Doxology Handwashing Timer

Burning Money: My "Fool's Errand" to the Homeland

UPDATE(S): Since this post on Thursday morning of March 5, there have been additional costs associated with the journey, which I have added to this accounting in red. I will continue to update this until I return to China.

I do not feel the need to explain myself, despite the judgmental and horrible things that people have said before and after my arrival on this, my native soil. As my readers know, I have come back because the United States government told Americans living abroad that they "should depart by commercial means." It was not "if you choose to depart, you must use commercial means" because, in fact, the consulates are under-staffed in China and staying there is a bit of a The Sand Pebbles-esque decision. (More on that in a later post.)

Some of you may have seen an article from the Old Grey Lady about being a pariah and the stigma of a Returnee. Today, there is another article about how the rich and super-rich are preparing.

On the other hand, a full accounting of the expenses that I have encountered since my return and some anticipated expenses appears below. I am offering this not so much as a word of caution to my friends in China who might be considering a similar "junket," but more as an explainer to the public of what is involved in such an endeavor. It would be financially devastating for the vast majority of the people with whom I work in China.

This accounting does not include taxi expenses to the airport in Guangzhou or any cash expenses that I may have spent with the cash dollars that I had in my wallet prior to arrival.

It also does not include the ongoing family expense of paying rent in China for the apartment that houses my girlfriend and kids. I am lucky to have a partner who can pay for food and basics for the family without my help during this time, but many people will not have that luxury.

It also does not include the future expenses that I anticipate: food for the next couple weeks until planned return; another rental car or public transportation (will it ever be responsible to sit among others for several hours) to get back to the airport; etc.

• Airfare to Date  

• My flight home was 10,900 RMB ($1,555). It is a round-trip ticket set to return in June. The change fee from our travel agent, which I assume is at cost passed on from the airline, is 1,100 RMB (about $158). 
• If I choose to return on March 18, it will cost me another 1,180 RMB (approx. $170 at today's rates), which I shelled out today because tickets are flying out the door as Chinese people realize that it might be safer to return than weather this in the Land of the Free, Home of the Daring. 




• Rental Car Fees to Date 

•  The first car that I kept for 24 hours was picked up at JFK and dropped off at Ithaca Airport. It cost was supposed to cost $234.90 with a base price of $172.20, taxes and fees of 62.70 and I agreed to pay the $10 for the collision damage plan, but I was subsequently charged $268.40 and have not called to find out what the additional costs were. 
•  But I was charged $14.00 for EZPass tolls based on the license plate of the car. 
• The second car that I picked up in Horseheads, NY, and dropped off in Hudson, NY, cost $144.00 plus the collision damage plan of $30. 
• The third car, which I plan to keep through Saturday, was picked up at a different rental car location (not an airport, which saves money) in Hudson and will be dropped off in the Seacoast of New Hampshire. It is expected to cost $257.77 plus a $40 collision damage plan, which is a far sight cheaper than an extending the Hertz rental by the same amount of time.

• Lodging to Date 

• AirBNB from Monday, February 17 (the day that I arrived at JFK from Beijing) to Wednesday, March 4 cost me $625.95. 
• Then another $62.76 for a single night in Leeds, NY, at The Hodepodge Lodge AirBNB. Leeds is across the Hudson River from Town of Hudson, where I needed to return my rental and where I expected to borrow a friend's Subaru; however, I do not drive stick/standard and after about 600 feet of practice, I was not not confident, so decided to rent another car after three hours of calling both Travelocity and Hertz (long hold times and multiple disconnects due to poor cell service or incompetence on their end). By the time I reimburse my friend for sending his key and send it back to him, it will be roughly $60 through the USPS. 
• I am fortunate to be headed to a farmhouse for the duration of my stay that belongs to a friend in the Seacoast of New Hampshire
  

