Good morning. We have some rain, which is good. So I think that maybe the title for the talk and discussion that we'll have today is Love in the Time of Coronavirus. You know, last week we had a really lively session discussing communication, and today we're going to fine-tune that a little bit and talk about communicable diseases. And the two that are on my mind, and that I hope that we can talk about together, obviously

[01:01]

we're talking about the potentials for an epidemic that seems to have arrived in various parts of the world. In the U.S., the two nodes of greatest infection right now, one is in Washington State and the other is California. And how many people are silently affected, we don't know. The numbers right now are relatively small, particularly in relation to the numbers of sicknesses and fatalities that we see with the so-called regular flu. But the contagion and the transmission of coronaviruses is pretty intense, and we're

[02:16]

beginning to look at what all the ramifications are for our lives, for our groups. And for the, at least the immediate future. So, the other communicable disease is fear. And I think that few of us are fully, sort of fully immune to that. I noticed when someone came in yesterday to the Zenda who was coughing and sneezing, I felt kind of my anxiety level crank up.

[03:20]

And I'm sure we all have situations like that in our lives. And that fear is very contagious, fear sleeps through a population very quickly, and we've seen this not just with coronavirus, but we see this with all the depredations and the oppressions and, you know, the small and great violences that happen in our lives and in our surroundings. And how that communicates to us, even when it appears we are not directly enmeshed in that, but we are indirectly affected in a deep way. So, we have to keep these things in some kind of balance. We have to look at what are real principles of harm reduction.

[04:26]

And what are the places where we are swayed by anxiety. And this doesn't just go for the coronavirus, it goes for all kinds of physiological and social viruses in our community. I think that the replicable koan from the Blue Cliff Record that kind of sets the question for this whole subject is KCD7 in the Blue Cliff Record. I think this might have been Mary's Shuso case. It's a dialogue with, or a monologue by Zen Master Yunmin who says, did I say, did I say

[05:40]

Mary Jerry's, did I say Jerry? Jerry's koan, I think. Ah, medicine and sickness cure each other. All the earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? Medicine and sickness cure each other. All the earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? This is a really wonderful hot well that sits in the middle of us at a time like the time that we are inhabiting, the time that we're having in terms of this, in terms of coronavirus, the times that we are inhabiting in terms of the political environment in this country.

[06:45]

We see, we came to see the sickness and our eyes aren't always so open to the medicine. More to the fact that staring right in our face is that we are the medicine. We carry it, we embody it. It is no place outside of ourself. So, it's also true that sickness is one of the classical definitions of suffering.

[07:53]

In the Sutra of the First Churning of the Wheel, Buddha says, this is another truth of suffering. Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, union with what is displeasing is suffering, separation from what is pleasing is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering. In brief, the five clinging aggregates are suffering. So, sickness is one of the conventional and obvious modalities of suffering,

[08:54]

which is not to say that sickness doesn't exist. It's not to say that pain doesn't exist. The question, of course, with suffering is, how does one engage, how does one meet that suffering? And so, that's the larger context, and I think the narrower context is, how are we going to engage with the coronavirus in the immediate future? So, today, what we decided is that there's a group of people, including people from the board, and the abbots, and the coordinator, and a couple of others,

[09:57]

who've been sort of putting our heads together, and quickly we put our heads together yesterday, and decided that we would forego the early part of the practice this morning, and break orioke breakfast, with the mind towards limiting some of the vectors of transmission that might be of concern. And then, a little later, we decided that today we're going to skip tea, so there won't be any tea after this lecture, which is a significant social moment for the sangha. And, we just met in the period before World Trade War period, and kicked around some ideas for the

[11:08]

for the next period. And, let me just say, I want to say what some of these ideas are, and they're not they're not yet decisions, they're just things that we were thinking about. And, I'm really curious to hear what you are thinking about, and the way we want to do that is actually, after I do this, we turn to somebody next to you, and tell them what you think in general, and maybe in specific about what BCC policies ought to be. And, then we'll harvest from that, from the group, and people have an opportunity to speak briefly. So, our time was very short. You know, we wanted to figure out sort of guidelines and protocols for

[12:14]

how to maintain sanitary standards, how to clean surfaces, how to mitigate the kinds of person-to-person contact, which is what the CDC is recommending. As of today, or this morning, the CDC was suggesting that older people stay home, stay home as much as possible. And, you know, older means over 60, if you wondered, except for Sojan, who has not yet reached the older stage. So, he can sit here alone. But, we didn't even get to that, because there were other issues. So, one of the things that

