Journal of a Plague Year, Tuesday, September 8

Today I found another discrepancy between the way we want to see the world, and the way it is.

I have breathing problems I believe were caused by exposure to my parents’ cigarette smoke when I was young. When I talked to a doctor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, around 1980 he told me I didn’t have asthma, but asthma-like symptoms and gave me a booklet to read. It said asthma was a condition of the lungs that only could be identified with an autopsy.

The Ann Arbor doctor told me my condition would be exacerbated by exercise, cold temperatures, and exposure to water. That was certainly proved true when I moved to Chicago and had to walk by the lake to get to the commuter train station in winter.

Fast forward to today. Our concept of asthma has changed, partly because there are fewer doctors per patient, partly because of the discipline imposed by malpractice insurance, and partly by pharmaceutical companies offerings medicines based on symptoms, not diagnosis.

A while back I asked someone in my doctor’s office about that definition of asthma. Oh no, I was told, you have asthma is you have trouble breathing.

My most recent doctor was appalled I was using albuterol sulfate, because it was not a control medication, but an emergency treatment. He cut back my prescription and told me to take one of the inhaled steroids.

I wasn’t convinced, because when I had tried one years before it seemed to have no affect. But with the one medication cut back I had no choice. Within six months I was in his office with uncontrollable coughing, my first serious asthma attack in years.

I went back to using the albuterol but continued the steroid, until last winter when I saw an article that said the steroid ws only effective in about 50% of the cases. The reason: there are different kinds of asthma, and the steroid treats only one type. Albuterol is what works in the other cases. [1]

It noted that no one did the diagnosis required to determine the type of asthma. There lies the gap between medical research, with its sophisticated laboratory tools, and what’s available from commercial companies and covered by medical insurance.

When coronavirus hit and Trump started making noises about cutting off our trade with China, I tried to get all my prescriptions renewed one last time. I was sure one had Chinese ingredients. I wasn’t sure about the others.

I wasn’t the only one. Apparently many people started stock piling their medications at the time albuterol inhalers were being used to treat respiratory problems of people with COVID-19. A scarcity developed, although one publication glibly said it wasn’t a supply problem, just an increase in demand. [2] Try that answer on an economics exam.

This is where the reality based on television takes over. In the typical medical drama like Marcus Welby or Doctor Kildare, a problem is identified before the first commercial, a desperate search is made, and, just before the final advertisement, a solution is found.

The one I remember most clearly was a M.A.S.H episode that was rerun about the time hantavirus was infecting Native American athletes. In the beginning, the medics are treating some patients with hantavirus and Klinger says he has the same symptoms. The medics assume he is playing another role to be dismissed from the army, and ignore him. Then when he gets really sick, they discover it also can affect Lebanese like him. They gave him the necessary treatment, and he was back in full drag in the next episode.

In the case of albuterol, the Federal Drug Adminstration reported the shortage, probably in April. [3] Medical websites warned people with asthma to use their steroids and other maintenance drugs, and not rely on albuterol. One even said a canister should last several months. [4] The medical research reported in December had not percolated through the establishment.

Then, the government took action. The FDA approved "the first generic version of an albuterol sulfate inhaler" to increase supply. [5] After that appeared, the stories of shortages disappeared.

I couldn’t get my refill in April because the prescription had expired, and I had postponed by annual physical until New Mexico began to allow some offices to reopen. Then, I got the one with Chinese ingredients first.

Next, and now it was August, I needed to refill something that was running out. This was when it was becoming obvious the Post Master was slowing down the mail. It took three weeks, instead of two to get the refill. I ended up taking the medicine every third day, instead of daily, to get by.

Now it was time to reorder the albuterol. I thought I was safe, but then my next to the last canister failed. This happens every couple years, and now I was down to one that was half gone, if I trusted the meter on it.

The post office has improved since its actions were publicized. I mailed the prescription on Monday, and on Thursday got an acknowledgment that it had been received. Then Saturday, I received an "urgent" message to call them.

Saturday was the first day of a three-day holiday. I called and was told my prescribed version of albuterol was out-of-stock, and to call back Monday. It was after that that I went on-line and searched for keywords "albuterol" and "shortages."

It’s been a difficult summer when smoke almost constant from fires in Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, and local ones like Rio Medio. Saturday the California and Medio fires were sending smoke that accumulated in front of the Jémez and even began to obsure the badlands.

I started worrying because I didn’t know the nature of the shortage. I didn’t dare take the remaining medicine, lest the canister fail. I put on my cotton beard mask in the house. I tried inhaling oxygen from an oxygen bar, a device used by gym rats to give themselves an edge. It only helped a little. I used a little of my precious cough medicine to treat the nasal drainage caused by the smoke. (Precious because it also became unavailable for reorder in April).

Instead of taking medicine in the middle of the night, I got up and spent half an hour on the oxygen bar. Then, and only then, did I take a puff of albuterol. Note, I said a puff. The prescribed amount is two.

I called Monday, but of course only the answer line people were working. I did ask when the other people would be available Tuesday, and was told 5 am. I asked the man his time zone, and calculated someone would be available at 6 am.

The smoke was worse yesterday, and I was still just as cautious.

Today, I was told the generic form I used was out of stock, [6] but that the name brand was available. The difference would be $100 co-pay instead of zero.

This is where having some savings or other financial resources matter, and why the poor suffer most in pandemics. I authorized the increased payment, and asked when I should have it. He was a bit hesitant, because so much depended on the post office, but he hazarded by the end of the week.

I got off the phone, and took some medicine.

When I get the prescription package I’ll discover the real cost. When I last had the medicine refilled it cost $105 for three months, and that was six canisters. It’s never been zero.

Over the weekend I was considering asking my doctor’s office for another copy of the prescription to take to a local drug store to see if they had it. That chain would be experiencing similar problems, but there was a chance the New Mexico warehouse might have more than the national one preferred by my Medicare Part D insurer.

The daily reports on Wikipedia, which have been less regular, indicates the number of new cases of Coronavirus since September 1 has come down from 31 to 22. The number of deaths in two weeks remains at three. [7]

Another holiday may change all that, and new storms can ignite new fires.

Sources:
1. "Inhaled steroids may not work for half of asthma patients." PulmCCM website. 12 December 2019. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.

Suzanne Leigh. "Gold Standard Asthma Treatment May Not Be Effective for Most Patients with Mild Asthma." University of California San Francisco website. 19 May 2019. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.

2. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. "A message to asthma sufferers about a shortage of albuterol metered dose inhalers." 9 April 2020. It had the sentences: "it is not a production problem. The shortage is occurring because of the increased use of albuterol inhalers in hospitals."

3. United States Federal Drug Administration. "Drug Shortages" website. It still had the announcement of the albuterol shortage when I looked yesterday, 7 September 2020.

4. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. "It is important that you not overuse your albuterol inhaler, as one canister should last for months."

5. Kristin J. Kelley. "FDA Approves Generic Asthma Inhaler, Acknowledges Shortage Due to COVID-19." Jwatch website. 9 April 2020. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.

6. I had thought when my doctor (another one from the ones so far mentioned) changed my prescription, it was to a generic, but perhaps it was just to a cheaper alternative that insurance companies would accept.

7. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, August 23

Another month when I don’t have all the bills I need to pay. I mail bills on or before the 25th if they are due on the 1st. When I was in the post office on Monday, one medical insurance bill hadn’t arrived 13 days before it’s due date.

I have two choices. Drive into the post office every day to see if it’s arrived, or take my checkbook with me and write a check in the car tomorrow. With the pandemic, I’ve cut my trips to the post office to one a week to minimize risks, so it’ll be in the car tomorrow.

In case the bill isn’t there, I’ll take an envelope and stamp with a copy of a previous bill to mail.

The pandemic and changes in the management of the Post Office may be making it difficult to pay in a timely fashion, but the insurance company’s computer systems haven’t been reprogrammed. Paying late, especially if I have develop a record of paying late, means I risk having my insurance cancelled.

I discovered a similar scheme earlier this week with my bank. It was sold to an out-of-state company last year, and things have been getting worse. My last savings account statement showed it was now paying the same token interest it was paying on the checking account.

I got a call from someone this week because the bank hasn’t been able to send me my next order of blank checks. While we were talking, I discovered the bank had changed the rules on activity. It used to be one had to make one transaction a year to avoid an account going dormant. This was apparently some government rule instituted after 9/11. If it was dormant, you had to file paperwork to get access.

This time she said accounts go inactive in six months and dormant in a year. The reactivation paperwork is required for inactive accounts. It now charges fees on dormant accounts.

In the past I did my yearly transaction at the time when I did the government required annual withdrawal from my IRA. Well, the lobby is still closed, and that transaction is too complicated to do in the drive through.

So, the bank is closed for activity, but if I don’t act I get penalized by both it and the federal government. And, the bank makes additional money off me.

Fortunately, the woman I talked to sent me an email address, and told me to send her requests for these transactions. That’s more than another bank I used to use offered when it changed hands.

I don’t need news stories to tell me the post office service has gotten worse. I track the books I order which come through media mail. That used to take two weeks. Now it averages three.

The last time I checked the tracking, the truck with the package arrived in Española from Albuquerque around 11:30 am. The truck used to arrive before the post office opened. That adds a day’s delay.

At the beginning of the year I noticed that packages that arrived in Denver were being sent to Las Vegas instead of Albuquerque. Las Vegas, of course, has had some of the most serious problems with the Coronavirus. That rerouting adds at least two days, plus an extra set of handling.

Delays are being added everywhere, even though we’ve had six months to adjust to doing things remotely.

About two weeks ago, Wikipedia stopped updated the Coronavirus page for New Mexico by 7:30 pm. Now, I find the update the next day. When that is added to the days when the totals are the same or go down, one loses all confidence in the timeliness of the information.

In the past two weeks we’ve had 26 active cases, down from the highs in late July. However, the number of deaths increased to 10, although only three occurred in the past two weeks.

The local website on wildfires maintained by the Forest Service was really useful when some employee got the idea of using blogging software to keep people informed. That was years ago. Management became involved. Updates became official releases. And now, they come out a day late.

I don’t have to tell anyone we’re having serious problems with smoke right now from a fire near Nambé, plus a huge fire near Grand Junction, Colorado, and all those fires in California. The weather bureau Air Quality forecast is still making predictions that let me know in advance I should wear a mask.

The Forest Service updates are a day late and only confirm what I suspect. Confirmation is necessary. One can’t just go on assumptions about conditions based on problems with breathing. That creates the possibility that I might dismiss something important.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, August 17

I finally got a new pair of glasses. Instead, of the usual place, I went to one of the cheap chains in Santa Fé.

It served my purpose. I wanted something that required as little human contact as possible, and that meant no measurements and no fittings.

Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars and waiting a week, I got a pair the same day for $40. I could actually have gotten two pairs for that price, but I didn’t want to spend more time looking for a second frame.

I know I’m getting what I paid for. There’s probably a quarter of the amount of plastic in the frames than there are in the more expensive ones. That means one really can’t have the ear pieces bent to fit.

There’s no scratch protection or light reduction coating. Those are luxuries.

The plastic lenses may not even be absolutely correct. They have a stock of standard lenses, and take them out of inventory.

But, when you’ve needed something for nine months, close is an improvement on inadequate.

I noticed while I was there the usual pattern of following rules without understanding. I asked if the woman who let me in the door if she would be taking my temperature. No, that’s only done at the optometrist’s office next door. They erected a low barrier between the two sections to maintain the safety of the one area.

Other than the mask and limited number of people allowed inside at a time, no other precautions were being taken. The set up was the usual one, a desk about 18" wide and three feet long with the technician on one side at one end and the customer on the other side at the other end. Not six feet apart, and no plexiglass barrier.

I think our local places have done a better job of implementing safe procedures. About three weeks back, all the restaurants put out picnic tables and installed canopy tops to make it easier to serve people outside. One even built a fence around its perimeter to give customers’ some privacy.

I don’t know how well they enforce small groups and distancing. I suspect much depends on peer pressure.

That doesn’t exist in Santa Fé. A friend told me he had a customer who works in one of the better restaurants. It constantly get parties from Texas who refuse to wear masks or respect the rules. All the waiter can do is wear a mask and hope.

I can only hope that waiter didn’t buy a pair of glasses this morning.

Journal of a Plague Year, Saturday, August 8

I came across a pamphlet from Alpena, Michigan, that said more than 1,000 cases of small pox had been reported in an 1873 epidemic. The census for 1880, showed 6,153 lived in the city and 8,789 in the county.

Alpena then was a new logging town on the eastern side of Michigan’s lower peninsula. The 52 who died represented .8% of the 1880 population. The totals for the county may have been higher, simply because people were isolated, much like they are in Rio Arriba county.

Small pox differs from our current Coronavirus pandemic because it is highly visible. No one needed a special test to know they were among the 16% who had been infected.

Unfortunately, we have made our problem less visible. Because of the national increase in cases, the commercial testing systems have broken down. On July 26, our governor decreed only those with obvious symptoms could be tested.

Almost immediately, the number of reported cases dropped, but a grimmer manifestation appeared that could not be denied. The number who died started increasing. The total deaths in Rio Arriba County on July 27 was 3; now it’s 7. Thus, while the number of known active cases in the county has dropped by 70%, the number who died has more than doubled.

When I was in town Friday, I saw a headline that said the governor was thinking about letting more businesses open because the number of reported cases had dropped.

Anyone who’s been around LANL, or any other institution that has implemented metrics as an impersonal way to evaluate projects and individuals, knows managers try to game the metrics rather than solve their problems.

Without anyone taking a deliberate action, that’s what’s happened here. Something failed, and the metrics showed progress. That illusionary progress now is being used to justify advancing to the next stage.

Alpena knew when it’s epidemic had passed. We are in the dark.

 Sources:
Alpena Dates of Events 1862–1902. Alpena, Michigan: Argus, 1915.
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, July 26

Two more deaths reported, one yesterday, one today. Our total is now three.

We have the highest level yet of known cases: 134 in the past 14 days.

