Monday, April 20th, 2020
It is hard to fathom that the current state has now lasted for 40 days (and a beautiful date 20-4-20). If anyone had told me two months ago that I would put my life basically on hold for any length of time, I would have vigorously refused to do so. In fact, I had an exchange with my brilliant friend at the outset of this pandemic making it quite clear that I had no intention putting life on hold for a year; which was my estimate of how long this would take. At the time this estimate was based on the information available on length to identify a viable treatment and/ or a vaccine. My position was, I had lived in Asia during SARS, bird flu, swine flu and the world had not stop then either.
Well, four days later I found myself "sheltering at home", fridge well stocked, office set up. Still, I had not yet given up on our diving trip to Puerto Rico, somehow hoping that in a few weeks the worst would have passed. How wrong I was!
Now, I may have become overly pessimistic, I believe we may be in this for the long-haul and a year for life to return to “normal” is a very optimistic scenario. In fact, I doubt it will ever return to the carefree global way we have lived before. People, certainly me and my family, will come out of this scarred. Hopefully not with any losses but scared enough to stay far from people we are not intimately close to in everyday life. Facemasks may become a permanent feature. Global travel may become the exception rather than the norm, which for someone with homes on three continents is a bitter pill to swallow. We will always fear getting infected and the possible implications of that.
Both EM and I are desperate for our social interactions, so much so that EM had an emotional melt down last night. Crying for life as it had been. It reminds me that no matter how balanced and calm a person is, there is a lot of emotional stress which comes with our current confinement. How does one provide comfort in a situation beyond one’s control or sphere of influence? If I could give her a structured school day, interactions with her friends, visits to the family, I so would. Alas, I can not even insinuate when to expect a glimmer of hope. Especially not with the leadership of the country we reside in. Where the president is instigating revolts against the measures designed to keep people safe. I just cannot understand how he and his supports can condone or worse actively encourage the demonstrations. How utterly irresponsible is that? Where a bunch of ignorant, if not outright stupid people take to the streets crying “land of the free”. It makes me so angry. Angry because I see my child crying, wanting to get back to normal life and then there are these idiots sabotaging containment on combatting of the invisible virus. Ignorance and stupidity have a way of making me very angry, to the extent that really all I want is for these people to get the virus and be left to their own devices. I want to shout at them “you are free to die”. It is just that some of us are not ready to die.
And is if anyone needed more evidence. Reports from Wisconsin indicate a significant rise of number of infected after the forced in person election. Who would have thought?
On the same note infections in the US (and the UK marching in lock step) are continuing to rise. The world today reports 2,4 million infected, with 770k of those in the USA. “America First” in action courtesy of agent orange and his competent task force who now praises himself through selective media clips. We are grateful for the voices of sanity out there, like Dr Fauci and Governor Como, Hogan, Whitmer, and so on, who are looking out to protect the people. At least this gives us – even if distant – the perspective that we can get on with our life sometime in the foreseeable future.
Mum today turned 82. While alone, many thought of her and because there was no entertaining others, she had the time to speak to every caller at length, which she rather liked. Very different to the celebration two years ago, where EM and I hopped over for the weekend. Hard to imagine doing that in this day and age; though there are still three flights from the US to Germany a day (none from DC).
The more time I spend here, the easier I find it to make peace with my fatherland, despite all my misgivings, and I have many. It ranks eight in terms of health care system in the world.
Am I turning old?