Year of the Rat: The Invisible War, #2

By Jorah Kai

CHINA, VIETNAM, CANADA, SAUDI ARABIA, ITALY, ARGENTINA, AMERICA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA

PHILIPPINES, NETHERLANDS, GUATEMALA, UGANDA, THE U.K., SINGAPORE, RUSSIA...

THE YEAR OF THE METAL RAT, 2020, was a time of panic, uncertainty, and great division. As the pandemic spread, some wore masks and socially distanced to protect the vulnerable, while others protested all public health measures as a form of tyranny and caused loud and obnoxious mass disruptions to critical infrastructure in a jarring display of 'personal freedom.'

 

Fake news and echo chambers enabled 'alternative facts,' while unhinged narratives and cartoonish conspiracies ran rampant, often trumping coverage of legitimate and existential converging catastrophes.

 

In YEAR OF THE RAT, the sequel to the international best-seller 'The Invisible War' (Kai's Diary), Jorah Kai documents the world's largest 'Zero Covid bubble' while the outside world handles the pandemic uniquely. Reaching out to friends across the globe, he weaves their stories together.

 

Thirty-six writers from 33 cities in 16 countries share their daily struggles, hopes, and fears for the YEAR OF THE RAT as the SARSCOV2 virus spreads catastrophe to every corner of the globe.

 

"It's... the metaphor of the yin and the yang. I'd say right now, we are in the yin. It's a kind of disaster. It's sad. And on the yang side... it looks like some sort of a mathematical balance that I cannot explain." - Jeanne Claude Van Damme

 

"I would have done the whole thing for a donut and a tuna fish sandwich. The money meant nothing. It was the opportunity to at least prove to myself that I wasn't a liar, that I wasn't living a life of disillusionment. When you think of yourself as being a very creative person, and turn around and realize you've been leading a lie." - Sylvester Stallone (Rocky).

 

"At the beginning of the pandemic, Jorah Kai led a plucky band of frontline workers and activists to fight the pandemic with science. Some called him a harbinger, others a 'pandemic guru' as they navigated an increasingly bizarre world of book deals, TV appearances, speaking engagements, and a recovery event with his childhood hero, martial arts movie star Jeanne Claude Van Damme.

But nothing could prepare him for what came next..." - The Narrator

• Language: English
• Publisher: More Publishing
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959604006

Book preview

2737 BCE-2012 CE BABYLON & BURNING MAN: Hammurabi’s Laws, Tea Time, and the God Phone

The story of tea began in China. Legends tell that in 2737 BC, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water when some leaves from the tree blew into the water. Emperor Shen Nung was a renowned herbalist and decided to try the infusion his servant had accidentally created.

Starting from capitals of ancient China like Chang’an (Xi’an) and Luoyang, the Silk Road bifurcated through the five Central Asian countries (the Stans) and continued through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, then to Greece and Italy and across the Mediterranean Sea or south through Israel into Africa.

Chinese civilization depended on irrigated farming and long-distance trade. Chinese people traded with the Mesopotamians, the Indus River valley people, and the Swahili from the eastern coast of Africa.

Merchants carried silk from China to Europe, where it dressed royalty and wealthy patrons. Other favorite commodities from Asia included jade and other precious stones, porcelain, spices, and tea. In exchange, horses, glassware, textiles, and manufactured goods traveled eastward.

Three thousand years before a goat herder named Kaldi first discovered the potential of our beloved coffee beans in the ancient coffee forests of the Ethiopian plateau, or, perhaps slightly earlier, south of the Arabian peninsula in the Port of Mokha, Yemen, it was tea that got the world out of bed.

An aye ... for an aye, said Hammurabi, sixth king of the Amorite First Dynasty of Babylon.

What? Asked his barista and then quickly lowered his gaze. I mean, what, your majesty?

Ahhh... Hammurabi mumbled, fidgeting with his slender hands. Known as a hard worker, a bit of a fidgety micro-manager of construction projects, but a shrewd administrator notwithstanding, Hammurabi was an insufferable mumbler before his first cup of green tea.

Pardon me, your grace, did you say you wanted spices in your morning cup? Apsu’s right eye twitched. He had a precarious relationship, to say the least, with the leader of the free world. Curiously, his lack of decorum was tolerated with bemusement by King Hammurabi - as long as the tea was perfect. But this mumbling...worried him. Baristas - or, more accurately, tea sommeliers - had been jailed or executed for failing to provide a decent cup of the morning leaves to the satisfaction of the ruling God King.

Hammurabi shot Apsu dagger eyes for his impertinent questions. His long, lean forward curled up like a wicked cobra, and suddenly, the tension drained out of his face. He could smell the fragrant tea steeping as Apsu brought his favorite three-faced goat mug, a gift from Pharoah Nebnun the Usurper for his birthday, toward him. Thinking of the terrible fate of Nebnun, after only two years as Pharaoh, and how his successor, Sehetepibre, had not given the young Hammurabi any birthday gifts at all, his face darkened, his eyes becoming twin pools of stormy malice.

