Pandemic Diary (Part III)
Those first few days are like an absurd dream The highway seems different. There is no road ahead. "The magic rituals of mass delusions were being cast and few had the knowledge of strength to resist"
Part III
It is March of 2020 and we are on the road leaving the Gulf coast and heading northwest. The memory of the previous weekend at the Orange Beach, AL show is still in my head along with assorted thoughts about anxiety, as in, now what the hell are they going to do with this epidemic. I am trying to write a book and like it or not the cloud of collective reasoning will show up in print. People were acting as if all of a sudden a disease just sprung up. This thing has been going on for months now, at least from my perspective.
As we clear Mobile driving towards the Mississippi state line we have the radio on listening to a local talk station and the discussion is wall to wall panic. Not jumping out the 10th floor window panic but a low boil fear expressed by one caller after another.
A local “expert” (EMT person or a doctor of some kind) comes on and expresses some opinion that he heard the night before on CNN of Fox without any real substance to it. There are lists on cancellations recited schools, county services, state departments, are closing their public offices but they still can be reached through an 800 number or website. Don’t show up in person without a hazmat☣️ suit is what my imagination is saying. After awhile we turn it off. Nobody knows anything.
About three months ago back in the first week of January we both got the Covid. Didn’t know it at the time thinking it was the flu. But a very strange flu. We both lost our sense of taste and smell then a vicious cough set in. A hacking that wouldn’t stop. I had gotten a flu shot but thought, ‘Oh well sometimes it doesn’t work’ or some other erroneous but comforting thought.
Nobody knew anything about Covid, it was only a vague rumor about China or international travelers getting sick. But we were sick but good. Yet there were art shows coming up in a couple weeks and we did not have enough jewelry to do the shows we had booked. So fever or not, sick as hell, fatigued, we both stumbled out to the studio and put in as many hours as possible.
Things got worse. I coughed so much at times I could not lie down so sleeping in bed was out of the question. We rigged up a chair and ottoman and I could recline and get some sleep sitting up which was a blessing.
Go to the doctor you might be wondering.? Dr Google said the symptoms were compatible with the flu and not much can be done because it is a virus. If you have a high fever or intestinal symptoms well maybe it’s time to do something. I had none of that only an intermittent fever and no stomach involvement. Conclusion, only go to a doctor if you need someone to hold your hand. Besides no one had heard of Covid .
About two weeks prior to the onset of symptoms we worked a Christmas (2019) school show prior to near a large international airport in a town where lots of their employees lived. The show was inside the auditoriums, hallways, and catacombs of this school with people packed in like Black Friday at Walmart.
Snot nosed kids, parents, and exhibitor crushed together in a grand swirl of people for two days. Is it possible one person in that mob had just gotten off a plane from Hong Kong wandered over to our booth and tried on some earrings while coughing in my face? I’m told Chinese people do not find that rude.
After sleeping in a chair for a few nights I actually started to feel a little bit human. The much needed rest along with every herbal medication in the house, lots of water, and too much coffee helped to keep the symptoms down while the plague virus began to run its course after about two weeks.
Neither one of us was in fact anything like “better” but somewhat stronger was a welcome sign of positive progress. Fever was gone and some of the muscle aches had disappeared but the fatigue was still there as was the weird lack of taste. We made jokes about it. If you were having soup, what does it taste like? answer: toast. Stew with rice, what does it taste like? answer: toast. Coke? toast. Hot sauce? toast. It wasn’t all that funny.
Soon it was time to pack up and drive to Cape Coral, Florida for our first show of the year. Get all the silver jewelry we had made in the proper boxes, clothes, get the RV outfitted, provisions for a couple days on the road and go. Still sick, still dead tired, blissful unaware we were recovering from the first wave of a bio weapons attack, and somewhere under the virus induced altered state of consciousness we though it a good idea to go back to work.
🎨🎨🎨
That was in January. I didn’t stop coughing until near then end of February and my wife suffered fatigue for nearly that long. Banging around the back roads of our auxiliary base in Florida trying to make a living selling art silver to an anxious and preoccupied public was sketchy at best.
We had worked in Florida for a couple decades by now and had seen the mood of people swing from boom to bust just like the land business. But this year was different. Although my health was improved by a particularly warm stretch of weather my attitude was in a serious funk.
News was not good. There were strange murmurings about a “novel” (a euphemism for man-made) virus emanating from an area in China known for biological weapons. People were getting sick with a flu-like bug that was evidently killing some folks who had certain preexisting conditions. There were rumors and disinformation and propaganda everywhere.
“Experts” self appointed and otherwise clamored for their fifteen minutes of fame in the media. The term “pandemic” was being batted around by the info boys and girls trying to look and sound somber and important while only thinly covering up their headline grabbing glee, ratings were good. It was a free for all of experts, political operatives, and global apparatchiks all hustling their own agenda. But beneath it all there was the unmistakable whiff of brimstone; the smell of power.
It seemed as though the "shadow" personality had traveled from the individual in leadership to the collective unconscious of a powerful clique who were in control of the media and science.* The dark side of authority was dominating our thinking to the exclusion of all other. The magic rituals of mass delusions were being cast and few had the knowledge of strength to resist. The whole pandemic affair had the feeling of a new style "Pearl Harbor".
We make our livelihood selling silver art jewelry or original oil paintings at art festivals. It is hard to sell anything like a painting or fancy silver work to people who are dazed with constant doses of cognitive dissonance and fear. By February the narrative Jello was beginning to set and the public was firmly in the grip of unseen hands working the keyboards of clout. We were cowed by an unseen bug likely produced in a lab by the hands of god only knows who.
Mobility was one of the keys to our business model as is the case for many art fair artists we had several studio locations. After years of nomadic travel from one show venue to another we began to call where we lived a “base”. In the answer to a question from someone, “Where do you live?” “We base out of the Ozarks” or the Gulf Coast or Florida or somewhere else that affords us studio space. Would our type of business travel be possible in the Pandemic world? I was already wondering.🤷♂️
The sales at shows in Florida in the winter of 2020 were not very good for us and a lot of other artists who we knew. By March our money situation was running on fumes and we had to pull the plastic out more often than we wanted to. Recent writing in my book reflected an overt angst. We hoped to save a bad season by selling a little in Alabama then heading to the Ozarks and gearing up for some reliable venues in the Spring as we headed north then east across the Panhandle to Alabama.
Part II (The Freak Show Begins) and link to Part I (Entropy)
That was what was running through my thoughts as we left the Gulf States and set a course for the Ozarks and hopefully some good news about the government reaction to the plague. Covid was like the Beatles…taking the world by storm.
*Big Pharma has profited from the COVID-19 pandemic, with Pfizer forecasting it will receive $54 billion revenue from its COVID vaccine and treatment this year, a sum larger than the combined revenue for all its other products.1 However, Amnesty International warns that pharmaceutical companies continue to obstruct fair access to COVID-19 vaccines by monopolizing technology, blocking and lobbying against the sharing of intellectual property, charging high prices for vaccines, and prioritizing supplies to wealthy countries.2 The Peoples Vaccine Alliance reports that Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.3 The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) assuring us that there would soon be enough vaccines to immunize everyone by early 2022, but vaccine development is not generally lucrative, and vaccines are only used once or twice.0
0 downtoearth.org.in
1 inquirer.com
2 amnesty.org
3 reliefweb.int
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Your pandemic history is outstanding. Your writing style transcends reason.
I had the blessings of some people that knew it was a lie and when they inconsistant rules and games started it was obvious. By Fall only the fools were still tricked. But it lasted for another year. Now the shot and more all is right there.