Pandemic


Hiding from the virus.

Gotta define some terms:

  1. isolation — if you have it.
  2. quarantine — might (or might not) have it, but aren't sick.
  3. social distancing — to avoid catching it.
  4. shelter-in-place / stay-at-home — stay indoors except to shop for groceries and medicines, and to exercise.
  5. lockdown — no one leaves their house, food is delivered.

I'm under shelter in place, and my wife is quarantined in her room because she is high risk and doesn't want to catch it.

There are a lot more people than usual out in the park taking walks. It's kind of annoying because I have to avoid them and many don't seem to understand what social distancing is. So I often have to suddenly veer away from my usual route to take an alternate route. I was used to having to park to myself mostly.

In my apartment, very few cars leave in the morning on weekdays. I assume they are all either working from home or not working at all.

I can't imagine the difficulty of this time for those living paycheck to paycheck (or worse), especially those who don't have a support group to help them.

Once before a hurricane I went to the market and the shelves were empty with people lined up around the store. People came out from everywhere, those with no teeth and looking like they don't get out much.

For me, this is not as severe as the hurricane, except that it soon ended, and this will go on for months. A short-term annoyance (unless your house got blown away) rather than a long-term lifestyle change for everyone.

It's weird having to decide whether to go grocery shopping when doing so could infect me and kill me and kill my wife. How badly do I want to eat ice cream?

The cashiers at the grocery store seem to have no clue about it. They blabber on loudly all day, standing right in front of you, presumably spewing out invisible drops of virus all over you.

So sad that so many businesses will go out of business over this, and that so many people will become homeless.

I have my two dogs as companions. But they are not human and can't talk. I wonder if they know something weird is going on?

I'm very sad that our society doesn't treat everyone who lives here with equal respect. There seems to be a heirarchy:

  1. The rich and powerful — too big to fail.
  2. The well-to-do
  3. Upper middle-class
  4. Middle-class
  5. Lower middle-class
  6. Poor
  7. Impoverished
  8. Homeless

Those who need help the most get it the least. Tax cuts favor those at the top. Those who don't have proper paperwork to prove they belong here are always afraid of deportation.

In order to get assistance you have to already be well-off, or you have to have a job. The less you have, the less they give you. The assumption seems to be, that if you are lower on the scale, you don't deserve help — and so you drift lower and lower.

This pandemic will, I think, push many people lower on the scale. (But it will push the well-off even higher.)

Many of those offending my sensibilities claim to be Christians, yet they clearly do not believe in the teachings of Jesus regarding the poor and needy. So what kind of Christians are they really? What good is it to be that kind of Christian?

It's weird that whether you are out of work or not depends on which business you happen to work in. But this is a familiar kind of phenomena relating to economics. All kinds of unexpected and seemingly unfair things happen all the time.