• Public Carrier Transportation to and from Rental Car facilities

   
• It was $65 from the Ithaca Airport to my AirBNB on Day Two of Quarantine. That was the drop off point for my Budget rental at Federal Circle, the car rental location associated with JFK.
•  I gave a Benjamin Franklin ($100) to my Superhost for driving me to the car rental place in Horseheads, about an hour away. A taxi would have cost $165. There was no offer of a shuttle despite multiple calls to the Hertz location, explaining that neither Lyft nor Uber were responding to calls in my rural area. (Not sure about the range of the shuttles that Hertz might offer, but a guy dropping his car off at Enterprise yesterday was shuttled home in it by one of their employees.)
• $12.43 for a Lyft from Hertz to Enterprise since keeping the car from Hertz for three more days was going to cost

• Gasoline 

• $21.45 at Mirabito in Ithaca to return compact car (hybrid) to Airport drop-off with a full tank
• $30.71 of gas from Stewart's Shops in Catskill, NY to return the Hertz vehicle full in Hudson.
• $30.84 at Irving in Hartford, VT to add  gas to the not-so-minivan that Enterprise rented to me
  
  

• Healthcare 

• $401.78 for health coverage from the exchange for the month of March. (Yes, Mom, I was uncovered from Feb. 17 to Leap Day, because my employer's insurance was not portable and HR did not remind me to get travel insurance.)
• $37.95 for a flu shot at Kinney Drugs in Seneca Falls, NY (yes, home of the 1848 convention!). It will be re-imburseable, but I had not yet received insurance card with number.
  
  

• Food and Meals 

•  $252.45 for a Forks Over Knives diet (no meat and mostly fresh food) at the Green Star Coop in Ithaca. (I was asymptomatic and wearing a mask. I called in advance to see if they could prepare the order, but they only had a not in-house delivery service that would have cost a lot so I did my own shopping, somewhat irresponsibly.)
• Lots of free squash and canned goods, as well as a spice cabinet and probably $100 to $200 of other edible supplies from host. 
• Forgotten amount for restaurant meal in Scranton, PA, but roughly $40.
  

• Incidentals 

•  The SIM card, necessary for getting Apple to call you back when your computer gives you a Service Battery ⚠ warning, but also for getting Uber to verify you, was $20 for the month of calls and texts, plus $10/GB (no charge beyond 6 GB or $60). I have used 0.43 in just two days since leaving my lazaretto. I had to pay $12.95 for expedited shipping to make sure the card would arrive before I departed.
• Purchase of two washable, re-useable masks for $59.98 that were sent to my sister and have not arrived.
• $8.99/month for Netflix, planned mental sanity account, but never watched more than the first episode of "The West" by Ken Burns and sixteen minutes of the second one

Final Full Day: So Long, My Lazaretto

This is the second post about the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Pauper Insane. 

"Willard Psychiatric Center- 125 Years of Service" says the sign on the back ell.

Site of the first chartered agricultural college in New York, which gets chartered in 1853, opens its doors to promising young farmers in December of 1860, but will basically go defunct as boys marched off to fight for the Union, closes its doors in November 1861. The sprawling campus of what would become the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Pauper Insane includes Hadley House, with a big stage for entertainment, and dozens of buildings--very large and small--that housed the engineer and various other "important" staff, as well as 3,000 or so inmates at a time at its peak. The vast majority of staff lived in the same buildings as the inmates, in case there was any bleating, antics, or need to tie someone to a chair or thrown them in an enclosed metal crib in the middle of the dark, quiet nights here alongside Lake Seneca. This was a humane place compared to what they might have experienced had the New York Legislature, in April 1865, not passed the Willard Act, modeling an institution on the philosophy of Dorothea Dix--some of whose documents used to be part of the collection at this little house museum.

In my earlier post, I speculated that the inmates were a variety of PTSD patients from the Civil and Great Wars, as well as cast-offs from families that could not deal with the syndromes of their children, but it never occurred to me that being gay--a tidbit that my decent docent mentioned in an off-hand way--would have been one qualification for commitment. (An example of my white straight privilege.)

