Sheltered from COVID-19, but not from the misinformation and vindictive tweets | Opinion

The sky over Biscayne Bay, a deep-blue paradigm of Florida in late March is an illusion. Sea gulls and other birds wing by while I swim.

The silky waters of the bay create soft waves brushing against the seawalls. Walking around my island, joggers run by me, impelled by their youth, evincing memories of when I ran five miles in the morning and played tennis in the afternoons. The ease of their steps evokes a bygone fantasy, a reminder of my growing fragility. Yet being outside is transformative, refreshing, imparting a calm that is only superficial.

Nothing seems amiss.

However, being inside most hours of these forlorn days ominously implies an impending doom exacerbating my despair. We know not when the pandemic will end, if our economy will survive, if our destinies will transform into a new malady or a dystopic public health landscape, lasting years.

Home confinement often does not seem to be a great chore. My wife, Catherine, and I vacuum, cook and clean floors and toilets. We are paying our cleaning woman not to come and think that she might have been infected a month ago, when she had an incessant cough. After that, Catherine got a sore throat and a cold that lasted about eight days, bestowing its gifts on me for another eight. We had no fever, but I thought that we might have suffered infection. Now recovered, isolated anyway, and following all the rules, Catherine insists that it was only a cold. But, it wasn’t, I wonder if I could donate some plasma for antibodies to someone else who was stricken worse than I was.

But without testing, who knows what we had? Not being prepared for this crisis proves that we need government. People hate lawyers until they need one. People hate going to the dentist until the pain of a toothaches drives them to go. For fans of limited government, this is their come to Jesus moment.

Each day bleeds into another and since we are in the most vulnerable group, we get groceries delivered, avoid all people and frantically disinfect letters, cardboard boxes from Amazon, vegetables, lettuce, fruit, and canned goods. We wash our hands countless times each day and agonize over the tiny virus creeping up our noses eventually killing us, gasping for an elusive breath as our lungs fill with fluid.

Across America, deliveries are multiplying exponentially. Just like the virus. There is a newly involuntary languid pace to life now and that is not entirely bad. No running to meet friends for dinner, no lateness for appointments, almost a pastoral nature to things. Yet it seems unnatural, almost forced, like house arrest. A perversion of one’s freedom.

We cannot see our children and our friends except on video, but have each other to dispel some of the loneliness and anxiety. We drink more. The uncertainty is daunting; each day the stock market careens on a dispiriting roller coaster.

A few months ago, I watched a documentary on Bill Gates funding a new type of toilet for the Third World that uses fecal matter for energy. In 2015, he presciently spoke of the lack of preparedness for this very type of pandemic. He did charts and computer modeling of the spread and the danger. Our government turned a deaf ear.

I wish Bill Gates were president.

The country is floundering like a harpooned whale, a gigantic leviathan of the 19th century unable to meet the challenges of a 21st century monster run wild, abetted by a soulless Senate majority leader enabling his president’s malfeasance and mendacity. The president used his 5 p.m. briefings to campaign for re-election, considering his polling above the public health, contradicting his experts, blowing hot air filled with misinformation, boasting about the “great job” he is doing. And the members of his fearful, unthinking base are right in his wheelhouse. Really, does anyone believe him? A man who has squandered his credibility on mean-spirited vindictive tweets and name-calling for three years?

President Trump uniting the country or recognizing the truth is like asking a bank robber to give back the money after he has fled to Monte Carlo. A coronavirus of lies surrounds his handling of this crisis, not of his making but certainly beyond his ability to tweet away.

Something clearly is amiss.

David Wieder is an attorney based in Miami Beach.

This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 3:41 PM.