And, we have no idea what’s really going on. Thursday, July 23, the governor had to limit tests to those with obvious symptoms, because of the delays in getting test supplies and results.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

Journal of a Plague Year, Wednesday, July 22

It’s only going to get worse. Yesterday 46 new cases of Coronavirus were reported in Rio Arriba County; today it was 5. The total for the last 14 days is 132. That’s more than our accumulated total on July 9. [1]

Wikipedia has added demographic information for the state since I last scrolled to the bottom of its web page. It indicates the largest groups getting positive test results are in their 20s and 30s.

When I was out Monday, the consequences already were obvious. The governor had closed restaurants again on 13 July, and only the drive ins had cars in their lots.

If that’s not bad enough, the president has intervened in one of our political disputes [2] and has announced he’s sending federal troops to Albuquerque to restore order.

These aren’t just any police. They’re from immigration control. Probably most don’t understand the difference between someone whose family was here before the Mexican War and refugees from Central America. They all look alike and speak Spanish.

The first result will be a greater spread of the virus as people move about in Bernalillo County and those leery of the police move north. Wikipedia indicated problems in Bernalillo County are now as bad as in Rio Arriba on a per capital basis (the total number of cases divided by the population is greater than 500 per 100,000 people). We reached that status on July 19.

The secondary result may be fewer individuals from Albuquerque driving north to make deliveries to our stores. People who are sick can’t work.

A trivial consequence is my car has missed its annual service. I bought it in Albuquerque and generally take it in sometime in April. Since I’m driving less, things dependent on use aren’t aging. Still, I’d had been thinking about scheduling maintenance, but no more.

I’d rather live with faulty windshield wipers than Coronavirus.

Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 22 July 2020.

2. I have no idea who Manny Gonzalez is, and zero knowledge about family feuds in Bernalillo County, but if they’re anything like the ones here they run deep and are hidden from public view

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, July 20

We are now firmly in the second phase of the pandemic, the one people are calling "It Didn’t Have To Be This Way."

We have more people getting sick in Rio Arriba County, and know less about them than we did in March. We passed a milestone today when more than 200 cases were diagnosed since the Coronavirus first appeared in the county on March 25. [1]

Our numbers of cases reported within 14 days had been creeping up from 45 on July 10 to 51 on July 16. Then, exactly two weeks after the Fourth of July, 37 new cases were reported on July 17, making the two-week total 87. Today, it was 99.

It’s easy to say "Aha, the Fourth" but, until recently, the two-week period was the extreme end of the period when people became sick. Symptom usually appear after about four days.

However, testing is no longer a useful measure. Numbers of cases have been increasing in so many states, including neighboring Texas and Arizona, that commercial laboratories that process the swabs can’t keep up, and results are taking a week to produce.

Colorado’s governor said Sunday that "every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, Labcorp, seven days, eight days, nine days — maybe six days if we're lucky. Almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective." [2]

The problem was the expectation this particular virus would disappear like the seasonal flu, so corporations didn’t invest in increasing their capacity. It made no sense to build new facilities and train new people on a tight schedule, when everything would be redundant in a few months. They only would have acted if they had had some government guarantees for financing, or if they believed their competitors would also act so no one would be at a competitive disadvantage for investing capital funds.

The same problem is happening in other areas of manufacturing. When I went to the grocery today, I noticed more empty shelves, especially in canned soup, canned tomato sauces and salsas, and canned entrees like ravioli.

I no longer can get the type of pizza I’ve been eating. It, and every other type from the one company, has been gone for more than two weeks. The company has exhausted its inventory. Some of the last ones I bought had ice crystals or odd packages that indicated they were the last items in storage.

Pizza, and many of the other foods I mentioned, contain tomatoes. They may not be able to be produced until tomatoes grown in this country are available. Shipments of produce from other countries probably have decreased with various types of international quarantines, and our domestic output may not be able to compensate in quantity within one growing season.

Tomato products may be another casualty of the agricultural cycles that made brown rice scarce this spring.

However, not every type of soup uses tomatoes. Chicken soups have been randomly available since spring: gone, then back, and now gone again.

We know the problem here: chicken producers have had the same problems as meat producers. They didn’t take the Coronavirus serious, and didn’t rethink their manufacturing processes. They had to close down to sanitize their sites. I’m not sure how many actually spent money on safety measures like installing plexiglass shields between work stations.

Not all companies have been passively waiting for things to get better. Amazon’s head, Jeff Bezos, responded to overwhelming demand in the spring by spending money to increase capacity. He saw possibilities in a permanent increase in business as people who wouldn’t buy things online had to change, and once over their qualms would become permanent customers.

In his case, it was a combination of entrepreneurial vision and cash resources. Unlike many companies that have come under the control of hedge funds, debt didn’t prevent him from acting.

Another industry that seems to have risen to the occasion is plexiglass. Natalia Broda said, that in Michigan, companies have been working full-time since March to meet demands. In one small company, the heads of Service Glass Company met two weeks after everything shut down, because they saw the possibility they would be inundated with orders.

Plaskolite, who makes the resin that is processed into sheets, has been running at near full capacity at ten plants seven days a week. This is the kind of operation that is so automated, few people are needed on the plant floor. It could increase production with fewer worries about contagion than a poultry plant. Its only worry is maintenance to keep machinery running.

Apart from wistful thinking, the biggest problem with economists in Washington is they only understand the stock market, which is driven by those hedge funds. I don’t know anyone in this, or previous administrations, who actually understands how an assembly line works. That expertise has been driven overseas by companies outsourcing their manufacturing operations. It’s a more serious loss than the resulting extended supply chains.

People in Detroit in the 1970s began warning these kinds of problems would occur sooner or later. The crises in the food supply did not have to be.

Fortunately, the knowledge and managerial skills survive in some places, like Detroit, and in some industries. The article I mentioned on plexiglass was written for a suburban newspaper outside Detroit by a female reporter who’d been around long enough to know the questions to ask for readers who still understood manufacturing from the plant floor up.

Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

2. Jared Polis. Meet the Press. 19 July 2020. Reported by David Cohen. "Colorado Governor: ‘National testing scene is a complete disgrace’." Politico website. 19 July 2020.

3. Natalie Broda. "Local Manufacturers Working 24/7 To Supply Plastic Protective Barriers." The Oakland [County, Michigan] Press website. 6 July 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Thursday, July 9

I gave in today and made my own mask. It wasn’t to wear into town to protect me against Coronavirus. It was to put on in the house to filter out the pollution coming from fires like the one near Mountaineer.

The Chinese masks I bought are not comfortable: the material is scratchy and it traps heat. They’re OK for the short times I’m out of the car in town, but not good for several hours.

I have said I thought it should be relatively simple, and it was.

I took an old, all-cotton sheet and put it through the wash. Then I cut a section along the edge wide enough to make ties, and long enough to fall to my chest.

As I said the sheet was old, and when it was made the salvage edge was somehow separate. When I went to cut along it, it tore along the line. No cutting needed. All I needed to do was cut down from the ends of the ties.

It looks more like a strange false beard or a long bib than a mask, but that’s OK. No one’s going to see me.

In the same way our luck with fires may have run out, our luck with Coronavirus may not have changed. We had 13 new cases reported on July 7, the Tuesday after the Fourth of July weekend. The virus wasn’t contacted over the holiday, but a small backlog in tests must have developed.

