The Virtual Mother’s Day

To the Point

The Virtual Mother’s Day

Ranking Calamities

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Conversation these past days with resident sons of the American West has revealed a common theme. There is agreement our lives amidst the pandemic have not really changed if daily activities are the only measure. Water, water, and water is the ongoing, central theme as the days of summer (with return of rattlesnakes and mid ‘90s temperature readings) start to appear.

            Long underwear has even been relegated to the middle drawer.

            Spring works are in full swing or approaching completion on many places. Ours will wait until more pairs are the point of discussion rather than bred cows, but even then, the smell of burning hair has been a feature. It has been associated with the cows and heifers arriving that were sourced to replace the old cows that were sold in yet another round of likely drought strategy requirements.

            In part of those arriving red mamas, the slash pitchfork low on the left shoulder has now been superseded by a bt high on the left hip to signify that legal requirement for ownership has changed. Some McWhorter cows and their respected ancestry are now Butterfield Trail dams. They will bring with them the instinct of motherhood that a millennium of breeding has only enhanced not created. They will join a sisterhood that is facing uncertain times.

            The American livestock business is operating in new frontiers. Abundance on the production end is matched with shortages and disjointed market chains on the harvest end. Increasing calamity prevails and it is promulgated with surgical masks and uncertainty. While the latter cannot be avoided, the former exists only as an unused version stored in the console of the ranch pickup. Yes, it is there, but it remains in an unused state of existence.

            Ranch smells and fresh air are best served unencumbered. Like motherhood being celebrated this day, the natural and unadulterated state is the preferred alternative.

            To the Point

            The suggestion was honor your own mother.

            Proverbs 31:25 reminds us She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. In the case of my mother, that is not entirely true. Dignity is a word that is difficult to associate with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. And, it is there that laughter is absent as well. Those of you who have faced this terrible disease know what that means. To those of you who will yet encounter its dreadful consequences, a whole new layer of horror will be revealed.

            Pandemic is a condition not reserved only for COVID-19.

Johns Hopkins University has published a historical and visual death toll ranking of great killing plagues and rampant disease outbreaks. It sets forth, through time, the highest to lowest killing force among natural occurring phenomenon. It only adds confusion to the wonders of our self-induced, selective Great Depression.

COVID-19 currently ranks number 17 in actual deaths amongst an arrayed list of diseases that altered the course of civilization. In truth, it doesn’t even register on the scale of real killing forces like Bubonic Plague that eliminated some 200M from 1347-1351 when the world’s population was estimated to only be 350M. That was followed by Smallpox that killed another 56M starting in 1520 when the world’s population had increased to some 450M souls.

In order, the killing forces continued in the tally of total deaths with the Spanish Flu, the Plague of Justinian, HIV/AIDS, the Third Plague, Antonine Plague, 17^th Century Great Plagues, Asia Flu, Russian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Cholera 6 outbreak, Japanese Smallpox Epidemic, 18^th Century Great Plagues, Swine Flu, and Yellow Fever before COVID-19 even registers. A total of nearly 400M deaths were accrued in the great die-off’s prior to the Corona Virus arrival which had killed a possible 84,000 by April 8 of last month.

This was all against a backdrop when the majority of the deaths were taking place in a world with much less total population than today’s estimated 7.6B. In fact, the Black Plague (Bubonic) likely killed 60% of the population. Smallpox killed at least 12% of the known population when it hit two centuries later. COVID-19 arrives at this time and place with a comparable score of .0001% of the current population.

That doesn’t suggest each of those lives lost wasn’t a tragedy. It doesn’t infer we should take this less seriously, either. What it does suggest is that since we are now being compared with herd dynamics (just like my red cows), and upwards of 70% of us must be exposed to the virus before our combined population can build natural resistance, this epidemic doesn’t even register on the vibration scale.

It is dangerous, though, and the very precautions being taken are likely to make us less resistant to natural occurrences hence forth.

Ranking Calamities

It is Mothers’ Day.

Those politicians (and shrill cheer leaders with ongoing pay checks) calling for lock down measures that extend to the far horizons regardless of the consequences have assured the rest of us this is a day of both epoch and epic proportions. It will be the first virtual celebration of this holiday in history.

How would you like to explain that to the generations of mothers that came before and exist in our memory, in our being, and in our heritable immune traits?

There will be scandalous gatherings of families who will defy the orders of the central governing apparatchiks. Somebody will be thrown in jail over it, and SWAT teams may even be deployed to harness the wrongdoers in their assumed rights to assemble for the simple intent to visit families.

I’m not going to divulge my plans other than my mother has a place in my heart on this day.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Deaths from combined cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s are more than three times those of COVID-19 in the same period. When you throw in suicide all bets are off.”