Wednesday, April 1. Better Late Than Never

 Day 69. Grandmothers across Greece are keeping watch on balconies, assisting police in maintaining order as quarantines spread across Europe.

We make a lemon soufflé. It's surprisingly easy and fluffy, and with practice, it might be as good as the one we had at Cézembre in Paris.

The WuTang clan donates thousands and helps raise $170,000 for Ottawa food bank in a one-day fundraising firestorm. Praise be, RZA. What can't you do? Ali baba sends Canada, 500,000 test kits and, one million masks. Mercedes F1 engineers help make a breathing aid for coronavirus patients in less than 100 hours. 

 A Canadian tech startup has designed a respirator that uses ubiquitous parts and can make 1 million of them but needs the release of Trudeau's federal emergency funding. 

We finally have so much good news. Better later than never. 

Trudeau has federalized the production of local PPE, and Toys 'R Us are us giving monitors to allow elderly patients to speak to each other. The Wartime footing has truly begun, as the caseload spike hits 1,000,000 official cases, a staggering number. 

Trudeau's benefits packages are starting to take form, as he encourages companies to hire back laid-off workers as the government will offer 75% wage subsidy, $750 on a $1000 cheque coming from taxes? Mr. Moneybags Trudeau, are you really gonna do that? 

 Just watch him. 

I take a picture, in my top hat and cyber shades, holding a lot of toilet paper and post it to the internet. Will I get an invite to The Island?

 I'm sitting around, eating a tuna sandwich, juggling cover design, meaningful outreach, and a few other things, including arguing with Xiaolin, who wants to argue with me because I'm too busy and not paying enough attention to my home life when my housekeeper comes by. 

I know that all sounds dramatic, but I try to be as cool as can be. Look, I'm a tree. Birds can hop around a tree, flapping, and chirping, but do you see the tree complain? Does it chirp back? Does it swat its branches and knock those birds off? No, it's just a tree. Strong, stable, reliable. A sanctuary. Made of Wood. Like me. 

 So I'm juggling balls, spinning plates, and you know, the usual chaos. Trying to get a calendar of boys and girls of Mask Culture off the ground to fight against the completely irresponsible and criminally misinformed CDC and their subsidiaries, however well-meaning, that are killing our most at risk like it's a sport.

Ding dong, the dogs are barking, and our Ayi is here. 

 She's wearing a mask, and I hand her two blue rubber gloves from the box by the door. But then I go back to making hummus... it's a balancing act of its own. Too dry, doesn't mix, a bit watery, damn, throw some sesame seeds in, and all these tasting spoons in the sink and drips everywhere. I'm a master of disaster. 

 I take a bite of my tuna sandwich, you know, with my mouth, like a normal person and freeze. What am I doing? I'm eating, in the open air, around my housekeeper, who's been outside. Who's been in other people's houses. Where other people live. I'm acting like a civilian. I'm a sitting duck. Sure, her mask and gloves stop her infection, but what about the particles on her clothing, swooshing around? That's what my mask is for. 

 So I take off to my office and finish the food quickly, wash my hands and face, and get my mask on. Because that's not honoring my warrior spirit, that wasn't being true to a leader of the Revel Alliance. People are counting on me to set an example, and I am not a sitting duck. But it can happen that easily. 

 The Revel Alliance? It went from a joke to a post to a group to 400+ strong members overnight, and many feel comfortable there. It's a green zone, a place to take our masks off online, where we won't be attacked for our high AQ, and even though slow on the uptake to this can come for meaningful information, relaxation, gardening tips, and baking recipes. I made a lemon soufflé, it was super easy. It made Xiaolin happy. You know, we can't be happy all the time, but we can try our best to stay in a good place.

 We end up with a living Facebook photo album, and I send the layout pages to my editor to put in the back of my book, mask kids save lives. 

 My first friend tested positive. She's in Africa. I asked if she wanted to blog, but she has to keep things quiet. In her country, personal movement is banned. Shopping malls are closed. 4 meters distance is required between shoppers at supermarkets. Supermarkets will limit their number of people a day. Food markets remain open. Factories will keep resting areas to maintain production. All the other shops are closed. Curfew begins at 7 p.m. The Government will distribute food to the needy. Max 5 people gathering. This is very serious, I hope she has a mild case and recovers well. Other friends tell me they aren't feeling well and maybe infected as well. 

 In the west, people try for two meters of social distancing, but if you don't wear a mask, it is really not far enough. Try eight! MIT has said that in half a second, a sneeze can go 10 meters, filling a bus or train car in trillions of infected particles virus, so could a fart, albeit a little slower. Unless everyone wears a mask, so just do it already. But there is social pressure. 