Apsu noticed and paled, stumbling slightly, but managed to steel himself and barely prevent tossing the steeping hot cup of tea across the precocious young king. However, several droplets flew from the cup and sprinkled Hammurabi’s toes. Hammurabi shifted uncomfortably as the boiling water dripped into his open-toe handles.

My...apologies, your grace, Apsu said, proffering the cup of tea to his king.

Hammurabi smiled, then, as if amused. Step forward, Apsu.

Wincing, Apsu obliged.

Hammurabi tipped the cup slightly to sprinkle a light tea drizzle onto Apsu’s right foot. Apsu howled and danced and drew back. Hammurabi grinned like a child with a new toy. An aye for an aye.

Apsu looked vexed but did not breathe a word of inquiry or complaint. Sighing in disappointment, Hammurabi elucidated. You see, I’m working on a code. I form of efficient - even brutal, justice to strengthen the rule of law in Babylon.

Excellent, your grace. Apsu puckered his lips curiously and preened. This will be a way to punish your servants more efficiently?

Taken aback, Hammurabi shook his head. He paused and sniffed the fragrant flower tea. No, it is aimed at all classes, from slave to nobleman, and even royalty shall not be above my law. All must answer equally for their transgressions and mistakes.

So you’re saying that if you spilled hot tea on my toes, I should spill more on the feet of the great King of the Amorites?

Hammurabi considered. Perhaps I could pay you a fine, then. Or your master. But I would still be accountable, whereas now, I am not.

Apsu scrunched his face and stroked his long, flowing beard. I do not see how you will convince the gentry and nobles to voluntarily endure punishment where before they stood impune from judgment. What logic will you give them?

That it is fair, and it is just, that it is the right thing to do, and by the credence of me, as King, I command it.

Apsu’s gaze lowered, but he said nothing. Hammurabi sipped his tea and studied Apsu for a long moment. Speak freely, Apsu. Why do you not enjoy this triumph of justice?

Your Grace. They will still surely protest it as wildly unfair and arbitrary. Nothing could make them punish themselves willingly. Nothing on this earth, short of a commandment of the gods.

Hammurabi’s eyes went wide in shock, and then those playful laugh lines that framed his steely eyes danced again in amusement. Well, it is good news to present then that I heard them in a dream. You see, they were given to me and handed down by Shamash, God of Justice.

Really? Apsu said, leaning forward. He was curious now and attentive. What else did Shamash tell you?

Hammurabi finished his tea with a gruntled slurp, passed the cup back, and clapped his hands. Call for the finest stone carvers in Babylon. We will write Hammurabi’s code in stone, and the people will rejoice, for it is the word of Shamash.

And so it was done. The laws were carved on huge stone slabs and placed all over the city so that people would know about them. Following his initial conquest, he was the first ruler able to successfully govern all of Mesopotamia without a revolution. He changed and fixed flaws in the Babylonian calendar, continued to be a hard worker, and remained personally involved in managing many of his construction projects. His name meant the kinsman is a healer, and he honored the traditions of Sumer, Akkad, and other lands he conquered. He was merciless to those who defied him. More than 3,800 years after he took power, the ancient Babylonian king Hammurabi is best remembered for the 282 rules in the Code of Hammurabi, what he thought were reasonable consequences for breaking society’s contracts, and, when pushed, granted by divine authority. God told him to do it.

I once saw a phone booth to God at Burning Man. I didn’t want to touch it. I was, honestly, not in the right headspace to handle that kind of contact. Someone I loved had just passed very tragically while I was on a four-month North American tour with the Root Sellers. I was numb, dumb and grieving, in a strange place as we finished the West Coast tour, driving from Vancouver down to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and eventually into the heart of the Black Rock Desert.

Black Rock Desert Playa​​ spans approximately 200 square miles, the legendary remnant of the ancient Lake Lahontan. Black Rock City, a magical, temporary community of nomads, artists, creative weirdos, and recently, instagram influencers, is built on the ancestral territory of the Northern Paiute People, the Numu. Their direct descendants are still grouped among different bands and tribes, like the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

The Black Rock Desert is an arid wasteland of lava beds and playa; alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. It's a silt playa 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada and west of Northern California that encompasses more than 300,000 acres of land and contains more than 120 miles of historic trails, a dry lakebed, a remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.

Myths and legends say the alkali silt lake bed has been a mystical, creative meeting place for tribes for thousands of years to gather after the harvest. It’s an inhospitable place covering every inch of you in silt, eating your flesh, and infecting your lungs. A dust storm could blow across the playa at any moment, blinding you, stopping traffic, and forcing all to huddle in place. If you didn’t have goggles to protect your eyes or a mask to protect your mouth and lungs, you would be in rough shape pretty quickly and dead shortly after. To live and stay in the Black Rock Desert Playa takes grit, resolution, and a bit of a death wish.

I remember driving up that way with my brother Galen, and the van broke down upon the lonely northern California corridor. Just a moment of distraction is all it takes to change your life, and in this case, pour sticky green radiator fluid over the lonely highway that pierced the endless dunes.

