Wall Street and Main Street are out of sync, still, and we have a better place for big companies to spend their advertising dollars...
  

1. With all the talk about testing for the virus, the hard fact is that we won’t get this under control until we have a treatment. A vaccine might be a year away, but an effective treatment is possible in a few months. In the meantime, both the rules of contagion and the rules of prevention are not going to change, no matter what the politicians and meme-masters claim.
   
   
2. One of the biggest lies being bandied about these days is that this is an unprecedented event. That's absolutely not true, but we tend to think that way because it hasn’t happened to any of us in our lifetimes. On the other hand, it’s so much easier to ignore the lessons of the past if we pretend this never occurred before.
   
   
3. So many big companies are advertising their support for front-line workers who are taking the big risks to operate our healthcare system, and our nation, but it all rings hollow to me. Instead of spending $millions on these ad campaigns, perhaps it would be more productive to simply buy some protective gear and ship it to all those heroes you’re thanking. Anonymously, of course.
   
   
4. The disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street could not be more dramatic than in the past few weeks, as 26 million Americans applied for unemployment and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared. Of course, Wall Street and Main Street haven’t been on the same page for a long, long time.
   
   
5. A friend was opining a while ago that this virus is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu and that there is no reason to adopt measures that will damage the economy. Now that we’ve seen 50,000 deaths—in spite of isolating more than half the people in this country—I am watching social media for his apology. Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t expect him to reconsider his views at all.
   
   
6. What exactly is the point of these protests against social distancing orders? Yep, it’s an inconvenience and, yep, it’s hurting the economy, but it’s not hurting the economy as much the disruption caused by a 30% increase in deaths per year in the United States. 
   
   
7. Nothing gives me more confidence for our future than the innovation and grit we’re seeing from average people in this crisis. Leadership at the top has been spotty, but innovation in the trenches has been great. People are coming up with new models for protective gear and respirators, research teams are developing dozens of tests and treatments on an accelerated schedule, and small business owners are re-purposing plants to produce whatever the market needs.
   
   
8. It’s the detours in life that make us more adaptable and, ultimately, more successful. Some detours are painful and some are fun, but they deliver lessons and skills that we carry through the rest of our lives. Sitting on the couch to save humanity is no exception.

 
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Am I the only person who wants this self-isolation to go on just a bit longer, if only so I can cross some more items off my to-do list?
 
Now that the politicians are talking about a return to normal, I keep thinking, “No, not yet.” Yes, I know we’re not going to reboot until we get past the bulge and come up with a treatment for the next victims. Even if the all clear sounds in July, though, I’m absolutely not ready.
 
I absolutely miss playing with the grandchildren and I miss restaurants and I miss the days when someone might cough a few feet away from me without causing a panic. Still, I’m kinda liking this whole shelter-in-place thing. It’s a new adventure, and it’s absolutely anything but boring. F’rinstance…
 
I’ve been kicking myself for the reading habit that disappeared over the years, vowing over and over again that I would catch up on all those books I had planned to buy, plus the ones I already bought and never cracked open. In the month since Jill and I sealed up our apartment, I’ve actually read four books and I’m in the middle of three more. Hooray for me, but I was really hoping to get through a few dozen before my parole.
 
Ditto for movies and TV shows that I missed along the way. I’ve checked off 28 of the top 100 films on some list I downloaded, plus another dozen from friend recommendations, but I’ve made it through only six at this point. Only another 80 hours to go and I’ll be caught up. Then, it’s time to stream Game of Thrones, Handmaid’s Tale, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and a hundred other series I never got around to bingeing when they were new. My best estimate is that I will get to the Red Wedding in 2032.
 
(Side note: Remember when it took less time to see the movie than we needed to read the book? Ah, good times.)
 
FTR, it’s not that I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for the past four weeks. I’ve been keeping up on my exercise, more or less, and I’m FaceTiming the grandkids about five times a day. I’m still mentoring start-up companies, writing the blog and WASHING MY HANDS every time I touch anything. I’ve been cooking more, doing more dishes, and recalculating my retirement savings at least three times a week.
 
And then there’s all the home movies I shot over the 39 years since we bought our first VHS camera. It’s taking me about two days to edit one year’s worth of tape, and all I am doing, really, is cutting and pasting. At the rate I’m going, I need another two months of isolation to finish the job, assuming I don’t watch any movies or read any books or Facetime the grandkids, or or or or or or.
 
That should bring me to the photo albums, but who am I kidding? I won’t be getting to the photos until three pandemics from now, assuming nobody makes any movies or television shows between now and then. Is it wrong of me to be making plans for the pandemics to come? Don’t answer that.
 
All this talk about returning to normal reminds me of last call at the bar. Whatever we’ve been doing, it’s an alert that we only have so much time to complete our mission. We all have different goals and different projects, of course, but all of us are on notice that this part of our journey is not going to last forever.
 
It’s a lot like life that way.
 
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Let’s add this to the many reasons kids are smarter than adults, and likely to be much happier, as well.
 
My grandson decided to get into the porta-crib by himself, so he grabbed a step-stool and started pulling himself up. I offered to help him, but he said, “I can do it.” And then he got stuck, so he asked for help.
 
Brilliant! He got stuck and asked for help. The greatest lessons are so, so simple.
 
So when do we lose the ability—no, the wisdom—to ask for help when we need it? As adults, we chant our rugged individualist, self-sufficiency mantras repeatedly as we damage our health, our relationships, and our survival. As is often the case, we would do a lot better if we acted like children.
 
I thought about my grandson recently, in a suburban diner, as I was catching up on life with a guy I hadn’t seen for about a decade. We were about 20 minutes into our highlight reels when I felt the need to explain how he could solve all his problems. (My old record was four minutes, so this counts as progress.)
 
