Monday, April 13 - Don't Panic

Jorah Kai CHONGQING, CHINA

Day 81. We're walking outside, enjoying a sunny day when it happens. The hair on the back of my neck tingles, and I sense the pitter patter of six teenagers approaching, still 15 meters away. Their masks are all down, around their necks, and one lifts his face up to sneeze into the open air. 

Everything is momentarily frozen in time. I can see the trillions of virus cells, racing faster than machine gun fire towards us.

PANIC!

Where's my towel?

He's 10 meters away now. It's too close. I hold my breath, close my eyes and turn my back to him, lifting my HEPA filter charcoal mask up in that moment around my face, tightening the draw string snugly at the back and then covering the straw of my strawberry juice in one fluid motion.

Half a second, maybe too long? Or just in time? Time. Hun. I bark to Xiaolin to put her mask back up also, but she's 1 second and 4 meters farther behind, out of the direct sneeze zone.

Embarrassed, the group of teenagers puts their masks on sheepishly, and I give them a dirty glare. They shuffle away.

"Those criminals, terrorists, sneezing in the open air….." I mutter, and Shaolin shakes her head.

Holding onto anger is like holding onto a hot coal and hoping someone else gets burned. It's not productive. It doesn't make it easy though. I'm still angry.

In another time, we're at China Post, and we've dotted all the I's and crossed the T's, and we're ready to do it. We're picking up my magic towels. We pay the taxes and come back, and inspect them, waffled, wavy, grey, and enigmatic. They seem normal enough. That's the trick, isn't it?

They box the box back up, tape it up, and we're off.

Police inspect us on the way out. I have my papers. In quadruplicate. Our protocols and technicalities are immaculate. I am allowed to leave.

We get a taxi and make our way back home, in time for some TV interviews and more print interviews with China and Canada. Then I wash our towels, use lavender softener in the last 20 minutes, and then hang them to dry.

Virginia pastor dies from COVID-19 after holding packed church service. Nobody could have seen that coming, except everyone.

Canada's economy is… crashing like a meteor?

Canada is sending out lots of checks, basic income, and EI for all. This is much better than the US is doing and is an excellent thing for my home country. I hope other countries can take Canada's lead and provide UBI for all who need it.

In absolutely disgusting US news, feds are confiscating and seizing medical supplies and PPE from democratic states and directing it to republican states. This is monstrously evil.

Just no words. It's tragic.

The intersection of incompetence and malicious intent is Trump's cornerstone. 

So states are now trying to ship in PPE secretly under the federal radar so the states and city levels can protect their front line workers without the Trump administration being able to steal their supplies to auction off for massive profit to the highest corporate bidders. This is America.

A doctor says, "COVID-19 Punishes Our Narcissism," and that's interesting. There are many theories and many philosophical lessons and psychological explanations for what people are collectively going through, but if I had to put it in simple terms, making do with being uncomfortable, being stoic, just seems the simplest, the least cluttered. Getting in touch with who we really are, without pretense, artifice, or distraction.  

Pearl TV has canceled an interview with me because of sensitivities over a negative diary published in the west where the author is pretty negative over Wuhan.

Never one to want to miss a chance to spread my message, I say, well, wouldn't they want a positive message of Chongqing's handling to combat the negative other diary? And they agree, well, yes, that makes sense, so I send them a copy of my message on YouTube and give them permission to use that, and they seemed happy. I'm tired anyway and a day not in front of cameras can be spent writing, or even sleeping

The director for my book comes back: the editor wants to know why you want that e back on Doctor?

Well, she took my E, and I need it back.

But isn't it a spelling mistake? Doctor?

No, I said, I need another E. It's Doctore.

Doctore?

Yes?

No, I mean, what is Doctore?

It's Italian.

Are you Italian?

No, but I'm not Danish either, and you're not bothering me about that one.

I may lose patience sometimes, but on some level, I am grateful to anyone that can tolerate me, even support me. I had caused some of my friends here in China, used to my normalflauge some real headaches when I busted out as Jiggity Jorah Ka ka ka Kai, a teacher, a loud voice, and now, pandemic procrastinator. I like this term. Peak? Let's do it later. Flatten the curve -- slowly, like, whenever, procrastinate the pandemic.

What happened? If I had to guess, the fear of death, the panic, was just so much that part of me died, and what was left, was reborn. Fearless, able to look a pandemic in the eye. 

