Plague Journal (1)

I have not been as frequent here as was the plan, but now that I am working from home this may change. I'll try frequent posts during the coming weeks, trying to relay the things I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, as we pass through this crisis. I'm calling it, rather dramatically, my "Plague Journal," recalling Defoe's Journal of the Plague Years. I sincerely hope that "years" is not a relevant term this time around.

Working from home is strange to me. This is only my second day, so I have not yet established a sense of routine. I intend to wake up at the same time as usual, get dressed in the same clothes, make my bed, have breakfast, and be at work at the usual time. Like many people, I am one who is comforted by routine, and will try my best to establish one.

I'll be working half-days only, so after a morning of work I plan to fix myself lunch and then go out for a nice long walk. Yesterday was the first of these daily walks. I passed numerous restaurants either closed or serving take-out only. Bars closed. Grocery stores open but at that time of day feeling like ghost towns. I pass a group of Boomer-aged people, 3 couples out walking like myself, standing "together" talking but keeping widely separated.

I have a strong case of normalcy bias. I expect things to be as they have always been. Therefore, I tend not to expect the worst. This bias has often stood me in good stead, but this time it nowadays it seems obsolete. At the beginning of this crisis, I thought the press was perhaps overplaying the doom scenarios. That was my normalcy bias kicking in. I think a lot of people thought the same. And in fact I still have some skepticism about the worst predictions, but each passing day is chipping away at that skepticism. At this point I have to admit that the way the world will look at the end of this crisis may be very different than the way it looked at the beginning.

But I am not worried. Not much. That is, I am deeply concerned, watching the news, checking the CDC website and the World Health Organization for facts, and following all the instructions about hand-washing and social distancing (when I remember to), but I am not engulfed in fear. I'm trying to stay rational, live in the moment, and carry on as best I can. I get the feeling that most people around me are doing the same.

It feels good to have data, even if the data is alarming. I've created some spreadsheets on my laptop to track the figures coming out of the CDC and the WHO. This gives me some numbers to look at and try to assess, rather than listening to predictions of the future. The CDC updates its stats at noon each day, and yesterday the number of deaths increased by 30% in one 24-hour period.  I realize that this percentage may fluctuate sharply from day to day, but if we average a 30% increase every day for 10 days the number of dead will rise from yesterday's 97 to over 1300!

Here is the best blogpost I've seen this morning on the situation. See you tomorrow.