Saturday, nowhere to go other than a few places to stock up.

First, though, we do a little exercise, walking a few miles. Thankfully we have a nice park nearby and there aren’t too many people around.

We then proceed to Costco, intent on buying just a few things, but of course we wind up getting far more. Costco opens very early on Saturday, used to be 9:30 AM but now they open around 9 AM. I guess. We arrived just a few minutes after nine and there was a line of people already waiting to go in.

Since the last time I went to Costco, they now allow a certain number of people in at a time, then stop the line and make people wait for others to leave the store. Further, they have created a long line area which keeps people separated. You’re asked to stay behind your cart and its a prudent measure for sure.

Once inside, it was a breeze looking through everything and buying stuff for the week -or longer. Today they had both toilet paper and paper towels (!!) so we took advantage and bought. There is a limit, however, of only one of each per customer.

Mind you, we have enough for ourselves but we’re no hoarders: We bought extra a week ago for one of my wife’s co-workers who had surgery on his ankle and can’t get around too well… and was running out of toilet paper.

This week we bought for her parents (they’re elderly and are isolating almost completely) and they’re running out of the stuff.

It was also, I might add, the first time we entered one of these stores with both gloves and a mask. While I’ve made it a habit in the last week plus to wear gloves when out to a store, we decided it was prudent to go the extra step and wear a mask as well.

We weren’t the only ones.

The other thing Costco is now doing is only allowing two people to enter the store per membership card so my daughter, who accompanied us, headed back to my car and hung out there while we did our shopping.

I suppose that’s one of the good things about having a Tesla: There’s a lot of entertainment/video games to spend the time with there.

Regardless, we made our rounds, picked up a bunch of stuff and headed out…

…and stopped at Target.

Target is on the way from Costco back home and since it was still pretty early (maybe 9:40 AM by that time) there weren’t all that many people at Target.

Like Costco, it appears Target is also counting the number of people within the store but, at least when we went, it wasn’t very busy at all and entered without waiting in any line.

We had a few more odds and ends to pick up (including food for the pets) and, again with mask and gloves, we finished our major shopping and headed home.

On the way back, it occurred to me the reality of the situation is certainly becoming real to many.

As I mentioned, most if not all the people in both Costco and Target had at least gloves. Many also had face masks and, thankfully, they all kept their distances from each other… and we certainly did the same.

But a weird sense of paranoia does begin to enter one’s head, doesn’t it?

You’re looking around, making sure there aren’t people coughing and making sure the guy/gal just over there doesn’t get too close.

And if they do, even if its unintentional, one can get annoyed and stop moving and/or move away, grumbling about how careless these people are, especially if it seems they’re not being proactive in their social distancing.

Social distancing. Self-isolating.

Two terms that were -to my mind anyway- never used much if at all have become the terms of this era.

Now and again I like to think about how much longer this is going to go on.

In the last entry (you can read it here) I figured we would be self-isolating and social distancing into May and likely the summer months as well.

My opinion hasn’t changed much.

I strongly believe April is gone in terms of the possibility we emerge from this.

If -and its a HUGE if- some kind of medication/treatement is discovered that deals well with Covid-19, then maybe we start emerging from this self-imposed exile in May. But if not, add May to the list of months we’ll be practicing both self-isolating and social distancing.

Two full months.

I suspect by then we must reach a point where the virus has gone through most communities and the larger number of people will have been affected and -hopefully- most will be through with it and essentially immune.

Hopefully –hopefully– the number of dead will be on the low end of the estimates and we can perhaps start to emerge a little from this daze.

But, again if there is no clear medicine or treatment available, we may see June and July join in the exiled months.

As always, keep safe out there.

I know there are those -especially on the Fox “News” and in this current administration- that tried to soft-pedal the disease and make it seem like it was no worse than getting the flu.

They’re changing their tunes but we still get stories like this one, by Matt Novak and presented on Gizmodo.com:

Georgia’s Idiot Governor says he didn’t know people could spread Covid-19 without symptoms

Yikes.

Keep informed -and stay away from anything that uses the two word combination of “Fox” and “News” together and we’ll hopefully get out of this fine.

Hopefully!

April Fool’s Day.

Not be be a downer, but it sure seems like there’s not much to have fun to be had today and I truly hope no one out there decides it would be really funny to do some kind of Coronavirus-type joke.

“Coughing” on your friends, etc.

