Cockeyed Optimist

Listening to #6, the Pastoral. And the rain. Actually feeling more optimistic than scared right now. It seems to me in my Pollyanna world that more and more decisions are now getting made with reference to evidence despite the babble of the willfully uninformed, and we're beginning to listen to and take the advice of the smart people who've spent their entire lives studying the fascinating world of infectious disease.

The horror of those suffering and dying and the torment of front-line medical professionals in this moment is forefront in my mind. But the fact that this particular agent is evidencing a kill rate in the low single digits means the present human race has a fighting chance to actually learn something valuable without having to experience the wholesale slaughter y. pestis exacted on the species in the 1350s.

Dare I say it, even America might learn something. Who knows--maybe we can finally divorce health care from employment--or house the homeless--or build slack and excess capacity into social systems instead of making efficiency the worship totem--or make it so the people who do the hard work of caring for and feeding humans can have a decent life.

One thing is evident most of all to me: we're on our own here. No super-intelligent aliens, no cosmic muffin, no magic beans are going to fix this. We have to do it ourselves or perish. And we definitely can do it.