Am I concerned and frightened? Yes.
And if you're not, then you don't know enough.
It's been building over the past couple of weeks, but it really hit home over the weekend when I saw the pictures of O'Hare and DFW, heard the stories of Americans hitting the bars and bragging about not social distancing, and seeing the exponential graph that shows we look a lot like Italy, just two weeks behind.
It's all scary stuff.
And it's okay to be scared.
What we don't need to do is panic.
Yes it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the media coverage and your friends like me blowing up your Facebook and Twitter feeds with the latest information, but the fact of the matter is, for most of the people that become inflicted with the virus--for a very large percentage, that is--they will recover just fine. The problem is that many people will require hospitalization. And if we don't learn the lessons from Wuhan and Italy--if our hospitals get overwhelmed with patients and we run out of beds or ventilators and doctors have to make choices that no doctor wants to make--then yes, many people will die. That's why you're at home right now reading this blog post instead of at work pretending to be busy or secretly surfing porn. Or maybe you just finished surfing porn, or are just about to, I don't know. It doesn't matter. The point is we need to be away from each other to slow the spread of the virus so we don't overwhelm our hospitals and people needlessly die. It's something we haven't had to do in a long time.
Several years ago, before I became a father and had two relatively helpless humans to take care of, I read the book The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. It's a good read on how the 1918 influenza virus evolved, then exploded across the planet, killing millions. I recommend it.
But we're not invincible.
And at some point we are all going to die.
Please don't rush that along.
And as with vaccines, it's not always about us individually. It's about all those arounds us; all those we come in contact with. We don't know everyone's story, so we don't know if the person we just brushed up against is immunocompromised or has a family member that is immunocompromised or will run into someone else who is immunocompromised (apparently I like the word immunocompromised at the moment), so it's important to protect all those people and to not be selfish and think the world revolves around only each one of us. It doesn't. You know it doesn't, so don't be stupid.
And regardless of what The Orange Man in the White House says, this is not the "Chinese Virus." (Don't be racist.) It's a virus. Period. It doesn't give a shit if your Chinese, Italian, Iranian, or American. "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear." It just does what it does.
And at the moment, it's doing it rather well.
But again, we don't need to panic. We need to do our best to not allow it to do so well.
Look, I love you guys, but for right now, please, stay the fuck away from everyone. One day this will get better and we'll all go back to going to our kid's soccer games, or hanging out with each other at dinner or a bar, or going out dancing, or going to Disneyland or Las Vegas or to swinger parties or whatever it is we enjoy doing that connects us with others. One day it will happen. Sure, it might not be exactly the way it was, we may need to make a few adjustments, but we will go on. Life will go on. Just like life went on after the 1918 influenza virus did its thing.
Things are slowly getting back to normal in China. That's good news. It means the rest of the world will, too. Some countries will sooner than others, but those countries were either better prepared, more organized, or responded faster than other countries. I'd like to think these trying times will be a catalyst for change in my country, but I'm not that naive. But maybe that's a post for another day. We'll see.
For now, though, know you are not alone. Yes, things are going to get worse--probably much worse--but remember: we're all in this together, and it will take all of us working together to get us out of this mess. Everyone has to help. So no hoarding food, no doing stupid shit like hanging out with a bunch of people, no ignoring science or experts. Follow the guidelines, be kind to one another, make love with those who want to make love with you, and for The Goddess's sake, please stay home as much as possible.
Until next time, my friends.