We baked in the sun for hours, until finally we got a tow truck. There was only room for two, and I offered the ride to G and his girlfriend. I’d been bad company for a while and welcomed the chance to be alone with my thoughts. I stood atop the desiccated corpse of a Goat - my Chinese sign and waved my thumb to the road. Eventually, someone came by a couple of Canadians in a cube van full of free-gan expired cakes they were driving down to Burning Man Arts Festival. I had left all my supplies, my tent, food, and water for the 10-day stay in the desert with Galen to bring when the van was fixed or a rental car could be acquired. I remember carrying only a liter of water, half a day’s worth, in those brutal temperatures, and a tutu because it was Monday night, and tomorrow would be tutu Tuesday. These were my tools and the clothes on my back, and I hitched a ride into Black Rock City for the first time. It was night, and the city was alive with color, sound, and excitement. I wandered past monsters, steam-powered beasts, and wild festive revelers. They drank, feasted, danced, and howled at the plump blood moon overhead.

I remembered stories and myths of ancient lands from when I was a child, places so hot during the day and freezing cold by night that you would die wandering through them for more than a few hours, but at the right time and place, exactly, you could stumble upon the bazaar of the bizarre: a rich bacchanalia of impressions, a smorgasbord of food, drink, and creative expression to sustain the weary soul. I was that wear soul, and here I was. I wandered for days and nights, somehow feasting upon fried bananas, martinis, bacon-wrapped scallops, and stranger things - the generosity of the desert. As they said, the playa provides.

I didn’t want to answer the phone because I didn’t know how to handle it. I felt spiritually and physically numb and hadn’t processed the tragedy meaningfully. If no one answered the God Phone? I would feel rejected. If it was some merry prankster cajoling me to live in the moment? I might feel cheated. And what if it was God? Truly? I wasn’t ready for that level of realness.

Fiction is the art of lying continuously, to tell the truth. Creative nonfiction is a graceful dance of verisimilitude - truthiness - twisting and turning to an infectious rhythm to create meaningful narratives. In a work of creative nonfiction, it’s important to gain the reader’s trust, so I will level with you: I’m about to lie to you, but only once, and only to make a point.

Eventually, I did pick up the God Phone. I asked, hey, some people have said that if you wanted us to wear masks, we’d have been born with them. Does that make sense?

The voice on the other end would have none of it. Were you born with clothes too? No, but you cast aside your innocence and left the garden, so you wore clothes to protect yourself and decided that you must toil for dinner. When the storm comes, masks are designed to protect you. Just like you wear clothes, so should you wear masks. Honor me by honoring yourself. Don’t be a dumbass.

Anyway, that’s what God said.

03/19 CHONGQING, CHINA: MY APOCALYPSE - THE IN-BETWEEN

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Day 56. I wake up at 11:11 AM again. I must have slept for 6 hours. I feel like a human again. I make some coffee, tidy up, and get right back to work. Xiaolin will come home today or tomorrow, and I will try to get my manuscript polished by then.

Xiaolin called to wish me a good day today. She’s getting baby Ethan ready to go downtown to Jiefangbei and enjoy the beautiful sunny Spring day. The sun is shining. It’s 20 degrees outside.

I heat up some carrots and rice she left me the other day and have a nice light lunch.

Outside, he meets another boy, and they play for a while. He takes his first ride on a scooter with a bit of help. Soon he won’t need it; one day he’ll be big, strong, smart, and capable. With a name like Xiang Ethan, it sounds like looks like a doctor, I know he’s going to change the world. A grandfather always knows best.

It’s delightful to work with friends to polish my document. My beta readers hover around the pages of my manuscript like bees in my flowers, pollinating this, spreading that over there. We work hard, flowers and bees, to make honey.

My doggos bark, rap rap rap, until I give up on eating and dump the carrots and rice onto their dish for them to enjoy. When they finish licking their chops, they bask on a cushion near the window as a warm golden sun lazily reminds them of the joy to be found outside of our four walls.

I’ll take them outside soon to enjoy the fresh air and run around. I can only imagine how excited they are going to be, with old Ben Ben finding his running legs again, tail wagging, and Hachoo doing laps around him as only the young can.

My good friend Andrea takes the bus over to visit. He’s always been a brave soul through this and sometimes makes me feel too careful in my tower on campus, scrying and shouting at the world. I suit up to meet him outside the school, and this time I try using my microphone headset in between my masks, with the speaker strapped to my belt to amplify my muffled voice. He thinks I’m nuts, but in a good way, giving me eye drops and Vitamin D pills. My eyes have been so fried; lately, I’m excited to go home and drop them in my eye holes. We walk around in the sunshine together outside, and the lady baker snaps a few photos of us when we pass by her bakery.

I go back home and relax. I teach Lil’ Kim for an hour and then take the pups outside. They’re tentative at first, taking everything in. The smells inform them of all they’ve missed, and Ben Ben gets up on his back paws to sniff a tree before he urinates on it. We have our Twitter and dogs, their pitter-patter. I yell, come on, and they both bolt toward me, tails wagging, excited to chase, bark, and play. Except for my gas mask, it feels completely normal.