Since then, our 14-day total has inched up by one a day to reach 39 today. Tomorrow may be when we begin to see the effects of the holiday, if any.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated July 9.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, July 6

Today I made by bravest venture yet into the world of Coronavirus. I went to my doctor’s office for my annual physical.

The entry ritual was the same as last week when I got the blood work done. As then, all the women were wearing short-sleeved tops. When I asked one why she wasn’t wearing long sleeves, she said she took a shower before she went home, so was OK.

These exams are predictable. The only differences I noticed was the doctor didn’t stick a tongue depressor in my mouth and ask me to say "ah."

He also didn’t have me change into one of those loose gowns to check my lungs. He stood to my side, and used his stethoscope through my clothes.

As always, he wanted me to get a shingles shot. I finally said OK, after he told me he probably has one case a month in Española, and most of the people hadn’t had chicken pox.

Then came the surprise. After promoting the importance of the vaccine, he said Medicare wouldn’t cover it. I hope my supplemental insurance will.

It reminded me again that the reasons people over 65 are more vulnerable to disease is many types of medical care aren’t available to them. The shingles vaccination cost $275, and a second is required. That’s a lot of money to pay out of a social security check.

Congress is particularly short-sighted, and as we’ve seen this year, has no idea of what constitutes the public good.

There are certain tests that should be required, and be free, for older people like refractions, which test for bad vision, and hearing loss. This isn’t simply for them. No one wants someone driving a car who has problems seeing or hearing.

It’s too soon to know if there’s a spike in positive tests for Coronavirus from the holiday. Most things were closed or on slow schedules until today. I calculate the total new cases for the past two weeks is 29, down from 40 on July 1.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated July 6.

Journal of a Plague Year, Wednesday, July 1

We reached a milestone today: Rio Arriba County now has had more than a 100 cases of Coronavirus reported in the county, 101 to be exact. By my calculation, we’ve had 40 reported in the past two weeks.

It no longer matters where or why. All that matters is how one avoids getting infected.

The medical establishment is coming out of hibernation. Last week Eye Associates called to reschedule my examination. Of course, I had seen someone else a couple weeks earlier.

Yesterday, I got blood work done for my annual physical, which now is planned for next week. The receptionist told me they never closed, but did most of their work by telephone. They’re only now resuming routine appointments.

The ritual was the same yesterday and at the ophthalmologist’s office. The door is locked. At the eye doctor’s the office manager came out; at the physician’s, someone talked to me through a window. In both cases they asked me the standard screening questions.

Yesterday, smoke filled the upper atmosphere, and I was having breathing problems. I probably had half the symptoms I was asked about: shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches, runny nose. I answered each my either saying no, or only because of the air.

Then we got to the question no one can answer truthfully: have you had contact with anyone who’s had the virus. I went to the grocery store and post office on Monday. All I could say was, "not that I know of."

The women weren’t particularly concerned, because their next step was to use an external thermometer on me. I apparently had a slightly elevated temperature in Santa Fé, but again she assumed it wasn’t a problem.

We were participating in a ritual whose purpose was mutual reassurance. My physical demeanor probably was more important. The woman who worked for a physician probably had developed an acute awareness of how people stand and talk when they are sick. That unconscious knowledge was the most important screening mechanism.

I later asked someone in the doctor’s office what she did if someone was sick. She said, she didn’t let him or her in.

I rephrased the question. What did you, meaning a doctor’s office, do when someone showed up who was sick, but probably not from Coronavirus? That is, after all, one reason we ask to see a doctor. To that she said, it depended.

The screening has put some changes in medical practice in dramatic relief. Doctors don’t treat immediate illnesses; their schedules are too filled to get a time slot. One is expected to go to an urgent care center or emergency room. We hear from insurance companies what that costs them, and then all of us in our increased premiums.

The change, in part, can be attributed to the development of antibiotics that control the spread of infectious diseases. When people lived longer, because they no longer died in an epidemic, new medical problems arose like heart attacks and cancer. Doctors now administer tests for those problems, and most of their time is working with people who are not sick, but who have serious medical conditions. (Notice how we’ve changed the language to match the situation.)

Similarly, we’ve been discovering hospitals cut back their capacity after they no longer needed beds for people who were sick. Instead, they were supported by elective surgeries that required little or no hospital time.

One doesn’t want to go back to the time when cholera, yellow fever, or polio spread through communities killing many, including doctors.

But, with the passing of the threat of infectious diseases, the institutions we used to rely on - the doctors and hospitals - changed their functions, and have been having to relearn their skills as we watch them.

Perhaps more important, we’ve shed our fears. When I was a child, polio was rampant in my hometown. After a boy in the neighborhood died, I was no longer allowed to play with a friend. Her mother was a nurse and wouldn’t let her outside.

No one knew then polio was a virus that spread through contaminated water, although, I think, people had a healthy suspicion of certain lakes. As a result, people like my friend’s mother took precautions.

We’ve forgotten how to handle fear. As a consequence, some overreact, like the ones who bought up all the cleaning supplies during the first weeks when the pandemic was only in Washington and New York states. Others treat fear with bravado and refuse to surrender to masks and other precautions,because they never had to when they were children.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 1 July 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Saturday, June 20

An on-line story I didn’t read had a headline about the difficulties of wearing a mask in the South. It was easy to imagine its contents. I’d overhead two men in the post office talking about the problems late in the day when their beards regrew.

It comes to mind now, when afternoon temperatures are near 90, and I have to wear a mask in the house because of the smoke from fires. The problems began around May 18 with fires in Mexico. [1] By June 12, the weather bureau map was showing intense smoke south of Yuma; a San Jose, California, newspaper said the fires were east of Tia Juana. [2]

The biggest culprit according to the Mercury News was the smoke from fires in the Gila National Forest around Silverado. Today two are burning a total of 18,169 acres. There’s also one near Magdalena that’s grown to 2,827 acres. [3]

Then, this week a fire broke out around Truth or Consequences. The Mims fire wasn’t that large, 125 acres, but its smoke came up the river valley. The weather bureau issued air quality alerts Thursday and Friday.

As I’ve said before, I didn’t begin by looking for news about fires. I began having problems with my stomach and breathing that forced me to put on a mask.

Now, I look at the map [4] in the morning to determine if it’s safe to go out, or if I have to don what we now call "personal protective gear." As if making if sound like sports equipment makes it more acceptable.

I prefer the paper masks, because they let more air through. They are comfortable enough that I can wear them when I’m sleeping. And yes, with the smoke, I have to do that.

This week they weren’t enough. I had to resort to the three-ply Chinese ones I mentioned in the post for June 1. I’ve learned to knot the elastic ear loops to make them fit. That just reduced the air flow and made them hotter to wear. They’re so close to my skin, they burn my lips.

I can imagine how much worse masks are when humidity is added to heat.

I’ve begun to wonder why we’ve fixated on masks as the method to stopping the spread of the Coronavirus. I saw a photograph of someone in Germany wearing a modified welder’s mask, a plexiglass face shield. It might not stop the virus from coming in at the sides, but it would be much more comfortable than a mask for extended periods of time. Besides, the longer one wears a non-medical mask, the less protective it becomes.