[13:24]

we were thinking about is that we need, we're thinking about recommending a break from the schedule for, at least for this week. I said that this is not a decision. This is, I'm just throwing these things out. So, and in that time, then really confer with all of the key people in the kitchen and in practice positions to see how that, how we can, how we can maximize safety and put those protocols in place for the foreseeable future. We don't know, the question is always, is this a fear-based reaction? Is this a reality-based reaction? Does this go too far? Does this go in no way far enough? You know, there are no, we have no

[14:34]

objective criteria for making that. We're just looking at recommendations, first of all, recommendations from the community and also recommendations from, I think, reputable entities like the CDC. So, that's, those things are linked. The idea of taking a step back while we see how things unfold over the course of next week and really taking that time to dig in and develop some kinds of protocols for what to do. I was really impressed. I went to an eco-chaplaincy training at Insight retreat center in Scotts Valley. And, you know, first of all, you know, approaching people,

[15:41]

friends, you know, you want to give them a hug or shake hands. It's like, and it's like, no, we conduct ourselves by bowing, which is really good. But it's hard to deconstruct that. It's hard, you know, to hold back from those hugs in California. It's, they have, they serve food in a sort of buffet style. So, before you got on the food line, there was a wash sink and you lathered your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds. And everyone did that before they got in the food line. And so, they were doing, and they had a really good protocol for a multiple stage dishwashing. So, they were taking care of, taking care of these things and wiping down surfaces very, very carefully.

[16:44]

And so, that was encouraging to me. I'm about to leave for Upaia to, for their chaplaincy training program. I'm leaving tomorrow. And there's been a lot of concern there and discussion about whether we should cancel the chaplaincy. And Upaia has done a lot of internal work on very, they're very medically oriented. So, they have pretty thorough resources for taking care of things. But still, some people are not coming. You know, people for whom it would involve, you know, a long plane ride. And so, there's shifts and changes that are going to happen. So, these are some of the thoughts. And what I'd like you to do is turn to someone next to you. And we'll take like three minutes a piece.

[17:53]

Maybe if you could be the timekeeper and ring the bell after three minutes and we can switch. And I'd like you, you know, decide who goes first. And just that person speaks uninterruptedly and the other person listens. And so, we'll do three minutes back and forth and then two minutes of discussion between you at the end. And talk about what you think might be a good plan for Berkley's End Center in the near future for dealing with coronavirus. You can also speak about what your concerns are. What your, your personal anxieties might be. Not necessarily related to Berkley's End Center, but just in terms of the epidemic itself. So, is that, that make sense? So, turn to someone next to you and begin a discussion.

[18:58]

Introduce yourselves. So,

[20:45]

um, okay, please change the primary speaker. So, um,

[22:56]

um, um, um,

[24:26]

um, [...]

[26:00]

um, so, please take, um, two minutes of kind of free conversation to finish up, and we'll ring the bell at the end of two minutes. Um,

[27:24]

Please come back to the facing the center of the room and let's take a few moments to ground ourselves and return to silence and find your breath. Succinctly, which is sometimes hard for us. If there are people who would like to share where you came to or what you were speculating about, we have, we have some time to share, not everybody but if you do, please do.

[30:41]

I kind of had two things. One was the suggestion of dropping the schedule for a week, like maybe really like a month. I don't like that. But of course, whatever ends up being best for the community, we should do. And then I was thinking more about solutions of things that we should be doing anyway. There are a lot of kitchen practices that we could adopt that would make things a little bit more sanitary. Our current dishwashing system isn't actually up to health code. We should have a three compartment sink with a sanitized section. That would ensure that all of our dishes were not just clean of dirt but germ free after they were used. I also think the way we present snacks at our groups and post-Saturday, there's a lot of touching things that aren't necessarily the thing you're going to eat. I'm wondering if we could, I mean it's unavoidable.

[31:57]

If the cookies are arrayed on a giant plate, you're going to kind of touch some of the other cookies. I'm wondering if we should move to a more, like little cups for snacks, and you take a cup and that's your snack cup. I know that's our more formal practice, but it would be a little bit more sanitary. In our group we're talking about risk and fear. I don't want to talk more about risk, but as a nurse I have encountered people who are quite ill with quite virulent diseases that I could catch. I know that fear is really, my fear is really allayed when I have more information about how to take care of myself and how to not pass it on to someone else, especially people I care about.