Today there are 220,000 documented cases of COVID-19, with 8980 deaths and 85, 769 recovered. There are the countries where it is winding down, the countries where it is raging hot, and the places it is quietly booming, set to explode. Wherever it touches, it disturbs the very fabric of society, changing things that words and ideas and men could not. COVID-19, barely three months old, has brought about some form of socialism that pure politics couldn’t, by necessity. America and many countries worldwide are experiencing healthcare for all, a reduction in pollution, working from home, and a form of universal basic income; all are part of this new paradigm that is 2020.

In places like Chongqing, where we have fought it back, we must remain watchful, and so the requirements to come are stringent (a negative nucleic acid PCR test). Tourists must be patient (a mandatory 14-day self-isolation upon entry). One day we hope for a vaccine. Until then, we will stand vigilant, a beacon for the world.

I never heard back about the remote island of Ireland, but it seems Chongqing will keep me here for another year. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

I make a tuna fish sandwich with lots of garlic and a hint of peanut butter. At the same time, my Bluetooth speaker pumps the rhythmic trance-induced beats and riffs of cyberpunk synthwave industrial music. I flip my knives in the air and catch them by the hilt, spinning around and waving my arms to the beat as I chop and dice salad greens. If I can’t dance, it’s not my apocalypse.

Jay has been hurting since he landed in America. His family is barricaded in their remote village and does not want to join him in the United States. He is becoming increasingly critical and cynical, full of zealous fervor. I couldn’t think of anything more Christlike than reaching out in a crisis to send a stranger masks to protect his family and become wartime buddies. Still, when I wouldn’t agree to pray to Jesus, having already found Jeffy Spaghetti, he blocked me. I hope he finds his family again.

A new Chinese study declares that those with blood type A were more ‘vulnerable’ to infection. In contrast, those with blood type O, which have both anti-A and anti-B antibodies, may have some protection and a ‘significantly lower risk’ of getting COVID-19. Another revelation is that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is uncommon and is 10-20 times more apt to fasten to human cells. This could explain the virulent, accelerated spread across communities. The structure of these unique spike proteins is quite significant because they will form the basis for forming a vaccine.

.

I take the dogs outside, and they sniff everything there is to smell. They are tentative at first but soon run and play while I enjoy the brilliant glow of the sun soaking into my skin. The Aegean shine is creeping in like a guilty husband back from the bar, a little tipsy but full of deep belly warmth. After a good hour, I go home and wash up, change my clothes, and relax.

Xiaolin called to wish me a good day today. She’s getting baby Ethan ready to go downtown to Jiefangbei to walk around and enjoy the beautiful sunny Spring day. The sun is shining. It’s 20 degrees outside.

Her father’s garden is gorgeous, full of yellow spring flowers from the blooming pawpaw trees. Bees buzz around the flowers, pollinating and making honey.

A cat meows, and down below, a city buzzes too. Life finds a way.

03/26 CHONGQING, CHINA THE LIGHTHOUSE

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Day 63. Everyone can be a lighthouse in the storm. We are all luminescent beings of incredible potential, capable of cutting through darkness and fog with our brilliance.

A lighthouse.

Those who prefer to breathe and stay calm during a crisis are also helpful. You can be like a tree. A tree replenishes oxygen, soaking up pollution and toxicity and giving us necessary fresh air. If you have to be a tree during a storm, you’re going to want to be a gnarly old tree with thick skin and deep roots. The other kind can lose their way under heavy rain, getting pulled and away when the winds blow down, and end up in Kansas before morning. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Eight days have passed since my last entry. Eight is a lucky number in China, so now is an auspicious time to get back into the game. I’ve buckled down with my team of rabble-rousers, a motley crew of teachers, engineers, rappers, professional pillow fighters, doctors, musicians, circus performers, bio-med techs, and throat singers. Our rebel alliance rallies truth to power against a sea of dangerous misinformation. We took a 60-day blog and turned it into a novel in a few days, with very little sleep, and it’s been handed off to the publisher, being typeset and triple-checked for imminent digital release. I hope it can make a difference in helping educate people on how to flatten the curve and then manage their quarantine and self-isolation time productively and with dignity. It can be a lot of fun, I’ve found.

Globally, the numbers are skyrocketing, as exponential growth tends to do when it really gets going. The sickening moments are still yet to come, and I dread them. I really want to run and sit this one out, but I refuse to turn away because if my hopes and wishes, and good vibes can help one person find a ledge or a strong branch to shelter in until the flood recedes, then it will be worth whatever the cost to stay in the game. Shut up. I’m not crying; you’re crying.

I can’t sugarcoat this. There will come a time when despite all the locking up of doors and sitting inside our homes, the numbers roar like a hungry honey badger daily because they’re already baked into the cake, and it will take a good two-week lag before we see those numbers start to decrease. It will be the longest, darkest time of our collective nights. But we will be lost together. In a community, even a community of social distance, shall we find the strength to overcome and the courage to build something better than we had before.

