de Los Muertos art. It was a subjective call, no question. We’d been crafting our annual ofrenda for some years and we didn’t want to skip additional invocations for our two recently passed furry kids. So, I ventured down to Olvera Street in downtown LA, masked up, and braved an indoor marketplace for the first time in seven months.

Olvera Street is a time-honored Southern Californian marketplace for many Angelenos. It was sad to see so many of their kiosks and storefronts shuttered due to the pandemic.  Not many folks were inside the store. I’d purchased art there before. I quickly located a couple of appropriate talaveras, paid the proprietor at arms’ distance, and left. I was indoors no more than ten minutes. Enough time to inadvertently suck in an errant droplet, to be sure. Upon my return home. I kept my distance from the wifey and I slept on the couch away from her for fourteen days to reduce cross contamination possibilities. I didn’t get ill. But it was a gamble all the same.

Generally speaking, we still weren’t eating out, not even on outside patios, we were still more or less quarantined, and it hit us in all the ways it hit middle class America, financially and emotionally, and yes, we had plenty of Covid cases within family and friend ranks, mostly on my wife’s side. We were fortunate because everyone we knew survived it, and I attributed a good portion of that success to her family’s genes somehow being more impervious to Covid than on average.

Covid-19 didn’t care that I was tired of being careful.

It didn’t care I lamented the prospect that it looked like 12 to 18, possibly even 24 months of my short lifespan, might have to be burned on adjusting and limiting my normal activities until it was safe again, not to mention dodging the possibility of dying earlier than average projections for a man of my genetics, lifestyle, and country of origin.

Stephen Elledge, an expert molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, published a study analyzing the life expectancy of over 200,000 Americans who died of Covid-19 complications. According to his findings, Covid-19 cost Americans 2.5 million years of life, which was about as much as the average numbers from six months of cancer deaths. Half of that lost 2.5 million years came from middle aged folks, not elderly ones. Elledge went on to note life expectancy was largely misunderstood, as it doesn’t stay static from the day you’re born until the day you die. It’s a perpetuating phenomenon; the longer you might live, the more likely you are to keep living after a certain point, because you’ve managed to circumvent common problems that could’ve killed you earlier on in life. Middle aged adults didn’t die as often as older folks did from Covid, but plenty died anyway, and those who died in their fifties from Covid lost two to three decades of life expectancy.

Everyone was saying that third wave surge we experienced across the world was the worst yet. Italy locked down again. Brazil faded fast. The United States never actually experienced a second wave to suffer a third. Dr. Fauci claimed we were still under a long haul first wave, thanks to the fact we didn’t do what other countries did.

According to a study published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, if 95% of Americans wore masks in public for the remainder of 2020, over 100,000 lives would be saved. A sixty-day mandatory mask mandate would’ve been our best option, a mandate legally enforced by fines or even jail time.

But naturally, that didn’t happen. It was just too tyrannical. We managed to politicize mask wearing same as we do with virtually anything these days. The idea was to make mask wearing a social norm, a daily altruistic action respecting the sanctity of life over our prior ideas of convenience. Our personal freedoms ideally did not outweigh others’ rights to live. And honestly, we were lightweights if we couldn’t manage to don a face covering during our public outings until the vaccines arrived. Prior generations suffered a lot more inconveniences than mask wearing.

And there it was again. We hyped a big game about freedom, but we weren’t walking the walk. We weren’t protecting our fellow American people. That’s not how soldiers roll. It’s not how true patriots roll. They put the greater good before themselves. The abject refusal to sacrifice even the most superficial habits and desires was a stark reflection of how soft Americans had become.

Yes, I could’ve skipped a consumer trip to Olvera Street. I included the admission here in the narrative because I’m reminding those who still think I’m lobbing rotten fruit from atop an ivory pedestal that I too, was subject to pandemic fatigue, and cherry picking when and how to disregard protocol. I am guilty. Same as you were. I own it. You must, as well. That’s what ownership is about, looking in the mirror, accepting it, validating our errors, and trying to do better next time.

It’s the same thing we teach our children. Remember?

*Compiled from October 18, 2020