I suppose we began assuming the virus would come and go. When something is temporary, one finds the cheapest solutions that are easily available. The methods used by medical professionals were promoted for all of us. It’s what we saw in photographs from Asia in previous viral epidemics.

But, now, we know we’re in this for a while. Rio Arriba County had 13 new cases in the past two days, for a total of 25 in the past 14 days.

It’s probably denial that makes us continue to use temporary solutions. It’s a kind of white magic to delay changing our behavior in hopes a problem will disappear.

One model we haven’t considered is the veil used by Islamic women. They may have had patriarchal origins, but they evolved in hot, arid climates where dust was a problem. They would be as good as the face shield, and cheaper to make. One could do it oneself.

Americans, of course, wouldn’t consider them. People have had enough problems with policemen who think their masks signified nefarious intent. Their reactions to anything from the Middle East would be much worse.

So we suffer through problems we make for ourselves through our reactions to crises and to our aversion to things "not invented here." And, meantime, we have our highest number of active Coronavirus cases so far.

Sources:
1. I mentioned the problems with smoke in the post for 19 May 2020.

2. Bay Area News Group. "Wildfire Smoke over Much of Southern California." The [San Jose, California] Mercury News website. 12 June 2020.

3. NM Fire Info website. Updated daily. The fires are the Tadpole and Good in the Gila National Forest, and the Vics Peak Fire in the Cibola National Forest.

4. The weather bureau (NOAA) air quality website is: https://airquality.weather.gov/sectors/southrockies.php

5. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 20 June 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Thursday, June 18

The number of Coronavirus cases in Rio Arriba County jumped again today, with six new reports. [1] The daily number had dropped to one, and the 14 day total was dropping. Now it’s back to 14 active cases in the past two weeks.

Six isn’t much when reads about the increases elsewhere. Tuesday three states recorded new highs: Florida had 2,783 new cases, Texas had 2,622, and Arizona had 2,392. [2] Two of those border New Mexico.

To get some perspective on those numbers, the total number of cases reported so far in McKinley County is 2,987. In San Juan County, it’s 2,148. That’s the total since the first case was reported, not the number for a single day.

Those are states with large numbers of Spanish-speaking residents. Politico reported today that many of the new cases are Latinos of working age. Laura Barrón-López was writing about states like Maryland and North Carolina, where people who speak Spanish often are recent migrants. [3]

These are people who work in meat processing plants, hospitality, and construction. The immigrant men I met in Santa Fé were skilled tradesmen, and their wives often worked as maids.

As anyone knows who has spent any time in the valley, it is a journalistic convenience to assume everyone who speaks Spanish has the same cultural and historic background. Recent migrants to North Carolina are different from those in Florida, and both differ from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

As one example of the easy generalization, Barrón-López mentioned the greater presence of underlying health problems among "Latinos," without being specific. The assumption with African-Americans is that poor health is related to economics and diet.

We know in the valley that the centuries of intermarrying in isolated communities before 1848 created special genetic problems, of which diabetes is one of the most serious results. Superficially, we sound like the national sample, but in fact our medical profile is unique.

One thing she mentioned that is common here is the hesitancy to seek medical help, either from lack of insurance or distrust. The patients in North Carolina were very ill when they finally came to an emergency room.

The positive side, and one that contradicts the assumptions about poor health and diet, is that the death rate among Spanish-speaking patients is lower than the national average. That was attributed to the fact they were younger, and thus able to fight off the disease.

These generalizations reinforced my view of the situation here in Rio Arriba County, where I’ve wondered if the number of cases was misleading. If people who become ill don’t get tested, and recover, they don’t become statistics.

One thing I’ve noticed in my recent trips into town is that different people are working at counters. I’m sure this is partly because individuals don’t make careers of running cash registers.

I stopped at one of the hardware stores to buy six cinder blocks. It was the third day for the yard man. This is not an easy job. Cinder blocks weigh between 30 and 35 pounds. Six isn’t a lot, but people usually buy more. Lifting heavy objects, and he said some of 16' lengths of lumber are heavier than the blocks, is grueling.

I hope the new faces don’t mean some of the people I saw in the early weeks of the contagion got sick. One rarely knows their names, but I recognize their faces because they do their jobs better than most. They may not be friends, but they no longer are strangers.

Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 18 June 2020.

2. Nick Visser. "3 States See Record High In Daily Coronavirus Infections After Reopening." Huffington Post website. 17 June 2020.

3. Laura Barrón-López. "Rising Coronavirus Cases among Latinos Alarm Public Health Experts." Politico website. 18 June 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, June 8

Businesses are reopening across the country. The immediate impact of that for me is that Amazon is returning to normal.

I ordered popcorn on March 20, just as the panic was setting in. Amazon was overwhelmed, and giving priority to its Prime customers. I didn’t receive it until the first of May. A six week delay.

I had learned you can’t have two open orders with Amazon, unless you’re willing to have them combined. If that’s a small package that’s OK. Popcorn is too heavy to be combined with anything else, but their computer would do it anyway.

As soon as I got a shipping notice, I tried to order popcorn again. My brand no longer was available. The order I placed May 8 didn’t ship until the first of June. The month’s wait was a little longer than it had been before the crisis, when Amazon seemed to be delaying shipping on items to non-Prime customers.

As soon as that order shipped, I ordered again on June 2. That one was shipped on June 5. Amazon was back to normal, and I may finally have enough on hand to survive until the new crop is harvested in the fall.

My local grocery store is not as lucky. It still has areas with empty shelves, but at least two men were reloading shelves when I was there today.

Restocking is the last step in reopening businesses. Food production companies have to reopen first. Few produce only one item, so decisions are made about the order of items to schedule in their lines. Then, they have to decide how to allocate the production. No doubt, small, independent grocers come after large chains.

As I drove from my home to the grocery and on to the post office, I saw the parking lots of all the restaurants were about half full. That is, they were as full as they allowed to be under the current restraints on occupancy.

I don’t know if restaurants will have the same problems as the local grocery in getting supplies. They began with the foods they had in storage when they closed. Frozen items were still there; perishable ones have to be replaced daily.

These restaurants are probably our only local businesses, besides the grocers and a drug store. Small clothing and electronic stores disappeared a long time ago. They’ve been replaced by the big box and dollar stores, which never closed, and by the second-hand stores, which were not deemed essential.

The restaurants are more than local businesses. Until the arrival of the casinos, they were the only centers for community life. When I moved here, people knew the names of the cooks, and swore by them. Then, Rio Grande Café and Angelina’s on the middle bridge road were the favorites.

While reopening businesses at the national level has meant more goods in local stores, it has been accompanied with increases in the number of new cases of coronavirus. New Mexico is one of 14 states to see its "highest-ever seven-day average of new virus cases at the start of June." [1]

Rio Arriba County continues to see new cases nearly every day. Memorial Day was May 25. In the next week, 11 people tested positive for coronavirus, and we had our first death. Since June 2, we’ve had 9 new reports. [2]

As I’ve indicated in my post for May 29, I have no idea what that increase bodes, because of the sheer size of Rio Arriba County.