A week ago, when I signed off on March 18, 2020, there were 175,000 global cases officially. Today, there are 531,600. The United States of America has rocketed to the top of the charts after a stunning gain of +17,057 cases from yesterday, with 85,268 1293 deaths. China is still number two, with 81,235 cases and 3287 deaths. They’ve just shut their borders completely to all foreigners, including my colleagues abroad, with Chinese VISAS, residence permits, and apartments full of their belongings left unattended, cheese slowly rotting in their refrigerators. Cheese.

If I leave, I will not be allowed back in. I hope this measure is temporary. As much as I saw it coming, after nearly 600 cases of backflow caught in the mandatory self-quarantine everyone entering China must do, they simply decided enough was enough.

In position three, jockeying to eclipse China by tomorrow and race America to the finish, is plucky Italy, with 80,589 and 10,361 deaths. They run out of gas sooner than America, though, as early reports of the quarantines from two weeks ago are starting to slow the rate of infections in the northern towns of Lombardy.

A friend asked me, Kai, how can you defend your use of masks when actual doctors on TV are saying they don’t do anything? I’m tired of saying the same thing over and over. First of all, there are doctors, finally getting screen time, who are speaking truth to power. We must all act like we are infected. Studies are showing 30% to 50% of cases are asymptomatic. That means many healthy-feeling individuals are walking plague factories and will infect many less lucky people if they don’t self-isolate and wear masks in public.

I ask my friend two questions since I’ve learned not everyone will listen to a message, but, given the right questions, they will seek the answers for themselves and be satisfied with what they find if they believe that they came up with it themselves.

What must a virus need to spread?

A virus needs new hosts.

A virus needs opportunities. 

It will travel on the breath, the cough, the sneeze of a host, through larger respiratory (breath) droplets, and sometimes hang in the air, other times float around before sinking onto the ground where eventually it will become inactive.

If everyone self-isolates, there will be no new hosts for the virus, and it will burn out. If you must gather in public, and everyone wears masks and goggles, and you don’t have open, exposed wounds, your skin is a natural barrier, and the coverings on your eyes (ocular mucous membranes) and your mouth and nose (your sinus mucous membranes) will catch the virus and stop you from being infected. Even if you wear a surgical mask that doesn’t have a perfect fit and a few particles enter the side of the mask, rather than trillions of particles directly into your open mouth, that will give your body time to rally a defense and fight the invisible war, giving you perhaps a mild case of the disease rather than a quickly debilitating and fatal one.

A host can also touch surfaces: a bank screen, a pin pad, a subway seat, or a bus rail, and this will be a vector for the spread of contamination. If you must be in public, you can wear gloves to keep your hands uncontaminated. You must not touch your mask and then your face. You must not touch a public surface and then feed your baby a cookie with your contaminated hands. Being outside is a little bit, or a lot, like traveling in space, and you must take precautions, or you’re gonna have a bad time. If you learn this, you may be fine. If you do not, you will become a vector of infection, and you or a loved one will possibly pay the ultimate price.

The rest of the pack is far behind the top three in this horse race, but they are jostling for contender status. Spain has 57,786 +8,271 from yesterday and 4,365 deaths. Spain is really struggling. I watch a video of a Spanish doctor crying, begging the world to listen. Just like Italy before, they did not listen to the warnings. They did not respect the plague. They felt like it was going to be okay, bolstered by the it’s just the flu COVIDIOTs. Now their hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients over 65 have their life-saving mechanical ventilators removed and are given painkillers so they may die in some comfort. At the same time, the machines are assigned to younger, 30-65-year-old patients who, in battlefield triage style, are deemed to have a better chance of life.

Remember, these patients sometimes require beds and machines for up to three weeks. This is a long, slow, grueling fight, and the moment the curve overwhelms the healthcare system, it gets much uglier.

In position five is Germany. 43,938 cases, 267 deaths.

Next is Iran at 29,406, +2,389 2,234 deaths.

Seventh is France 29,155, +3,922 1,696 deaths.

Eighth is Switzerland 11,811, +914 191 deaths.

Neck in neck with Switzerland for position nine is the UK, coming on strong with 11,658 cases, +2,129 new cases, and 578 deaths.

Rounding out the top 10 is South Korea, an early favorite for the podium whose great containment methods, incredible testing, and use of public masks for all citizens have cut their early lead, and now they are falling towards the back of the pack. They still have 9,241 cases, only +104 new cases, and 131 deaths. They are doing an incredible job.

My Native land, Canada, is not in the top 10, so I will continue my analysis of the four-horse race of the apocalypse. In position 11 is the Netherlands 7,431 +1,019 434 deaths.

Next is Austria, with 6,909 +1,321 49 deaths.

Lucky 13 is Belgium 6,235 +1,298 220 deaths.

Here comes Canada, holding steady at 14th place with 4,043 +634 39 deaths, an uptick of three from 8 hours ago when I went to sleep. I remember when we had our first case a few weeks back, then the big 100 just a few days ago; 1000 seemed like a big number. Hold onto your hats; we’re headed for big numbers in April. Will we hit hundreds of thousands or millions? Or will we dodge the worst of it? It depends on you.

