Corona Chronicles part 1

The world is topsy turvy. Since the beginning of March 2020, all hell has literally broken loose. It started in China and we heard that they had shut down Wuhan Province because of an epidemic of flu. We didn’t worry about it until there was an outbreak in Iran and then in Italy and Spain and France and Washington State.

All non-essential meetings have ceased except for on-line contact. We are wearing face masks and standing the requisite six feet from everyone when we go to the grocery. I made two masks for each of us, but Gary is the only one who is shopping. I’ve gone out only to the church where I am only around a few others also wearing masks and keeping our distance and to my friend’s porch where three of us meet (and sit with our lawn chairs widely space) for lunch once a week.

Churches, concerts and sports events are all cancelled. Restaurants and bars are closed except for take-out. Very few people are on the roads. Air pollution in the big cities has dropped to the level of ancient times. Lots more people are walking around the neighborhood, but keeping their distance and waving to others without coming in close contact. The food banks are swamped because most service industry workers have been laid off or lost their jobs. The IRS is sending stimulus checks of $1,200 to each adult and families are receiving $500 per child unless of course you are undocumented or have a contract type job and don’t qualify. Millions have applied for unemployment compensation and businesses have applied for Small Business Administration grants to pay for some of their operating costs. The airlines are basically grounded with only a few flights each day.

Closer to home my granddaughter was to start training as a flight attendant in late March. Her class was cancelled because the airline is furloughing its current employees and not taking on any new ones for the foreseeable future. Everyone who can is working from home on-line. Schools are closed for the remainder of the school year. Graduates are graduating without “walking.” Classes are being held on-line for some courses, but many students don’t have the ability to participate on-line. Teachers are contacting their classes by Facebook and Zoom. Playgrounds and movie theaters, museums and swimming pools are closed. Only golf courses currently remain open. Our bowling league ended a month early and the bowling center closed.

We have weeded the yard and played endless games of FreeCell, worked a few puzzles and read books, but don’t have nearly enough books to read or ambition to read the ones I have on the shelf. The Library is closed. Any sort of game requiring more players than members of your immediate family is out. People are painting and roofing and doing yard maintenance. We are waiting. We are waiting for the spread of infection to be over and waiting for life as we know it to begin again. Right now that looks like a very distant possibility. It hardly seems prudent to buy anything new because the likelihood of getting to use a new winter jacket seems iffy. If I get the virus, most probably I will die because I have the dreaded “pre-existing” conditions of old age and chronic lung disease.

This virus apparently attacks the lungs and prevents them from expanding to breathe. The most serious cases have been on ventilators for several weeks before they recover and the odds for recovering if you’re sick enough to require intubation are less than 50%. Most of those who do recover have had a less serious case. Some people are evidently totally unaware that they have even had the virus which complicates quarantining them because they don’t realize they are contagious.

The scientific community worldwide is burning the midnight oil to develop testing and vaccines.  The Chinese mapped the virus genome and published it. There are many approaches being studied for slowing and preventing the spread, but their safety and effectiveness will not be known for months yet. Perhaps in a year we will have a vaccine to immunize the population, but unchecked the number of persons killed by the virus could reach levels similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic of over 50,000,000 deaths worldwide. Thus far the epidemic has not spread widely in third world countries, but sooner or later it will get there.

So far there have only been a few “known” cases in Gila County. We don’t know how many “asymptomatic” cases there are. Nationwide there have currently been over 32,000 deaths in the U.S. and 154,000 worldwide. Nursing homes seem to be hit the hardest, but young people have died, too. People are getting restless because the quarantine seems endless and families are running out of money for rent and food. The planning for tackling this threat was piece meal and uncoordinated. There is no general consensus of how to deal with it except by social distancing and that approach is going to spread the timeline for returning to normal over months. New York City has been the hardest hit area to date. The peak infection rate will roll across the country hitting some states much later than others, but it seems that there is no way to escape totally because none of us humans has natural immunity to this new virus. We’re waiting it out.