Quarantine Day 54...Blah

March 13 seems like a very long time ago. We've settled into a routine, and adapted well enough that it almost seems hard to remember sometimes what it was like when it wasn't like this. Which is both good and bad.

We are fortunate to be in a school district that was well positioned to move to some semblance of online learning (everyone in the high school already had a Chromebook), so Grace's schoolwork is moving along, if somewhat slowly. Julia's work training programs through the Special Ed department can't continue, so they are giving Julia some around-the-house assignments with life skills things, but she is impacted more than Grace. Amp and I are both still working, at least as of now, so we take that one day at a time. My company may be doing more Covid-19 testing than any other lab in the country, but not many people are going to the doctor for anything else, so overall testing demand has crashed (which is all public knowledge). Our leadership has put measures in place to help us ride things out, at least for a while, so there are no guarantees but so far so good. Dialysis isn't optional, so Amp's company forges ahead, and I must say that they have been terrific in taking care of their employees from what I can see. She's only been with them for a few months, but I am very impressed.

Most importantly, we are all still healthy. Knock wood.

That being said, it's undeniable that some days are "blah".

Ryder says "blah" too

Grace asks sometimes what I think the summer and fall will look like. Impossible to answer of course, but we don't try to sugar coat anything for her. Some things will likely begin to move a little bit toward more normal as states take different approaches to reopening, but it isn't going to be anything like normal for a long time.

I fully expect the disruption will carry well into the next school year, if not well into 2021. It's very unlikely at this point that we will be going to the Shore for a week in the summer as we usually do. Band Camp that runs for 2 weeks in August is no sure thing. For that matter, we may not need a marching band routine because there may not be a football season in the fall, at least not the way it normally would be. Or band competitions. School may not be back to normal by when they are supposed to go back the week before Labor Day. The Addams Family is the musical scheduled for the fall, but who knows about that either. In other words, who knows about anything. The message to Grace, then, is don't count on anything and just take things one day at a time.

States reopening too early could make the summer bad in places (if not everywhere). A second wave could make the winter bad. I read an article with loads of historical graphs and charts that detailed a sobering scientific reality. Epidemics invariably come in waves, and the second wave is invariably the worst, not the first...

I hope I am wrong about all of the above, of course.

But it would be nice if we believed in the science. It would be nice if we were planning and preparing better than we seem to be, rather than incompetent leadership sticking its head in the sand and hoping everything turns out OK. Unfortunately, we seem to have moved into the "I can't get reelected unless the economy gets better so the death count no longer matters to me" phase of the proceedings.

We hope it just goes away in the summer (despite the fact that the virus thrives in the tropics).
We hope that it won't come back, despite the fact that they all come back.
We hope that a vaccine that is safe and effective is developed faster than any vaccine has ever been developed in the history of humankind.
We hope a lot of things.

Hope is not a plan.