The other day the Trump administration finally seemed to admit the reality of this situation, that if everything goes well, we can expect some 100,000 to 250,000 dead.

I know there still exist those out there who aren’t taking this very seriously and, truly and honestly, I hope they come out of this unscathed.

But given the ease in which this virus seems to be transmitted, the odds sure seem like they might catch up with you. And sadly, it doesn’t end with people catching the illness, it continues as they spread it to others.

*****

Last weekend, it was our intention to take a mini-vacation, ie something that would last maybe two or so weekdays and the weekend. We had marked the date and were planning to do some Florida driving, including going to the parks (Disney World, Universal).

Obviously that didn’t happen.

We also were considering taking a longer vacation later on, perhaps a week or so, and fly up to New York and visit that area. Maybe even make our way to Boston.

Obviously, that’s not going to happen now.

Today, I feel like we’re going to be under a lockdown through this month, April, and likely the entirety of May. The disease will still be out there, but by that point the raging fire will have spread through and, hopefully, care will be easier to provide.

Even so, we will continue to be isolating, I feel, well past May and into the summer months.

It feels like the world itself has hit the pause button and we’re just keeping our heads down and hoping for the best while fearing the worst.

Some random thoughts (!) here:

Nintendo’s timing in releasing Animal Crossings may well have been incredibly fortuitous for the company. I don’t mean to step on the misery and misfortune brought on by this pandemic, but when locked up and isolated, one hunts for anything to pass the time and Animal Crossing’s release was a godsend to many.

******

With the good comes the very bad. We’re starting to see many celebrities who have contacted the Coronavirus, including big names such as Tom Hanks and his wife Rita WIlson, Idris Elba, Prince Charles, etc.

More depressing is that like many other “regular” victims, some celebrities have fallen to the Coronavirus.

Christie D’Zurilla at latimes.com offers a list of some of the celebrities who have fallen from this virus:

Celebrities who died from Coronavirus

******

Now for a bit of better news, also found on latimes.com and in an article written by Sonia Kelly:

Powell’s Books rehires more than 100 employees as online orders soar

The article’s title says it all and, I wonder, if maybe this event will truly transition people from “going out” to buy certain items and, instead, they realize its not worth going out to pick up some things.

Granted, I’m not talking about all things here.

But in recent times I’ve noted that I no longer have much of a desire to visit bookstores. While Amazon.com makes me nervous about their overall size and monopolistic bend, the reality is that whatever book/comic book/graphic I may want, there it is.

And I don’t have to order physical copies of them. I can order the digital version and be reading the book/comic book/graphic novel in a matter of seconds.

Same with music.

Same with movies (though in this case I tend to use VUDU).

Same with video games (though I don’t seem to have as much time nowadays to play all that much as before).

The reality is that going out even before the Coronavirus for us tended to be so we could a) eat out/buy food and/or groceries or b) see a movie (that’s done for now) or c) buy clothing.

Otherwise, there really wasn’t much of a need to go out at all.

That was obviously for us.

Will it be like that for others now?

Funny how time becomes fluid when you’re locked up inside.

Two weeks ago -roughly- and in the first couple of weeks of March the U.S. seemed to finally wake up to the fact that the Coronavirus was something to take seriously.

We had sporting events cancelled, large parks (Disney, Universal, etc.) shutting down. Airlines essentially stopping foreign flights, cruise ships grounded. Restaurants no longer seating people inside but doing take-out or delivery.

Clubs, bars?

If you’re smart, you’ll forget about that.

Sadly, not everyone is taking this as seriously as they should. There are those I read about in the news who just have to have a party or have to have their services with crowds. Jerry Falwell Jr., staunch Trump supporter and right-wing Born Again fanatic, stated Liberty University, his university, would press forward with regular classes.

I suppose he bought into Trump’s original “it’s a hoax” line and, frankly, I fear for the students.

Now, at the end of March, it feels like a morbid quiet has settled over us here. While we read the terrible stories of Hospital ICU’s overwhelmed with patients, especially in the denser cities like New York and Chicago, we go to stores to buy our basic needs -food being the biggie- but try to keep our distance from others.

Where once you’d see one or two people with gloves and/or masks, the majority of people now seem to be using these items and its rarer now to see people walking around stores (those that are still open) without some form of protective gear.

Back in March 13 (Friday the 13th, I might add!) I wrote the first of the Coronavirus Diaries (click here to read it!) and I wondered:

How long will this go on? Not to put too fine a point on it, but the economic impact will be both very negative and incredibly huge.

