I didn’t take it hard when my wife and I learned that we wouldn’t be able to have children of our own. In my mind, kids were a general threat to life and freedom, and 18 years of parenting wasn’t at the top of my to-do list. But my wife wanted kids. She really wanted kids. I’ve never seen her so heartbroken, always the healthy one when it comes to family and friendship.

We had two choices: pursue adoption, or enter the bizarre (for me) world of in vitro fertilization (IVF); hormone injections, test tubes, frozen embryos, masturbating in the doctor’s office, etc. It felt like an uncomfortable intrusion of technology, and a high dollar roll of the dice, but there was a good chance we’d end up with a kid – our kid.

Ultimately, it felt more redemptive to try for an already existing kid, so we went the adoption route, but were convinced, like so many others in our predicament, that someone else’s kid could never feel like our own.

Our first adoption was a little rough, taking almost three years to finalize. But once the paperwork went through, we were whisked away to Hunan Province to take charge of an 8-month-old who had been left swaddled at a train station in Yueyang City. Within a few months, she would steal our hearts and warm me up to the idea of being dad.

Adoption #2 was brutal. We were matched with a little Ethiopian girl living in Awassa, a small city located five hours south of Addis Ababa. Now “seasoned” parents, we quickly fell in love, named her Amara, and prepared to help a child, who’d suffered abandonment and institutionalized care, slog through the grueling process of trusting us. To our shock, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs put the process on hold, offering no clue as to when we might be able to move forward. We advocated in vain, cried, pounded our fists, wondered how God could allow such a thing, and finally gave up, adopting another little girl from an orphanage in Addis instead.

In the early spring of 2013, three years later, I got a call from our adoption agency. Amara was back on the grid, and we had first dibs. I packed my things, bought her a pinwheel at the dollar store, and boarded a plane for Ethiopia’s capital city. Amara and I spent the next 7 days together, shuttling around to different administrative offices while she clung to me like nobody’s business in the hot Ethiopian sun, slapping me in the face with her pinwheel every time I tried to put her down.

We are now 12 years into a parenting journey that we never dreamed of; our original fears about adoption completely debunked. I can’t imagine any other kids, biologically derived or not, feeling more like my kids than these kids.

18 years won’t be enough.

Closer to Us

How is it that someone else’s kids feel like my own? Why do I feel like I’ve known them forever? When I look at them, I see a piece of myself in each of their faces.

What’s happened here?

My Western mind is tempted to dismiss this as “love,” a phenomenon that comes around whenever we commit to a relationship, sacrificing our time and resources, developing a fondness as time goes by, etc. If we stop investing, it goes away, back from wherever it came.

Happens all the time.

But what if love isn’t something that appears out of thin air? What if it’s something we uncover, something that’s always existed? Could it be that I didn’t “fall in love” with my kids, but instead stumbled into something that’s been there all along? Crazy, but might there be a connection between us, all of us, that we fall more deeply into when we fall in love?

Cambridge professor and famed Christian thinker C.S. Lewis proposed such a connection in a series of BBC lectures that were later compiled into his 1952 work, Mere Christianity:

“If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It would look like one single growing thing – rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.”

If this is a thing, I’ll feel more human as I draw nearer to “us.” I’ll see myself in the people I love, feeling like I’ve known them my entire life, because… well… I am them, and they are me. That would explain why our isolationist “me first” culture is driving us crazy, or why it hurts to lose someone we love. We were created to be close, impossibly so, and when we muster the courage to labor through love’s tribulations, it feels wonderful, like coming home after a long journey.

It doesn’t matter who I love, or whether I deem them worthy of my time and attention. The more I tunnel through the fear, doubt, hatred, anxiety, betrayals, and emotional garbage hell-bent on keeping us apart, the more my loved ones will feel like me, and the more I’ll feel like myself.

Human.

I don’t have any liberal friends trying to downplay coronavirus on social media. My conservative friends, on the other hand, from my perspective, have struggled to understand how bad things are. I wrote a post last week venting my frustrations, and a few anti-liberal friends filled me in on what’s happening, and why.

From their perspective, the liberal media has lost its way, picking on Donald Trump, incessantly calling for his termination, blind to his good parts, and, in general, spreading lies and harmful agendas. If it’s liberal, it’s not trustworthy.

Fake news.

Dangerous for America.

Rest assured that liberals feel the same way about conservative media outlets. Who in the world would support Donald Trump, or call him a good president? Come on, people. If a liberal president got caught with his hand in as many cookie jars as Donald Trump has, conservatives would be just as quick to call for his dismissal.

Either way, as a country, we’ve become divided in the way we process truth, which is getting in the way of our ability to process truth.

