Coronavirus March 22
Posted on 03/22/2020 in misc
North Anna River at North Anna Battlefield
Like everybody else, the pandemic is "top of mind" 24 x 7 for me. I'm writing to help myself not internalize all of it. You can find other posts in the series at https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/tag/coronavirus.html
I’ve seen some comparisons to 9/11 online recently. For me, there is no contest. Coronavirus is far more scary. I lived in the DC suburbs on 9/11/2001, and even went into the office that day, where we could see the smoke from the Pentagon. We weren’t that close though, maybe 8 miles (ca. 13 km) or so. However, at no point on or after 9/11 was I ever worried about dying at the hands of a terrorist. I didn’t know anybody that died on 9/11. It was an attack on America for sure, but it was also pretty obviously a one-time thing designed to provoke a response, and not the beginning of the US being invaded. Obviously it’s pretty easy to look back and state how badly we over reacted, but I’m fairly certain I believed we were over reacting on 9/12/2001.
People that lost loved ones in the attack, or lived through it in NYC had a very different experience on 9/11 and may see that experience as worse, and that is totally fair. However, the death toll in the US from coronavirus will probably exceed 3000 by several orders of magnitude. If that happens, we will all lose somebody close to us.
It was 55 and party sunny today so Breck and I headed out to an out of the way Civil War battlefield where we could get in a 5-mile hike. It was more crowded than I expected (I was expecting maybe 1 or 2 other people) but it was easy to maintain a nice safe distance from other humans. And it was definitely nice to get a couple of hours of outside time.
I installed my bidet adapter today too, so I got that going for me. If we end up in a severe TP shortage my ass will still be clean.
And on that foray into TMI land, I am done for today. I managed to mostly avoid thinking about the virus this evening, instead opting for mindless TV. I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow, as I have stuff to do.