Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
The number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, though South Brunswick’s infection rate continues to be lower than the rest of the state.
The township Office of Emergency Management reported last night that there had been 13 new positive cases since Friday, bringing the township total to 38. That means there is about 0.8 cases per 1,000 township residents. The statewide infection rate is at about 1.8 cases per 1,000 residents, with 16,638 people testing positive.
A successful food drive earlier this month will be followed up Friday as officials brace for growing need.
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Annie with our rescues, Rosie and Sophie, in 2011.
I wrote a piece several years ago about the rescue dog operation overseen by our friend Carol in conjunction with a number of other rescues and national organizations. They bring dogs (like our two) north from the high-kill shelters down south, where spaying and neutering are far less common, which in turn leads to an explosion of the canine population.
I thought it would be useful to repost it today, because they held their monthly rescue transport in South Jersey and my good friend Bill Stanley, who fosters rescue dogs, told me the number of rescue groups involved and the number of dogs rescued was lower than normal. The rescues took significant precautions, he said, but the need for social distancing likely is having an effect on the number of volunteers and organizations that can participate. On the plus side, he said, more people are home, which makes it easier for them to adopt, acclimate and train their animals — but still, the virus is obviously taking its toll.
This is another under-reported way in which the coronavirus is affected us. I don’t mean to imply that this impact is on the same level as the human illness and economic damage we are experiencing. But the impact is real. Many of these animals have been abused. Many have been abandoned — pregnant females dropped off at shelters because the owners don’t want to deal with the responsibility, shelters that have a high kill rate, that view these animals as nothing more than possessions.
There is a danger that they will be forgotten in this crisis, that the volunteers and fosters will be unable to continue their work, that people will stop donating, that there will be no one to help these helpless animals. We can’t let that happen.
These are the pieces I wrote this past week and posted to Medium. Most of my writing in recent weeks has been focused on the Novel Coronavirus outbreak, which is to be expected given how deeply it is affecting the entire globe.
My mom is in a memory care unit in Las Vegas. Elkhorn-Jones is a small, but excellent facility that specializes in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. Its staff is amazingly attentive and they keep the residents busy and engaged, which keeps people like my mom on an even keel.
This is where we are at today, as the virus count increases geometrically. We have state governments attempting to shut their borders to people from other states — Rhode Island and Florida will not be the last to do this.
This virus is real. The impacts are real. But this is the kind of thing that happens when there is no federal leadership and when we have a president whose prescription for all ills is to close our national borders rather than to address the infections that are killing us from the inside.
Immigration? Shut the borders and, for god’s sake, don’t address the reason that millions around the globe have been forced to flee their homes — kleptocracy and corruption, climate, war, violence, broken economies, etc.
Terrorism? Shut the borders and, for god’s sake, don’t address the root causes of terrorism, which are similar to those driving the refugee crisis — corruption and a sense of lost power.
COVID-19? Shut the borders to China. Then Europe. And now, the state’s are closing their borders to other states, attempting to restrict the movement of Americans within their own country, as if the virus respects borders, as if the virus can be contained without an aggressive and unified response.
We need federal leadership. We need to nationalize the manufacture of ventilators (Trump final ordered GM to manufacture them under the Defense Protection Act, though other companies need to be doing the same). We need the manufacture of tests, research into drugs, a moratorium on mortgage and rent, on insurance payments, utility payments at a national level, which in turn would allow people to stay home without as much worry about their finances.
The governors of Rhode Island and Florida are doing what they think will protect their residents and, while I think their approaches are problematic, I can’t blame them.
