Hello, my Darling,
It’s been a while since I last wrote. Here’s a quick update on your life right now. You turned 4 a month ago. When I came inside the house you hugged me tight and said, “I missed you.” “I missed you, too,” I said. You give the best hugs ever because they are so filled with love and you actually want to give hugs now. In the last couple of months you have done really well with toilet training and use undies all the time during the day. This doesn’t surprise me because clearly, you are brilliant. Your Grandma J has been teaching you things and you just soak it right up. You can tell your left from right, have known the alphabet by sight for ages, and know your numbers by sight past 10, maybe even 20 by now. You love Disney princesses and your Barbies more than anything else but Cinderella and Elsa especially. You love books and to be read to. You love your brother, too. Many times you have said, “Hims a stinker,” and you are right. He is a little stinker. But he makes us laugh! And he adores you! He tries to do everything you do. I must remember to write more often now that you are growing and changing from a little person into a big preschool-age girl.
I really wanted to tell you about what’s happening in the world right now. Being only 4 you won’t remember any of this. All you will know is the After, whatever that may be. Auntie G was a little younger than you when the Twin Towers in New York City were attacked and fell. She doesn’t remember that day, or the weeks that followed. She only knows the After, the part wherein everything had changed. This will be the same for you.
There is a new virus sweeping across the globe. It has officially been called SARS-CoV-2, for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. The name for the illness is called COVID-19 for Coronavirus Disease 2019. The first infections started in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. I had never heard of this city before any of this happened. If it hadn’t I may have gone the rest of my life not knowing this city existed. Now the whole world knows its name. Scientists don’t know exactly when or how the virus originated. One theory is that it started in an animal (the animal kingdom has a lot of coronaviruses, actually), evolved and jumped to humans through bats. Other viruses have jumped from animal to human before with SARS, MERS and HIV; there might be others before you actually read this. We may never know the exact beginnings. One certain thing is that it was not engineered in a laboratory. It happened naturally.
A website created by a high school student in Washington state is tracking the virus spread across the globe. It’s kind of amazing and frightening at the same time to see the numbers change every few minutes. Five days ago there were 426,648 confirmed cases worldwide, and 18,911 had died. This instant there are 597,004; with 27,361 dead. For the record, the US has 105,012 with 1,708 dead. Michigan has 3,657 confirmed, with 93 dead. The growth rate is partly from getting more and more people tested, and partly because some people just haven’t been good at Social Distancing — keeping away from others. It’s a polite way of saying loosely quarantined.
One phrase that has been used a lot is “flatten the curve.” Honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing everyone say it, “Flatten the curve…” I know the reasons for it but it already sounds like an outdated cliche. In algebra you may have learned (or will learn) about exponential growth. Flattening the curve is what takes place to slow down the growth of the curve. Because this is a new virus no one has any immunity to it so anyone can potentially get it. Exponential growth says that one person spreads it to 4, and those 4 to 16, and those 16 to 64, then to 256, and so one. I’m pretty sure my math is prob’ly wrong, but I think you get the idea. Flattening the curve happens when that one person stays away from others so either a) they don’t spread the virus and they are the only one who gets sick or b) they don’t come into contact with someone who is infected. There are people who are mad about having to quarantine by order of the government. Their complaint is their loss of freedoms and this is just the first step toward a fully socialist nation. I’m not sure what history books and time will have to say about that. I have my opinions. Maybe someday we will be able to talk about it. In a nutshell flattening the curve is: avoid people = avoid the virus = contain the virus = fewer people get sick at the same time = no mad crush of sick and dying going to hospitals = more people survive in the long run. One very wise doctor from Chicago said if social distancing works like it should, the whole thing will be very anticlimactic. She explained it would be as if almost nothing had happened. And that’s what we want — nothing to happen.
We can still leave home to go to the grocery store, get gas for our cars, take them into a shop for repairs, go to the pharmacy and go to other “essential” places. The “essential” places were never specifically spelled out so some businesses and shops have been staying open even if public opinion disagrees with how essential they actually are. The company where I’ve worked since last November decided to close all of its retail stores beginning Sunday, March 15. The original plan was to re-open on March 30. The company has since changed the plan and will be closed through April 19, 2020. I’ll be off work for five weeks for sure. All schools in Michigan have been closed since March 16 with a three-week closure planned. Now some people are saying the rest of the year may be cancelled completely. Around that same time Governor Whitmer told all bars and restaurants to close and could only be open for carry-out or delivery. In the last couple of days nearly everything has been shut down and we have been told to shelter in place. If we must go out we should keep at least 6 feet from other people. Grampa had to go to a store today to get parts to repair the garage door. The store he went to only allowed 100 people inside at a time. Customers could use only one entry/exit door so the greeter person could keep accurate count. This is the first time I’ve heard about a store doing this but it doesn’t surprise me if others don’t follow suit.