[33:09]

And I know in our, this morning when I came watching you do the vows, I just was overwhelmed by how much I love this place, how much I love these people, and I don't want my elders to die. And so I really care about taking care of other people. And I know that's why we're here, and I'm so grateful that we're talking about this. Because people are dying with fear, and we want to do the best we can for everyone here, and I really appreciate that we're not talking about it. So, my point I think is that there's a lot of fear out there, there is a lot of really good information about how to take care of ourselves there, and this happens, this fear happens at every new disease.

[34:18]

Who had the disease in 1918, AIDS, etc. So, we're right on track, we're doing exactly what happens, and this is what happens. So, I just wanted to say, I'm going to miss this opportunity to talk about this. Right after we finished speaking, I realized that what we've just done serves a really important function, especially if we're going to be in communities where we gather and engage. So, having this opportunity to share directly with some other person, I thought was something that should be in my mind as much as the activity at the time that I was working on this.

[35:29]

Thank you. I think that also the attached part, it's really important to remember that we can return from that place of energy and excitement and thinking, talking. All of us have the tools to be able to step back and ground ourselves in our breath, knowing where our feet are, and so forth, and that that is an incredibly important ability that we have been cultivating for years. And just to remember that it's not like something separate from the other activity we've done. It's a way of holding it. And so, it's important to do.

[36:30]

Helen? Fear is generally information, and it's important information. And sometimes it's really difficult because there are particular individuals who, for whatever reasons, are those who catch the fear, you know, and hold it and share it for all of us. But it's not an insignificant thing. It also can be, it also can be contagious. It can be a hazardous reality. We can cause harm with our fear. Right. Right. Yeah, so, yeah. All right. Uh-huh.

[37:57]

Uh-huh. Right. So, yeah, we're just, right now, I'm entertaining ideas that hopefully we're going to process in the course of the day and put out some announcements. I really encourage you, look on, for further information, look on the BCC website, look on the various community lists if you're on those, and on the bulletin boards here. We'll circulate this stuff as widely as we can, and we'll try to do it in as timely a fashion as we can. Linda. Well, this has been going on for quite a while now. Oh, yes. This activity is just getting started. Yeah. So, about cancelling for whatever unknown period of time of our sitting, I just wanted to do that.

[39:08]

But all getting together is good for our immune system. Uh-huh. I mean, it's a big loss. Uh-huh. If we cancel the program, we don't know how long it will take. So, I just wanted to put in a word for carefully regarding getting all the variables and still getting together. Yes. My feeling, as I talked about in this meeting earlier, and this is just my feeling, is to take a step back this week can be useful in allowing us the space to be more deliberative about what we want to do, what precautions we'll take, and then how we might go forward. And, you know, it's not like, oh, yeah, we're canceling until the unforeseeable future, you know, but we don't know what that future is. And so, first of all, we need to see what are the preparations that we need to do to face it.

[40:17]

Anyway, yeah, it's not just closing the doors. Gary. I've been following this Earth-wide map from John Hopkins University, and it's really worth looking at, because you can see the concentration of where the virus is and click on any one country, and you can roll over a dot, and it'll tell you how many cases, how many cases have been resolved, or how many are outstanding. You know, here are the numbers, and in any way, it's pretty informative. Thank you. A couple quick things to share. One is that I shared first, and I was too shy to mention my annoyance as a reaction to the way the media is treating this. And just to share another side, I hear it, and holding everyone else's reactions that are somewhat different than mine.

[41:25]

But then when Sue spoke, she mentioned it, and then I felt a little bit comfortable enough to say that. So just share, along with fear and caution, and also can come up sort of maybe reactions to what some people might think, over-cautiousness or over-worry. So I wanted to share that very briefly. And then in terms of the program and the schedule, I feel very much like Ted did. It's like, oh, no. I have a strong feeling that I would like to maintain the schedule as much as possible, even if we flex it in various ways. And I started thinking of one thing I've always noticed, like during cold and flu season, when we've been asked to be cautious here. I think it's been quite nice that we ask people who are symptomatic not to come, that we cover our coughs. We have good practices. And with the space we have around each other and with bowing and other practices that we have, I feel like—and I'm not a doctor, and so I don't know if this is true—

[42:29]

I have a sense that we're gathering together as a group, but in a fairly sanitary way, where we're still self-contained. And maybe we could increase that in some way. I was even thinking, in terms of breakfast, I feel like it would be—especially if we're weathering something for quite a while, it would be nice to come up with a way to still eat breakfast together. And one of the great things about orioke eating is that we're in charge of the cleaning and handling of our utensils and bowls. No one else is. There's things we could—the servers could do even more intense hand-washing. The servers could wear masks or even gloves as well to assure people. And we could probably get up to speed with a different dishwashing system, even with our current system. I just wanted to share some of those thoughts. Thank you. Sorry. I kind of agree with a lot of what you say. One thing that I think an organization is supposed to do is to have a dishwasher.