Turkey has shot from the back of the pack to take the number 15 spot today, with 3,629 cases, +1,196 new cases from yesterday, and 75 deaths. Turkey’s getting serious about testing. Number sixteen is Portugal 3,544 +549 60 deaths.

Next is Norway, down two spots from last night but holding on with 3,369 +285 14 deaths.

Australia is position 18 with 3,050, +374, 13 deaths.

Brazil is hanging in the C20 with 2,985 cases, +431 from yesterday, and 77 deaths.

Last is Sweden, with 2,840 cases, +314, and 77 deaths.

Israel was booted from the C20 by Turkey’s quick gains and deserves an honorable mention at a respectable 2,693 cases, +324 from yesterday, and 8 deaths. That’s the C20, or COVID/top20 snapshot today. If you find it interesting there are no developing countries in the top 20, remember it takes resources and money to test for COVID-19.

A large tree near the Three Gorges MuseumThe stress of a storm will thicken a tree’s trunk and send its roots deep into the earth, rooting it in place. This tree, under intense stress, will grow strong and more profound. This is the power of learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Not wanting life to be a walk in the park, but assuming there will be a fair amount of displeasure and annoyance on any given day, and just learning to kind of ignore it.

As RZA says, that shit is just balls of rock flying through space. They think they’ve got impact, but I am the sun. This is my secret weapon, how I channel stoicism. If I can handle my wife, do you think angry people on social media bother me? Naw. Which is good because some people are pretty angry. Please see a psychologist as soon as possible. You are very sick. You need help. writes a ‘friend’ on Facebook before he blocks me, as a response to my posting about my experience for 60 days in quarantine and offering help and support to the internet daily.

People are coping with the pandemic weirdly. Often slow adjusters lash out. Lots of people in the west are confused and scared. The stages of grief are on full display these days. Lots of denial, anger, bargaining, and panic are emerging, and it’s okay if people are doing their best.

Those of us who are quick adaptors should try to be kind to those who are slower to understand what’s happening, but we should all try to be kind at this hard time.

Since acting childish is in vogue, I thought it would be useful as a small learning exercise: If you were on a spaceship and lost atmosphere, would you run to your pressure suit or just drift away as your eyeballs get sucked out of your freezing head? I’m seeing a lot of I’m not gonna be scared of deep space, and then you get sucked out of the airlock. Do you get it? The rules changed overnight. The floor is lava, and the air is poison. If you respect the new rules, you can keep safe and follow us safely. If you don’t play the game, you risk yourself and the rest of us too.

For those with #2020vision that see this clearly, be patient with those of your people that are slow to adjust, having a hard time, or believe the misinformation coming from some of your misinformed health departments. But don’t let them drown out your truth; only leave the information for them to digest. Leave them with questions, and they will find the truth themselves.

Baby Ethan loves bubbles. Xiaolin played with baby Ethan yesterday under a big, beautiful, ancient tree in front of the three gorges museum at ZhenMinDaLiTang, Chongqing’s big concert, and audience hall. It was 25 degrees and sunny. Today it’s 29 degrees, and we’re out and about in T-shirts and face masks.

Baby Ethan loves birds, too. In stubborn ignorance of the facts, Trump wants to reopen the country with a Bang as the pandemic spreads wildly across America. He thinks crowded churches for Easter is what he’s praying for, even as his key medical expert facepalms during a live press conference. Other conservatives are hoping old people will just sacrifice their lives for the economy without even stopping to think what having 2% of a country just die at once would do to the health care system, city resources, or even the economy. It’s the empire with new clothes on a bad acid trip, dangling off the side of a skyscraper by his toes. Or, as my wonderful Uncle says, I feel sorry for all my American friends, but that’s what happens when you elect a turnip as President! 

What’s the difference between a Turnip and a Trump? A turnip can go bad, but a Trump was always bad.

We’re looking at freight train coming across the country, now we’re looking at a bullet train because the numbers are rising so fast, says NY Governor Cuomo. He’s asked for 30,000 ventilators from the national reserve, and Mike Pence sent him 2,000. What is he supposed to do? Run a lottery to see who wins the right to breathe?

Another target of my wrath is the mindless COVIDIOTS trying to convince my 90-year-old grandmother on TV that she should stop wearing her mask or scarf outside. Of the many talking heads and their mouthpieces that say masks don’t protect you from respiratory infections, the best argument they have seems to be that the people who touch the mask and then don’t wash their hands will contaminate themselves?

Even though they’re getting a much smaller viral load than if they’d gotten all that virus in their mouth to begin with, right?

At least my mom was available to talk sense to her, and as she got off the phone, she saw an eagle fly by, a good omen.

A new study informs us we should disinfect our personal PPE outside of a window or balcony, as the reflection of glass windows can prevent the UV lights of the sun from their full disinfecting glory. 