Welp, two weeks later the economic impact is becoming clearer. Unemployment is literally through the roof and this is hardly surprising. When restaurants and Hotels, airlines and the Cruise Industry, and any shop not deemed “essential” is forced to close up, this leaves those who run these businesses in a tough spot. If your business is idle/closed, you aren’t making money. You cannot keep paying your employees so they have to be laid off. They sign up for unemployment but the rent is due. Bills have to be paid.

It’s a scary, scary time, to say the least.

And the worst thing about it all?

I don’t see the end.

China, where the Coronavirus first appeared, seemed to get a handle on the virus and, a few days back, opened their cinemas.

Ominously, the very next day they closed them again.

Another thing I said in that original Friday the 13th post was:

The biggest hope is that scientists figure out in relatively short order a vaccine and/or effective treatment against this pandemic before it becomes far, far worse than it already is.

It seems to me the entire planet, all nations of the world, are effectively hitting the pause button. We’re all hoping we can weather this storm as best as possible, keeping the worst numbers, those who get very sick and/or fall to this illness, low.

We’re all hoping for that effective treatment, for the vaccine that rids us of this pandemic.

Pretty obvious stuff, I concluded in that Friday the 13th post.

It feels like we’re closer to the beginning than the end at this point, and one wonders how long it will take to get to normalcy.

If ever.

You have absolutely no reason to believe me but I had a conversation with my wife a week or so ago and at the onset of the self-isolation craziness and the enormity of the Coronavirus was becoming all too real, wherein I wondered whether I, and a few people I know around me, had contracted the Coronavirus earlier in the year and didn’t know it.

Bear with me here because I know what I’m about to say may sound crazy but…

Early in the year, in early January, I recall my father got very sick (he’s since recovered) and he was sick for an awful long time, perhaps two or so weeks, and had a hard time getting rid of whatever he had. A friend of ours, another elderly man, also got sick around that time and for him, too, the illness lasted an unusually long time. He coughed a lot and had pain in his lungs but, over time, he finally got over it. Yet another person who works for us also got sick and it also took a long while to get over. One of my sisters also got sick. She’s a pharmacist and noted this cycle of getting sick was going out of hand. We started cleaning up around us and disinfecting all because it seemed like we couldn’t quite kick the illness.

At around that time, perhaps later January, I too got sick but the illness didn’t last terribly long for me and it wasn’t particularly hard hitting. What I do recall was that I felt it was strange to catch what I thought was the flu (the symptoms seemed to line up with that) since I had my flu shots for the year done in October or so. My wife, as far as I can remember, didn’t get sick.

I also recall experiencing -and I verified it with some of my January and early February posts- being awfully tired at the end of work weeks, to the point where I would literally collapse in bed from exhaustion and greatly welcome the weekends.

See, when I’m not working on my latest novel, my family works in the tourism industry and we have contact with people from all over the world.

Including China.

Could what the people immediately around me and I have been experiencing at that time, in January and into very early February, been the Coronavirus and we simply didn’t know?

Before you think I’m certifiably nuts, check out this article by Lindsay Holmes and presented on Huffingtonpost.com:

Is It Possible That You Had The Coronavirus Earlier This Year?

Seems like I’m not the only one who thinks maybe he was exposed to the virus early on.

Thing is, and as the article notes: There is no way to test someone to see if they had the Coronavirus before, just if they have it now.

Which means that even if I was exposed to it or had it, I, and everyone in my circle of family and all my friends, even those who were sick earlier in the year, need to continue being incredibly cautious and self-isolating.

Still, it is a scary thought that maybe, just maybe I might have been already exposed to this virus before the news of the pandemic truly broke.

Terrifying, really.

With plenty of you out there home and not going out, if you’re interested in watching the progression of the Coronavirus, especially in your country and/or state, check out this interesting link to 91-Divoc:

An interactive visualization of the exponential spread of COVID-19

The information is rather… depressing, I guess, showing that the U.S. is essentially following the same line of infections by time passage that many other nations have shown. While others have managed to get control, however, we’re still on the upswing of things.

Speaking of which, its even more depressing to see comments by right wing pundits -over-eager, it seems, to please Trump- starting to talk about “opening up” businesses, ie ending the self-isolation many have been doing lately, and simply stop doing it and allow people to congregate.

Seems like a great idea… if one wants everyone to catch this virus and for certain overwhelm all hospitals and, as a result, have many more people who will not be able to get access to ventilators die.

