In the last week or so, developments around the coronavirus have gone from "a nasty thing that's happening to those poor folks over there" to "holy shit, people I know could die." It occurred to me last night that it would be appropriate and possibly a meaningful personal exercise to log some of the experiences my family, friends, and I are having in this time, unique in my lifetime. So, it is my intent that this be the first in a series of posts related to SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 disease it causes, and, especially, what's happening in my small part of the world pandemic.
This time last week, I was on day five of a particularly nasty flu. It was the first day that I could detect symptoms attenuating, although that was only the subtlest change and I was far from recovered; since the previous Tuesday, my lungs had felt like I was breathing ammonia fumes, I was coughing frequently and often painfully, and was generally achey as hell. News of SARS-CoV-2's expansion from epidemic to pandemic filtered into my bedroom only in small, disjointed pieces, peppered in between episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marvel movies, and long naps. Once I was recovered enough to be cognizant of what was happening, I discussed with my wife and business partner taking the precaution of preparing to transition my private psychology practice to telepsych -- psychotherapy conducted by video chat. It seemed a prudent thing to have as a backup.
Over the course of the week, my RSS news feeds transitioned to nearly exclusively coronavirus coverage; even some of my favorite comics had begun featuring public health awareness topics. By midweek, both my daughters' and my wife's schools had closed or announced plans to close by the weekend and local government announcements became increasingly dire. As Italy, and now Spain and France, have gone into lockdown, the theme seems to be get ahead of the train. By the end of my workday today, it became clear that my family's best course of action is to self-quarantine.
Writing that feels a bit over the top. I'm not impulsive, at least not when it comes to big life decisions. It has taken quite a bit of steady, strong evidence to convince me that we -- my family, my community, my country -- are at significant risk, but I am convinced. The resources I respect, the science community, public health institutions, level headed friends, are fairly consistent in their assessment that we need to pay attention. So, while at this moment I can hear kids playing outside my window and the birds raucously feeding in my backyard, it feels incongruous that in a week or two my city's hospitals could be overwhelmed with people with collapsing pulmonary systems and my community could be in a police-enforced lockdown. Yet, it appears that those scenarios are not beyond reasonable expectations; thus, I act, even as it feels over the top.
I remember a similar feeling at least once before: August 23rd, 1992. Meteorologists were predicting that Hurricane Andrew would come ashore some dozen or so miles north of my ground-level South Beach apartment and the city was evacuating. Under an eerie foreboding, my brother and I picked up everything off of the floor, packed up the cats and some overnight bags, and headed to a friend's fortified apartment in South Miami, well inland and, so we thought, further from the storm. A long, frightening, largely sleepless night later, we emerged from our impromptu revetment to a changed world: the familiar neighborhood was unrecognizable, a tangled jetsam of power lines, roofing, and tree detritus.
Today feels similar, although the timeline is multiplied a few dozen times. From my experience with Hurricane Andrew, and other events, I know the world can change, sometimes in an instant. It is rare that we get warning; it is good to heed it when we do.
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