In my defense, as a human, I want to hear what I want to hear. I need to know that there are others on this planet who have sympathy for how I think, and more importantly, how I feel. I have strong tribal urges – we all do – and can easily be convinced that those outside my tribe pose a threat to our country, and more importantly, to me.

Media outlets on both sides know this, and make a TON of money from it.

They typically don’t lie, but they do spin, emphasizing things that are unimportant, taking things out of context, and editing key details that leave me thinking, and more importantly, feeling like the world is as I think it should be. No need to fact check, or head over to the other side to see what’s been left out of the story.

When my favorite media outlets reported that the president called coronavirus a “hoax,” I believed it. Sounds like something he’d say. Most of my liberal friends believed it too. Why fact check? This morning I looked a little deeper and read what Trump actually said: coronavirus isn’t a hoax. The way liberals are responding to it is. They’re overreacting, etc., etc.

There’s a big difference between a sitting president calling an epidemic a hoax, and critiquing the way his adversaries are responding to a national emergency.

But I’m bothered by the way the president seems to be downplaying things, so I posted this on Facebook yesterday:

 

A friend of mine who’s always been an objective thinker re politics, and a conservative, hit back pretty hard, claiming that the above quotes were taken out of context. Before posting this pic, I “fact checked” at snopes and factcheck.org – they’re both pretty good about catching out-of-context things. Seemed legit. But when thoughtful people start throwin’ flags, I’m compelled to dig deeper. I haven’t done that yet, it’s a lot of research – many speeches to pore over, etc., but if this was taken out of context, I’ll have to eat crow, disavow, recant, etc., which will hurt my soul. But that’s part of my process for now.

While I’m trying to be objective about politics, and take my cues from thoughtful people, I’ve come to realize that I need Trump to say stupid things. I need to know that my tribe is right about him. I need to believe that my favored media outlets are right and everyone else is wrong. Fact checking hurts. Questioning my own perspective causes pain. So I don’t usually do it.

I’m not alone.

According to Pew Research, 76% of white evangelicals believe that the coronavirus epidemic has been blown out of proportion by the media – liberal media, that is.

Fox News is aware of COVID-19 mortality rates, but it doesn’t wear this data on its sleeve, nor does it point out that COVID-19 is nothing like the flu, or H1N1, etc. 3 minutes ago, Fox posted its first article suggesting that self-quarantine might be a good idea, but it’s a sports figure talking about their views on quarantine, not an actual recommendation from Fox.

For anyone who believes that right-leaning media outlets are the only place they need to go for news, they’ll be left wondering why everyone’s so panicky over the flu’s second cousin. In the absence of a full picture, and at the suggestion of others, it’ll be easy to conclude that the panic is a hoax, and oh, look at that cheap flight to Florida.

To me, that kind of underblowing is irresponsible, and puts people at risk. But it’s not Fox’s fault, it’s the fault of people who’ve decided that there’s only one place to go for truth.

Moving Forward, Slowly

My liberal outlook on life shouldn’t keep me from listening to what my conservative friends have to say, or from heading over to Fox News to see how they’re reporting on different issues. Clearly, I’m not a fan, but Fox has a voice with nearly half of my country, and probably knows them better than I do. I have a responsibility to try and understand, and allow them some room to hold my views accountable.

And nothing should override the importance of checking the facts – typically a quick Google search away. But to do that right, I have to lay aside my tribal urges, my need to be right, and my partisan bullshit.

Easier said than done I find.

Conservative media outlets, via their audience, perspective, desire to make money, etc., will present news that my favored voices might be a bit shy to report on. So, when time.com alleges that Donald Trump abused his power with the Ukranian president, I want to know the other side of the story. Fox News says Joe Biden did the same thing.

Via a quick search on the internet, and an openness to the perspectives I don’t like, I can get a fuller picture of what’s happening – barring the emotional barriers, it’s easy. Turns out that one could listen in on the entire impeachment proceedings. Now, if you want to talk about Trump, Biden, and Ukraine, I can give you an earful.

You might not agree with me, but I’ll leave you with an understanding of why I landed where I landed.

Same with our current situation. If you tell me that the media has overblown coronavirus, I’ll have some things to say that, again, might not land you on my page, but will leave you feeling that I’ve done my homework, and that you might want to reconsider hitting your favorite bar this weekend.

Obviously, I have more faith in media outlets that lean liberal. Coronavirus coverage is simply another reason why. But It’s unwise to ignore how half of my country thinks, and to believe that mainline conservative media is completely incapable of reporting truth.

It takes a great fool to believe that only left or right-leaning media outlets are capable of truth, that fact-checking is not necessary, and that the voices who don’t tell us what we want to hear are spreading lies and trying to destroy our country.

