Day Seven: Welcoming People Home from China

One more week to go of this "experience"...if I am not sick, and their is no evidence that I am. Temperature hovers around 98 degrees morning and night. I am arguing with everybody about everything. This a lot more stressful than I anticipated so get ready if you are reading this from China and planning to come home for a two-week isolated quarantine. Probably more manageable if you land with your whole family and you hole up together, but this is for the birds--even if I have the best Superhost ever, ever and his property is gorgeous. Not trying to sound ungrateful or like my situation is particularly rough. I am healthy after all! What do we have in life besides our health? Or something like that. Still and all, it is stressful.

It is increasingly clear that school, in my province of China (i.e., Guangdong), will extend beyond the expected mid-July end of the school year to the end of the first week of August, though no announcements have been made. In the education market, that may mean that there will be high attrition. Thus, next fall, if everything is back to a modicum of normality, it may be a good time to look for opportunities teaching in China. Already the various recruitment websites are noisy with places looking for new hires. If the various provincial education boards do make this decision to lengthen the school year due to the lower intensity of on-line teaching and stemming from a desire to make sure all content is covered, they need to think about what ramifications that will have on students, parents, Chinese and foreign teachers, and the economy.

It is not clear, when and if life returns to normal, what the Chinese government will do to insert a bit of juice into the economy after two or three months of its malingering workforce not making widgets. Already the biggest travel time of the year (Lunar New Year) and resultant economic activity world-wide has been devastated by the nearly national shut-in. Difficult times lie ahead for all businesses. The restaurant sector is likely to have been hit very hard as margins are thin to non-existent in good times. One friend of ours has 23 restaurants and over a thousand workers who he cannot pay. Imagine this story repeated, literally, millions of times over. If students had intended to attend a summer program in late July and early August, now they may not be able to do so.

I am starting to get to the place where I don't want to read the COVID-19 news updates any longer, even though it is germane to my family and my life as a teacher in China. I have been looking at The Guardian every day for a month now to get the best available health reporting and up-to-the-minute alerts about breaking news. Furthermore, I can hardly make sense of the world any more. The Internet and social media seem to be full of rumors and misleading propaganda, my distinction being that the latter are officially generated a type of rumor promulgated by governments or government actors. For instance, the various theories of spread based on bats, snakes, and pangolins have gotten a lot more play than they merit, maybe. Yesterday, I thought it was fecal spread because of the Chinese CDC article published a few days ago. Today a respected NH doctor, with whom I discussed this, re-sent me the US CDC stuff about how they think it is primarily spread through the air by coughing and sneezing. He agreed that it could be both. I joked that if I have this thing, I am like a perfect piece of evolutionary farm equipment--a spreader and a sprinkler. We must keep pursuing the truth and the martyrs, like the doctor in Hubei who died from this, were doing that, but there are others, like Mike Pompeo, with an axe to grind. Can we trust that this is not economic warfare?

I burst into tears today while talking to my Congressman's office about the difficulty of coming back when you cannot get straight answers from a) a chronically understaffed Department of State or b) a frighteningly understaffed US CDC about a) whether you "should return by commercial means" is still the current recommendation or if it was even ever the real recommendation and b) what will happen in terms of quarantine when you do arrive. As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post,  I had called both US CDC and the NY Dept of Health before arrival and I said please don't share my phone number unless absolutely necessary with the CDC worker in the airport. None of these parties explained that two nice RNs from the county health department would be out to see me and do an intake interview. That would have been nice to know for me and for my AirBnB Superhost before they called to announce that they would like to come out and see me.

I talked to a reporter that I have known for almost twenty years today for almost an hour relating much of what's happened and at the end, under pressure from his editor, he had to cut off my droning, detailed stories with the question that I remember from Project Laundry List days when a reporter did not think there was a story, "What do you want me to do with this info?" Let me try to answer that.

I want people to know that we cannot get straight answers from our own government about whether we are supposed to shelter in place or leave.

Aside: My friend in California, whose quarantine with wife and kids did not involve daily calls to report his temperature to public health officials or a visit from any state or county health officials, was speculating that when we return some people will resent that we were able to leave. Good Lord, there is a difference between solidarity and stupidity. 

Today's news from Italy and South Korea make me confident that I did the right thing, but I am conflicted because when will my girlfriend and the two kids we are raising together be able to leave? When will China let them leave and the US let them enter? We are lucky that they all have current visas (and Yaya and I both have a MasterCard), but I cannot imagine the Americans inside of China, who want to leave but don't have a visa or a line of credit. At current "market" rates they are facing a 12,000 RMB ($1,700) round-trip plane ticket, if they can even find an available one; two weeks in a hotel or friend's house where they should not share a toilet with other non-pariahs, etc. Some might be facing losing their job if they come home and don't go back when school's and work open.