 I call Dylan, and he's boisterous at 2 a.m. in LA. He was doing his thing downtown -- I'm not sure why, some people just need to be outside, I guess - and a large, muscular young man started yelling at him, obviously drunk. The rubber gloves and mask attracted trouble. It turns out all the dangerous messaging about masks not being needed actually makes you vulnerable in some places. Anti-science civilians are dangerously ignorant, paranoid, and violent. It's a good time to stay at home. 

 The powers that be are guilty of messages so dull I would argue it's medical malpractice -- violated the first edict of medicine. Primum non nocere, "first, do no harm," the Hippocratic Oath, as early as AD 245, we see "I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm." Knowing that masks work, in a move to stop citizens from competing with the health care workers because of a negligent pandemic prevention shortage, they've given horrible messages, and now, as headlines read "CDC considers reversing itself and asking for people to wear masks" I read, "CDC considers waking up drunk at the wheel and trying to make sense for the first time in this entire crisis." How I got to be the smart guy at the table with the CDC and WHO is a mystery. Still, it's made me all the more driven because of the herculean efforts to overcome these blatant falsehoods. But I am not alone. The People, United--- the Revel Alliance is strong, and we are getting stronger by the day. 

 I must remember to be kind. I must remember to be patient. Not everyone is an early adapter, and most did not get locked down 70 days ago and have the foresight to clearly look with 2020 vision at this crisis unfolding. 

 At least, a small kindness, the mouthpieces for the failing CDC have stopped badgering me, apoplectic in their growing realization that I have been right all along. Their precious panel of experts has been dangerously unprepared and lost 70 days of leeway and 50,000 lives, which will probably double several more times by the time they have their plans together. 

Xiaolin disappears to her family house for a visit. Time goes by. I sleep a few times. She sends pictures of baozi, a kind of Chinese pastry she's learned to make. I keep one foot in front of the other, and then she's back. It's delicious. We learned so many things during this special time.

I am to speak at union conferences, promoting my book. They want to buy 2000 copies to give out to every guest. But it's in a month. A month! I worry the war will be won or lost by the time I'm signing books. Care mongers will sew masks, and every grocery store clerk in Canada will wear them to work. But where to get them? 

We try to track down HEPA air filters, industrial size sheets and cut them down and sew them into bandanas. After a similar initiative in Ontario, my mom, a retired social worker, has signed up for volunteer social work for front line workers that need therapy. The Revel Alliance is creating our own public-facing crisis team. 

People, including the wild Turnip, are pointing fingers, saying that if China hadn't downplayed its numbers, the world would have acted smarter. But they have resources to tap the German Chancellor's phone, an ally, and can't even figure out what China is up to? Watch what they do, not what they say. Sure, many countries, China, Italy, Spain, German, Canada, and America, are all accused of playing down numbers to avoid panic, not counting those with co-morbidities or those who die at home, when you see whole cities go under lockdown, you should act with caution and awareness. Instead, like lemmings, one country after another watches their neighbors fall, and then acts surprised when they do the same. Now they are threatening to do more than yell when the panic is over, stoking war flames on top of a great economic depression and crippling pandemic. We need leaders, not shuffling middle managers. Still, photos of thousands of urns outside Chinese funerary homes and hour-long lineups raise questions that a 3200 person death toll sounds awfully low. 

Boris Johnson is sick. God save the queen, they say. She's still not amused. 

Thomas Schaefer, 54, the state finance minister of Germany's Hesse region, which includes Frankfurt, has been found dead. Police say he killed himself in despair over the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. 

Tracking COVID-19. He was found on railway tracks near Frankfurt. You can throw yourself on the tracks, but that will not stop the train that's a-coming. State governor Volker Bouffier linked Schaefer's death to the virus crisis. 

"I have to assume that these worries overwhelmed him," Bouffier said. "He apparently couldn't find a way out. He was in despair and left us." state finance minister for a decade. 

Prince Charles is sick. His son threw a tantrum when Canada closed the borders and flew to California. 

The Belarus president said vodka and sauna will kill the virus, and they laugh and continue on, feeling awfully American. 

The darling first lady of the Czech Republic, Dagmar Pavlova, went and bought all the curtains in a fabric store and has broken the curve with their team of mask sewers. I hear now that she is sick, but I can't confirm it. Either way, she is a shining example in the west that America and its allies should take a page from. 

My friend Camillo that I met on a flight from Amsterdam to Athens last summer, told me that in Syria, the government sends undercover agents to follow old people around, and if they cough two times, they're taken off the street, taken somewhere and shot. Many friends have confirmed this, but he hopes they're wrong. 

