Day 13…I can’t really believe it. Last week was rough.
I intended this to be a daily log of what I was doing and experiencing during a sort of forced semi-quarantine. That never really happened – all the previous posts were written at least a week off their publication date. This one, however, is being written today. I decided to skip trying to do daily posts for last week because, well, the week is just too homogenized to be worth a daily look. Especially in retrospect.
And here we are, two days later. I need to prioritize this project – it’s a record for later as well as a release.
Ok, I changed the titles to reflect the actual day. Ugh.
Alright, it’s Monday. We have been in a stay home world since last Saturday – just over a week. And that has been a far harder thing than I expected. Not the staying home part – I am far too good at that. The getting out part. See, when you are like me, unsocial, depressed, and more than able to work from home, a stay home order isn’t a big deal. But getting out…that needs to be something you force. Why? Simple, it’s not healthy, physically or psychologically, to stay home all day. We are social animals, and this is hard.
Day 10: Costco
So, Friday, I forced myself to go to Costco. That was interesting for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I got light headed just being outside. I have experienced this before when ending hospital stays – it seems to be a kind of agoraphobic response. I don’t have that particular phobia, but nothing else quite makes sense. The feeling of being out in the open can be overwhelming when you haven’t been outside in a week. And that is a dangerous thing. If you read this, make sure to get out some. At least every other day. Go drive, walk, cycle, whatever you need to do to get outside and away from home a bit. You don’t need to even go anywhere specific, just be not-home.
Anyway, Costco was different. They now have an employee outside wiping all the carts down before you can grab one. Then, the entrance funnels you through an amusement-park like line in the area where the carts used to be. Once inside, it’s not too different. They have added whiteboard signs to list what they are out of, which is nice. They had everything I needed, even though paper rolls were limited to one each. The checkout now has tape lines every 6′ or so…and they extend halfway back in some areas. There is also now a self-check, which was kind of redundant, as the attendant basically scanned everything for me anyway. Regular checkout has the plexi shields in front of the cashiers. On leaving, the receipt check is totally perfunctory. They don’t even get close anymore.
I did hear what the different entrance procedure was all about as I left. It seems they are limited to 550 people, and the fire marshal checks. Several times a day. So, when they hit capacity, they no longer allow new customers to enter. Thus, a line. It’s really different.
Day 11 & 12: Warframe
Video games for the win. That’s about it.
Day 13: Work and Realizations
Day 13 was a back to work thing. Lots of email today. This isn’t a work blog, so that’s that.
But I did realize something important. We look at the COVID-19 numbers, and keep comparing them to the seasonal influenza numbers. So, of course, they look off. Seasonal numbers are way higher in every respect save case mortality rate. So, we still have people saying this is stupidly overblown, and gee, the flu is worse.
Ok, fair cop. But what if the average seasonal influenza outbreak happened in a month? Annual flu season runs, roughly, October through May. the 2017-18 flu season resulted in an estimated 45 million cases, with 810,000 hospitalizations and 61,099 deaths. Again, that’s over 8 months. And it was a bad one (2018-19 had about 35.5 million cases, with 490,600 hospitalized, and 34,200 deaths). On average, we see 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010. So, yeah, it’s bad.
Imagine that hitting in three weeks.
Now does all this make sense? And this is what we are looking at – experts estimate millions of cases, 100,000 or more deaths.
Day 13 In Illinois
Per the state website, as of 3/30/2020 2:30 P.M., Illinois has…
- Tested: 30,446
- Cases: 5,057
- Positive Test Percentage: 16.61%
- Infection Rate: 0.04%
- Deaths: 73
- Case Fatality Rate: 1.44%