A plucky novelist against a novel virus.

I'm making waves, and not everyone likes it, but the work is more important than the trivialities. Still, maintenance is key, and I try to step lightly around the shell of the life, for I still wear the face of the man they once knew, and it would be cruel not to mind their dreams, as I would have them care for mine.

Bernie has bowed out for now, and I, for one, am happy he doesn't have to shake any more hands right now. But beyond that, more than that, I'm gutted, because now we're really in the wrong timeline. That sneaky weasel in the Hadron Collider might be the cause ...in 2012... next time I'm there, I'll try to stop him, if I can.

 I will visit his America in my dreams, and I will take back what I learn to share with you. It's not what we wanted, but it's what we have. I love you and your dreams, Uncle Bernie. You are a lighthouse in the darkest stormy night.

Elon Musk wants to connect our brains to computers next year. Not soon enough for VR clubs and intimacy. Dating in the age of COVID is probably not fun. Except, maybe for the gas masks and latex crowd.

South Korea reports recovered coronavirus patients testing positive again. The antibodies are low, in many cases, roughly 30%.. the younger ones…what's going on here? Many with low antibodies were young. Those in ICU that got donated plasma were excluded from this study. Given antibody titer in 30% of patients was too low to give immunity to reinfection— interesting — put a pin in this. Possible ideas: maybe a false positive initially? Maybe they're not producing antibodies? Maybe t cells, cytokines, or other methods to fight it off rather than antibodies? Vaccine producers take note. The titers of NAbs were variable, and in elderly patients were significantly higher plasma NAb titers.… they would be the ones to draw plasma from. According to the antibody study: "The Nab titers were positively correlated with plasma CRP levels but negatively correlated with the lymphocyte counts of patients at the time of admission, indicating an association between tumbrel response and cellular immune response."

What does this mean? Some younger people might be clearing the disease another way other than creating antibodies (macrophages? T-cells? Cytokines?). Still, secondary infection in at least some people is a distinct possibility now, not to mention multiple strains percolating some countries such as the USA, so even if you've recovered, you need to take precautions and keep wearing a mask and social distancing.

This might slow down vaccine creation, or require more than one vaccine, but it could throw a monkey wrench into the Herd Immunity camp. How did Dr. Martensen put it? "What an astonishing foe, packed into a 34KB of information packed into.." a nanoscopic bilipid ... medieval mace?

One theory - reactivation - is odd. That the level of the virus remains dormant and later can reactivate for another pass.

Dr. Fauci says Coronavirus immunity cards for Americans are 'being discussed.' It's not as elegant as our Youkan card app, which uses our GPS to determine our risk assessment, but it makes sense. Many in the West are more concerned with privacy violations than actually stopping the deaths of millions of people in a viral plague, so it's really wild to just see that conversation happening and want to shake them all and say, "you're asking the wrong questions, you're worried about the wrong things." I choose to pick only certain times now to debate on the internet, when it serves a good or I just can't resist. I'm too busy to engage in meaningless debates, my writing is a better way to reach more people, and I'd rather spend time with close friends and family than arguing with strangers.

Dylan's involved with 3 hands project, where able-bodied astronauts buy groceries for vulnerable immunosuppressed people. This is amazing, and I highly approve of 3handproject.org.

Mental health and long term care homes are pretty desperate now… I'm really happy that I got one CTV interview about mindfulness.

It's been 100 days … since the first reports of the virus. Look where we are. 96,000 have died, 1.6 million have the infection, and billions are living under lockdown.

New York City buries unclaimed coronavirus victims in mass graves at Potter's Field. My friend Marley's Jamaican grandmother might be in one of these. She is sad. I am sad. It's really unbelievable. Damn you, you orange menace. America. How did you let this happen?

In Ecuador, the stories of carnage are even grimmer, with bodies being burned on street corners as the system simply cannot even manage to haul them off. We need social distancing globally, we need masks in public. In India, many dense communities in New Dehli are welding up their doors to seal in infected communities to keep the spread of infection out of mainstream society.

Every square inch of storage for oil will be full in 4-6 weeks. OPEC has a big conference call to discuss how much they should cut down on global oil production. This is economically devastating but environmentally excellent.

Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, has grown into his shoes this month and seems to make more sense than usual. He's asking to increase the testing capabilities.

