Special edition: stay the hell home
If you can, that is
Hello, friends. Just wanted to drop into your inbox to tell you to not panic and to START SOCIALLY DISTANCING IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY.
We’re in the middle of an official pandemic and one of the only ways to save lives at this point is by “flattening the curve” — that is, making sure we don’t overload our already shoddy health-care systems by all getting sick at once. If you are at all able to work from home and avoid contact with other human beings — even just one-on-one contact! — please do so. We simply don’t know who does and doesn’t have coronavirus right now. Our nightmare government hasn’t been able to get a testing regime in place and the virus can live in you, undetected, for weeks at a time, meaning you could feel perfectly healthy and unknowingly give it to someone, or vice versa.
So if you care about other people and their well-being, live your life as if you’re already infected. Wash your hands, wear gloves, etc. If you haven’t already, get food and other supplies (but don’t do overkill on that — others need them, too) while stores are still open and reasonably well-stocked, then shelter in place if at all possible. Don’t go to that party, don’t go to that concert, don’t do anything involving other humans unless it’s absolutely necessary. (Oh, and absolutely don’t listen to anything the Trump administration, including the CDC, is telling you.)
Think I’m being paranoid? Read these posts:
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-quarantine-cancellation
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-cancel-everything/607675/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30567-5/fulltext
https://qz.com/1816060/a-chart-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-shows-why-social-distancing-works/
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/9/21171674/coronavirus-epidemic-canceling-events-outbreak-reduction
Happy to send you more links if you’re not convinced.
Stay safe out there, folks. This is gonna be a rough one.
Love,
A