The news about the coronavirus just seems to get worse and worse. Yet at the same time, there have been sparks of humanity. My friend Linda, who lives in the quarantined Bay Area, told me about several incidents she has experienced. The first involved a can that rolled away from her at the check out stand at a grocery store. It wasn't discovered until she had completed her transaction. The man behind her insisted on paying for it for her.
At a gas station, she saw a homeless man quietly digging through the trash looking for aluminum cans. She gave him a $10 bill.
"You would've thought I gave him a gold brick," she said. "He kept saying 'thank you' over and over until I thought I would cry. Poor guy, his horizons are so low."
Before heading home, she went to a Jack In The Box drive thru. The car ahead of her was slow, taking so long to get their order. When it was finally her turn to pick up her food, she was not charged.
"You don't have to pay for anything," she said the guy at the drive thru window told her. "The car ahead of you paid for your order because they made you wait so long."
Amazing.
Linda also has a friend with liver cancer. She delivers food to her home with communication through texts. She texts when she is on her way, texts when she arrives and texts when the food is on the front porch. Once Linda is back in her car, the woman gets the food off of the porch and texts that she has received it okay.
Simple. Safe. Helpful.
On the national front, in addition to us all getting a check from Uncle Sam to help tide us over during this crisis ($1,000 isn't going to go very far for most families--but it is better than nothing. Will it be taxed?), there is now a nationwide moratorium on evictions/foreclosures until the end of April, giving some families time to regroup and come up with a Plan B as they struggle through this. It's not much, but better than being homeless during this mess.
Despite all of these kind and decent things, the horrors of COVID 19 just do not seem to end. I check the worldwide locations of my friends every day. Angel, one of my friends in Colombia, sent me another picture of himself home in bed. You can see the article I sent him last night. He says he is fine, but I don't think he understands the severity of it all. Both of my friends there (in different cities) say they have the "flu". I just have to wonder if it's possibly something more and not being counted as such in the national tallies because they are not being tested. Are they unknowingly infecting others?
I heard from my friend David in Australia today. He and his partner are okay. I have not heard from my other Colombian friend, Walter. I haven't heard from my friend Mauro and his family who live near Parma, Italy or my friend Andrey, who lives near Venice. Elnur in Russia and Rosa in England have also been silent. I hope they are okay--and are just busy. I can't imagine just how it is in other parts of the world these days. I'm sure it is insane everywhere.
My mom sent me an email from Island County, where she lives in Washington state. It says the virus is now "wide-spread" there. GEEZ! And just recently they had the annual Mussel Festival in Coupeville (the town my mother, brother, and nephew live in) with hundreds of people in attendance. Scary!
I have been needing a haircut. I was going to go last week, but put it off. I thought about going yesterday after my tax appointment, but I was freaked out after my visit to the tax lady's office. I thought about going today, but spent much of the day answering emails and thought I'd put it off. I was sort of scared to go, but knew it needed to be cut. Maybe I could do it myself?
Around 3:30 this afternoon, I learned that Fresno was its calling for its citizens to Shelter in Place. I don't live in Fresno, but my city adjoins it. When Fresno does something, my city usually follows suit. This may have been my last chance to get a haircut before things get really bad. I weighed the odds. Although the county directly south of us just announced they had a 5th case of the virus, our county still only has 3 cases and all of them were travel-related, not community spread. While I am sure there are probably undiagnosed cases in the area, I thought the odds were still in my favor if I risked it. I found some money I could transfer to my checking account so I could pull out $20 (I'm super broke--as usual) and by 4 pm I was on my way.
As shocked as I had been the day before driving around town and seeing all of the normal day-to-day activity, I was still surprised to see so many people out like nothing was wrong. Shopping centers were open and the parking lots were full. Cars were all over the road. People were out and about everywhere. I realize I have no place to say anything because I was out trying to get a haircut, but jeepers. At least I was concerned I might catch something. Everyone else seemed oblivious to the potential danger.
I told myself I would not get a haircut if the shop was crowded. When I walked up to it, there was no one to be seen inside. Was it even open? I pulled the door and it was unlocked. I stepped in. I had to wait a few moments before the one person working came out from the back room. She cautiously looked me over, (I'm sure trying to decide if I was safe or not) and then directed me to a chair.
I asked her how business had been. She said no one had been in, for the most part. We talked about Fresno's shelter in place order. She was worried about our town doing the same thing and what she would do.
About this time, another man came into the shop. She told him she'd be with him in a few minutes. He brought up the virus and started going off on how it was all being blown out of proportion by the media, how it was just like the flu and people were panicking for no reason.
I told him that it wasn't like the flu, that the flu doesn't overrun the entire world all at once. I pointed out the situation in Italy and how their medical facilities were overwhelmed.
The guy blamed that on the fact that Italians are mostly smokers.
What an idiotic response.
The coronavirus is unusual. If it were just like the flu, it would not be so devastating. The hospitals in Italy would be busy but not operating over capacity as they are now. I wasn't going to argue with him. You can't argue with stupid. But you could tell he was someone who listened to FOX News, as FOX has been saying (until very recently) that it was just the flu, even going so far as to say it was all a hoax by the democrats. Utterly irresponsible. How can they get away with crap like that? The president is no better. He kept saying it was just the flu as well and that it would go away. Irresponsible talk like that is why so many people are treating this like a big joke.
Devin Nunes is our Representative. Even a few days ago he was encouraging people to go out and support local restaurants and bars. Today I got a newsletter where he calls Fresno's Shelter in Place recommendation "controversial". He is supposed to be representing the people of this area--not just business owners. Why would he call trying to keep people out of harms way "controversial"? Dufus.
The more people that treat this as a hoax or that sheltering in place is just a suggestion, the more people are going to be exposed to this thing. It may not be in our backyards and neighborhoods yet---but it will be eventually.
The graph below was taken from that John Hopkins University worldwide coronavirus map I mentioned before. This is the most recent update of this chart. The orange line shows the number of cases in China. It has flattened out and remained more or less steady because the people there have taken the shelter in place thing seriously. The yellow line is zooming almost straight up because the rest of the world is not avoiding one another.
As I write this, there are 218,815 reported cases of the virus in the world. There have been 8,810 deaths and 84,118 recoveries. The death to recovery ratio is still about 1 in 10, but closer to 1.5 in 10.
Most people do not realize that President Trump closed the National Security Committee's global health unit in 2018 and cut funding to the Center For Disease Control (CDC). Both organizations warned that something like this could happen. It did and now we are screwed. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
I handed the haircut lady the $20 I had barely been able to scrape together for my $12 haircut. She started handing me my change. I told her to keep it. You could see the gratitude and the fear in her face as I did so. Who knows what she and so many others like her will do when their jobs become obsolete for a while during this increasingly real nightmare.
And I've got a good 4 to 6 weeks before I'll have to try butchering my hair myself---if this thing continues on.
Stay well.
Continue to Part 5 HERE
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