Do you remember how it started?
The first news reports, most of them fairly measured, about a new virus emerging on the other sides of the world, moving higher up in priority as the days and weeks of the new year passed on? Casually witnessing from what seemed a safe distance as country after country was added to the roster of the ones affected, the number of cases growing at alarmingly geometric rates in so many different locations, the confirmed deaths growing from sad to tragic to terrifying?
How did you feel when the NHL and the NBA suspended their seasons? When theaters closed and concerts were cancelled? When it was declared too risky to be in an enclosed space with more than 250 other people, and soon after that number dropped to 10? The jokes about toilet paper and hand sanitizer becoming the currency of the apocalypse? Trying to a package of Lysol wipes or their generic equivalents of any size, something reliably stocked in any retail store from Speedway to Target, then accepting what seemed impossible when the companies that produced them ran out. How quickly did you shift your mindset into rationing however many you still had on hand?
Did you have a happy Easter this year, while much of the nation was on some version of quarantine? No, it never really was an actual quarantine; it just became convenient to call it that instead of by any of the names different states were using: Sheltering in Place, Safe at Home orders, and so on. We reading social media posts about all the banana bread and sourdough people were trying to make, and saw the Instagram pictures displaying their results. The invention and implementation of societal distance learning came into being, soon followed by memes and videos of how frustrated people were becoming as they struggled to manage their own staying-at-home lives with helping their children learn. Community events became online features — concerts, happy hours, birthdays, proms, graduation ceremonies. All were well-intended but were never substitutes for the real things, the idea of normal from which we felt we were being deprived. That was okay though. We were all in this together.
Everything had happened so quickly and there was still so little we knew about the virus. The safest thing was to keep our heads down and our doors locked. Doctors and nurses and really anyone in the medical profession, particularly the ones working in hospitals where patients were being treated for the virus were held to the same standard of heroism as soldiers putting their lives in jeopardy to protect each other and defend the ideas of our nation. State governments kept us informed about how bad things were, how much worse they were expected to get and by what speculated dates, and what we each needed to do to “flatten the curve.”
Of course it didn’t last. When you put an ignorant and immeasurably selfish jackass in a position to influence the opinions of far too many people who are more than willing to be influenced, the Kumbaya of it all falls apart with very little prompting. Armed protests at state governments, many of which were at least encouraged by the previously-mentioned ignorant jackass, began demanding a return to normalcy. I understood the frustration at the root of these demonstrations, since so many people have had their economic livelihoods decimated throughout all of this, and desperately needed to return to work. After all, some reasoned, the part of the population most affected was the senior citizens, who were already more at risk due to health-related problems. Other people, convinced by the belief in their own invulnerability, had reached their breaking point.
A few weeks after that chaos seemed to return to a controlled boil, the country really did get turned upside down. Suddenly we were looking at the probability of our society going through systemic changes that had nothing to do with the virus.
Here in my state, things are continuing the gradual process of reopening. The current data I’m looking at lists 33,227 cases, with 1,416 deaths. We were in bad shape for a few weeks there, but things have calmed enough for politicians to decide it’s relatively safe to start slipping back into the habits of the old normal, as long as people continue to observe social distancing and wear masks while in public. Which, to no surprise, many people who are either too ignorant or obstinate or believe themselves to be making a political stand by their actions simply don’t. It’s becoming more common for viral videos to show adults throwing honest-to-God R-rated tantrums if employees asks them to wear a mask as they shop.
If we dare to go beyond the borders of my state, things are much worse. The United States has passed the two and a half million benchmark for COVID-19 cases, with, depending on the source, approximately 125,000 deaths. Not only has the virus migrated to states that managed to escape widespread infection in the spring, but its staging comebacks in some that are now having second thoughts about the rate of their openings, and its all happening at rates that put us, as a nation, in the middle of the most aggressive spreading we’ve seen yet. Last night I heard on the news that even here in my state, there’s a been a shift in the affected population: Now the greatest number of new cases is coming from people in their 20s, with clusters of virus spread originating in bars. I guess that invulnerability didn’t work out.
As a teacher, my life is filled with three-word directions: Sharpen your pencil. Write your name. Tie your shoes. Wipe your nose. Wash your hands. Lower your voice. All because kids don’t always know to do the right thing on their own.
Here’s one more for those that haven’t figured it out on their own yet:
WEAR A MASK.
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