Work in the Time of COVID-19

With the ever-rising infection rate of the COVID-19 virus, more and more people are being required to work at home.

No hard-and-fast rule has come from the federal government as of 26 March 2020.  The CDC is only issuing "recommended" guidelines for personal separation to prevent contagion.  On social media, people talk about staying six feet away from others.

Some states have gone much further than the federal government.  Kentucky, for example, proclaimed a state of emergency on 6 March 2020.  The governor then proceeded to take steps to close schools, restrict restaurants to call-in and pick-up rather than dining-in, recommend that vulnerable segments of the population stay home, and other measures to prevent the spread.  The result is that the infection rate has been slowed in Kentucky.

In contrast, Tennessee's governor did nothing.  Their infection rate continues to climb.

In Florida, the governor has done little.  He did not close the beaches and did not prevent Spring Break gatherings of students in large groups, with the result that students returned to their homes and schools infected by COVID-19.  Cities in Florida have taken their own measures.  Jacksonville's mayor proclaimed a state of emergency on 13 March 2020, closed the city's beaches, and issued a requirement for all commercial concerns doing business in the city that can make provisions for employees to work at home to do so.  Our younger daughter works for an essential business -- food distribution.  She was told yesterday to prepare to work at home.  Before that, while she was still commuting from her home in another county to Jacksonville, she had been issued a letter by her employing company stating that she works for an essential business and that she be allowed to travel county-to-county in case counties started closing their borders.

All over the country, people are gearing up to work at home.  Some couples living in small apartments have had to come up with novel methods and physical arrangements.  Children, sent home from school, need supervision, instruction, and entertainment.  Some people have become inventive in that area; on Facebook there is a video of a four-year-old progressing through an indoor obstacle course constructed by his father!  

When the personal computer first came on the scene, there was a lot of talk of "the paperless society" and how computers would radically change the way people work.  For many years, not much seemed to be happening to bring these conditions about.  There was still an awful lot of paper circulating.  This disease and its severity may just change that.
 

Wash those hands! -- in the time of COVID-19

Good parents always instruct their children to wash their hands after using the bathroom or before handling food or eating.

Now we're all being told to wash our hands -- the surgeon's way --several times a day after or before all sorts of activities.  Twenty seconds, washing all over the hand, between fingers, and back and front.  One of the popular things these days is sharing bits of prose or poetry, or song verses or choruses, that come out to about twenty seconds, to time your handwashing.

One suggestion has been the opening voice-over to the 1960s television series "Star Trek," which has lived on and on well into the 21st Century:

Space -- the final frontier!
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise,
Its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds,
To seek out new life and new civilizations --
To boldy go where no man has gone before!

Others use a verse to the song "The Wall," by the group Pink Floyd:

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Not that I was ever a fan of rock'n'roll.  I'm not.  So what I usually sing as a handwashing mantra is a parody of the Pink Floyd song that my daughter and I made up one hurricane season (we live in Florida):

We don't need no big fat windstorm,
We don't need no hurricane.
Storm clouds on the far horizon
Bringing on the wind and rain.
Hey, Cyclone!  Leave Florida alone!
All in all, you're just another wind in the fall.
All in all, you're just another wind in the fall.

For the liturgically-minded Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, and some others, singing The Doxology works:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise God all creatures here below.
Praise him above, ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

There is also the "Seven-part Amen."  (Yes, it's just "Amen," chanted seven times to a particular tune.)

Other mantras used by people I've encountered have been taken from Frank Herbert's Dune novels, bits of doggerel by Monty Python (20th-21st century comedy troupe), and many other sources.  (I welcome suggestions from readers.)

Humor in the Time of COVID-19

As in any time of great stress, from surgery to war, many of us -- those of us graced with a sense of humor -- may indulge in a very dark sort of humor, usually called gallows humor or black humor.

The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.  