But that’s where we seem to be. And while we judge, point fingers, accuse, and indict, the foundations are being laid for the destruction of our country, right under our noses. And because we’re in the process of trading truth for politics, we probably won’t turn this around.

It’ll always be someone else’s fault.

In the meantime, shame on any pundit or media outlet that makes their bread and butter exacerbating our partisan foolishness.

And shame on us, me included, for being such suckers for it.

My wife and I took a vacation to Costa Rica earlier this month. We’d planned it for a long time and decided to roll the dice a bit as our vacation coincided with the news that coronavirus cases in the US were beginning to ramp up. It was a good trip, but we couldn’t help but feel like we’d made a dumb decision. Following that, it feels a bit out of place to rant about how people are dealing with this epidemic, but alas, ranting is what I do..

I’ve spent the past few weeks responding to social media perspectives on how people in the US should be responding/not responding. I don’t put much faith in my ability to change anyone’s mind on Facebook, but, as long as I’m respectful, I don’t think it’s an utter waste of time. So I’ve dove in many times over the past couple of weeks, trying to make one simple point.

I have friends who’ve become convinced that coronavirus is, basically, the flu, and have read TONS of posts indicting the CDC, WHO, etc. for inciting a needless panic. Some of those friends have reduced this to a conspiracy who’s aim is to further discredit our president.

Tonight, at about 11:00 PM, I reached my zenith. A friend posted this:

 

According to the CDC and WHO, the normal, everyday flu kills a lot of people – A LOT of people. So, what’s everyone freaking out about? Why get so bent out of shape over something that so far has only killed a few people in Colorado? Why aren’t we getting just as crazy about the flu? The answer? There’s nothing to freak out about, so there must be something fishy going on here, ergo the myriad conspiracy/get Trump theories.

Simple Math?

What the coronavirus seems to have revealed about us ‘Mericans is that we have a math problem. According to the CDC, as of this writing, there are 1,629 known cases of COVID-19 in the US, 41 of which have been fatal. The flu’s numbers are much more extreme: 36,000,000 cases with 22,000 deaths.

I had no idea the flu cold get so serious.

But the flu’s been around longer – number comparisons don’t work. We have to look at rates, which is super easy (I swear I’m not trying to sport with your intelligence here – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to point this out):

41 ÷ 1,629 = .025
22,000 ÷ 36,000,000 = .0006

The data says that COVID-19 kills 2.5% of its victims, while the normal, everyday flu has a .06% mortality rate. In other words, COVID-19, so far, is 41 times more lethal than flu.

My wife, a medical professional, says that I can’t draw this conclusion. We don’t know how many COVID-19 cases are out there. Many have the virus but are asymptomatic – these go undetected/unreported. And you have to account for the elderly and people with compromised immune systems – their mortality rates are much higher. When the dust settles, the death rate will be closer to 1%.

She’s probably right, and has bested me many times in mathematics.

But the same holds true for the flu. Many cases go untested/unreported, and the elderly/immune compromised are at a higher risk. The numbers from the CDC can only be based on the data that we have, just like our data for coronavirus. I think the “unknowns” come close to cancelling each other out.

But even if we allow a 1% mortality rate for COVID-19, which I think is low, it’s still almost 20x more fatal than the flu

.01 ÷ .0006 = 16.66

Coronavirus ain’t the flu. And all it takes is some super simple math to figure that out.

Time to Panic?

I’m not writing this to scare everyone. I believe, as most do, that panic hurts us all, and makes this situation much worse. But downplaying the facts about this epidemic, or focusing on the “good news” without telling the whole story, also makes this worse. We have a serious problem on our hands, and need to continue to take it seriously.

When someone comes along and says “hey, this is serious, take precautionary measures, even extreme ones if needed,” then a few right-wing pundits respond with, “that’s just a deep-state liberal trying to make this sound worse than it is,” I get angry – not at the “deep state” conspiracy BS, but at a person of influence leading their disciples away from responsible, effective action.

Panic? No. Downplay? Hell no.

My family has decided, at least for a few weeks, to do some extreme social distancing. We’ve travelled recently, I’m immune compromised, and my wife works in a hospital. We’ll stay home as much as possible, and limit our social interactions to only those that are necessary.

I worry for the legion of people who live near me and don’t have this option, now faced with Denver school closures and the resultant child care issues. I’m at a loss for how to help while limiting my interaction with others. In some ways I wish this was a conspiracy, then my kids and I could free-range some old fashioned Christianity; helping our neighbors, making grocery runs, getting to know each other, babysitting, whatever.

If things don’t clear up soon, maybe we’ll do all of that anyway. Home Depot still has masks.