[43:36]

Well, more than a dishwasher. Which is really hard, because we have such little— I think we should think about that. I think it's possible, even though it's impossible. And there are things we could do in the kitchen that are much more— As far as wearing a face mask, that's for you—my understanding is so you don't touch your face. Not because you do this. Because it's not characterized in any way by touch. So, reducing the touch is the most important thing. And, you know, we could clean the surfaces every day. And, of course, you know, we don't usually pay that much attention to pay attention to.

[44:38]

And washing your hands is the most important thing. Because nobody knows. So, washing your hands is the main thing. Because we're always touching things. Think about how many times you've touched a machine. Oh, there are a lot of you touching a machine. Just be careful. All you can do is be careful. Really, all you can do is be careful. And so, that's part of our practice anyway. You know, in epidemics, societies that had cleanliness practices were the ones that survived the plague. The Jews had very clean practices. And they survived the plague. The plague. The plague in Israel. And back in Europe.

[45:40]

So, I think that's my opinion. Also, I think that we have to close the window to say that if you don't want to come, you don't come. If people don't want to come, they'll come. I don't see the problem with that. I really like the feeling of just like this giving us an opportunity to up our game and figure out how to do that. I agree that like morning Zazen, it's not like we're going to be over here sanitizing everything at 5.40 if we're not sitting Zazen. Maybe we could end very early and spend 20 minutes cleaning every time or something. There might be ways to... Or, you know, some of us could go in the kitchen and clean during Zazen and everything. There's a lot of ways we could use creative ideas. I also think... I just... I know that we have this thing about staying home if you're sick. But I always have the feeling that there's a countervailing pressure that's... I don't know where it's coming from.

[46:43]

But you should be a good... Maybe you should be a good Zen student. You should come. You should push through. Or we just... You know, I... You know, not to add another fear balance, but, you know, I worked in restaurants for many, many years. There was nothing about staying home. There's nothing. There's no substitutes. There's no way to substitute. There's nothing in a restaurant that encourages anybody to stay home when they're sick. And that... There's just... It's not set up for that. It's like... I remember Debra Madison telling me, work through it. So... Stay home when you don't feel... If you feel a little under the weather, give yourself the gift of sleeping in, taking a nap or something. So, I mean, I just think there's various ways we can up our game in a way that is great. We'll be more awake after that, you know, which is the whole point of waking up. So, we don't have a good baseline of how this virus acts.

[47:49]

There are people who are walking around, and every one of us could be a carrier and we could be asymptomatic. And that's the thing that is probably the greatest vector for spread. When somebody gets it, we don't know how it's going to affect them. We have so few cases at this point that we don't really understand. The numbers you mentioned, Gary, are the ones that we know about. It's been crawling around Seattle and California for a long time, and we don't know about it. In a moment of frivolousness, which is what I do, I was... We had a conference on Tuesday where we had about 2,000 people together over a camera. And I would suggest that we should all be making out in the plaza. Go ahead and get the virus, and you develop an immunity to it. You always want to protect your elders. People should self-select in terms of how they want to behave through this. Because at the same time, you create harm when you create protection. At South by Southwest, 400,000 people aren't going to gather together. Judge that as you will, whatever.

[48:51]

There are small businesses who are going to go out of business, who are going to lose their livelihoods because they don't have that income. We always look for balance, and we don't necessarily know how to express that. And this is kind of what practice calls us to do. What is balance in this moment, over time, in past and future? How do we understand that? And so as we all kind of come to this together, I'm fatalistic about potentially picking it up at some point. They say 50 to 70 percent of the people are going to get it. I can understand that number. That makes sense to me. But how we care for each other in the midst of this, while we're waiting for a vaccine, while we wait for treatments to come out, is sort of a mark of that. We've had a couple of visceral reactions to, oh, please don't shut the Zendo down. Come if you wish. I think it's a great idea. So as we understand how we work together to get through this, I think the baseline for me is that we don't really know how severe this virus is.