Yep, classic pro-business, anti-people thinking.

Here’s a lovely story by Daniel Burke regarding a lovely pastor who defied the governor’s mandate to not have groups of more than 50 people -itself a rather large figure!- and claims to have held mass for 1000 people!

Then there’s Britt Hume of Fox News (who else?) saying it’s “entirely reasonable” for the elderly to risk getting the Coronavirus to aid the economy (the link is to an article by Matthew Rozsa and preented on Salon.com):

Fox News’ Brit Hume: “Entirely reasonable” for elderly to risk getting Coronavirus to aid economy

Sigh.

These are the same people who were outraged at Obamacare because it supposedly (it didn’t) create “death panels” for medical services. Now, some of them are actively urging people to risk their health and/or life for the sake of keeping this economy going.

Speaking of which, here’s another scary article presented on laeater.com and written by Matthew Kang:

Cheesecake Factory Tells Landlords Across Country It Won’t Be Able to Pay Rent on April 1

Most people in the U.S. likely are familiar with the Cheesecake Factory brand. They are a restaurant chain that serves a plethora of foods but their specialty is (c’mon… guess!) cheesecakes. They make many different types and most are quite delicious filled calorie bombs.

Just writing the above makes me want to go to a Cheesecake Factory and pick up a slice of something…

Anyway, this very large, successful chain of restaurants, like I’m sure many, many other restaurants out there, faces harsh economic issues and, as the article makes clear from the headline, they will be unable to pay any of their rents come April 1st, a few days from now.

I suppose this is what gets the right wing riled up and wanting to “force” people outside and not in isolation, the idea that many businesses are on the fringe of collapsing because they no longer have the large client base -and the money provided by the same- to count on to survive.

As I said in one of my first posts regarding the Coronavirus, this is the second very big issue one has to deal with, the first being one’s health: The Economy.

It’s going to be hurting.

Bad.

And for some time. I suspect the “end the isolation” movement is going to fade away as we hear about more and more hospitals that are overwhelmed with patients and more and more deaths reported.

On the somewhat plus side, it was reported that the Coronavirus does not seem to mutate rapidly (you can read an article about that here, fromn washingtonpost.com and written by Joel Achenbach). This is good news because it means that when an effective vaccine against the Corornavirus is developed (early trials are already in effect), people can get the vaccine and, likely, the virus will be done.

However, realistically an effective vaccine will not be available at least until next year some time (it takes that long to go through effective trials), so we’ve still got a while to deal with this.

The end of it can’t come soon enough.

Self-Isolation.

Seems like that’s the key here. Stay at home. Venture out only if you absolutely have to, and in those cases maintain distance from others, and afterwards wash your hands well.

Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York opined on the news that he expected April and May to be even worse with the number of sick being seen/hospitalized. Senator Rand Paul, a supposed Libertarian (but pretty much another hard right Republican) revealed he tested positive for COVID19 and was -there’s that word again- self-isolating so as not to spread the disease to others.

In Miami Beach, all Hotels have been ordered to close starting tomorrow. This means no new reservations/clients but, of course, there are some exceptions for people who have monthly rents and effectively “live” in the rooms they have. Miami Beach is that way. There are people who come down during winter (the “snow birds”) and spend the winter in the warmer weather and/or there are others who come to visit family and take up rooms for extended periods of time. Finally, there are those who pretty much live in certain apartments in what are labeled “Hotels”.

For one month starting tomorrow and continuing through April 22, though, the Hotels are to close their doors to any daily tourists.

It makes sense: Even if the Hotels themselves may not be overrun in their lobbies with people, if the Hotels keep operating and each one has, say, at least 10 rooms occupied (a paltry number for this period of time!), those numbers per Hotel add up and the beaches could well be crowded with people and therein comes the problem.

Already “non-essential” stores have been ordered to be closed for an extended period of time while restaurants continue to operate but will only make “to go” food or deliveries and will not allow people to sit within.

I said it before and it bears repeating: The effort is appropriate certainly even as the effect on the economy is going to be devastating.

I sincerely hope Bill DeBlasio’s prediction winds up being wrong. I really, really hope that some kind of effective medication can be found to combat the virus. It appears a vaccine, when it comes, will not arrive for at least a year, so that’s out for now.

There’s simply no bright way to paint this.

We’re at the beginning of this situation and the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is, at least today, nowhere in sight.