Pandemic Narrative, Part 6

Tuesday evening, April 7th. As I suspected, the number of COVID-19 cases in Minnesota surpassed one thousand as of today. Friday at midnight is supposed to be the end of our state’s “shelter in place” experience, although regardless of whatever individual governors are choosing to call it, we all recognize it for the quarantine that it is. I’m trying to remember to listen to his daily 2:00 P.M. briefings this week, even though they fall right in the middle of my afternoon distance learning office hours. I highly suspect that date is going to be extended for some time considerably beyond Friday at midnight. 

I just got back from taking the dog for a walk. Today was the first undeniably warm day of the year, the first day when there isn’t even a hint of cool or chill in the air, when the temperature has crossed over from that neutral range of degrees between cool and warm and took its first tentative steps toward warm. It felt wonderful. It put me in mind of spring days from the past when that first warm day hits. The kids at school would be in shorts by now, complaining about the classroom being too warm instead of asking if they can go out to their lockers and get their jackets to wear. As we walked through the neighborhood, I half-expect to smell someone out grilling. In any normal year we might have crossed paths with neighbor Max taking little Molly for her walk, or stopped to talk with neighbor Dave for twenty minutes or so, because he’s the kind of guy you stop and talk with for twenty minutes when you see him out on your evening walk. 

Tonight though, outside of a woman I didn’t know getting her mail, then waving and hurrying inside when she saw us approaching, we didn’t see anyone. I’m honestly beginning to wonder if things are ever going to go back to what we once thought of as normal life. I can see too easily how that might not happen. For all this talk about when businesses will open again, or when sports will start being played, or whether or not summer festivals will get manage to meet the dates to which they’ve been postponed instead of cancelled altogether, nobody knows a damn thing about what’s going to happen. Flatten the curve? We’re all in this together? America strong? No. NO. I contend this is nothing but happy-ass propaganda with no purpose other than anesthetizing people with blind hope. This pandemic is in it’s nascent stage, and there are too many people who have everything about it surrounding them who still aren’t taking it seriously. I’m not saying 99.4% of the population is going to be killed off by it, while the American survivors will either congregate in Boulder or Las Vegas and prepare for the ultimate battle between good and evil. However, I do think this experience is going to leave societal scars, and they’ll be the kind that will redefine what normal life could be for decades to come. 

I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m just feeling overly-dramatic about everything tonight. I just don’t think we’re going to walk this off so easily once the curve is flattened.