I suspect the problem isn’t infections passed between neighbors. The lockdown stopped that kind of transmission.

People have adjusted to the new rules. Most people I saw today were wearing masks. Many of those were fabric. Individuals understand the necessity of social distancing, even if their habits of space utilization sometimes overrule caution.

What the lockdown couldn’t stop was travel. San Felipe was the one pueblo to have a high incidence of coronavirus. [3] I never saw any explanation, like the ones provided for the outbreak on Navajo lands. I suspect the cause was their gas station on the main highway between Albuquerque and Santa Fé

Reopening means tourists passing through Española on their way elsewhere. The gas station convenience stores and fast food restaurants are the ones most vulnerable to people traveling while ill. They’re more likely to stop at the big box for supplies than the local stores.

People who work for businesses that serve outsiders have entered a more dangerous time, while the rest of us face the possibility of catching the virus from one of them before they feel ill.

Sources:
1. Jamie Ross. "Fourteen States Record Highest-Ever Weekly COVID-19 Infection Rate, Says Report." The Daily Beast website. 9 June 2007.

2. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

3. Dan Boyd. "Tribes Feeling Brunt of Coronavirus Impact in NM." Albuquerque Journal website. 14 April 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, June 1

Today’s trip to the post office coincided with the first day of the next phase of the pandemic. Restaurants and stores are able to open, but need to limit the number of people they serve.

I didn’t notice anything new open on Riverside, but I’ll admit I was paying more attention to traffic.

What I did see was that one of the strip developments had plywood boards over all its windows. Its retail spaces never were completely filled, and what ones were used were not essential businesses. I don’t know if each of them failed, or if the owner wasn’t able to pay his creditors.

One thing the slow down in business has revealed is the precarious nature of many companies. The big ones that filed for bankruptcy, like Hertz and some retailers, had been purchased by vulture capitalists and had so much debt their demises were a matter of time. Coronavirus simply speeded up the inevitable. [1]

One other thing I saw was a truck in front of one of the restaurants filled with tables and chairs. I assume the restaurant was sending furniture into storage to make it easier to comply with the rules about occupancy and table spacing.

I stopped at one drug store to see if they had something back in stock. They didn’t. When I was there May 15 the cashier still wasn’t wearing a mask and wasn’t protected by a plexiglass shield. Today, that had changed.

It’s hard to find out the exact conditions for reopening. I’m sure business owners have drilled down on websites and read documents. I learned more from an announcement on the radio than I did looking on the internet. The radio said people were required to wear masks when they were out in public. That may be what finally forced the drug store to act.

More people were wearing masks. The exceptions included the usual young men alone or with other young men. If they were with women, they seemed to have on masks.

The other group I saw without masks were in the parking lot of a dollar store. Economics is still a factor. My latest box of fifty masks cost $23.39. If one is poor or has had household members lose jobs, that’s a lot of money.

In addition, there’s the problem of availability. I bought mine from Amazon. To do that, I had to have a computer, a computer connection, and a credit card. If you don’t have a computer, the public library used to be available, but isn’t due to the lock down.

I didn’t bother to see if the drug store had any for sale. The effect of the virus is to curtail my curiosity. I go in, pick up what I intend, and leave as quickly as possible.

The masks should have been an improvement over my paper ones. They claimed to be composed of three layers. But of what? It wasn’t on the box. It was made in China and didn’t have to conform to our labeling requirements.

I found a slip of paper at the bottom labeled "certificate." It indicated the "non-medical disposable mask" was composed of "non-woven fabric, melt-blown fabric." That tells me something about the manufacturing process of Zhenjiang Fox Outdoor Products, but nothing about the raw materials.

It didn’t fit as well as my paper one. It was made for a bigger head. It sagged from the ear loops and the piece that’s supposed to pinch down over the nose didn’t work well. I managed to make it reasonably tight at the the top, but I couldn’t do anything about the opening at the bottom.

When I was standing outside the lobby in the post office, the woman six-feet behind me complained about the smell of a disinfectant. I didn’t smell anything. Either the mask was filtering out odors, or my nose had stuffed up as soon as it detected a problem. It tends to do that.

I did notice, though, that my lips were beginning to burn.

I was wearing my usual going-to-town duds, that included a sweatshirt and rubber gloves. I picked up a long box that I had to hold with both my hands. I set it on the ground to open the trunk of my car. It contained popcorn that I couldn’t get locally, and certainly wasn’t going to be damaged by being dropped.

As soon as I got home, I changed clothes. Then, I brought in the box. By the time I had it in the house, a distance of about thirty feet, I had rashes on both my arms where they had touched the box. I immediately washed them with powdered soap.

Meantime, the area around my lips was beginning to swell. When wiping them with a sanitizing hand wipe didn’t work, I rubbed neosporin antibiotic ointment in the area.

I have no idea what I got into. If it were just my arms, it could have come from the post office parking lot pavement. It it were just my lips, it could have been the unidentified fabric in the masks or an allergic reaction to something I ate. When I eat something that contains traces of penicillin I break out, often fairly quickly. I still suspicious of the generic cheese I’m eating because brown rice isn’t available.

There was nothing on the web about a chemical leak; such information only appears when the consequences are obvious. There were no reports of fires that would have required dropping chemicals. And, so far as I know, no place in the immediate area has been firing teargas at protestors.

The only possibility is that the woman behind me in the post office was right, that some chemical was or had been used. I opened the box that contained food, and hoped all the layers of cardboard protected the contents.

Wikipedia reported four new cases of coronavirus in Rio Arriba county. [2] That brings the total to 48, with 15 in the past fourteen days. It took until April 28 to reach that accumulated number, and we did it again in two weeks.

Sources:
1. Ford Motor sold Hertz in 2004 and Carl Ichan became involved in 2014. JC Crew was bought by TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners in 2011. Neiman Marcus was taken over by Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2013.

David Welch. "O.J., Accounting Fraud, Icahn: the Story of Hertz Going Bust." Bloomberg News website. 26 May 2020.

Chris Isidore and Nathaniel Meyersohn. "J.Crew Has Filed for Bankruptcy." CNN website. 4 May 2020.

Nathaniel Meyersohn and Chris Isidore. "Neiman Marcus Files for Bankruptcy." CNN website. 7 May 2020.

2. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 1 June 2020.

Journal of a Plague Year, Friday, May 29

I was numb after looking at Wikipedia’s coronavirus statistics for Rio Arriba county tonight. We had jumped from 37 reported positive tests on Tuesday, May 26, to 43 with our first death. That was six new cases in three days. It meant 15 active cases in the past 14 days, more than at any other time.

My first reaction was one of futility. We had managed to get through the beginning of the pandemic relatively unscathed. That may have been more because outsiders weren’t traveling through the town than our own proactive actions.

But now that the governor is beginning to let businesses open, all the dislocations suffered by our local businesses are for naught. We’re worse off than we’ve ever been.

Then I got angry about the lack of information. The state is only sending information to whatever source Wikipedia uses a few times a week. No more daily updates. There hasn’t been a comment posted on Rio Arriba county since May 2.

