grinding to a halt

So many changes have come with the virus surging around the world. Flights, drives, jaunts and in many cases, even jogs are shut down or strongly discouraged. Our county still has just three positive cases and all are resting at home - so it's fairly quiet around here.

On the other hand, our workplace has many people out 'sick' meaning they are either ill with something else or in self-preservation quarantine due to previous conditions that the virus will greatly complicate. My work is among the few considered 'essential' so I'm getting my part-time check, unlike many in the USA and elsewhere. Congress is about to finalize a massive injection of cash into the system in several forms, and we're also partway into a home refinance that was being looked at before the viral growth curve began its exponential upswing.

If all goes as planned - a phrase that is getting little use right now! - we will emerge from this better than many others. My elder siblings and my mom are at a far greater level of risk than myself, but this virus is pervasive and not as discriminating as casual onlookers (mostly younger) have been led to believe. Less than 2% who catch it are dying, but they are not all above 85 or confronted with contributing health issues!

Nearly all of us will endure beyond this first phase, and any others that may await. The world will be rather different on the other end of it, I'm thinking.

True March madness

The covid-19 turmoil has led to orders to minimize large groups - and sports organizations have responded. NBA, MLS, MLB and NCAA games are either delayed into April or scrubbed completely. No March Madness basketball.. that's fine by me but a huge blow to casual gamblers who claim they don't actually gamble. Even the PGA is acting by removing spectators after today's first round of the Players championship! And my brother and grandson lost the Shamrock Run spring ritual that was to happen next week.

Add these to cancellations of concerts, Broadway plays, Presidential election rallies and other large assemblies (hmm, southern megachurches?) and it's time to self-quarantine and watch the effects on society.. and maybe some golf.

It will be a strange March. And probably April, and ..no one knows how much longer..

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Update - golf tournament stopped after one round, Masters 'postponed'. No watching golf either!

CoVid∙19

my first CoVid-19 post.
Definitely not my last..

At left is what amounts to a 2020 snapshot of the stock market and worldwide CoVid-19 virus cases. They are not in perfect alignment, but the point is made. Stock prices wavered a bit in late January as China fought the disease on its own; it has now taken hold firmly in Korea and Italy, and about half the countries of the world now do battle with it. The US government has been making many announcements & pronouncements to keep stocks from crashing all at once, but then investors see the true content of those messages - and the drop resumes.

The USA infection chart is below. Ground Zero was an assisted-living home near Seattle, a two-hour drive from home. New hot spots appeared in New York, where one contagious person seems to have caught about forty others before being detected. Scientists now say that most of the carriers show no symptoms when they carry it to others, so it's insidious and hard to trap.

Added to the problem is the slow time to make tests available, thereby assuring US citizens that the spread is far wider than the capture rate. I had two co-workers go home last night; who knows what they have? Our county has declared an emergency despite no positive test results, toilet paper and other staples cannot be found at many stores, and no inoculations will be available for about a year in the best of cases. Unless the chart below is flattened by reducing contact all existing medical services will be overburdened by the simultaneous need for many to receive treatment. It's a frightening time, especially for those of us with elders in assisted living.. and those of use who have read "The Stand", "The Plague" or "The White Plague".
Yes, I've read all three.

Chaos rules.

3/13: Tom Hanks and his spouse, the Canadian prime minister's wife, England's health minister. It's like Fran Goldsmith's list of things to tell her unborn child in 'the Stand'. These people are not gone however, and really about a 10% chance of it. Foretelling on the future is as dangerous here as it is on Roshar.