A “Not Me” attitude converted to COVID-19 Reality Checks
A pandemic? Worldwide virus? It didn’t seem relevant to me. Sure we had Ebola but that was limited primarily to Africa. And there was SARS, H1N1 and others. But they didn’t affect me personally. They happened elsewhere, to other people, or in crowded conditions where illness can spread fast. Not in 2020, not me and not in the middle-class suburbs of Phoenix Arizona where I live.
My husband and I attended an outdoor Irish Festival in Phoenix on Saturday March 7. Lines were long, the bagpipes fabulous, the fiddles fiddled, and the beer flowed. We had not one thought of a contagious virus, or a Corona something, nor did any of the thousands of other people there. Festival warnings or cautions? Not one.
Sunday, my book club met at our usual local restaurant. The place was eerily quiet, and Adam, the owner, sat at a table, on his cell phone, distracted. We were the only customers. Hmmm.
After the weekend, things escalated quickly over the next several days, even as I maintained an attitude of “Seriously?”
As background, I maintain a pragmatic skepticism towards alarmist trends, and tire of constant politics, especially anything trending on social media. Right or wrong, in recent months I’ve come to limit my attention to daily news. It’s my coping mechanism to avoid reacting in constant anger at what is happening in our country, or start a downward mood swing in frustration. With my ADHD I can anger quickly, but I’m not by nature someone who scares easily.
The “Not Me” attitude
Three weeks earlier, my husband insisted we buy a years’ supply of ibuprofen because a “virus” was spreading our way. Medicine for a virus? Logical. We might use it anyway. After tossing it in the shopping cart, I promptly forgot about it, having done our due diligence.
I am closer to sixty than I like to admit. Concerned? No. I am healthy, work out at the gym (I used to anyway), maintain a normal weight, and have no underlying health conditions. Other than the normal conditions of aging — mild arthritis, some spinal stenosis, and the occasional stress headache (thus the ibuprofen), I haven’t been sick in years. Arrogant or realistic? Depends on your viewpoint.
Reality Check #1 — Cancelations Cascade into a New Reality and lifestyle
Monday, March 9, the Tucson Festival of Books canceled its 2020 event set to run March 14–15. This is a huge event that draws more than 130,000 people every year. I look forward to it for months in advance. I remember thinking “Really? Aren’t they being over cautious? I was just at an Irish festival.” Then I read the details, and so many authors had canceled out of fear of the virus, they had no choice. I remember a full moon that evening.
Tuesday a friend’s St. Patrick’s Day party was canceled. There went the new green shirt I bought.
Wednesday, I went to the gym in the morning and got a much-needed haircut in the afternoon. Later that day, the governor of Arizona declared a state of emergency.
Then, major cancelations followed. Baseball Spring Training (a huge deal in Phoenix) and all accompanying events. Marathons. Hockey. I have learned that life is unpredictable, and many times, not fair. I can’t prevent a natural disaster, random shooting, Alzheimer’s, or a drunk driver like the one who killed my brother, so I can’t live in fear of what may never happen. Or might. It’s just a virus, right?
Within seven days movie theaters closed, schools closed, venues closed, stores closed, restaurants closed, events were canceled or postponed, my Toastmasters meeting was canceled, and the concept of living in an era like no other, perhaps since the Great Depression of 1929, sunk in. My sense of “Wow” kicked in with each closure.
Reality Check #2 — Empty Shelves at the Grocery Store
Friday, I went to Safeway for a regular food run. People lined up with full grocery carts, every register line eight people long. The crowd dwarfed any shopping day around Christmas or Thanksgiving. Toilet paper was cleaned out, as were paper towels, soap, detergent, and so many other staples. Toilet paper? Really? Well, it was Friday the 13th. Craziness.
Sure, we had ibuprofen. But storing away enough food and staples to supply a bunker for a month or more? I never saw that one coming. What I did sense was mass fear of the scariest type — fear of the unknown.
As I stood in line chatting with the woman behind me, she told me about a friend who had just lost a $200,000 catering event when Spring Training was canceled. She and her husband were buying a house, set to close in two weeks. She wondered if the value would drop suddenly now that they had locked in their rates and price.
Like everyone else, I joined the herd behavior. If the food supply was going to be that endangered, I rationalized that I too needed to stock up before it was all gone. Too late. Four days in a row I shopped. Four days in a row I stood in long lines, with panicked people. Everywhere I went shelves were empty. I walked empty aisles at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, and elsewhere, mouth agape. I snapped photos, later comparing them to photos of empty store shelves during the era of 1980s communism in Eastern Europe.
Reality Check #3 — My daughter is a doctor. She ran out of PPE.
A month ago I didn’t even know the acronym — PPE — for Personal Protective Equipment. As a first-year resident in family practice in Pennsylvania, she is working in an atmosphere of high stress, lack of equipment, and information on the virus that changes daily. She doesn’t have time to read the thirty or more emails of daily updates from the hospital.