There’s no doubt I was right, of course. I knew what he needed because I could see things objectively, without being bogged down by emotional baggage or unnecessary details of his life. Foolishly, he was challenged by minor issues like "ethics" and "people" and how many "resources" he could devote to the problems. Let’s just say that he didn’t take a ton of notes as I spewed sagacity all over the table.
 
We commiserated for a while about how easily we can solve other people’s problems, a particularly relevant topic for two guys who have earned their keep as consultants. When you’re in the business of finding solutions, though, problem solving is the easy part. The biggest challenge is convincing the client to accept and implement the plan that they’re paying you to deliver.
 
I encountered this frequently with business founders who couldn’t accept the limits of their insights. Paraphrasing just a tad, “I built this company and nobody knows more about this business than I do, so nobody can solve any problems better than I can. If I haven’t fixed it, it cannot be fixed. Now, what was your idea?”
 
This resistance is pervasive in our personal lives as well. Someone asks if we need help and we say, no, we’re fine, we have it under control, we can handle it, no need to be concerned. Except, of course, that we can’t get out of our own way and we’ll be wallowing in our slop forever.
 
Every one of us has a friend who is trapped in an eternal do-loop, continually hitting the same roadblock and making the same decisions that get them nowhere. Every one of us has a friend who picks the wrong relationship, the wrong investment, the wrong job, the wrong health choices, over and over again.
 
And every one of us is that friend to somebody else.  We need help, we know we need help, all our friends know we need help, and we still insist it’s all fine, totally under control.
 
This is one of those challenges that is dirt simple.

1. If we have a problem we can solve on our own, solve it and move on.
2. If we have a problem that could be solved, but not by us, we can ask for help.
3. If we’re too embarrassed to admit we’re stuck, we can choose to keep suffering, but it must be in silence.

 
Any three-year-old could make the right choice here. Couldn’t we be just as smart?
 
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 Now what?
 
If you were sick and you finally found a medicine that kept your illness under control, would you stop taking it as soon as it started to work?
 
That’s the trap we’re in right now. All this social distancing and hand washing appears to be slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Slowing, but not stopping, of course. Even if 80% of us are locked in our closets 24 hours per day, somebody has to deliver the toilet paper.  
 
All the people who drive the trucks and treat the patients and stock the shelves and fix the plumbing are still on the job. Some are driven by their commitment to the greater good, some cannot afford to miss a paycheck, and others are simply certain it won’t happen to them. It will, though, at least to some of them, and the outbreak will continue.
 
The virus will spread more slowly if they interact with fewer people, of course. If we go back to our regularly scheduled programming, we’ll just reboot the plague.
 
Maybe warmer weather will slow the spread, at least until the fall. Maybe it will turn out that drinking a gallon of Diet Rite each day really does work. Maybe a million old people will offer to die in order to save the economy. Maybe.
 
Right now, the stock market is orgasmic as the adult in the room predicts a peak, but a peak is not a trough and it is not an end date. When is it safe to come out to play, and how will we know?
 
Even as I write this, I realize that the whole situation looks very different in different parts of the country, even in different neighborhoods. Immigration issues look different in Boise than in El Paso. Gun control has a very different value proposition in Chicago than in Casper. The plague probably looks like no big deal in most rural areas, while it's a clear and present danger in densely populated cities. In fact, the situation looks different in downtown Chicago than in many of our suburbs.
 
Let’s assume, though, that we were and are taking this seriously. Let’s assume that we’ve seen enough deaths and enough hot spots that we all agree there is a threat. Even if we believe the threat is less significant in our corner of the world, it is real.
 
Now what? How do we prepare for life with a highly communicable disease that has no proven treatments and no vaccine? When is it safe to open the diner, hug the grandkids and stop washing our damned hands. (Honestly, I feel like Lady Macbeth, but not quite as guilty.)
 
It’s sunny and almost 70 in Chicago today, the perfect day to invite the neighbors over for a barbecue. Too soon, though. We have to wait until…what?

Now that we’ve decided this is a war, I guess I’m a war correspondent. That makes all of these battlefield updates much more dramatic, including…

1. Along with coronavirus, we’re also experiencing a pandemic of hunkering down. I haven’t heard that phrase more than once in the 45 years since Richard Nixon made it famous, but it’s already the leading candidate for my 2020 Word of the Year.
2. Our self-quarantine is beginning to look like a 12-step program. There’s a larger power at work here and I have to take it one day at a time.
3. Pots and kettles/Motes and beams. Politicians are continually seeking political advantages, but they’re absolutely shocked and outraged that the other side is doing the same thing. It makes me sad, though, when my friends repeat their team’s talking points with no awareness of the hypocrisy. It makes me even sadder to know that so many people will read this and think I’m talking about everybody else. 
4. I’ve received about 50 emails from various law firms with advice on how to deal with the coronavirus. It turns out that washing my hands is a constitutional issue.
5. One upside to staying indoors is that I have been sober for a whole week. That’s a new record, if you don’t count the month before my bar mitzvah.
6. A guy suggested to me that the virus isn’t all that dangerous, since neither of us knows any victims, but I think his math skills are lacking. If there are 330 million people in the country and I know just 330 of them, I’m not likely to know a victim until there are close to a million cases, plus or minus one or two hundred thousand.
7. To keep ourselves occupied, we decided to watch a bunch of the movies we’d missed over the years. After watching a few of them, I’m grateful, retroactively, for all the movie tickets I didn’t buy over the last couple of decades.  
8. Teaching is one of those lip-service jobs that everyone says they respect and everyone describes as the hardest and most important career in the world yada yada. Now that millions of moms and dads are home-schooling their kids for weeks on end, we’re probably going to see less lip service and more real appreciation.

 
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