I have written a number of things on my Medium website about coronavirus.
March 1st- My Family Takes the Coronavirus Threat Seriously
March 6th- A Logic Based Guide to Why Testing for the Coronavirus is Crucial
March 10th- Dear Americans, Please Stop Politicizing a Global Threat
March 15th- Am I a Covid-19 Cylon? Are you?
But I wanted a personal one. No one is likely to care what I say here, but I needed to process my feelings through writing, even if no one will care to read it.
I love planning.
I have one of those fancy planners with stickers and everything, and it helps me keep track of the many activities that my kids have on a typical week.
This week is anything but typical.
Usually we would have school, followed by rink time, hockey practices, soccer practices, and games for both.
Not this week.
This week everything is closed, and it is surreal to live through a time where for the safety of the public EVERYTHING is getting canceled. A week where the news, Twitter, and everyone online says it is time to stay home, social distance, keep the virus from spreading.
These are scenes from a movie, not real life.
Yet it is real.
What is worse is that my state, California, is in the thick of it, with the third highest confirmed numbers of the States, meaning that the true numbers are exponentially higher. We hear the reports coming from Italy, which is running about 10 days ahead of us, and their hospitals are overrun. They are choosing who gets to live based on bedspace/ ventilators, and warning that we will have the same problem if we aren't careful.
The governor here has said that he will be taking over hotels as hospitals when it comes to that. Which if Italy is any indicator, it probably will.
I'm nervous for Grace, as she has a compromised immune system, and under normal circumstances she has to be hospitalized for regular fevers.
Even if she can avoid the bad virus, I'm afraid if she gets a regular virus during these strange times. A regular virus that usually gets her time in the hospital, an anti-bacterial shot and monitoring. Will there be a place for her to go?
I feel lost. All the time.
There is no way to prepare for an outbreak. But it is here. In my area, in my state, in my country. This is not a foreign virus, this is a virus very much here.
Every day we see the numbers grow. Every day the news tells us how we haven't tested enough and our true numbers are exponentially higher. So I am rightfully concerned about literally every person we come in contact with. I want to limit all interactions with the outside world. Which is what they tell us anyways, so my family is hunkering down and trying to find a balance with still living life, having fun while going nowhere that other people are.
It is strange.
Someday books and movies will be made about the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and they will know how long it lasts, and how it ends. But not us. We are living through it, and the unknown is scary.
The odds are that by the end of it, we will all know someone who is affected by the coronavirus, either by getting sick or dying to it. It is a weird thought. I don't want it to affect my small world.
But it probably will, like it or not.
Someday my grandkids might ask me what it was like living through the coronavirus pandemic.
My current thoughts are that it is scary, surrreal, and unsettling. It is a poignant reminder that we live in a world where bad things can happen, even if we usually ignore that reality. If a pandemic can happen, what else is possible? I know our nation will get through it, but I think the scars the fear will leave will last even after the worst of the pandemic is past.