On Monday, March 23, the issue became real and close to home. My daughter called home SCARED. Anxious. In disbelief. Her clinic ran out of all protective supplies that day. Still, they were expected to continue to see and treat patients the next day.
She talked of “super spreaders” who are healthy, have no clue they are carriers, but have a high viral load and are very contagious. Three ER docs from her hospital caught the virus at a convention of ER docs where no one appeared ill.
I began researching face masks, PPE, and Corona Virus. That’s when the worldwide magnitude of the crisis and the predictable predicament of shortage of PPE (dependence on overseas manufacturing, worldwide demand, limited stockpiles, et al) became real. While other nations had been battling this virus for months, it now had my full attention. Why? It became directly relevant to me.
Arizona lags behind Pennsylvania, Washington, New York, and other states in cases, death count, and urgency. Now, the nightly news is the daily death count worldwide, in the US, and in Arizona.
My drive to do something, anything, sent me into high gear. I posted a plea on Facebook for anyone who could donate hand-sewn masks or other equipment. Three friends responded with supplies, and an organization donated a dozen. What my daughter can’t use, she can share.
I purchased goggles and boxes of nitrile gloves at a paint store, after searching multiple locations. I bought twelve of each to send to my daughter. Now, even these are impossible to find anyplace.
I pulled my sewing machine out of storage and started watching YouTube videos on how to sew masks and began sewing.
Reality Check #4. Younger people also die of COVID-19
April 3 my daughter called home more scared than a week earlier. As of then, her hospital in Allentown PA had more than 700 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more every day. However . . . they had tested more than 4,000 people, presumed to have COVID. Their lab only has the capacity to run 100 tests a day. The tests are sent out to another lab — results can take seven to ten days. They have to presume every patient coming in has COVID-19, especially with any flu-like symptoms. When someone presents at the ER, how do you know? They have two ERs — one for COVID, one for others, based on symptoms.
The previous evening she admitted two patients who were both in their 40s. Both had to be intubated. One kept crashing, and died despite everything they tried. She hasn’t admitted any seniors — the majority of incoming patients are all young to middle-age adults “you know, like up to age 55.” Ouch. Several days later she sent me a text that read “2/3 of my patients will die by the end of the day. I feel weird about that.” They did.
Tangentially, every patient coming in is exceptionally ill. She estimates that only half come in for respiratory symptoms (presumed COVID.) People with serious health issues are so scared of going to the hospital and catching this contagious virus, they are waiting too long to seek medical attention. In some cases they are dying — an incredible frustration for doctors who know prompt attention would have saved them.
Reality Check #5 — Lack of Testing Means the Incidence Rate is Woefully Underreported
If my daughter’s hospital had an outstanding 4,000 tests for COVID pending results, then what about everyone else who has yet to be tested? Multiply this by every hospital and every state and the numbers grow scarier every day. From the beginning, inadequate testing was an issue in Arizona, which definitely bred a false security and hubris from leaders that “it is a minor issue in our state.”
Now, my pragmatic skepticism means I will doubt future reports (national and local) that “we have this under control” until widespread testing is readily available. Perhaps this is a better attitude. It means I won’t lower my guard and will continue precautions. The unknown is still relevant. Until it isn’t.
Reality Check #6— It’s not just about me
I live with three other people. My husband, grown son, and 86-year-old father-in-law. While I still consider my exposure minimal, I have a healthy respect for something that cannot be seen but can infect family members or anyone else I am close to. Again, I can’t prevent other kinds of disasters, but I can wear a mask and wash hands. A lot. I’ve sterilized my cell phone, door handles, light switches, and I wipe down every milk bottle and food container before it goes in the refrigerator. Then I go on living.
Food acquisition and storage continues to be challenging and time-consuming if I have to visit multiple stores. While most places now limit purchases of each item to one or two, which prevents hoarding, there are still huge gaps in the supply chain. Six weeks into quarantine, I have yet to see flour, sugar, regular pasta, or toilet paper in the grocery store. My only option for buying rice meant buying a twenty-pound bag at Sam’s Club.
Four days ago I heard that a local restaurant had flour and sugar for sale. When I arrived, I walked into an empty shell of what used to be a daily site of a busy lunch hour. I bought the last six pounds of flour and four pounds of sugar they had, all packaged in Ziploc bags, and their last loaf of day-old artesian bread. The bread was a sympathy purchase.
As I brought home my bags of white powder, I had the sense I had just shopped on the black market. Now, food plants are shutting down because employees came down with the virus. How many more will follow? I will continue to stockpile what I can. Just in case. An attitude of “not me” or “not in the United States,” would be cavalier at this point. The United Nations foresees multiple famines of biblical proportions in 2020, or a “hunger pandemic.” Coincidentally, much of our food supply does come from other countries.
I am keeping a Corona Virus journal and check the CDC website on a regular basis. When I write a novel that revolves around the present time, I want to get the history right.
For now, I sit back, take reasonable precautions, and watch as history evolves before our eyes. I’m reading books on previous plagues to take notes on how history repeats itself. It usually does.