In India, frontline workers use Chloroquine in appropriate doses as a prophylactic. While Trump has tried to comfort people on Twitter by saying saving this medicine will protect you before his doctors are ready to prescribe it, it is leading to heart attacks and death as people order it themselves on the internet. Their police are out in force, wearing masks and physically punishing (beating) citizens who are out on the streets as India has a complete 21-day lockdown.

In many countries, prisoners are being released. In Canada, we have closed the border and invoked the Quarantine Act. Kamal Khera, who re-registered as a nurse, tests positive for COVID-19, our first MP to fall to the disease. Some flights are still coming in, but they will be self-quarantining, and the penalty for breaking that 14-day isolation at home is a 1 million dollars fine and three years in jail.

Some doctors are finally speaking up, telling everyone to act like they have the virus and that everyone should wear masks. Good. That is common sense, and it’s true. It’s the only way to stop the virus. It feels good to be on the sensible side of public health information. Prince Charles has tested sick for COVID-19. The Queen is isolated and has her meeting with Boris the Johnson Johnson via telephone. She was not amused. Not the way we wanted it, but the Canada Emergency Response Benefit will inject billions into the economy and will provide Universal Basic Income, delivering $2000 CDN (RMB 10,000) a month for workers that cannot get EI or work at the moment. 100 Billion dollars in relief is coming. Help is on the way.

Okay, so what’s the good news? Do we have good news? We’ve got some. Iceland has tested a broad cross-section of its general population, figuring out that the numbers among the general population are still quite low at 0.1%. They plan to test their entire community, isolate those infected, and let the disease burn out. Xiaolin taught her mom how to make an egg cake. Everyone is happy.

Mama learned how to make a cake. We relax and make pancakes. Drink a lot of coffee. I’m buzzing, vibrating so fast I can feel my atoms doing ‘the Triangle.’

We’ll go to the Ren Ren Le supermarket. We bought milk, eggs, bread, yogurt, green peppers, onions, green onions, nacho cheese, Doritos, and some other goodies. They did not take our temperature on the way inside for the first time in two months. Things are really loosening up. They still beeped at us when we went home. We’re not febrile.

Chongqing is standing strong. It’s been 27 days since a new infection popped up inside Chongqing. It’s been more than 20 since the last of our 570 patients, minus the 6 that died, was released from the hospital. That gives us a 1.04% case fatality rate and a 99% recovery rate in the city-state of Chongqing. Two cases were caught on the way in returning students from Spain and America who were quarantined and showed symptoms after several days. The protocols stopped them from becoming new patients 0 in a new outbreak. If you want to enter Chongqing for business or pleasure, you must take a nucleic PCR test and quarantine for 14 days. On March 24, the reduced CQ threat level was reduced to level 3, and masks were optional but suggested for crowded areas such as movie theaters and shopping malls. So far, our protocols have held firm, and CQ is resolute in accomplishing both a return to work and a safe haven from the virus.

Factories and offices are now open, and tourism and entertainment are picking up again. The famous 9th street, a bar, and club street have been open since March 24 and had wild, packed dance parties in celebration, but I’m not going to be going out to them for a little bit, just to be safe. In wacky weather news, on March 24, an extreme, mysterious hail the size of fists fell from the sky over CQ. They’re calling for more of it tonight.

A coronavirus-shaped hail ball fell from the sky last night. I teach a class from 2-3, Lil’ Kim’ after hiring a translator to do the Chinese edition of my book The Invisible War. Next week we’re going to figure out other languages. Italian, Spanish, and French seem like good places to start. It’s a good, productive afternoon.

Afterward, we take a walk in the sun down to Starbucks. It’s 29 degrees Celcius and sunny, so I’m rocking a T-shirt, baseball 3D panda baseball hat, and a face mask with jeans and my wheat AF1s. Xiaolin used to hate that hat, but since it became part of my PPE gear, she doesn’t complain. The upside of a pandemic: I get to wear whatever hat I want. We order our thing: she gets a large caramel macchiato, I get a cold brew espresso tonic with a lime twist, and we use the sit on the amphitheater again. They have antiviral wet papers for our hands and lids, and we make use of them. We walk back to the amphitheater that, 60 days ago, we sat at before all this got weird, and it strikes me as if this is all so surreal. Still, it could have been a dream, but somehow we made it through the storm, and we’re out the other end.

I read her my book for a bit. She really likes it, but I find some typos. I make a note to send it to my publisher.

Trump is helping me market it, discussing fighting his invisible enemies as a significant talking point on TV. Two girls run up snacking, no masks. Xiaolin puts her mask on. I turn my face away and hold my breath. I count backward from 10, but then they’re gone. We trust that the city is safe, but somehow people enjoy having their own protection.

As we walk back, seeing people lively again is interesting. A woman has a robin blue dress and a matching mask. Another woman has a pink dress and a pink mask. A guy has a black mask with a printed design on it. I want to get one with my own face printed on it. A stylish mask was a fashion accessory in 2020. I’m still watching Altered Carbon Season 2—not Xiaolin’s thing, but I can squeeze an episode in here and there, and it seems more and more slightly futuristic but not that unbelievable. I watched Johnny Pneumonic last night, and I love how 1995 and my 15-20-year-old ’90s self and our idea of what 2021 would be like... some cyber gear, a slightly pre-Kung Fu neo take by Keanu Reeves on a cool future cyberpunk futurist hacking the web. A virus spreading across the world inconveniences most of us into staying home and surfing the web. Woah.

