The Pandemic Journal - Day 44

I have been listening to Governor Cuomo of New York. He is articulate, thoughtful, compassionate, and empathetic. He is also intelligent.

Listening to him is a balm compared to the circus shows of last week, when #45 was holding his daily press rallies. I doubt they stop, but I am hoping for a small break from them after his debacle of suggesting we drink disinfectants to kill the coronavirus.

As for how I personally am doing, I am mostly fine. Somehow I have managed to get a huge bruise on my stomach. I don't know how it got there, as I don't recall hitting anything. I think it happened last Monday, when we were out. Perhaps I hit it on the car door or on the shopping cart in that madhouse that was Food Lion.

It isn't sore, but it is certainly a huge bruise. I am putting Arnica on it to try to get it to go away more quickly.

I saw two coyotes this morning, very close to the house. Our cows are calving and the next door neighbors have young kids, so this isn't good, that they will come so close to us. They scare the deer, and they are very ugly creatures. We will have to keep a close eye on the babies.

Some of those babies went off to the stockyard this morning. Of course, they are no longer babies. They needed to be weaned from their mothers. We will lose money on this sale.

Here is an economics lesson for you - many of the slaughter houses have shut down for various meat products because their workers have the Covid-45 virus. That means that there will be a backlog of animals, starting with small farmers like us, who sell to a middle-man called a finisher. The finisher fatten the cattle purchased at the stockyard and then takes them to slaughter. But if the finisher has many cattle backed up, then he will pay us less for our product (the calves). However, because the slaughterhouses and meat packaging plants are shut down, the price of meat will skyrocket on the consumer end. That is lack of availability but not because of anything we (the small farmers) have done.

This is true for milk, too. Milk producers were geared to package milk in little cartons for consumption in schools. So much for the schools, so much for home use. Suddenly, that turned on its head. No school consumption, more home consumption, but the packagers were not prepared for this (though they may have been had the federal government done its job). It is the same with toilet paper - people used toilet paper at work and in restaurants. Those are closed. Now they need more home-packaged toilet paper, and the demand caught the suppliers off-guard. It should not have, because we had three months warning on this, but those who should have been listening were deaf and dumb.

Other shortages are also because of the manufacturing and distribution chain. Many of our goods come from China, which was shut down for months. So those goods were not being made and shipped here. Hence the lack of PPE, because apparently we don't make much stuff in the USA anymore. That is not a politician's fault, that is because of corporate greed created through the stock market and shareholders. It erodes society when goods are not created in place. Not only does it takes away jobs, it helps create this massive wealth division that this country is currently experiencing.

Many things will be in short supply for the remainder of the year. If there are second or third outbreaks of this virus, as well as perhaps a bad flu year this fall, expect things to be even worse.

I have realized in multiple discussions with people that most folks have no idea how things are moved around and distributed in their hometowns, whether at the local level or internationally. Schools need to teach this stuff. Beef doesn't grow at the grocery store. It grows here, on my farm, and then goes through multiple levels before it becomes hamburger on the grill.

I have no other news. Everyone in my immediate family seems to be well. My friends are well, as best I can tell. We are all practicing physical separation. Many people locally have stopped doing that, and the numbers are creeping up.

My expectation is that from now on, for the rest of my life, I will wear a mask in public. It will be some time before I venture out again, I imagine, but when I do, I plan to wear protective gear for the foreseeable future.

The old ways of the world are gone now. We need to accept that, and find a new way of life, and create a new world and a new normal. Those who cannot accept this will die from the virus or a gunshot wound or whatever.

The rest of us will do the best we can.