 The WHO is still worrying about the wrong things. They're giving out bad information, trying to calm panic. In an FAQ, they say COVID-19 isn't airborne, falls to ground quickly, and that 1 meter is ok. MIT, a plucky little institute, contradicts them, suggesting 8 meters in an enclosed space, and that a sneeze can travel 30m/s - a cloud can span 7-8 meters (25 feet) half a bus!! In 1 second. Unless everyone wears masks. The virus particles can stay suspended for hours in airflow, or climate control systems. Hours, in the air... that sounds airborne. Virus particles have been found in the ventilation systems of hospitals. 

 Shuffling middle management tries to perpetuate the idea that "no one could have seen this coming." I guess I'm inconvenient then, having been yelling for 70 days straight. I wasn't alone. 

 How do we stop this? 

 It's straightforward. Halt inbound travel or enforce the quarantine. Make everyone wear face masks when outside the home. 

 Why does it work? It stops the spread of the virus from both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected. Just talking... causes air particles to circulate, and surround both people. Put them in masks, and we keep our particles to ourselves. Anyone of those particles could carry millions of virus particles. Fewer particles in the air mean less contamination on surfaces too. It reminds us not to touch our faces. If we get the virus, we want a low inoculum, if you get infected you don't want a large dose, a low dose gives you a better chance to get a mild case. This is why so many health care workers get serious infections... a low viral load gives your body hours or days to mount a defense. A high viral load overwhelmed your body and gets the upper hand. Even a cotton mask that doesn't fully protect, you will filter most of the virus and give you a fighting chance. It stacks the odds in your favor. 

My editor in Beijing is the toughest part of this quarantine so far. One day she snaps and says I'm wasting time, causing more people to die because my edits are too slow, then she says she'll need ten days to show me the proof before we can proceed. I've cocooned myself from her because it feels like gaslighting. Still, I am happy the book is moving forward and looking forward to the good it is going to do. 

Dash surprises me with something extraordinary, some lyrics that will make a big difference and I fall to my knees in a marketing meeting with Beijing's biggest printing company and cry in a ball for the first time in two months, an avalanche of emotions breaking through my stoic and resolute barriers. It feels good, but I am now a human, again, and must rely on my team and the alliance to proceed because I am not capable of bottling it back down anymore. Dash's work is going to make a big splash. Dash Splash. I love it.  

I found a new flying spaghetti monster painting of the Fork Horsman of the Pastocalypse fighting the heretic (COVID) fake meatball. This will be my next tattoo, but for now, it's my next T-shirt. They have a special, buy two, get one free, so I get my book cover and Devon's lovely "who do you want to be in this crisis" diagram, all of them will be beautiful new shirts for my spring and summer operations. 

As Canada and other countries set hefty million-dollar fines for quarantine breakers, I imagine the cottage industry of pandemic bounty hunter. I think for 10-20% of a million, it would be a pretty sweet side gig for me. I could support the front line with a lot of masks for a million dollars just to round up 5 defiant old snowbirds. This has high cinematic potential; comic books too. 

In other news--hospitals threaten to fire doctors who speak out about lack of gear, and the White House and other spunky organizations are finally considering telling the public to wear face masks. Well, good for you, two months late to the party. 

Andrew Cuomo, NY Governor, asks for more ventilators. Trump doesn't believe he needs them. In a Brooklyn, NY hospital, people die in waiting rooms, waiting for a bed, and proper care. This is two weeks ahead of the models and seems to indicate a health care system ready to collapse. Already. 

Seeing a passionate and articulate local leader pleading to do the right thing, America is in a frenzy, infatuated with leadership, Cuomo! Cuomo! They chant.

"The more I think and read about COVID, the more I think of this as a war and the conditions that we're living in to be close to wartime measures. How fortunate, then, that we're not killing each other but working together against a common enemy. 

To win, just as for any war, we need to be very deliberate with our strategy, we need to be tactical, organized, and one step ahead of the invisible enemy." 

- Canadian (Yukon) Chief Medical Officer Brendan Hanley. 

Century-Old Vaccine Investigated as a Weapon Against Coronavirus, the interesting headline reads. A vaccine that's been used to prevent tuberculosis is being given to health-care workers in Melbourne to see if it will protect them against the coronavirus. 

Italy Home Quarantine Repeats China's Mistake, Doctors Say. Italy needs to shift to mass quarantining of coronavirus patients with mild symptoms instead of letting them isolate at home, according to a group of Chinese experts who traveled to the European nation to advise officials there. 

Homeless people in Las Vegas sleep 6 feet apart in a parking lot as thousands of hotel rooms sit empty in Las Vegas. 

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination" - John Lennon 

When the days blur, and I vibrate so fast, I can feel myself occasionally in President Sanders' America. They handled it much better. 100,000 dead, overall. In our schmutz of the metaverse, we're looking at millions. But we can stop people from going out. The virus needs bodies to feed. I've seen it with my eyes, and I know its name. I will not stop until we've vanquished it.  

