It’s been more than a week since my last update. In that time Minnesota has seen the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 shoot up to 441. (Incidentally, I learned on a podcast that COVID-19 stands for COronaVIrus Disease number 19, which means we’ve already seen at least 18 other coronaviruses and their subsequent illnesses come and go.) Minnesota has also experienced our first deaths, with a current total of 5, as of last night. During one of his updates this week, Gov. Tim Walz, who went into self-quarantine himself after contact with a staffer who had tested positive, made the optimistic claim that the social distancing efforts of Minnesotans has made a difference, and the virus is spreading more slowly here than it is in other areas. The catch to this was his follow-up statement — that we’re too far past the point of no return when it comes to flattening the curve, and we’re going to experience a peak. The best he is hoping for now is that we stretch that number out enough to keep from running out of available beds necessary to treat the critical cases. I mean, that’s the reality of where we are now, but how grim is that….
He made two other significant statements at that same press conference: 1) The state is now on a shelter-in-place lockdown for two weeks, and 2) schools statewide are closed through May 4th. I’d already been back at school and engaged in some of the most comically surreal tasks of my career at that point, so closing was no surprise. Only going as far as May 4th? That was unexpected. I don’t believe this means he expects things to all be resolved and back on a healing path by a date of his choosing — any kind of political leader to even flirt with an idea like that would have to be an absolute, glow-in-the-dark moron. I think he’s hoping that having us on distance learning for what amounts to the month of April will help slow the spread. Beyond that? All we can do these days is take what’s in front of us then see what happens, which is all I feel comfortable saying on the subject for now.
During this uniquely busy week when I didn’t post any updates, I was back at school working on some of the most unusual tasks I wouldn’t have dreamed possible even two months prior: Staff meetings held by video conference, bagging up the contents of student desks and lockers while wearing latex gloves, planning on having an entire week to wrap things up before distance learning started then finding out at the end of the second day teachers were being sent home for our own safety. That was the tipping point for me, when everything became real. When our principal announced that I had a painful chill surge through my body, then spent the following hour in a hazy panic.
So I’m decidedly locked down into self-isolation now. I’m comfortably supplied up and have more food in my house than I’ve probably ever had at one time before, which is to say I have what would amount to a normal amount of food for a responsible adult who doesn’t have thirty-four places within a mile of his house where he can buy a sandwich whenever he feels like it. It’s helped this weekend that the weather has been cold and windy and wet so there isn’t much reason to leave the house anyway.
Being an off-the-charts introvert, I don’t have much problem being by myself, but even I can reach an isolation breaking point; being introverted is not the same thing as being anti-social or misanthropic, after all. When I went back to school this past Friday to work my shift of returning bags of supplies to the families picking them up, I was very aware it would be the last day in a good long time I’d be seeing any people at all, much less many of the people important to me.
I suspect April will prove to feel like a very long month. I’m hoping to take advantage of all this time at home to clean and organize and do a hundred other things I’m great about procrastinating around, but I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of time killing recreation going on as well. The one thing I know for sure is that I’ll be throwing myself into this distance learning experiment. Keeping involved with my school work isn’t just going to be a responsibility, but one of the things I expect will keep me centered. In the end, it might be one of the few aspects of my life this month over which I’m going to have any control.
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