There needs to be a support group to welcome people back from China. I would rather call it a relief committee so it does not sound so pathetic, but people need information and what is on the CDC website or what little clarity you can coax from the Department of State is not enough to help figure out where to stay, how to get groceries, etc. Then there is all the regular hassle of coming back and needing to get a working SIM card, etc. It's a lot to think through and people need checklists and guidance. Even hyper-educated, hyper-vigilant, hyper-responsible people like myself. Done tooting my horn.

That's enough stream-of-consciousness for one day. Good night.

Day Six: My Fascination with Sh*t (and its possible relationship to COVID-19)

It was two books--The Humanure Hanbook (1995, now in its 4th edition) published while I was in college and How to Shit in the Woods (1989, now in its 3rd edition), a rollicking read to which I was introduced on a 1992 NOLS course in the Brooks Range of Alaska--that got me interested in shit. By senior year in college, I had also become aware that my favorite writer, Wendell Berry (b. 1934-), had written a book called The Toilet Papers--not his best literary work, but one of the most important. He made the observation that one of the stupidest things we do (I would add, besides give each other shit) is shit in water. Bill Gates agrees and is spending part of his fortune (less than 1%, I am sure--in fact, "Overall, the Gates Foundation has invested some $200 million into projects having to do with clean waste and sanitation") to solve this problem. (Stephen Colbert interviewed Bill and Melinda about their wealth and it is a good watch!)

      

"A classic is back in print! One of the favorite books of 1970s back-to-the-landers, The Toilet Papers is an informative, inspiring, and irreverent look at how people have dealt with their wastes through the centuries." -review on EBookMall  The Humanure Handbook "is a self-published book that no respectable publisher would touch with a ten-foot shovel" available at The Humanure Store.

Gates has done the rounds with Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah on the topic of poop. This is the most important thing that he is doing in our water-constrained world with his unearned billions. It is also relevant to COVID-19.



Jason Gale reports for Bloombergquint, "The finding of live virus particles in stool specimens indicates a fecal-oral route for coronavirus, which may be why it’s caused outbreaks on cruise ships with an intensity often seen with gastro-causing norovirus, which also spreads along that pathway. More than 600 Covid-19 infections were confirmed among passengers and crew aboard the Diamond Princess, the ship quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan."


It is time to take this shit very seriously.

The prevention and control recommendations in the report are:

Suggestions to strengthen the control of fecal oral transmission of 2019-nCoV include strengthening health publicity and education; maintaining environmental health and personal hygiene; drinking boiled water, avoiding raw food consumption, and implementing separate meal systems in epidemic areas; frequently washing hands and disinfecting of surfaces of objects in households, toilets, public places, and transportation vehicles; and disinfecting the excreta and environment of patients in medical facilities to prevent water and food contamination from patients’ stool samples. (China CDC Weekly)

Finally, on a personal note, I was thrilled to see, before I departed China, that my AirBnB had a Sun-Mar compost toilet solely for my use during the quarantine period (i.e., my shitty hands are the only ones touching the sawdust scoop handle) and nobody else is using it. I had suspected this mode of transmission for some time and am gratified to see it more solidly (no pun intended) confirmed; however, we still do not know enough about this coronavirus (COVID-19) and how it spreads to be conclusive.

I will post a little video introduction to the Sun-Mar toilet on my Facebook page, if you are interested in seeing what you could have in your home. Just as important as solar panels and your food compost/recycling set-up. Get with the program...

Day Five: My Lazaretto, Musings On the Chronic Insane

Willard Asylum Is One Of The Creepiest Places On Earth

A note to my host, a Briton, after yesterday's perambulation of my lazaretto:

When you are ready to do laundry, which need not be for a few more days, I wonder if you have a drying rack or clothesline, as I am historically, since college, philosophically unable to dry clothes in the dryer. I ran an organization called Project Laundry List (www.laundrylist.org) for fifteen years (founded it in 1996) and a decade ago was featured in a full-length documentary by you British chaps, called Drying for Freedom (www.dryingforfreedom.com). (How you love to make fun of Americans!) Given your amazing hospitality and generosity, of course, under the circumstances, I would be willing to accept whatever you want to do...

"New Catholic" is my plot! Unmarked graves, eh? I love cemeteries as a historian and New Englander. There is a tale in my family that I once remarked to my father, at about age ten, "There are so many dead people in New Hampshire" because of the proliferation of Civil War (and earlier and later) family plots, often adjacent to an animal pound. They litter the forests and fields of northern New England on both side of the Connecticut. [Vermont shipped off more people per capita to fight in that war than any other state, except possibly Maine.]

That said, I did not love this graveyard, but I will go back. How utterly depressing to think of all those late 19th and early 20th Century adults with various syndromes (autism and Tourettes) that caused their families to abandon them for life, because they could not cope with what many times was probably not insanity at all. They lived out their lives and then did not even merit a headstone. Are all of the NY Cavalry and Infantry headstones also for inmates or is that a separate contiguous plot? Think of the PTSD after the Civil War and WWI, chapters in our national history buried and drowned out by the PTSD victims of Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan.

