Life During Covid
An open letter to my grandchildren:
Given my health, I don’t expect to live long enough to tell my great-grandchildren and/or grandchildren about Life during the Covid-19 epidemic.
A coronavirus is a type of virus. In late 2019, a new coronavirus was discovered in Wuhan, China. “The new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which is believed to have started in animals and spread to humans. Animal-to-person spread was suspected after the initial outbreak in December among people who had a link to a large seafood and live animal market in Wuhan, China. While no one knows for sure how SARS-CoV-2 spread from an animal (and what type of animal) to a human, SARS-CoV-2 is a betacoronavirus, which means it originated in bats.” (YaleMedicine.org)
Lockdown and Flattening the Curve brought new vocabulary, new practices. Wearing a mask was no longer limited to bank robbers. People were encouraged to wash their hands well and often, and to use hand sanitizer, which (future grandchildren, your Grandpa Edward is allergic to). Some people acted like they’d never washed their hands before. ALWAYS wash your hands before food preparation, before and after eating, and after going to the bathroom. This should have been common sense before the Pandemic.
Some people, thought the pandemic was exaggerated or a hoax. Such people refused to wear masks in public, and often mocked people who chose to follow the Center for Disease Control (CDC)’s guidelines. Social distancing meant stay six feet away from other people. They was a cute cartoon where the Loch Ness Monster scolded a fisherman in a rowboat. “D’you not ken social distancing, laddie? Two meters, laddie, two meters.” Non-essential businesses were requested to close, which adversely affected the economy. People couldn’t go to work. Your mother (or perhaps your Aunt Caitlin)went on Spring Break and didn’t go back to high school until her re-scheduled graduation. Your Uncle Ian (or maybe your father) called it the Ultimate Senior Ditch Day.First groups of more than fifty were banned, then groups of ten or more. Science fiction conventions (I was scheduled to be a guest at MidSouthCon that year) and Renaissance festivals were cancelled, as was your grandfather’s Travel Agents of Tennessee annual convention. Museums and libraries closed. Anything that could be done virtually was. Museum visits, religious services, lessons, business meetings, garden tours.
I suspect virtual meetings will continue as a cheaper, safer way for people to get together for years. Delivery became a way of life. Delivery of cooked food, groceries, almost any sort of packages. People could not go to sit-down restaurants except to order and pick up food to go. Our family reserved going out to eat for special occasions, so this was not as major an inconvenience for us as some other people seemed to find it.
We re-opened in phases. As each phase loosened, the infection curve unflattened and contagion statistics spiked. As I write this, over 100,000 people have died in the USA so far. When beaches reopened on both coasts, fools rushed in where angels feared to tread.
Mostly, future grandchildren, we stayed home (shelter in place) and watched reruns on TV. Many people did spring cleaning more thoroughly than they had ever done before and many people experimented with new recipes, and shared the results online. I baked my first loaf of bread. Many people baked sourdough bread. As of this writing, I have not attempted sourdough yet.
Shoppers went crazy in grocery stores. Hoarders bought all the toilet paper, paper towels, dry yeast, they could. Why, I’m not sure. Diarrhea is not a Covid symptom. When supplies ran low, the stores limited how much bread or meat people could buy.
2020 was the Year Everything Went Crazy: wildfires in Australia, a pompous ass in the White House, Brexit, murder-hornets, the murder of George Floyd which led to major protests against racial discrimination in the justice system, which led to rioting and looting.
I hope the world survives, so you can read this someday, future grandchildren.