I have shared all of my pictures and my descriptions of what I saw yesterday on a public Facebook post. I have not the time to write a long post today as I must retrieve my letter from Seneca County Department of Health. Also, I have a date with Lucifer and Taughannock Falls, which "is the highest reliable single plunge in the State of New York."

State: New York
Location: Robert H. Treman State Park, 6 miles south west of Ithaca.
Height: 115
Crest: 20?
Water Source: Enfield Creek

Waypoint: 42.40056N 76.58444W

Summary: One of the more impressive falls in the Finger Lakes Region. This one definitely should be part of any waterfall tour of the area. You can hike from the falls through the scenic Enfield Glen to the Lower Falls.

Can't have a Chicken Pox Party, so let's have a Pity Party with your favorite pariah

Coming into Concord on Thursday evening and want to see people on Friday evening in a group setting. Have a message into my friend at the Department of Health to ask where I should lodge, because there are cases of asymptomatic infection, possibly, that extend beyond the 14-day quarantine period. (One friend reminded me that I have actually been cooped up since January 23, with scarcely any possible exposure beyond the buttons in the elevator of my building, but the trip to the airport in a taxi and being on a plane for three hours and then another plane from Beijing to New York resets the Exposure Clock.) I was going to stay in the home of an old, dear friend who has passed away, but I decided that since her child won't be there, it is best not to touch his fridge door or his spare key.  I might obsessively need to wipe everything I touched out of a mixture of politeness and genuine concern. Frankly, as each day wears on, the chances of me being an asymptomatic carrier continue to wane.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun, to have a party with friends since I could get called back to work in China within a week (unlikely, but possible--imagine that level of uncertainty in your life?). Furthermore, I plan to re-quarantine myself for another couple weeks, because as I said to the bickering CDC women at passport control, who could not agree if the professional who was helping me told me that my quarantine was optional, not mandatory, "Don't worry. I am going to quarantine myself anyway, because I do not want to be a part of the spread of a disease or the cause of a pandemic. My friends would never forgive me."

Over the last two weeks, so busy that I have watched the first boring episode of Ken Burns' The West (I am a huge fan of his opus so maybe it is me and not the actual documentary), I have had so many conversations about public health and medicine with a variety of clued-in folks that have left me feeling fairly confident that I know the status of the current knowledge (what we know and what we think we know versus rumors, speculation, and prognostication) and the best way to communicate about what is happening. My old friend, an immunologist, may vehemently disagree with me, but instead of engaging publicly or privately, he has chosen to cut-me-loose, as is the style of Americans on the Internet these days. All I can say is, "Bring it." I love you, but I cannot stand by as people scaremonger about this disease. Scaremonger about Mike Pence and the disaster that our federal government has become, underfunded as it is (blame that on both parties, please, and call your damn Congressman) and run by an Administration that could not find itself out of a paper bag unless there was a tiki torch rally happening at the orifice; indeed, then they would show up with feigned law-and-order to snuff out the torches with a blink and a wink.)

It is good that we can are finally learning more about this. One of the valuable people who has been most helpful to me both in counseling me through this hard time and in providing valid information is a first cousin. She is a former USN doctor, who has served in Guam, but her glibness got us both labeled as insensitive jerks, when she wrote on Facebook, "."

Now she has, in response to my posting an article about how COVID-19 is like the flu, with the comment that the next thing we need is an article about how COVID-19 is like the "common cold," shared this, in the category of what we think we know:

[Eighty percent] of cases thus far are mild, and coronavirus IS one of the ‘common cold’ viruses along with rhinovirus, adenovirus and others while flu -
Orthomyxoviridae - definitely is not. 

In the ‘non-mild’ cases, the pneumonia is the issue with some distinctive findings on chest CT. The literature I’m reading suggests some promise on certain antivirals’ ability to prevent that complication, which seems to show up around day 9-12 of illness (if it’s going to happen).