Various reactions to the virus have produced a great deal of humor.  The silly run on toilet paper is one part that has generated a lot of the funny posts we see on Facebook, for instance:

[Right-click on each link to open in a new window.  That way, you don't get taken away entirely from this blog entry.]

This is reminiscent of third-grade experiments in botanical propagation:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157566447588037&set=a.10150257656758037&type=3&theater

Or a Biblical quotation made manifest:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10163144285155574&set=gm.3101453046534483&type=3&theater

Finally, just how elusive is a roll of toilet paper these days, anyway:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10159709038558066&set=a.489047123065&type=3&theater

The quarantining going on these days gives rise to such comments as "Actually, it's only Quarantine if it comes from the Quarantine Region of France; otherwise, it's merely sparkling isolation."

Punsters are having a good time, as well:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10216781050741303&set=a.2193848528437&type=3&theater&ifg=1

And, finally, a little bit of creativity coming out of this scary experience, as a pianist composes The Coronavirus Etude, for Piano and Disinfecting Wipe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=whNICyl_et0&fbclid=IwAR2HAQPWZszx1auRMGB1oOxJcjw8yZVXOhkgVagT2v2n_zg51KsbUrtJdpQ&app=desktop
 

Life in the Time of COVID-19

I give credit -- or apologies -- for the title of this post and its followers on this topic to Gabriel García Marquez.

On my mother's side, there is a collateral relative who lived at the time of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.  She lost her children to the disease, getting no help from her husband.  She divorced him and went from Indiana to California to start anew, met a doctor and married him.

What will our lives be like as we go through this pandemic, and hopefully, live to see the end of it?  What family stories will come out of this pandemic?

I am going to post about what it is like living through this thing, so that future generations of genealogists and family historians will have some record of what it was like.  I don't limit this to my own family, because, for one thing, the family patrimony for future generations is solely in the hands and life of our grandson.  For another, any record of what it was like can be used for background for just about anyone's family history.

So here's what it is like.

The outbreak of this virus was just declared a pandemic about a week ago.  The entire world is affected.  Closer to home, there has been one death so far in my county, at a hospital four miles from our home.  How much more exposure there may be, no one knows.

In my state, there have been 314 cases reported so far, with 7 deaths.  For some reason, children seem not to be infected at the same rate as adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and seem to have milder cases when they do fall ill with it.

My husband and I are 73 and 72, respectively.  He is actually pretty healthy, but I have a bunch of chronic conditions.  The recommendation for folks our age is to stay home.  My husband and I, natural homebodies, do that pretty much, anyway.  We have been in the habit of going out to eat something like once a week, but we're not doing that any more for a while.  My husband went to the grocery store yesterday to stock up, so we have plenty of meats, frozen vegetables, fruit, and other grocery supplies.

He said that people were crazy.  He also went to BJs wholesale club yesterday, and said that the toilet paper was gone, and the shelves where it had been were stocked with bottled water.  You'd think a category five hurricane was coming, not a possible 14-days at home to avoid exposure.

The economic impact of this pandemic could be disastrous.  Restaurants are being ordered to close.  Universities, colleges, and public schools are shutting down.  Our grandson has an extra two weeks off right now, in addition to his school's spring break.  He's a fifteen-year-old freshman in high school.  Our older daughter, enrolled in the doctoral program in audiology at the University of Florida, is attending her classes online rather than in person.  The university is even making some plans to put all their clinical rotations online rather than in person, too.  As a forner registered nurse, I'm not sure how well that could work.  In the health professions, you need that hands-on work to learn a lot of what you need to learn, and practice your diagnostic and treatment skills.

Our younger daughter works in an industry which may not feel as much economic damage as some.  She works for a national food distribution company, in a very necessary job of solving problems in accounts payable.   As she is on the money end of it, that might help her job keep going.

In subsequent posts, I'll talk about such aspects of the disease as the gallows humor coming out of it, how handwashing has given rise to several mantras, and how we've had a less than stellar performance by the government (this will get political).  Stay tuned.