This morning I canceled the last of our remaining travel plans, an extended family beach vacation in July in North Carolina. This trip has been in the works for over a year now (you might remember that Kelsey, Maria, and Emma requested it), and I'm sad that we won't be able to go. Discussions have been ongoing for a couple of weeks about whether we should cancel or not, with some of my aunts and uncles advocating for a wait-and-see approach and others thinking we should go ahead and cancel because it still won't be safe to travel by July. But the tipping point came today, because I had more hours cut at work (for a total reduction of 40 percent of my hours each week), so not only will it probably not be safe for us to go, it definitely won't be financially feasible anymore. We had rented a house with my mom, along with Janis and Laura and their families. Jan and Laura might still end up going (renting a smaller house for themselves), but Marlene and the Forts are out.
It's Monday, so there's elearning, which means today was bound to be hard. But apparently that wasn't enough for the universe, because now there's a tech problem that means half the kids lost all the apps on their school ipads, so they can't access the assignments. Liam has all his apps, so he's fine, but Max and Henry lost theirs. Henry managed to get his work done, and Max has been using my laptop as a workaround. The other option they gave the kids was to have them use their phones since most kids have smartphones these days. Imagine that for a second: How hard would it be to do a full day of schoolwork on your phone screen? Every kid would have eyestrain and a blinding headache by the end of the day.
Over the weekend, lots of stuff happened nationally, but I'll summarize it by letting you know it's all bullshit. Trump belittled reporters, dodged blame, and used his press conferences to attack his political rivals. More stories came out about the federal government deliberately blocking states from getting the PPE they need. More stories came out about Trump being a damned liar who has known since NOVEMBER that we were headed for this crisis because a dozen different officials from the World Health Organization (which he is blaming somehow?) told him so. Repeatedly. More idiots protested in state capitals, gatherings that put everyone at risk and were encouraged by the president and Fox News. Oh, and guess who's organizing these "grassroots" protests? Conservative political action groups. Color me shocked. The (Republican) governor of Florida ordered all the beaches opened back up, and white people flocked to them in droves. Dear fellow white people: What is wrong with you? Go home! Stay there. Stay alive. Is this "freedom" worth the cost of your life or someone else's? If you answered yes, please re-evaluate and go back to the part where I said you should stay home.
Seriously, you can't look at all these protests and all this idiocy on display and tell me you don't notice that all these protesters are white.
Denver. Photo credit: Alyson McClaren
Harrisburg. Photo credit: Matt Rourke/AP
Huntington Beach. Photo credit: Kevin Chang/LA Times
Indianapolis. Photo credit: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA
Olympia. Photo credit: Elaine Thompson/AP
And while all these people are out and about, likely infecting each other and then bringing the virus back to their communities, around 2,000 Americans continue to die each day. Each. Day. I cannot — and will never ever be able to — understand a mindset in which people think their right to have stores open, their right go to the beach or church, their right to do really stupid things is more important than another American's right to not get infected by a deadly virus. A single other American, let alone 2,000 of them every single day.
In utterly terrifying news, today a five-year-old died of COVID-19 complications in Michigan. She had been sheltering in her home with her parents for weeks, so they're not sure how or when she contracted the virus, but she developed a complication that hasn't been seen before: meningitis. And she's not the only person in Michigan to develop a new complication: a 58-year-old woman developed acute necrotizing encephalitis — a central nervous system disorder marked by lesions all over the brain. Which ... ok then. While we're busy trying to get a handle on how to treat the existing complications, the virus is busy creating new ones. How will this ever end?
Listen, it's been a hard day, and it's hard to dredge up any hope right now. After he came home from work, Mike took me outside for some sunshine and fresh air out on the pasture trails, and that helped a little. But I'm just exhausted. I'm not sick — none of us are sick here — but I'm really feeling the stress and constant trauma of this whole situation. And knowing that we're still just at the beginning ... well, it's tough to swallow today.
Nationwide cases: 787,630. Deaths: 42,687.
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