We make fajitas, and they’re wonderful. No cheese, but that’s okay. Life’s little pleasures. I think of all the cheese rotting in foreigners’ apartments around China and wish I could save it all in my belly. Things are looking good. Our protocols are strong. The Asian world generally gets it when it comes to spreading.

Mass tests in an Italian town have halted COVID-19 spread. The key is the asymptomatic transmission- studies here say 1/3 to half of the people infected are carriers. That’s how it spreads so well. The minute you get everyone covering their mouths and not going around touching everything, you get a handle on it. You need the healthy to cover up, too, get everyone in a mask, and a month later, it’s worked itself out. If you can’t count on your city to protect you, sadly, and you can’t come to mine, you can at least manage your environment. This just in: I can’t invite you or my family to come to Chongqing anymore and ride out the storm. After dealing with almost 600 backwash cases this week, China has closed its borders to foreigners. I am shocked. I slept on it, and I’m thinking about it again with a strong coffee in my hand. It’s still shocking. I don’t know if my blog will be seen as helpful when the tables have turned, and I’m at the movies eating popcorn when your town has food shortages and the national guard collecting the dead from home to home.

I will try to be mindful of that disconnect. Perhaps for some, it will remind you of a time when things were simple and give you hope that the time will come again soon. For others, my early warnings made you grow gardens, and you will be eating your simple meals, carrots, and potatoes, and glad you had the foresight to strike out early and make this space for yourself. If you can get to the countryside, visit an Uncle or Aunt, or go back and spend time at the family house, there may come a day soon when it will be much more relaxing and possible to thrive out there in the clear open air.

This virus spreads through healthy-looking hosts and quickly disrupts an unsuspecting population, but cannot so easily infect a wary one, so get your asses wary. Get to a place where you can be isolated and safe.

Don’t let anyone without a mask near you; if you have to go outside, cover your mouth and don’t get closer than 2 meters from anyone with a mask or 4-5 meters from anyone without.

Get your food and get back home. It’ll get better soon, I think. At least in a month, the COVIDIOTS will be too sick to cause you grief.

A retired emergency room physician in my family and reasonable medical professional in a sea of bad advice said all this: I am not surprised – after a national stay at home in Canada for two weeks, followed by widespread (33 million) testing and contact tracing, Canada should be able to control this pandemic in Canada.

Last night we had another hailstorm, and the building shook from all the wind and an onslaught of biblical-level heavy rain through the night. The earth is groaning in her hospital bed, but her antivirals are starting to shake up the human problem that’s depleted her immunity, and she’s doing her best to pull through. If it’s her or us, I’m rooting for her.

Someone posted my status about good news in CQ, saying, I hope this means it’s almost over. Yes, for cities that use proper protocols. Otherwise, it could linger for years. Things are about to get very dark for many of you, but that’s why you have to look for the lighthouse. Last night I wrote 4000 words, but then I got the news about the border closing and decided I couldn’t write or post anything at all. After some sleep, I feel I can continue, so here is my post. 

I putter around after 8 a.m. IELTS writing class, which is a kind of torture, I think, to have us wake up so early during the apocalypse, but I manage. After I edit in my office, drinking my strong coffee, I hear Xiaolin coughing in our room. I go and see her.

Her shoulder is cold. I give her a hot bandage and then go and find a USB battery to power it. She wants a sweater too, so as I’m boiling water to make her honey water, I go try to find her sweater on the couch, but it’s buried under the laundry I ran around frantically bringing inside as the hail, and torrential rains came down, so I snap something cranky, I’m trying to write, can you just wear another sweater I ask? And then I’ve done it, lost my patience, and Yoda will make me levitate rocks with my mind for the rest of the weekend. 

Chongqing is a city on the hill, shining light and hope with our protocols. Other cities also have solid protocols, and many lighthouses will soon spring up. Let them shine a light of hope onto you, and if all they do is expose the mistakes in the approach of your leaders, I hope it will guide your way safely back into port.

In the chaos and darkness of this storm, we can all be lighthouses.

04/1 CHONGQING, CHINA: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

APRIL 1, 2020

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.

In a one-day fundraising firestorm, the WuTang clan donates thousands and helps raise $170,000 for the Ottawa food bank. 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 Trudeau’s federal emergency funding release. 

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 a 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 I 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, and 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 with 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, 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.

My first friend tested positive. She’s in Africa. I asked if she wanted to blog, but she had 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 the 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 may also be infected. 

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 with trillions of infected virus particles, 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 driven me all the more 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 the 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 makes baozi! It’s delicious. We learned so many things during this special time.

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, 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 its 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 would kill the virus, and they laughed and continued 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 broke 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 whom 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 the 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