The blatant ignorance of these comments shouldn't surprise me. We have been pretty lucky in the U. P. so far. However, our continued good luck depends upon the continuance of social distancing and isolation. Once people stop wearing their masks, start flocking to T. J. Maxx, and gather together for glasses of wine, that luck will quickly run out. And then the healthcare system in the Upper Peninsula will become just as overwhelmed as Detroit's. Second wave.
In 1918, the first wave of the flu was quite deadly, but not intensively. The second wave, which came in the fall--after people stopped wearing masks, started going to restaurants and stores, gathered for church picnics and such--was a whole other story. To try to put it into perspective, here's an excerpt from a letter written by an army doctor at Camp Devens, just outside of Boston, on September 29, 1918:
The normal number of doctors here is about 25 and that has been increased to over 250, all of whom (of course excepting me) have temporary orders — “Return to your proper station on completion of work” — Mine says, “Permanent Duty,” but I have been in the Army just long enough to learn that it doesn’t always mean what it says. So I don’t know what will happen to me at the end of this. We have lost an outrageous number of nurses and doctors, and the little town of Ayer is a sight. It takes special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce, we used to go down to the morgue (which is just back of my ward) and look at the boys laid out in long rows. It beats any sight they ever had in France after a battle. An extra long barracks has been vacated for the use of the morgue, and it would make any man sit up and take notice to walk down the long lines of dead soldiers all dressed up and laid out in double rows. We have no relief here; you get up in the morning at 5:30 and work steady till about 9:30 p.m., sleep, then go at it again. Some of the men of course have been here all the time, and they are tired.We are not at the end of the Covid-19 epidemic. We are just at the beginning. You aren't wearing that mask to protect yourself. You're wearing it to protect other people from the possibility of infection. Sharing a glass of wine with some friends might sound like fun. But I know of a couple in the U. P. who had dinner with two friends a month-and-a-half ago. That couple ended up contracting the virus, and their friends ended up dying. It isn't just about Detroit.
These are facts, historical and current. Wear your masks. Stay at home. And remember, all those people from downstate come up to the U. P. in the summer. We aren't out of the woods. We're in the woods.
In a year or so, Saint Marty will buy you a glass of wine if you follow these instructions. He'll even cook you dinner.
poem from Kyrie
by: Ellen Bryant Voigt
deep in the lungs a cloudiness not clearing;
vertigo, nausea, slowed heart, thick green catarrh,
nosebleeds, spewing across the room--
as if it had conscripted all disease.
Once, finding a jug of homemade corn
beneath the bed where a whole fevered family
lay head to foot in their own and the others' filth,
I took a draught and split the rest among them,
even the children--these the very children named for me,
who had pulled them into this world--
it was the fourth day and my bag was empty,
small black bag I carried like a Bible.