[49:55]

Having a 3.4 percent death rate at this point speaks to the skew in the population of people who have become ill, who have skewed to being older for a couple of really good reasons. Anyway, I think that as we find our practice and find our balance, this is where the expression of affection comes in. Thank you. I'm going to take one more question and acknowledge that like everything that I experienced in my life, this discourse is incomplete, and it remains for us to continue to talk with each other and talk with ourselves and stay tuned for what kind of policy recommendations we make. We have time for one more question or comment. I'm sorry, but are you saying before we come on Monday morning

[50:59]

we should check the website? At 5 o'clock on Monday afternoon we should check the website to see if our tune is on? I would think that if there is a policy about attendance, it will be up by tomorrow. And I don't think... Maybe you could say by 5 o'clock, hopefully earlier, but it's not like it's going to change. We don't want it to change hour by hour. You know, because that's just reactive. You know, it's like if we're going to try something, we'll try it and we'll announce it in the course of tomorrow. And, you know, maybe we'll have a weekly update or something like that. No, we haven't gotten to this.

[51:59]

This is a really new wrinkle in how we do things. So we're trying to do it in as reasonable and open a way as possible. Tiny, tiny, really quick. There's a sewing class tomorrow. I assume that that will continue. Probably. Probably. But that's something that we will talk about immediately after this. Is there a reason that we're having to stop right away? No. I think other people have things to say. We can go on. Is that okay? Since there's no tea. Okay. Okay. Let's... Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. Let's say cut off at 1130. Okay? All right. I just want to say I appreciate the dialogue.

[53:01]

And I'm hearing it through the years of harm reduction principles, which is always mitigating harm and also... It's always looking at, I don't know, harmonizing in the midst of really not knowing. You can't predict what's going to happen. In this moment, where am I coming from around harmonizing that? Mitigating harm and bringing towards benefit. And what I realize as I'm listening to, you know, a lot of different perspectives both that are voiced and that I don't know what all the people who I'm spoken to might say, that we're going to try to figure out what am I actually thinking or feeling, is something around, yes, choice is really important.

[54:05]

My choices impact everyone in a way that I can't predict. So I really want to come from hearing as many perspectives as possible and then deeply really sitting with what am I hearing really is. And I feel like that's really the challenge and the opportunity here is to settle. Also, we want to act from a place that might not look like that's our practice. For instance, closing the door means that we have time to really see what our aim can be. Because we don't know the potential harm that can come during this next week. It might not prove more harm than the harm that I might not even know or believe. I know one of my kids works for Facebook.

[55:18]

Their policy supports deep cleaning of workplace every day. So I'm thinking from here, deep cleaning the kitchen sounds fairly easy. Although I have a question about what deep cleaning is and how to find out. But how do we deep clean the Zendo? I would say actually we kind of do it. We do it, we clean the Zendo every day. We use disinfecting soap and cleaners on the floor. We're brushing the Zafus. To an extent, even given the fact that there's real subjectivity about what deep cleaning is, it's pretty good. That's just my opinion. I'm sure that what I have to say is probably going to roll out anyway in further discussions.

[56:22]

That's an example where it seems to me like every day we're going to deep clean this whole thing. If we come to that, it seems like overkill in one area. Not that I want the meal boards to not be sanitary, but we don't eat off the meal boards. Maybe you touch them, but just like you touch a zillion other things. The key things are things like a doorknob or a handle as you go into the bathroom and come out. These are things that are probably a hundred times more contagious than something that's on the floor. So what's on the floor? You're not going to normally pick something up and lick it off the floor. But you might easily hold your hand on the bathroom door and then wipe your eyes. That happens all the time.

[57:25]

When we're talking about balance, I think it's a question of trying to think, what are the real hot points here? Not to get something that people are going to end up paying no attention to because it's just too much. You have to sterilize the window every day. I think the kitchen is a big thing, including the dishwashing thing. Drying with towels is not sanitary. I know it's like at Green Gulch in Tassajara. They would wash, sterilize everything, and then just let it dry in the air. You don't have to use cloths to spread it, which probably just spreads the germs. So that would be an area, whether it's a dishwashing machine or just a drying thing, that could be a lot more focused, I think, than these sort of...