Dr. Tam has wondered if Ottawa, expecting SARS, has underestimated the ninja that is COVID-19. I think everyone has, that's fair to say.

Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson is out of the ICU. He looks like he's going to make it.

It was only a matter of time, the Finns have hired necromancers, and we see -1 on their daily death count.

Uganda man runs from quarantine. People worry that mob justice will prevail. I wonder how many people on boats and in cramped hiding conditions he will infect.

"Head Lice Drug Kills Novel Coronavirus Within 48 Hours, New Study Finds: Weather Channel" - this sounds too good to be true, but also, awesome. Go, Australia, let's get that COVID on the barbie!

Many neighborhoods, two dozen, in New Dehli are sealed up to prevent the outbreak from reaching the rest of the city. India is so dense... this is in the developing world, and it's going to be ... I know on some level, but I can't say now. We must work hard and just hope to triage the worst of it.

Xiaolin and I work well together. It's only one class, and it goes by quickly. I'm a children's show tv host, and it keeps the lights on. Xiaolin has been so great lately, helping me to multitask and cover for me, so I can keep all my plates spinning. We've temporarily closed the second class so I can focus on my writing and book launch, and that's fine by me.

I take a couple of hours and look through the printout of my book, and mark up 44 pages that need corrections. Some are mine, others are theirs, but all of them will make a better book, and that's important to me.

I send it back, and we go for a walk in the sun, walking down the hill past the ShiQiaoPu subway station and across the street, past the Star Bucks, and order some strawberry flavored summer drinks at the ShuYi juice bar. 

We go sit in the sun, and my neck starts to cook like I'm at the beach. It's sunny, the sky is blue, and it must be 30 degrees, which makes April 12 the first day of summer in Chongqing, I guess.

Eddie Large, the comedian, dies aged 78, of COVID-19.

My editor is still a bit snarky to me, but I have her boss running notes back and forth.

I try to weigh the public good of putting the book out versus threatening to walk away if they ruin my poetic or idiomatic language.  

All of a sudden, they ask me to change the title. I feel sick.

I think about, well, other than knowing in my heart this is the name of the book, China's leader Xi Jinping, Trudeau, Trump, Johnson, and many others have referred to the war footing, fighting invisible enemies, and the warlike conditions, this is obviously the title, but someone in the publishing sector is nervous, would I be ok with "The Invisible Despair?" No, how about "The Invisible Danger?"

Nope, I say. It's the Invisible War, or I walk away. They can the Chinese version as "brother Kai's diary," and a modified internal Chinese English version, but if they don't publish the English version the way I want it, I'll lawyer up and give it away for free on the internet.

They want this book more than I want this book, and so I let them think about it. 

I get a call the next day; my everyone has decided to let me do what I want, which works out great for me because that's what I do anyway.

I KNEW WHERE MY TOWEL WAS!

I take a shower with my Kanso towel. It's light as a feather, it doesn't seem to get wet. It will feel fresh forever. Believing in magic is great.

Shaolin and I leave the flat, again, to catch some of this intense sun. I've answered 36 questions from the editors and sent back 37 corrections to their current draft and feeling satisfied. We leave the house, generally relaxed these days, and see, outside the building, near the school gate, a couple of guys in full on Hazmat suits. Shaolin backs up, I snap a photo.

Tempted to run the other way, we instead gather more information.

Luckily it's just a drill.

There is no COVID-19 emergency today, but as my high school prepares to open again in May, they are making changes. Already, a row of sinks and soap for handwashing before students enter the gate has been installed. 

Now, they have an ambulance on standby and a couple of guys in Hazmat suits ready to rush anyone with a fever to a safe place until they can get the arrangements for priority hospital entrance.

Further discussion revealed that one of the hazmat men is my buddy, who the ladies call 'Handsome Frank', and the second was that the 'safe room' for possible COVID-19 cases is the least populated residential building on campus.

Whew.

Wait.

I live in the least populated residential building on campus. YUP. The foreign teacher building now houses the "potential viral infection chill lounge."

I'm going to need a longer mixtape.

 

 

This diary entry is part of Kai’s collection, from an upcoming book titled The Lighthouse, his second collection of COVID-19 diary entries, this one is a collaboration of voices from around the globe. He shares with them iChongqing, and at www.theinvisiblewar.co.