CoronaQuarantine, Day 21
So we had our first of what we all already decided will now be weekly Wednesday Zoom meetings yesterday at 5:00. I am definitely counting that as socializing, and it's outside the scope of family holiday get-togethers, so the way I see it, it qualifies for the Social Review. If this does keep up for several weeks, ironically the next Social Review will be packed with a lot of people who don't usually get on it, and with rather high numbers. Last night was a "virtual gathering" of 13 people! Dad and Sherri; Angel; Gina and Beth; Ricky, Rachael and Raiden; David; Christopher; Tristen; Shobhit and me.
Future Zoom meetups may well be even larger: when I posted these photos to Facebook, a couple of people lamented that they missed it, including Jennifer, and Nikki. Ricky said Brandi, who had a baby only days ago, had to take a nap; she'll almost certainly come on future calls, as will still others I'm sure. And one very fortunate byproduct of this was how it sort of bypassed geographical barriers that existed even before COVID-19: it's been many, many years since Dad and Sherri had all four of their kids together. Although we weren't technically "all together" in this instance either, we were still all talking and even able to see each other at the same time, with me in Seattle, Christopher in Wallace Idaho, and Gina, Angel, Dad and Sherri all in Olympia (but still in separate houses).
The pictures and screenshots I took last night that feature all six of us in one photo are the first pictures to be taken of the lot of us since I gradated college in 1998. If you just go by photos of the four of us kids all together, they are the first taken since 2003. It's still been that long since all of us were in each other's physical company, and who the hell knows when it will happen again even after this pandemic is over, but, you take what you can get. And I keep thinking about how the current state of technology is such a huge blessing in the midst of this global health crisis. I mean, I guess even three decades ago if we were all savvy enough (we all would not have been) we could have all gotten o a huge conference call, but being able to see everybody just makes the hugest difference.
Granted, I still had a lot of emotional ambivalence about it. It's still not the same as being able to visit in person, and when the call was ended after maybe 45 minutes, I just felt . . . sad. Everything about these circumstances is sad, and the mandated lack of human contact is the fucking worst of it. In every other kind of catastrophe, being able to turn to each other for comfort is how people get through. And being unable to do that is one of the hallmarks of this particular calamity. The whole thing is just kind of crazy making.
Don't get me wrong, though—I was still thrilled we were able to do this, and really look forward to making it a weekly thing. As I said, you take what you can get. I'm just feeling emotions about all this shit that are pretty unusual for me, as typically I have a very positive outlook and worldview (even with a broader defeatist attitude about humanity's prospects in the face of climate change, which is a separate discussion). It's a pretty different thing, though, when the whole world is looking at an oncoming avalanche of sickness and death, and even those of us who still have work are spending lonely days alone just sort of trying to pretend there is something normal about our radically altered routines.
I would have gladly stayed on that Zoom call for another hour, to be honest—even though we all hung up when it basically petered out and no one had anything left to talk about. What is there to talk about, aside from how a global pandemic is affecting all of our lives? Dad did comment that "It's nice to see everyone looking healthy." Indeed. And it sounds like Dad and Sherri have stayed more isolated than probably any of us, which given their ages (they are in their sixties, therefore "high risk") is for the best. Ricky said he had to go for a run and he hopped off the call first, but that sort of crashed the party and we all said our goodbyes after that.
Dad did ask me what I planned to do about my Birth Week. I still don't know for sure, although it's obviously not going to happen in any standard way this year, or at the time that it should. I suggested I might just shift the whole week off to another time later this year and Sherri quipped, "That's not allowed!" Well, I don't want to outright cancel the whole thing either.
Every time new predictions come out about the broader effects across the country—almost entirely because of the federal government and President Fuckwit's botched response to the crisis, stupidly allowing states to respond on widely varying timelines—they make it sound like this will be worse than we thought, for longer than we thought. Like, we may still be seeing lots of people dying well into July. Ugh. I suppose the sort-of upside is how early on Washington State took action, and we should see the other side of "the curve" earlier than other areas. We'll still be facing widespread curves with their own issues and sickness and death on their own times in other states and regions for many months to come, and there likely won't be any getting around how dispiriting the whole thing is going to be, and already is.
Danielle has been regularly updating me on the number of positive cases at the hospital she works at in Renton. As of this morning, they have 37 positive cases and 8 "PUIs," which stands for "Person Under Investigation." It has been climbing steadily, which was as expected. There has been some news, though, about how maybe Washington State's hospitals won't be as overrun as initially feared because of the early action that was taken with closures and the stay-at-home order. I did text her back this morning how soon they expect they'll run out of available beds, but she hasn't gotten back to me. She's probably working, and presumably busy.
As for the rest of last night, Shobhit got home from work in the middle of the Zoom call, so he was able to say hi to everyone (and get himself a Social Review point, which should make him happy!). After that, we made burritos for dinner, and then we sat down to watch Alita: Battle Angel on HBO Go. I avoided it in theaters because the reviews were so mixed, but then over the past several months people on podcasts I listen to kept saying it was better than it looked, so I decided to give it a try once it was streaming somewhere. It was . . . all right. Not boring, at least. It certainly kept Shobhit engaged, as he lay on the couch with Shanti adorably snuggling next to him.
And now, today: Shobhit was supposed to work 11:15 - 7:45, but he just came back, saying he's not feeling well. We did take his temperature this morning and it was fine, 97.7°. So it's tricky with him; it could be something, or it could be something unrelated to the coronavirus, or it could be he's just whipped up his own worry because he doesn't feel perfect, which he is sometimes wont to do. Who knows? If he's not feeling great, no matter what, it's probably for the best that he's not around other coworkers and shoppers today anyway.
He just told me he's not any less hungry than usual, but his throat was really dry. I honestly think he's just being paranoid, but I suppose you never know. "My body needed rest, I could feel it," he said. He's got sick time that he'll lose if he doesn’t use it anyway.
[posted 12:32 pm]