The COVID-19 train keeps a rollin’. Day 15 is much the same as the other days – work, Warframe, and tedium. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, of course. But I don’t run. So that analogy is weak at best. It’s a miniseries, not a YouTube video maybe. Miniseries implies an ending, so I like that better than, well, the alternative.
I have a new quick-catalog project for work, which is a nice distraction from the other massive projects. It’s a big one too, as the quick catalogs go – 130 pages or so. But there is one pesky item holding me up. One. Item. Out of 130 pages…1280 items. Le sigh. It could be so much worse than that, so I’m not really upset so much as needing to have something to make the days seem different. And this gets to be the one for now.
I wanted to talk about a phrase I am really not happy about. The New Normal. Firstly, this isn’t normal. Not by a long shot. This is the new now, and will, in time, end. But we must not make the mistake of thinking this is normal. Normal is what comes next, as we move into a post-stay-home order world. This is, and must be seen as, an aberration to normalcy. But if we accept or adjust to the idea that this is somehow normal, we do ourselves a grave disservice.
Imagine this being normal. That day to day, we hide inside, only venturing out for limited, specific, activities. Still avoiding friends & family. Imagine that there are no bars, restaurants, churches, theaters, etc. to go to. Ever. Does that sound normal to you?
I really hope not.
So when we see people talking about this as the new normal, it concerns me. I mean, the whole thing concerns me, but that especially.
Behavioral psychologists claim that if you do a thing for, on average, 66 days, it becomes a habit. 66 days. I am on day 15 of not being able to go to work (but able to work), and Illinois is on day 12 of the stay home order. In another two months, the average person will have internalized this behavior as normal. And then what? I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it worries me.
Maybe in the next post, I’ll talk about what comes next, and how we begin to build a new normal.
Day 15 In Illinois
Per the state website, as of 4/1/2020 2:30 P.M., Illinois has…
- Tested: 40,384
- Cases: 6,980
- Positive Test Percentage: 17.28%
- Infection Rate: 0.055%
- Deaths: 141
- Case Fatality Rate: 2.02%
Infection Rate is arrived at by dividing Cases into the estimated population of IL, as listed by the US Census (12,671,821)