-Your Chronic Inmate
2/21/2020 at 2:47 PM

 

Chiesa di Santa Maria di Nazareth- Venezia

lazaretto

noun, plural laz·a·ret·tos.

1.  a hospital for those affected with contagious diseases, especially leprosy [and COVID-19].

2.  a building or a ship set apart for quarantine purposes.

ORIGIN OF LAZARETTO
1540–50; < Upper Italian (Venetian) lazareto, blend of lazzaro lazar and Nazareto popular name of a hospital maintained in Venice by the Church of Santa Maria di Nazaret

 
The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane sits on both the National Register of Historic Places and at the end of my lane. Yesterday and again today, I wandered around the 75-acre farm to which I am legally bound for my period of (supposedly voluntary) self-quarantine. It is adjacent to a cemetery in which more than 6,000 people lie, more than 1,500 of whom were buried by one of their fellow denizens, named Mocha (like chocolate and coffee), or so claims a plaque erected by his admirers. He lived from 1878 to 1968 (90 years), outliving both MLK, Jr. and RFK.

As the video above mentions, most people spent thirty years in the place. Thirty years! I am only here for two weeks, cut off from family and friend. It will probably be long enough.

      

There are road signs in the middle of this barren field (no headstones): One says "New Catholic" (converts? Italian immigrants, Polish?), another "Old Catholic" (Irishman? Quebecois and Marylanders?). One says "New Protestant" (cremated?), another "Old  Protestant" (members of the Society of the Cincinnati? descendants of early settlers in the Colonies?). There is a plain "Jewish" sign and then a fabulous arch for "Old Jewish ✡ Cemetery."

At the far end of the field, by a precipice that goes down to the two-lane highway running along the shore of Lake Seneca is a soldier's field, where there are headstones. Mostly Civil War and Great War veterans (or KIA, perhaps), each man's stone has an American flag. Only one stone, slightly different than most of the rest has a wreath aside it.

Patrick Walsh was a seaman on the USS Wabash and USS Montauk, who fought in the Civil War, but died as America was entering World War I. Though he does not seem to be among the notable or honored crew, one wonders if he saw service with George Dewey.

There are no marked plots for atheists, agnostics, Moslems, Hindoos, or any other faiths, but in a grove of trees that bisects two fields are 107 cast iron, numbered graves with no other information.

 

+     +     +

In today's post, I want to turn, briefly and ultimately, from this description of and these musings on my surroundings to a brief reflection on the history of the lazaretto (spellcheck wants to make it amaretto). In Italian, lazar, as the etymology above indicates, means someone affected with a disease, especially the disease of Lazarus, or leprosy. Of course, as far as I know, I have neither COVID-19 nor leprosy nor chronic insanity, but I am self-quarantined near an asylum so this is not a non sequitur. Furthermore, I did say to my host, as I was proposing to stay here, "Feeling like a pariah! Haha," though my host's legitimate worries have mostly subsided as I continue to be healthy. Still, this experience, where a guest on his property overheard us talking about the impending initial visit from the Health Department nurses, makes me reflect on the experience of Lazarus, of those who survived the Black Death, of the Yellow Fever (not that "yellow fever"!) in Philadelphia, 1793. In fact, in preparation for the now largely cancelled United States Academic Decathlon in China--ironically focused on health this year with a big chunk of reading on plague--I learned a great deal about buboes and transmission of disease by rodents. I also read a wonderful book for young teens called Fever, 1793, which described how people would avoid each other on the streets of Philadelphia in the days of Dr. Benjamin Rush, though Yellow Fever is not transmitted from person-to-person. 

It is like that now in China. Masked, out for a walk in an abandoned park, you see someone coming the other way and both of you adjust or pull up your N95 masks and give a wide berth. You have no idea if the person could even give you COVID-19 if he tried, but we must behave that it is possible.

When I leave here, despite the fact that there will be virtually no chance that I arrived back in the US infected, will people still be worried to be near me? Of course there are those generous and/or foolish who would see me now, without waiting. Some may think that the God of Lazarus will protect them from being sick, perhaps because of their "good works"; others, because they perceive themselves to be healthy, young, virile. This is a disease killing smokers, as my friend Michael, who returned for a two week quarantine in China first observed. Those with already weakened lungs are succumbing at a higher rate than most, men more than women. In China, men smoke a lot.

WILLARD OFFICIALLY OPENED IN 1869 [four years after the Civil War ended). BY 1877  [the end of Reconstruction] WILLARD, AT 475 ACRES (1500 PATIENTS) WAS THE LARGEST ASYLUM IN THE UNITED STATES.  IN 1995 WILLARD PSYCHIATRIC CENTER CLOSED ITS DOORS, BUT A PORTION OF THE CAMPUS IS A NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS REHABILITATION FACILITY FOR INMATES. (MOSTLY INMATES WITH DRUG ADDICTION)
Attribution: Jerrye &amp; Roy Klotz, MD / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Additional Reading

Read more about the suitcase that is mentioned in this spooky video above.