We have a weekly newspaper, which means anything it reports if out-of-date when it appears.

Rio Arriba is a large county. It’s larger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, and Connecticut. What does six new positive tests mean when they are spread over 5,896 square miles?

They may not even be in the Española valley. They could be in Abiquiu or Chimayó, which are more likely to attract outside visitors. Or, they could be up near Chama and Dulce, which are more than 80 miles away and closer to the Navajo outbreak.

Sometimes, just to get some perspective, I look at the statistics for my home county in Michigan. It has reported 366 cases and 22 deaths. When that number is divided by the county population, it means there have been 268 reports for 100,000 people. In Rio Arriba county, that number is now 108 per 100,000.

I have the same problems with getting information on my home county as Rio Arriba. The only daily newspaper now is owned by a chain, and keeps its website closed to non-subscribers. Like Rio Arriba county, it has no television stations, and never has.

It’s geographic size is much smaller, but it has three good sized towns or cities, plus several villages larger than anything in this county. When I tried to find out if any of the illnesses were in my hometown, I could find nothing online. I have no idea if anyone I know was affected or threatened.

Some in government think the less information it provides, the better off it is because it assumes we can’t be mad about what we don’t know. It doesn’t understand it’s the unknown that is so dangerous.

If I knew more about where the cases were in Rio Arriba county were I could act to avoid those areas. Since I don’t know, I have no choice but to be even more wary about going into town.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 29 May 2020. Wikipedia also was the source for other statistical information.

Journal of a Plague Year, Tuesday, May 26

Today’s trip to the post office marked the beginning of the third billing cycle since the beginning of the lock down in New Mexico.

Last week when I went in, the two people ahead of me were buying money orders. In answer to some comment, the clerk said they had noticed an increase in that particular business.

Traffic seemed heavier on Riverside, and the drive-ins all were full around noon. The food truck that installed picnic tables had added more, and they all were full. Few people were in the grocery store.

People wore masks, but had no sense of distance. They follow the floor markers, but, if the tapes aren’t there, they crowd each other. It’s difficult to pass people in aisles when they still walk down the center.

I don’t think these are deliberate attempts to flout medical guidelines. I think people have no sense of space. When they drive, they are taught to maintain a safe distance between themselves and the car ahead. However, the cars on the sides are closer. They’re peripheral vision is used to moving in rectangles, not circles.

As of Sunday, Rio Arriba County had an accumulated total of 37 diagnosed cases of coronavirus, with 9 of those in the past two weeks. There had been four reports since May 19, or one a day.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Reviewed today, May 26.

Journal of a Plague Year, Thursday, May 21

I finally got the filters changed on my well today. It was more than two months after their annual change date and everything was encrusted with dirt.

When I tried to contact the company earlier, its voice mail was full. I mentioned Monday I had gotten put off when I called again. After I didn’t hear Tuesday morning, I tried again around noon. The person had gotten the note, but hadn’t bothered to call.

It’s not that they were that busy. She scheduled the service for the next morning. When no one showed up yesterday, I called at noon. Oh, they’d had an emergency, but hadn’t bothered to let me know. She thought he could come late in the day, but called later to say he couldn’t. I spent most of the day in the house waiting for the phone to ring.

He appeared this morning. I asked if the company had stayed open, and he said it was considered an essential business. During the time when people were shopping in a panic, he said the office got so many calls the service people couldn’t keep up. Individuals were afraid they wouldn’t have water.

It was the same irrational fear that led people to buy up the bottled water supply. My local grocery still has a limit of three bottles of drinking water per customer per visit.

Then, the reign of terror set in. The number of calls declined, and the company reduced its staff. He said people treated them with fear. One person sprayed him with disinfectant before he could enter the house. Those chemicals aren’t made for use on human beings.

After that, he said the company stopped servicing filtration units in homes. It did continue to do ones in wells, garages, and other outside places. He and his co-workers had no desire to be near strangers who could be carrying the coronavirus, and whose houses were unknown environments.

We agreed people couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t just that they could be asymptomatic carriers. There were ones who would lie about their physical condition because they didn’t want to be inconvenienced.

He reminded me Santa Fé has a lot of wealthy people who constantly fly in and out. They are the ones who are most likely to be carriers, and often the most self-centered.

When last I checked, Santa Fé had had 126 people test positive for coronavirus and three die. We were still at a total of 33 on March 19, of which nine cases had appeared after May 1.

Things have calmed down now. The customers the service people see have settled into the coronavirus routine.

Service calls are still a bit like the meeting of two dogs. Each walks around the other, deciding if it’s safe to get closer.

I had on a mask when I opened the gate, both because of the bad air and the virus. He put his on as soon as he got ready to get out of the truck. I have no idea if he wore it in the well. I was elsewhere in the yard, within shouting distance if there was a problem.

I had to sign some paper before he started. Would I trust his pen, or did I want to supply my own? I didn’t have one with me, so took the chance. It’s not something I would have thought of, but he’d seen customers with varying levels of fear.

When I realized the company had been open all along, I mentioned the full voice mail. It was purchased by an out-of-state company some years ago, and its central office tried to handle answering the phones. I gather the local office staff was part of the reduction in forces.

Then he said there were problems with the phone system, which still weren’t resolved. He wasn’t sure if it was Century Link or ComCast. Working remotely has taxed the technical knowledge of many and uncovered limitations in their hardware and software.

I haven’t talked with anyone other than my one friend who has admitted having had the virus, or knowing someone who did. However, everyone I meet is either in the at-risk group or has a family member who is. The serviceman said his mother and mother-in-law were in that pool and his wife was close. In addition, there were children in the home.

He hadn’t much like working the past few weeks, but he had few options. He was a manager, not a technician, and had been pressed into service.

In the end, I didn’t get a receipt. Supposedly, someone will email me one. I foresee more phone calls at long distance rates to get services that should be routine.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Checked on May 21, but last updated May 19.

Journal of a Plague Year, Wednesday, May 20

I got a phone call from the ophthalmologist in Santa Fé. I suspect everyone whose job involves contact with people is feeling the effects of isolation. He talked more than I would have expected.

He first wanted to assure me it was safe to see him. He said everyone who came in the office had to be wearing a mask and had their temperature taken. Then, they had to wash their hands.

He also told me he has a UV/ozone system installed to clean the office that runs in the night. I’m not sure how effective that is—some reports on the internet indicated the procedure was used in laboratory conditions, but others indicated there were a great many scam companies. Whether or not it works, it was a signal he cared about his practice and that practice included the sort of upscale or New Age people who would be aware of such cleaning procedures.

Next, he told me he had just read an article that indicated there’s no evidence yet that the coronavirus has penetrated any of the cells in the eye. That told me he’s one of those doctors who seriously tries to keep up with the literature.

I told him I had been seeing someone in Española, but that Eye Associates had closed the office. I said I was looking for a new doctor because I didn’t fancy driving down from Los Alamos with dilated eyes.

He knew my doctor. I rather gather Angela Bratton is well known, and highly respected. He said he had seen her at various professional meetings. He also understood why I wouldn’t want to make the drive down the hill after seeing her.

