You can feel removed from the tumult convulsing the country in this small Arizona town, nestled in a valley between the Santa Rita and Patagonia mountains, about 60 miles southeast of Tucson and 18 miles north of the Mexican border. No hordes of protestors surging down its quiet streets, no police battalions firing tear gas and swinging billy clubs; no ambulances rushing pandemic victims to hospitals. So I was surprised to learn yesterday that EMTs had evacuated a woman, sick with pneumonia and the Covid19 virus, from her house, a block over from ours. A friend who is a town councilman phoned to tell me that the she had contracted the disease from her elderly mother, who had died of the virus — Patagonia’s first death in the pandemic. The town marshal interviewed the woman in the hospital, attempting to trace identities of people with whom she’d been in contact, starting with her son and daughter, both in their early 30s. She said, I was told, that she was estranged from her daughter and that her mentally-retarded son did not live with her. Apparently, there was reason to disbelieve her. The word got out, and local stores and shops have barred the daughter from entering, while the son has been confined to a house with a mental health counselor. A poignant sight yesterday was the marshal’s patrol car, parked in front of the house with its roof lights flashing. I learned later that he and the counselor were trying to explain to the man that he had to be quarantined and why.

Arizona emerged from its none-to-stringent lockdown a little more than two weeks ago, and began a phased re-opening, with recommendations on social distancing, wearing masks, and other measures, all of which have been ignored as much as they’ve been followed. As honored in the breach as in the observance, to paraphrase from Hamlet. That’s my impression from observing customers in Safeway, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, HomeDepot, etc. Half were wearing masks, half not; half obeyed the one-way signs in the aisles, half didn’t; but most did follow the 6-foot social distancing stickers in the checkout lanes. The state’s reopening has resulted in the predicted spike in diagnosed cases: 618 new cases and 23 deaths recorded today, bringing Arizona’s total to, respectively, to 28,296 with 1,070 deaths. I came across a sobering statistic in a London newspaper yesterday: people my age are 10,000 times more likely than teenagers  to die of Covid19.

We’re planning to return to our Connecticut place on the 16th, and should arrive there on the 20th. We’ll be carrying  our own  food and water, plenty of hand sanitizer, and paper towels to wipe down fixtures in motel rooms. A 2,500-mile drive across Pandemic Land should be an experience — one that, it is to be hoped, will turn out well.