Just What the World Needs

Four years after the world lost its mind, I was apprehensive re-reading where mine was at the time. I needn’t have been.

Atlanta, GA

March 12, 2020

The first thing people usually do at times like this is panic. So at least they’re doing it in the right order. 

Anytime a bug is afoot, precautionary measures are probably warranted. But must we swing sledgehammers in order to tame it? Apparently we do.

Yesterday my company prohibited travel till the first of May, and compelled working from home till the beginning of April. My commute is 570 miles, so the prohibition implies the compulsion. 

I expect we’ll soon be unable to go anywhere in Atlanta either. Not that there will be anyplace to go.

This city was supposed to host the Final Four in a few weeks. I hope it has a lot of freezer space, because no fans will be here to enjoy the elaborate spread that countless restaurants, hotels, and bars have spent years preparing. 

We attended an Atlanta Hawks game Monday night. That may be the last sporting event open to fans for a while. Most won’t include players either. 

Vaudeville has also taken a hit. In what appears to be an emergency relief measure, political campaign rallies have been suspended. With a virus afoot, the last thing politicians want is to kill off their voters. 

But every silver lining has a cloud.

Regrettably, the “debates” will go on…perhaps to keep the ravages of a pandemic in proper perspective. As with other late-night comedy shows, there will be no live audience. 

Today the governor of Ohio declared all schools in the Buckeye state closed for three weeks. Here in Atlanta, a teacher at one of our county elementary schools “tested positive”. Her school closed indefinitely.

This afternoon all others announced the same. Our son’s Senior Prom was to be only ten days away. But he’ll now not need his tux.

We’re assured these decisions are unfortunate, yet prudent. This coronavirus ostensibly spreads faster, and burrows deeper, than the flu. Like Greek-borne gifts, it can ride and hide inconspicuous within the shells of ostensibly innocuous carriers. It can then surreptitiously breach susceptible walls.

When its battalions emerge, their swords tend particularly to pierce the elderly, infirm, and denizens of nursing homes. But few others appear to be inordinately affected.

Yet with few exceptions, most people are hiding at home. I peered from our trench earlier today. The guns were silent, so I slowly crawled under the barbed wire, across no-man’s land, and to the barber. 

Across Italy, all shops not selling food or pharmaceuticals are closed. Since the United States seem to be enduring viral infections and official responses about eleven days behind the Lombards, Venetians, and Tuscans, we are preparing for the possibility that stores will soon close and streets clear. 

Given recent and potential cancellations and closures, I decided I’d best get a haircut now. Otherwise, I risk waiting another month, at which point my elongated locks might require me to take up the violin. Not that I wouldn’t have the time.

Mencken referred to the general public as Boobus Americanus. We should approach the species as Keynes counseled investors. We must anticipate what average opinion expects average opinion will be.

As news feeds suggest hospitals filling like Churchill’s martini glass, and cities emptying like an Amway pitch at a bachelor party, average opinion will incline toward extreme actions.

Wall Street algos got the memo a couple weeks ago…just about the time the bug started flittering around lower Manhattan. People may not be able to get onto planes from Europe or into seats at a basketball game, but they can’t wait to get the hell out of the stock market. The indices are dropping points like Henry VIII shed wives.

So what next?

I recently re-read The Fourth Turning, a cyclical account of history, written in 1997 by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Its thesis stipulates that generational archetypes transition thru (and coincide with) predictable waves, or seasonal “turnings”. 

The four phases recur about every eighty years, and descend from an optimistic “High” to an existential “Crisis”.  America endured Fourth Turning “Crisis” phases around 1780, 1860, and 1940.

Hmmm….As Mark Twain ostensibly said, history may not always repeat, but it does rhyme.

Of course, past performance does not guarantee future results. 

No one knows what the future will bring. We’re rarely even aware of what the past dragged in. For the present, we’ll make the best of an uncertain, disconcerting situation. 

But maybe the “High” is closer than we think. After all…my wife and I are prohibited from going into the office. Our sons are not allowed to go to school.

Our freezer is stocked, the wine rack is full. The air is warming, the azaleas are blooming. Our only commute will be the occasional walk around the neighborhood or thru the woods.

We have more time, and less to do.

Just what the world needs: less for me to say…and more time to say it!

JD