[58:31]

I think that's true. Yes, back there. I just was noticing, like in other places as well, that this does trigger our control issues a little bit as well. I think. And the one thing that I've thought about this too is that it's actually an opportunity for me to consider my control issues and kind of accept that there is a part of this that is, you know, there's a part of our control, there's a part of it that is going to be the way it's going to be, you know, no matter what we do. But yeah, I was just thinking that it is control that does trigger our control issues a lot. I think what my perspective is is we're actually, I want to find the middle way. I can tap into my control issues and then I can tap into the, well, whatever, you know.

[59:32]

And what we're trying to do, I think this goes in the line of what Judy was saying about harm reduction, that it works in a responsible approach that is a middle way that is assessing that there are risks involved and looking at what the losses and gains might be according to what our practice is. But yeah. Yes. I have, this is a perspective leaning towards overkill and being kind of control freaky. I have a friend who does, she works with public health bodies on epidemics and engages in planning for that. So he's, you know, he's alive these days. But he says timing really matters.

[60:37]

This thing is going to become endemic over a certain period of time. But the slowing it down gives us both social and medical time to respond and develop vaccines and stuff. So there's a second argument for reacting extremely now to buy time for other things to happen. So closing for a week is a perfect small example. But it might also be appropriate to be a little bit germaphobic and isolate ourselves and know that that's not how we're going to live. But it's an appropriate reaction for a short period of time. Okay. Yes. I've been following the news about this virus, especially because my wife and two boys are now in Taiwan, which is only 100 miles from China.

[61:48]

But I would say that in terms of personal care, far above 90% of what I read is how to avoid getting the virus. But I've seen hardly anything that discusses the likelihood that you're going to get it. What do you do? How will I know whether I'm transmissible or not without having any noticeable symptoms? If I start to develop symptoms, what am I supposed to do? Do I need to go to a hospital? Or how do I get a test? There are very good instructions on the CDC website that really go step-by-step about how you respond to those questions. I recommend it. I read them last night. Yeah. Mark. At the risk of spreading rumors, I know my own sense of alarm is activated.

[62:55]

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a hospital executive at a major hospital in New Hampshire. He told me that his hospital is full and there are triaging patients. The CDC is displaying one patient in New Hampshire who is infected. By policy and by incompetence, we're really in the dark on how widespread this fire is right now. So we're full of actually coronavirus patients, not influenza. Yeah, well, that's not entirely surprising, but it's alarming. So? Well, two things. One is, you know, we closed this center for two weeks at Christmas and we survived. So if we do that, it's not that big a deal. The other thing is, I think it would benefit us to see what we can do online just because it would be useful in the long run.

[64:05]

It would be nice to be able to video a lecture. It would be nice to be able to sit together at home. Yeah, I mean, those are really good ideas. And they involve a kind of shifting and developing of resources that I don't think we could do just overnight. But it's really something that we look to in the long run. Yeah. There is an online, San Francisco does have an online center. You know, you log in and you're sitting with everybody else and it's live. I think it's a kind of funny idea to me, but it's just me. Yeah. [...] There was a hand back there. Yes, sir. I have to second your perspective. It's saying there are social and medical reasons to try to slow the time to meet.

[65:12]

Yeah. And from the front, I have a daughter. Oh. My wife has been with me for years. I have to place her in a quiet place. Yes. Is she okay? She's fine. Oh, okay. So patients can actually get more data to have better preventative medical responses and treatment.

[66:38]

And also to understand this more so that for those people who are really vulnerable and being killed by this, that we give our society or our labs who are working 24 hours a day another opportunity to find a way to minimize the data. Okay. It doesn't feel like fear to me, if the incidence is supposed to be 3.4% I've heard that's greatly overstated because there are many people who are carrying it who are not part of that larger number. So probably it's 2% max. That's one of the only people, and probably people who are severely vulnerable. So out of respect for those people who have nowhere to go, it seems like a good idea to stop. Thank you. We've come from maybe 1.1 to 11.30, which I think is a good place to stop. Is there someone else that wants to add something?

[67:41]

Yeah. Yeah, well... Yeah, there's a lot of places they tell you not to go. Yeah. And we learn to resist that, and learn to just sit with it. And so why can't we just do that all the time? Yeah. Right.

[68:50]

Yeah. Yeah, but do it at home. Thank you very much for this. This is really helpful. It gives us some perspective and guidance. And also, maybe to belabor the obvious, this is a community-building discussion, and we need each other at this moment in time. Thank you.

[69:28]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