He told me Eye Associates had had to shut down its Santa Fé office completely. There was no way it could enforce social distancing, and the lobby seating area was a real problem.

I’d been in it once, and knew it was carpeted with upholstered chairs. The place in Española had a vinyl tile floor and aluminum chairs with plastic seats.

Environment and sanitation are everything. I’ve gotten so I judge every store and office I enter by how easy it would be to keep it clean.

My greatest anxiety about seeing an eye doctor was all those machines they use. There’s the one where you place your chin in a particular location, and then press your forehead against a bar. That puts your face in the exact position of the last person there. If he or she were infected, it is likely you would be exposed to surviving droplets containing the coronavirus.

The other contraption is the one used to do the refraction. I wondered how one ever keep all those lenses clean. And then, there’s all those mechanical parts that hold them together. Again, it helps that things are sanitized at night, but the machine is only as safe as the people who were before me on that day.

I got the impression he might have been open, at least partially, during the lockdown. He mentioned some of his patients were beset by intense fears of the virus.

Someone recently died in his family (not from coronavirus), and I deduced that may be one reason the office is closed for a couple weeks.

The person had been in military and the cremated remains would be interred at the National Cemetery. Of course, there currently are no military funerals with Taps.

In addition, he said he was trying to get a mass said. Again, nothing could be public, rituals still matter.

I suspect every person with a private business is hurting. I have an appointment just a few days after he reopens in June.

Journal of a Plague Year, Tuesday, May 19

Air quality has been bad this week, as smoke as come with the winds from fires in México.

I first noticed the problem last Thursday, May 14, when I suddenly had problems breathing outside around 10:30 am. The next day I checked the air quality screen on the NOAA website, and saw vertical smoke was going into Texas.

Saturday, I woke up with breathing problems. I tried inhaling oxygen from one of those oxygen machines they sell to gym rats, but still had to take medicine. I finally had to put on a mask to be outside around 9:45 am. The NOAA map showed heavy smoke in west Texas.

Yesterday, NOAA’s map showed smoke was covering this area. I had to put a mask again around 7:30 pm, but this time in the house.

Today the map showed smoke still covered the area with a particularly thick plume west of the Rockies and a concentration of surface smoke around Albuquerque. I didn’t want to waste a mask, so stayed in the house.

Around 9:30 am, I had to put the mask on anyway, again when I was in the house.

I couldn’t let my low inventory of masks stop me from wearing one, so I ventured onto Amazon. I entered my usual band, and other brands came up. I didn’t much care who made it, so long as it worked.

None were being sold by Amazon, and none had inflated prices. I read Amazon was trying to remove those vendors from its marketplace.

Some of the third party vendors said they were shipping direct from China. That would take too long, and I wasn’t real sure they would arrive. Rumors persist the federal government is impounding masks and other protective gear from China, though I think that’s usually limited to medical grade.

I didn’t need something to protect me from the virus. Well, I do, but those aren’t available. What I need is something to protect me from dust, pollen, chemical fumes, and smoke. Scarcities caused by the coronavirus had made them impossible to get earlier.

I took a chance on a vendor with a relatively low customer approval rating. It actually claimed to ship the same day.

Since I’ve learned vendors sometimes create labels that trick Amazon into thinking they’ve shipped when they haven’t, I checked the Amazon website. The postal service tracing said it was delivered to a post office near Los Angeles and had been transferred to the City of Industry distribution center.

As they say, it’s in the mail, but one of the bottleneck areas.

Still, knowing the masks actually are coming means I can use the ones I have when I need them, without worrying about running out because of the virus.

This is a copy of the smoke map I made while I was preparing to post this. On Tuesday, that gray area covered New Mexico.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, May 18

The Santa Fé Attitude thrives despite the coronavirus.

That’s my term for the arrogance of many in that city who think that, because they have no competition, they can ignore their customers.

Now that businesses are being allowed to open up, I called two to make appointments.

One was the company that services my well. When I called some weeks ago, its voice mail was full. It was obvious no one was checking it.

Today when I called I was told the person who makes appointments was not available. The individual who answered said I could leave my number and someone would call back.

I would think they would be hungry for business and would have trained people to backup each other.

Then I called an ophthalmologist. The tape was much friendlier. It said to leave a message and someone would get back to me. The voice said they didn’t check daily, but did check.

The problem was that now that it’s possible to make appointments, they are closing the office from May 15 to June 8.

I really don’t have a problem with individuals wanting to extend their isolation for a longer period. The virus is still dangerous and much about its behavior isn’t known, and won’t be known until it’s been around a full year.

All I can do now is to wait to see if either bother to return my call, or if we’re back to business as usual when Espanola calls aren’t returned. Sometimes that’s because people forget to dial the area code, and sometimes I suspect its because they don’t want our business.

So far, the other eye doctor, whose office promised to call as soon as it was making appointments, hasn’t bothered.

Journal of a Plague Year, Friday, May 15

Maybe the $1,200 payment is having an affect. Today was the first time, since the lock down began, that there was a line in the post office so long someone came to handle just the package requests.

The postal clerk opened the top of the Dutch door outside the lobby to take slips, shut it, and disappeared. That was useful, but dangerous to the clerk because there was no protective barrier there like the plexiglass shields and barriers than enforce the 6' distance inside.

People were a bit friendlier in other places. Individuals rarely speak to strangers in Española or elsewhere. If someone does attempt a conversation, he or she is treated like a mad person to be avoided. It’s actually a pretty good way to enforce social distancing.

This time a woman in the grocery store asked if she could pass me. The aisles were so narrow, it was impossible to stay apart. Usually people just go by without thinking, leaving it to me to get as far away as possible from them.

I was hesitating at the head of another aisle when a man wanted to get through. He named what he was after, and I said I was trying to find the peanut butter. He didn’t recall exactly where it was but remembered it was with the honey on the right hand side near the back end of some aisle on the other side of the store. It was.

I left the grocery to get something from each of the drug stores. I noticed the long line of cars in the pharmacy pick-up line. I hope people weren’t waiting to get refills until they got money.

I passed a women in the second store who said she’d just seen me in the other.

While the shelves still were bare in the sections with paper goods and cleaning supplies, I noticed one business had a sign advertising it had toilet paper. Another had a notice saying it had "Masks for Sale."

By the way, the search for peanut butter wasn’t some whim. My fingernails got more brittle in the past week. I took that as a sign of protein problems, and that the white rice just wasn’t as good as the brown.

There were two alternatives: mozzarella cheese or peanut butter. I try to avoid dairy products because my doctor has concerns about my cholesterol levels. And, of course, there always are those chemical additives.

The grocery had all the major peanut butter brands, plus the house brand and one geared to the health conscious. In addition to the added sugar, they all had additional oils. Most used palm or cottonseed. The healthy alternative had flax seed oil. None of those added ingredients are healthy.

Pure peanut butter has two problems. The oil and solids separate, and one has to set a container on its lid for them to begin to mix. That’s the reason some chemicals are added to the popular brands.

The other problem is there is something in the peanut supply. I can use one jar with no problem, and react to the contents of another of the same brand. It’s always chance.

I ended up with the cheese, because I didn’t want to drive to Santa Fé just to buy a jar of peanut butter.