The coronavirus isn’t deadly in every way. It’s brought back to life two old-fashioned means of communication: phone calling and letter writing.

It’s been nearly 13 years since Nielsen announced the phone call’s adieu in the United States. In autumn 2007 the number of texts sent on cellphones topped the number of phone calls. Today three-quarters of American households no longer have landline phones, and cellphones convey five times more text messages than voice calls.

Actual voice calls are reserved mostly for our mothers and for emergencies. Phone chats with my friends have been rare for years.

It was therefore striking that last Friday I had seven long phone conversations with friends as we coped with isolation.

Texting or email could have confirmed that the other person was all right. Phoning served an additional purpose: to hear the voice of an intimate during this weeks-long, maybe months-long, seclusion; to have thoughtful communication, not just an answer to “Are you okay?”

Email and texting don’t meet the need for intimacy and immediacy. An email may be answered hours later or not at all. A text message is likely to be hasty and impersonal. Neither gives the comfort of hearing an actual, familiar voice.

A telephone call can be as intimate and long as the two or more of you desire. Under the present circumstances, it’s nearly guaranteed that a ringing phone will be answered.

During this episode even my college-age nieces, who are major texters like the rest of their generation, are preferring to talk to their friends by voice chats. Admittedly, it’s with the addition of video via FaceTime, but they consider FaceTime like a phone call plus. “It’s the same as the phone except with a video stream so you can see each other,” Alex said.

They’ve discovered the limitations of texting.

“It’s way easier to talk to people over FaceTime than by text if you are trying to catch up and have an extended conversation,” Ashley said.

They’ve also phoned — audio only — their grandmother in an assisted living residence. Frequent calls from her family members are a lifeline for my mother, who can’t have visitors and doesn’t have a cellphone or a computer.

Concern about elderly people in senior residences motivated people to revive another old-fashioned style of communicating: a note or a card in a stamped enveloped delivered by the US Post Office.

Like phone calls, greeting cards and handwritten letters on stationery were replaced by electronic messages years ago. But last week USA Today reported about people who are initiating or volunteering for projects to make cards for elderly residents of nursing homes and retirement facilities who are confined to their rooms, seeing only the staff who deliver their meals and medicine. In case volunteers worry about transmitting the coronavirus on stationery, the story said that such transmission is “extremely unlikely.”

When we’re finally released from isolation, it’s likely that these old-fashioned modes will fade again. But I doubt that they’ll entirely disappear, especially phone calls. There will always be times when we are separated from loved ones, by miles if not by a virus, and want to hear their voices and really talk with them.

*****

ANTI-TRUMP QUOTATIONS: 106TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

”I’m finding it hard to control my anger with Donald Trump’s response to this crisis. I have doctors and nurses and first responders begging for masks, equipment, and more tests. … Donald Trump promised to deliver for all the states weeks ago and so far has done very little. This is the time for serious people, not the carnival barkers that are tweeting from the cheap seats. All I can say is get to work or get out of the way.”
— Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker

On Sunday, March 22, 2020 a prayer service for the community of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta Parish was posted.

I was pleased to wake up Sunday morning to an email and Facebook postings of this lovely video.  It made me grateful for technology and social media that we can connect in this way during this time of the Coronavirus.

“Let’s choose to embrace staying at home as a blessing. Let’s choose to embrace receiving Spiritual Communion as a blessing.  Let’s choose to embrace praying at home without being in church with our community as a blessing for now.”~ Fr. Francis Li

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While Covid-19 over all of us looms

They’re asking that we spend the time in our rooms.

Let’s follow the guidelines

And stay on the sidelines

So fewer of us will wind up in our tombs.

During an outbreak in your community, protect yourself and others by:

Many of us are preparing for another (or first for some) week of working remotely, not working at all and/or homeschooling our children while schools are closed as a result of COVID-19. Last week was pretty rough in our household, not because teaching our child is outside the normal, but because this situation itself is truly a lot to deal with. I wrote a few schooling from home tips based on day 1, however, also learned as the week went on that we needed to be flexible.

I’m one of the “lucky” parents who has the ability to work remotely vs. being out of work and losing wages or having to commute in the midst of the pandemic, but none of us are lucky in this scenario. Across the world, we are dealing with the unknown. All we know is what is being reported by the media and delivered in remarks by government officials and experts, and that’s a scary feeling no matter what side of it you’re on.

As adults, some of us are terrified of this unknown virus that has taken the world by storm because we don’t want ourselves, love ones or anyone else to be infected, others are skeptical of how much we’re being told and not told, and some simply don’t care at all because they think it’s all a conspiracy. I’m personally taking it seriously because people are dying across the world from something we truly aren’t in a position to fight. I don’t care how few deaths there appear to be in comparison to the cases, one death is honestly too much when it’s something we have no defense against.