Shaolin waters and cares for flowers and plants with a fastidious kindness that makes me slow down and brings me back to the present with a meaningful awareness of this moment. Watering plants is one of her many lessons.

Chicago is calling: DANiSH, come play the Freakeasy. 

Yeah, right, Chris Martin says. He's scared to go to the grocery store. Scared? Or vigilant? "Oh, look at that knight, he's so scared of the fire breathing dragon he's putting on armor and quested for a magic sword!" 

Damnit, Chris, it's called having a plan.

Although rare, conjunctivitis, or pink eye, has been found to be a symptom in some COVID-19 cases, a new alert reveals.

Dutch Scientists Find a Novel Coronavirus Early-Warning Signal: 

coronavirus in a city's wastewater before COVID-19 cases were reported, demonstrating a novel early warning system for the pneumonia-causing disease.

I've bought the-invisible-war.com and theinvisiblewar.co, but I can't get theinvisiblewar.com. If anyone can help me, well, you know this would be a kindness. Somebody has got it parked. I'm going to launch a blog soon, to host The LiGHTHOUSE project, and I think I need an adjective as well. Open to suggestions. 

A really elegant solution for reusing masks was posted by the sister in law of a good friend of mine. You put a sandwich Tupperware plastic box to the mask, and without touching your mask, you roll the elastics across to the bottom of the box, then remove, and put a lid on (with your name even!) Then you come back, put the box to your mouth, use the elastics to roll back onto your head, and it's back in place—- you never have to handle it or touch the front or worry where you put it!

We hit 1,000,000 official cases worldwide. Canada is over 10,000. This is blowing up now. There's a great website on cbc.ca where you can compare Canada's curve to other countries. We haven't achieved the flattening of Korea or China, but we are doing better than some. We need to really work hard for the next two weeks to get things under control. We are fighting hard. The ground level response is quite strong.

I'm supporting several union groups on how to get their workers to all wear masks and how to make masks out of vacuum filters, HEPA air filters (large industrial ones), and other DIY projects.

I blink, and it feels days have gone by. I am hardly sleeping again, so much to do. I'm glad I don't go outside because my immune system must be weak like this. I will rest this weekend. I notice the days have flashed forward because our Ayi arrives for the third time. Xiaolin is having lunch in the kitchen. Xiaolin has replaced all our wood chopsticks with silver metal ones. She says the other ones were moldy, but I know she's just training me for war. Woah, the virus is fierce, they say. Yeah, but have you met my wife?

We give Benben some delicious fresh chicken from Xiaolin's soup, and he thanks us by peeing all over the kitchen floor and then pooing in the living room. We barely raise our voice, mop tactic triage, and we move on.

I've been teaching since 8 a.m. I' ve worked in my office three hours after that, all that on only an hour or two of sleep, but after a good chat with Dylan and Dash yesterday, I'm on a two-hour call with Stephane, and we're really vibing out. Our Ayi has gloves and a mask on. Xiaolin asks me to clean the dog shit off the balcony, so I put my FaceTiming phone in my pocket, fill up a bucket of hot soapy water and go sweep up the dog poop. As I slosh the water, I use the outdoor broom to swoosh the water around and accidentally stab the metal rim into my right palm. Just like that, blood, like stigmata, is pouring down my wrist, my epidermal barrier broken, and I start looking around as if I could spot the nanoscopic particles. I ball my hand into a fist and rush to the bathroom, wash the blood off, spray some alcohol onto the cut, and it stings nicely, and then I find a bandaid to go on. I put my mask on and finish up with Stephane, eat a little lunch (vegetables and rice), and hide out until my Ayi is gone.

I feel good. I've got a flow state on. Thanks to DASH, my stone skin has melted and I'm in touch with my emotions again. The deep-seated stress is leaving my body and I'm working well with a team. I stop screaming things. I speak softly, if urgently, and I smile without gallows humor.

 There's so much to do. We've got Justin Bieber's mom on the phone, tell your boy we need his help!

It's been such a long week, just trying to keep things together at home, just trying to light the fires globally, the lighthouses, to tell the story that must be told, dealing with everything, treading so lightly so I might not crush my dreams, that I haven't stopped to write in my journal for days. Better late than never.

To those of you in not in Asia, where it's hard to be the first ones in your city or town that wear a mask, I know what you're feeling.

It's hard to be the first one to dance at a party too. Everyone looks at you. You're a freak, you're weird, look at you wiggle. Weirdo. Freak.

 And then someone joins you, and you dance around each other, bolstered.

And then another joins, and another, and now you have a dance floor. And people finish their drinks and follow along because it looks like a good idea, and then all of a sudden the weirdos aren't you, they're the creeping wallflowers, watching from the corners, awkwardly still and lanky.

 Start the dance. Change the game. Save some lives, you brave hero, you.