covid diary: day 21

March has been the longest month of my life. And probably yours too. Thirty-one days, but it feels like a lifetime has passed. On March 1, there were 94 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. Trump was still saying that it was no big deal, just like the flu, everyone would recover quickly, and nothing bad would happen. We were watching the news from China, from Italy, and thinking it could get bad here, but we had no idea. We still really have no idea how bad it can get, but now we know that it can get really bad, really fast. Even in a place like Indiana, which has been relatively low in terms of infection rates. Look at the change in the past 10 days:

Again, that's 10 days. And those numbers are with extremely limited testing. Only very sick people are able to get the test. The majority of people (thank goodness) won't get that sick, so they won't get tested. But look again at those maps, and then think that this is a minority, something like 20 percent of the actual number of people who have this virus. Are you scared? Are you as scared as I am?

And still, I keep seeing arguments that guns/car accidents/flu/whatever kill more people per year than COVID-19. As if that's an argument that we shouldn't be taking this seriously. It's not like the flu; people have no immunity to this virus. There's no vaccine. There's no "coronavirus season" that we know of. And it's definitely not like guns or car accidents. You can't choose not to get COVID-19. You can't choose what you do with it. There are no seat belts (metaphorically speaking) that can improve your chances, and there's no requirement for licensing or minimum education in place that can minimize accidents by increasing knowledge of best practices. Honestly, this isn't like anything else except for a different novel pandemic. You can legitimately compare it to the 1918 flu pandemic, for example. But that's it. And people minimizing this make me so angry because they're not just risking their own lives; they're risking the lives of every single person they come into contact with.

And listen, I get that it's hard. I am so used to seeing my parents, to having the boys see my parents. I value that relationship more than almost all others. My parents treasure the boys, and the boys treasure them right back. I am in constant gratitude that the boys have them to learn from, to spend time with, to know. And in the past three weeks, we've seen them once, across the wide expanse of a cemetery. And we don't know when it will be safe to see them again. It's impossibly hard. And we multiply that by everyone we care about but can't see right now. But we know that this isolation is keeping all of us safer, so we make do with phone calls, with facetime, with texts. We make do.

I'm not going to lie. This sucks, and I'm fairly certain we won't get through it without having it personally affect us in one way or another. But what choice do we have right now except to take it seriously and take any measures within our power to protect ourselves and the people we love?

Nationwide cases: 189,978. Deaths: 4,093.