I try very hard not to have to cover more serious subjects here. It can be, quite honestly, depressing, to cover much of what goes on in the world, and while I do share very strong opinions from time to time on my hobbies, I do fully acknowledge, regardless of how supportive or critical I may be of an aspect of them, that many of these hobbies are overall insignificant in the grand scheme of the world. I’d consider myself very well informed and educated on a great variety of subjects and do pay attention to far more things that some may suspect. I simply don’t devote time and space to them on Xadara as I don’t feel this is the place to discuss them, and in some cases (such as space and rocketry) I’ve once written about them in detail here, only to pull away in recent years.
The current Coronavirus pandemic, however, is something I can’t ignore. No one can really ignore this one. In a rare case which, as usual, isn’t a good thing, this is an event which is affecting pretty much everyone on Earth in some capacity or another in a very direct, and very dangerous, way.
I remember early in the year hearing about this strange new virus that was a big concern in Wuhan, China. I didn’t think much of it — I don’t think anyone I know, or too many people outside of the directly affected area, really did. We’ve all lived through so many virus scares in the past that we all were kind of numbed to the threat of such. “Yeah, sure, another one, how many has it been in the past 20 years? Over a dozen? What’s so special about this one” seemed to be the general consensus. I recall memes which now are incredibly ironic where people pointed out all the ones they had survived, including “SARS” back in 2002-2004. I say this is ironic because the particular Cornavirus threat going on right now, SARS-COV-2, as it’s properly known, falls into the SARS category – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It’s common name of “COVID-19” stemming from it being a type of Coronavirus disease which was first seen in 2019.
Science lesson aside move ahead to the first cases hitting the US. Again, things didn’t seem too crazy then; this often happens with these outbreaks and I figured it would be a limited situation. It, obviously, wasn’t. As we all know, this things spread, quickly, and here in the United States our beyond incompetent presidential administration and absolutely pathetic healthcare system did virtually nothing to actually halt the spread of the disease before it could get here; all efforts after its arrival could be best described as “pathetically too little, too late.”
Move to a few weeks ago, and the first cases were found in my home state of Tennessee. Not just my home state, but my home county. Yes, the disease had made it to what is, in effect, my back yard. Things were stable enough, though — no one panicked or really seemed too concerned, as no new cases arose. Last Thursday that seemed to change as for some reason work was virtually devoid of customer flow and we learned that there were many more cases now being reported across the state, and another case was in my county.
This was the point where we first truly got concerned, I’d say. Previously I had grown cautious, but now we had reached a stage where all the panic buying happened, and people weren’t behaving quite normal. The situation had been declared a pandemic and any hope that this would just go over pretty much flew out the window, and in the past week the situation has greatly escalated.
We’re now in a situation where bars and restaurants are (finally) closed in my area, well over a week or more after that action should have been taken. Tennessee is one of the states which has been incredibly behind on even trying to address the spread of the virus, even after it had clearly entered the area — the counties surrounding Nashville were where the bulk of the cases in the state were, but in the past few days the area around Memphis has become quite the hot zone itself; this may not have been the case had things been shut down sooner rather than later.
It’s rather incredible how quickly this all escalated, but then again it doesn’t surprise me. We’ve all (and I mean virtually everyone around the world in any developed nation) grown to scoff at the idea of another pandemic threatening the world. Nations and citizens alike didn’t take this threat seriously early on, and at this stage I feel it’s something we can’t easily stop. We could have just a few weeks ago, but now? Not so much. Were our health care system better we may have been able to negate some of the spread, or at least be in a better shape to handle what’s to come, but we’re not, and that honestly scares me.
Don’t read me wrong, of course — we will survive this. The mortality rate isn’t incredibly high, but this is a deadly disease regardless, and the idea is to prevent it from getting to people whom it’s more likely to kill — the old, the weak, the people with compromised immune systems. The people who need the most protection from this kind of thing are who we’re trying to protect, and it’s absolutely sickening that some people, mostly the generally healthy younger people, still treat this as something to not be concerned about. Of course there are also those who think this is some kind of sick hoax, or some kind of intentional viral warfare — the hell with those conspiracy nuts I say — but these kids who seem to think this isn’t anything to worry about… I pity them because their arrogance may bring about the loss of someone they otherwise care greatly for.
For now, however, it’s somewhat life as usual. I still have to go to work, and we’re trying our damnedest to keep the business afloat until something has to be done. If we are forced to close of course we’ll comply, but for as long as we can be open we will, to at least try to provide the customers the games and repair services they may well need as quarantines become mandatory and normal life grinds to a halt. Being a small, one off store, if this happens I obviously can’t get paid, so we can only hope that reasonable government assistance in some form happens once the call is finally made. In the meantime, we’re fighting our best to keep the store clean, our hands washed constantly, and monitoring ourselves just to make sure we may not have contracted the illness. The sooner we suspect it, the sooner we can take whatever action we may need to. Customer traffic has returned to normal, but everyone’s clearly a bit on edge. Understandable, of course.
Am I worried? Yes. Do I think this will all be okay in the end? Sure, but I fear the number of dead we will have to bury when this is all said and done. I worry for others safety, not so much my own, and I’m most terrified at the absolute incompetence this situation is likely to continue to be managed with. I’d rather everyone in charge actually grasp the situation, realize things need to be shut down and proper assistance given to the populace. Shut down the need to work and go out, you shut down much of the chance of the virus to spread and, hopefully, save thousands upon thousands of lives. If such doesn’t happen, then I fear this is something that will simply have to run its course (if that isn’t already the case) and the end result won’t be a pretty one. All this chaos from one strand of RNA wrapped in a spherical protein coat.
I write this for the sake of documentation — as a type of historic record of the feelings of one person during this crisis. It is my intention to log my experiences during this event via follow up entries. We’ll see what happens. As it stands, however, I’ve watched the number shoot from 2 people in my county, to 4, to 10 to 30+ in just a few days so, whatever happens it’s going to be soon. Otherwise, tomorrow I’ll head to work and it will be business as usual.
Stay safe. Stay home. We’ll get through this.