A lot of people are worried about losing their jobs when businesses are finally allowed to re-open and people and can get back to work. Some small businesses might not survive the shut down and may never reopen. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 38% in less than 6 weeks going from 29,551.42 on Feb 12 to its lowest of 18,308.42 on March 23 during the day. Congress had been talking about and negotiating a financial rescue package to help stabilize the economy. When the Dow drops so does the economy. (This makes no sense since the Dow is based on the financial performance of only 30 companies. So the whole country goes in the crapper if these 30 companies do. Logical, right?) Apparently investors are very happy and the stock markets are rebounding because Republicans and Democrats decided to play nice and get along instead of point fingers and try to lay blame. Except for President Trump. He just likes to point fingers and lay blame anywhere except his own failings. Yes, I’m very frustrated with the country’s political situation right now, too. Unfortunately the real world doesn’t react as quickly as the stock market and a lot of people could be out of work when this is all done.
The bailout deal worth $2 trillion dollars did get signed tonight. Yup, that’s a 2 with 12 zeros behind it. It will help people who have been laid off or furloughed because their jobs were ordered to shut down and can now claim Unemployment benefits. Usual unemployment insurance rules don’t allow for this sort of thing. I don’t know all that much about unemployment benefits or the rules, but this is an important part of the package. It will help businesses that lost revenue and still have bills to pay. It’s supposed to help hospitals. We’ll see how this all pans out over time. There are lots of other details which I don’t know right now. I do know that any cash payments made to workers will have to be claimed on next year’s tax returns. So it’s not really free money. It’s an advance on next year’s refund, basically, kinda sorta maybe. Again lots of rules I don’t know.
We’re strange creatures, we humans. We can be terribly selfish. When closings started people flocked to stores and bought up all the toilet paper! I don’t know why. They also bought up all the hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes they could find and pretty much anything else in the stores. Food shelves were bare – totally empty. I had never seen anything like it before in my life! I told Grampa this is what it might be like when people prepare for a hurricane. But this was the whole country, not just part of one state. I did not go crazy and buy a lot extra. I did buy 10 pounds of flour in case I needed to bake my own bread, and I got more bleach. That was mostly because it was on sale and I needed it anyway, and I only got what I needed, not gallons and gallons of it. All this buying has led to shortages in places where things like face masks and nitrile gloves are needed most — hospitals, doctor’s offices, senior citizen care homes. Hospitals are running out of things they call PPE, personal protective equipment. So much so that people are starting to sew two-layer cotton face masks at home and donate them where they are needed most. They aren’t a perfect solution but will work.
Hospitals are being overwhelmed. One hospital group in Michigan has 3100 beds total. Earlier this week a news story reported over 600 of them were filled with COVID-19 patients. There aren’t enough tests available to test everyone who comes to emergency rooms with symptoms. At first, those who get tested had to wait days to find out if they had the virus. It’s a new disease so tests didn’t exist at all before this. I guess now there is one that gets results in 24 hours. Scientists are trying to make one that shows results in 45 minutes. Only the sickest of the sick are getting admitted to hospitals. The rest are being told to go home and quarantine there for 14 days and come back if they get worse. And not everyone has the same symptoms, either, unlike getting a cold where symptoms are pretty much the same everywhere around the world. So far people have said they have experienced a dry cough, scratchy throat, low fever, high fever, body aches, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, trouble breathing, loss of sense of taste and/or smell; a mild combination of any of these; a severe combination or these, or no symptoms at all. The worst is having trouble breathing. For many, this turns into pneumonia. That’s what seems to be killing most of those who die. Part of the problem is not having enough ventilators for all the patients who need one. That part is sad enough but doubly so because the hospitals are on lockdown so no one is allowed to have visitors. I can’t imagine how horribly grievous that must be — to be alone knowing your family can’t come to share their love, loss and farewells. Even funerals have been cancelled so families aren’t allowed to say a proper goodbye right now either.
Nurses and doctors are exhausted, frustrated heroes. These amazing people are working endlessly to care for patients with a disease they know virtually nothing about, with new theories coming almost daily on how best to move forward. They are going in every day onto wards filled with people who are sick, contagious and dying. Hospitals are filling to capacity and are starting to use unusual places to house patients to like their lobbies and conference rooms There have been many video reports made by medical staff pleading with people to stay home, wash their hands, practice social distancing and keep away from others. They have also been pleading for supplies like masks and gloves; pleading with leaders to do something — anything– to get more ventilators, test kits, face shields, gowns, N95 masks and hand sanitizer. Businesses large and small have stepped up and are refitting their production lines to make hand sanitizer, face shields, cotton face masks. One of the car makers has pledged to start making ventilators. It makes me wonder if this is what it was like when the country pulled together during WWII to make ammunition, weapons, planes and ships.
O my! This has gotten long. It could be longer if I went into more details but I won’t. This is a strange time. A lot of people are dealing with feelings of anxiety and sadness. Someone wrote that we’re experiencing collective grief. It has been raining for a couple of hours now. Sometimes I think the heavens can feel the sadness of the people below and they just weep for us when we can’t.
It is quite late now and I must go. I can’t wait til I can hug you again and we can say how much we’ve missed each other. You will squirm and tell me to let you go. I can tell you now in advance and you’ll learn it all this time later, that I did not. And I held you closer for just a bit longer. And came back for seconds as soon as I could.
I love you, precious girl, always and ever!
Gram
My Own Little Soap-box 