My physician*, the former head of the NH Medical Society, has also been helpful. One of the bundle of things that repatriating or returning from abroad citizens need to do is sign up for healthcare coverage, if their work coverage is not portable across national borders, as mine was not. He and my cousin were both able coaches for the experience of signing up with a for-profit health exchange. The policy starts today; tomorrow, I am liberated and get a rental car. Good timing. Thank the Lord nothing happened to me in Scranton, where I stopped for dinner on the five hour drive to my lazaretto. You never know when some stranger is going to sneeze on you and give you the flu or a common cold!

Anyway, back to the idea of holding a party. I am worried that I will continue to self-quarantine in an abundance of caution and then get called back to China, seeing neither of my sisters or my favorite people before I need to leave again. My summer vacation is probably getting eaten up by an official March 2 (tomorrow!) restart date so I won't see them until I pop back on a climate-irresponsible junket to attend my sister's wedding in September. Alternatively, I will find a way to get my partner and her kids here and then we will be like one-armed paper hangers in Versailles (or whatever the expression is), as we seek to acculturate and enroll the kids in school--a privilege that my well-heeled Chinese-American friend, a lawyer in Shanghai has availed himself of in Manhattan with his Chinese-American wife and their Chinese-American kids. "I chose Chinatown over Marin for this precise reason. Didn't want to be a scourge...There are three families that here due to the lock out [sic]."

I emailed a few folks about the party idea. Wanted to call it a "chicken pox party" and wear a hazmat suit from an EMT friend who used to visit Superfund sites (a job that I had in 2004). She now mostly visits clothes dryer fires and bonfires (think 5th of November) that have gotten out of control. There will be no party with me in a Hazmat suit and her in a Guy Fawkes mask, though, because somebody I respect blew the whistle on this idea as irresponsible and suggested instead, "Maybe you can have a party to play the game Pandemic, and people can learn and engage around the issues? Bring examples of appropriate behaviors and PPE [personal protective equipment] for flu and droplet-born disease. A hazmat suit may [my emphasis] mis-represent the risks, unless you’re in a medical setting." I think a Hazmat suit would not only protect everybody, but be hilarious. There is no doubt about it, though, it completely misrepresents the risk, just as the picture in this Scientific American article might leave people thinking that there is a basis for aerosol spraying in the streets. Yet, the picture got people to look at the article, just as a person in a Hazmat suit would draw attention, too. In the zeitgeist of the moment, everybody would instantly know what the article was about.


So, I can think of nothing more awkward than sitting around with a bunch of people who do not know each other playing a board game, but I am down with the hand-washing demo and sniffing some pepper so we can sneeze into our elbows (but what if I am sick? Someone else will have to do that.) If you want to join me on Friday evening, please RSVP send me a message. Not sure where I will be staying because NH Dept of Health does not seem to have a COVOD-19 hotline on the weekends that could tell me which public accommodations have agreed to act as quarantine facilities, but, oh yeah, that does not pertain to me any longer.



*A fellow 2004 Boston Democratic National Convention delegate for HoHo "Choo choo" Dean, M.D.--now a pharmaceutical lobbyist since Obama, sadly, gave up on the fifty state strategy and booted him from the position now held by the all-powerful and so-popular Perez, compared, at least, to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, right?

Day Ten: Open Letter for Enemies of Civil Discourse

Day Nine: Letter from Congressman Welch's Office

UPDATE: Phyrrhic victory!!! They have clarified that people should come home and get sick instead of stay and get sick, but all I was seeking was clarity. Come home, friends!


Hello Mr. Lee,

I certainly understand your frustration. I reached out to the State Department with your question, and received the following response:

“Those currently in China should attempt to depart by commercial means. U.S. citizens remaining in China should follow the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Chinese health authorities’ guidance for prevention, signs and symptoms, and treatment. We strongly urge U.S. citizens remaining in China to stay home as much as possible and limit contact with others, including large gatherings.”

Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you,

Shannon Furnari
Deputy State Director
Office of Congressman Peter Welch (VT-AL)

Day Eight: How You Can Help This Effort

In Memory of Dr. Li Wenliang (1986-2020)

Lessons and Scripture for the Day

There are three kinds of information:

• what we know
• what we think we know
• rumors and speculation

This morning, I spoke to someone that I have known a long time who had very good information on coronavirus. He works in public health on the environmental side for a state government. They are knee deep in responding to the pending, possible pandemic. He asked me, a little too politely and diplomatically as he has been trained, to remove an irresponsible article from my Facebook feed that I had posted mostly to make the point that the rumors are rampant. I don't want to be in the company of Rush Limbaugh, who continues spreading this vile bile even as his bearded countenance withers into even greater (mental) illness that will eventually consume him. So, I did as I was told asked.

In fact, the most irresponsible article that I have shared was in WeChat Moments, on the other side of the Great Firewall of China. If I was still inside China, I would not have posted it, because I am more cautious there--given the strict punishment for rumor mongering. The article was viral and claimed that America had started the spread of the virus (think smallpox blankets and Indians), as well as kept secret the presence of 10,000 infected people--a possibility that most doctors and American journalists find preposterous. Just almost no way that could happen in this social media rich nation with a free press.

The topic of the untoward repercussions of censorship and Dr. Li Wenliang (the opthamologist who died of COVID-19 on February 6 and whom I referred to as a martyr in last night's post) is beyond the scope of today's discussion, but my old friend from Changchun--with whom I sometimes think that I have only a christened name (Alexander), our Catholic faith, and a penchant for argumentation in common--has published a powerful essay on the subject.

My acquaintance shared a Scientific American article that every responsible blogger, journalist, and poster to social media should read. Obviously, the rumors while we searched for the cause of HIV burned a painful memory in the generations that lived through the 1980s. More recently, the SARS epidemic in 2003 gave rise to horrible rumors. Yet even this very article that I am recommending, which was written as an antidote to misinformation, features a picture that is irresponsible from a public health awareness perspective.

South Korean health officials spray disinfectant in Daegu on February 21, 2020. Credit: Jung Yeon-Je Getty Images

While this is happening in South Korea now and it happened near my home in Panyu District of Guangzhou City, this aerosol spraying is mostly a placebo to reassure the public, peering out from their windows, that the government is doing something to protect you. It is an effective propaganda tool, albeit an expensive use of public resources. 

Before I conclude this post, I want to summarize the main recommendations of my friends in public health and the CDC fliers that I have been handed since coming back:

• get the flu shot. 
• wash your hands all the time
• do not touch your face
• avoid sick people (but if you have one in your home assign one person to tend her/him)

When I leave this place where I am staying, I will need to wash the grime in the sink, bathroom, and anywhere else its built up. Using a disinfectant is not necessary, but helps. 

Finally, I discussed with him that I think there needs to be a "Guide for Returners" that helps us to find the hotels which have agreed to host people who might be hosting COVID-19, helps us to figure out the financial resources to get a phone, find and pay for safe transportation to our lodgings, etc. The three day delay between landing and my visit from the Seneca County Health Department was enough time for me--who had called CDC and the New York Health Department prior to leaving China--to spread the disease to hundreds of people, if I had not been responsible and if I had not come to a rural county. Luckily, as I keep mentioning I am very healthy, but that does not mean that I don't have it because of the long incubation period. If I did and had gone to rent a car, eat at a restaurant on the drive north because the one that I had thought I would go to was closed, and visited the healthy food store in Ithaca to do a couple weeks of food shopping many people could be sick because of me. Yet, I probably had less contact than most people would, as I had meticulously planned to rent a car, do all my shopping at once, and only stop for gas and a meal.

Thanks for reading and please help to promote responsible reporting of information on COVID-19 or other diseases.