October Surprise

So, we have a new president elect, Joe Biden.  Sort of.  

While Donald Trump continues his quixotic quest to overturn the results of a fairly contested election - one he lost - hundreds of thousands of Americans test positive for COVID-19 every day.  In fact, yesterday, a record - 124,000.  Hospitalizations and deaths, nationwide, are on the rise this fall, an eventuality that was predicted by virtually every epidemiologist who commented on the pandemic.

It's saddening and depressing in many ways.  It's anxiety inducing, also, to those of us who live in fear of catching the virus.  Or of the virus catching us.  

Strangely enough, although statistically things are worse than they were last spring, when the economy was shut down, many people - including several standing maskless right in front of me as I write this at Honest Coffee Roasters - act as if the pandemic isn't occurring.  This is especially true in Franklin and Williamson County, where I work.  

Across the country, the governors in several states are imposing, or re-imposing, lockdown measures designed to curb the spread of the virus.  Restaurants closing at 10 p.m.  Limiting the size of public gatherings.  Closing gyms, nail salons, and spas.  The Los Angeles Lakers announced yesterday that when the 2020-21 NBA season starts in late December, there will be no fans at the Staples Center.  

On the home front, Jude and I pulled Joe out of fall basketball last week, before his first practice.  First Presbyterian Church in Nashville canceled the fall league he usually plays in,  so we had signed him up for a league based out of the Brentwood YMCA.  The games were to be played at a multicourt facility in Franklin and he would be playing for a coach we didn't know and with boys we didn't know.  In the end, we decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, so we pulled him from the league.  He was disappointed but it was the right decision.

JP is playing basketball this fall - for the first time - for my friend, Isaac Connor.  It's a great opportunity for him to play for and learn from a different coach.  I have coached Isaac's sons, Cyrus and Elias, in baseball for years, and I know Isaac well, so I am as comfortable as I can be with JP playing basketball during the pandemic.  At his first practice last night, though, I deliberately stayed out of the gym at Brentwood Academy where he was practicing.  It's an auxiliary gym - small, no where to sit - and I just didn't feel comfortable lingering in it and watching practice.  

At work, I have 13 or 14 mediations scheduled between now and Christmas.  In mediations, I spend as much as eight or ten hours shuttling back and forth between two conference rooms in my office, meeting with the parties and their attorneys.  In the end, that's where I'll get the virus, I know, because it's really impossible to properly distance in a closed conference room during an eight hour day.  I can't really mediate with a mask on because it's just too hard to connect with people.  Zoom mediations just are not effective either.

So, the show must go on and, in fact, it does go on.  I don't see the economy shutting down again.  I think COVID-19 will be with us through the winter months, at least.  My law partner, Mark, laughed in my face last spring when I told him 1,000,000 Americans might lose their lives.  241,809 deaths to date, according to the New York Times, and climbing.  I hope he's right and I'm wrong.

Dark times, in many ways.  It's important, I guess, to enjoy the little things.  A late afternoon run.  A good book.  A family dinner.  Watching American Ninja Warriors, the Mandalorian, or All or Nothing (Tottenham) with the boys.  

And try not to let the virus catch me.