That being said, I urge everyone to do what’s best for their own families during this time. This means listening to your children and adjusting as needed. My daughter told me last night that she misses going to school with her friends and her weekly dance class. She had a hard time staying focused last week when she’s generally an honor student, because this whole situation is even scarier for children. While it may feel like a break from school, most kids understand that they aren’t home because the schools decided to give them an extra break.

Instead of starting her school day at the normal time, I’ve become more flexible to allow her to sleep longer, which in turn gives me some uninterrupted time in the morning to perform the duties of my role remotely. Once she’s awake, she has the freedom to pick the assignments she wants to focus on, with my guidance on deadlines and how many she should accomplish daily. It took us a while to get into this groove, but we are figuring it out.

So far, my daughter has received praise from two teachers on work she turned in last week. My original plan consisted of me mapping out what she needed to complete each day, but I have to pivot because that wasn’t really what worked for us collectively. I also allowed her to have a version of gym once she mentioned missing gym class. We jumped rope, hula hooped and she rode her bike for a little to keep her active. On Tuesday, we will be having dance class, where she will teach me the routine she’s been learning all year to keep her going on that.

Many of us have at least two weeks left of this “new” normal setup, if not longer. The best we can all do is make sure our families are staying safe and healthy, and doing what’s best for our households. Above all else, please listen to your local officials. If they’re saying stay home, please stay home.

I’d love to know what’s been working in your households as well, so feel free to chime in via comments or social media shares.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

America’s and the world’s economies are being torpedoed on the basis of rampant speculation.

Call it science, but it’s still speculation. That’s because every single analysis about the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic is based on a fatal  flaw:

There’s no way to satisfactorily predict how many people–what percentage of the population–will die from coronavirus.

That’s because you can catch the disease, but you may never know it. Neither will doctors, healthcare professionals or experts who are estimating the impact of the pandemic.

Covid-19 in some cases will produce minor or no symptoms. In another word, asymptomatic. How many actual cases, no one knows. Or will ever know. Test everyone who exhibits symptoms–whether of coronavirus or not–you still won’t find the cases that fly under the radar.

Without knowing the total number of actual cases, you never, not ever, will be able to determine the percentage of people who die from the disease. In other words, the fatality rate is determined by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of cases. In mathematical terms, without that accurate number as the denominator, you’ll never get a true percentage.

(Unless, of course, you test every single one of the 330 million Americans to discover every hidden case. Absurd. You can do a representative sample of the entire population, but as far as I know that hasn’t been done prior to launching the economy killing hide-in-place policies.)

This, of course, is my opinion. But I’m not alone in it. Here are some others:

• How many people are going to die from COVID-19? A group of statisticians who work for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group notes that studies estimating the fatality rate range from “0.24 percent to 0.48 per cent,” on average, vastly below the estimates that have set off the economy-killing policies.

• Lower death rate estimates for coronavirus, especially for non-elderly, provide glimmer of hope. “The chance of someone with symptomatic Covid-19 dying varied by age, confirming other studies. For those aged 15 to 44, the fatality rate was 0.5%, though it might have been as low as 0.1% or as high as 1.3%. For people 45 to 64, the fatality rate was also 0.5%, with a possible low of 0.2% and a possible high of 1.1%. For those over 64, it was 2.7%, with a low and high estimate of 1.5% and 4.7%. The chance of serious illness from coronavirus infection in younger people was so low, the scientists estimate a fatality rate of zero.”

• How deadly is the new coronavirus? “The case-fatality rate is determined by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of cases. Epidemiologists believe the total number of infections with SARS-CoV-2 is underestimated because people with few or mild symptoms may never see a doctor. As testing expands and scientists begin using retrospective methods to study who has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 circulating in their bloodstreams, the total number of confirmed cases will go up and the ratio of deaths to infections will likely drop.” [Emphasis added]

• Will The Costs Of A Great Depression Outweigh The Risks Of Coronavirus? “Federal and state governments are making a massive gamble about a little-understood new virus. They are betting our future on the most extreme worst-case scenario without considering the costs.” The article cites an expert: “If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to ‘influenza-like illness’ would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.”

Read these and other articles examining the death estimates and you will come to realize that they involve extremely intricate calculations and poorly supported assumptions. I’m not claiming that these articles totally vindicate my view, but they do reveal the shaky foundation on which federal, state and local governments have based policies that in the end may have more far-reaching, long-lasting and destructive consequences than Covid-19.

Related: Letter from the huddled masses.

[email protected]

www.dennisbyrne.net 

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

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