This is from Marissa Cangin, an acquaintance of mine through my old friend, William Dale. Both work at City of Hope National Medical Center in California. William is Arthur M. Coppola Family Chair in Supportive Care Medicine there, and Marissa is an Assistant Clinical Professor–a clinical psychologist–in the Department of Supportive Care. (Marissa’s specialty is roughly what Felician’s PsyD program trains for.) My heartfelt gratitude to both of them, and to everyone at City of Hope (and elsewhere), for doing what they do. My preferred blood-donation organization happens to be the Red Cross, and I’m going to make my way over there–in my case, Flemington, NJ–at first opportunity. Please take Marissa’s suggestion to heart. Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (7): You Heard It Here First
Suleman Khawaja, MD, Valley Hospital, Ridgewood, New Jersey:
I need to decompress a bit. Work today marked the transition to a war zone. And the difference between the combatants and the politicians who sent us to battle while watching from a safe distance has become stark.
Mariel Padilla, Express Desk, New York Times:
‘It Feels Like a War Zone’: Doctors and Nurses Plead for Masks on Social Media
As supplies have dwindled, doctors and nurses have improvised ways to make their stock last. Now they’re urging leaders to help.
War with Iran (24): Regrets Only
The Washington Examiner is a right-wing paper, and it’s angry at us. It’s trying to cut through this coronavirus noise, and tell us something. My God, why is no one listening? What will it take?
Iran repeatedly attacks US troops while coronavirus outbreak distracts public attention.
Repeatedly! And during a pandemic! The nerve of those people! Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (6): “Dial a Philosopher”
I just got a frightened text message from a friend who read my last post, and asked me to convince his teenager both to take coronavirus more seriously, and to be more rigorous about social distancing. He’s one of a small handful of people to have expressed horror at that post, either on Facebook or offline.
This is the article that did it for him:
Italy suffered its worst day of the coronavirus outbreak Tuesday, recording 475 deaths. The epicenter of the pandemic in Europe, Italy is further along an infection curve other countries in the west appear to be following, and its healthcare system has buckled under the weight of 35,000 cases.
I agreed to do it. He thanks me for being “Dial-a-Philosopher.” Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (5): Vox Populi
A sample of comments that my wife and I managed to hear in a single day, Tuesday, March 17, from people talking about the coronavirus (except for #9, from different places in New Jersey).
(1) 11:30 am:
This whole coronavirus thing just strikes me as bullshit.
Coronavirus Diary (4): La Forza del Destino
The overture:
Coronavirus Diary (3): Creeping Death
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
–Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5
I count it as a great blessing that I have so far, at age fifty, managed to avoid becoming a father. Amusingly enough, my ex-wife once told me, flat out, “Before I met you, I was on the fence about having children. I no longer am. You would make a terrible father. So I’ve abandoned the idea.” Music to my ears.
And yet, I’ve just had a phone conversation with one of my best friends, in which he asked me whether I would temporarily take custody of his child in the event that both he and his wife die of COVID-19. “Yes,” I say, without hesitation. I actually like his kid, as kids go. Granted, the custody he imagines is temporary, until family members could come and do a formal adoption. My friend knows me well enough to know that coronavirus or no, it makes little sense to turn me into a bona fide step-father. One catastrophe is enough. Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (2): Against Ageist Fascism
I shouldn’t have to make this point in this, our post-Auschwitzean age, but just a quick PSA, FYI: age-based genocide (or even malice or discrimination) is immoral. And PS, a pandemic is not the time to be wishing death on the elderly. Call me crazy, but there’s no good time to be wishing death on anyone. And yet I’ve seen more than one instance, on Facebook and elsewhere, of people’s expressing genocidal or near-genocidal sentiments about the elderly. Genocidal sentiments aside, there’s been no shortage of ageist malice for “Boomers,” or “old people.” Paraphrase of a rant I saw in the comments section of a local newspaper:
The Boomers raised our rents, gouged us on tuition, saddled us with debts, dragged us into unwanted wars, pay us crap wages, and vote the wrong way: so good riddance to them; may they all drop dead.
Substitute “Jews” for “boomers” or “the disabled” in rants of this sort, and you have the logic of the Final Solution-by-viral-proxy. Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (1): Flirting with Disaster
I had a sobering half-hour phone conversation today with my brother Suleman, a hospitalist at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Ridgewood lies just a few miles northwest of the current epicenter of coronavirus cases in New Jersey, Teaneck. My own county, Hunterdon, has just seen its first case. Continue reading
Injustice and Its Victims (Or Not)
Michael Young and I are hanging out at an undisclosed location in New Jersey, riding out the coronavirus by trading barbed moral intuitions with (or at?) each other. We need help. I mean, we need your help adjudicating a clash of intuitions about injustice. I doubt that anything of great significance turns on which set of intuitions is right. But I called bullshit on some of the crap Michael was slinging at me, telling him that I would appeal for a verdict to the Final Authority of All Philosophical Authorities, vox populi. Or at least the voice of a handful of self-selected readers of Policy of Truth, the moral and epistemic paragons of the Internet.
I won’t tell you which of us holds which view until I get some responses. This is my idea of an incentive to get you to respond. Like you care. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 