March 21, 2020
It has been a week of voluntary self-quarantine for my wife, 8 month old and myself due to the warnings and requests of career epidemiologists and virologists, some public officials, watching the map, and reading reports out of China, South Korea and All over Europe pertaining to COVID-19 (“the Virus”). I left the apartment for groceries at ACME in Jersey City “over by Best Buy” and St. Joseph’s Zeppoles from Giorgio’s on March 19th. Before that, I had gone grocery shopping at Stop and Shop, a few blocks from home, on Friday the 13th. We were in Lo-Fi on March 12 and ordered corned beef from Carpe Diem on St. Paddy’s. Outside of that, all contact has been through FaceTime, Zoom, and Microsoft Tables. Along with an uptick in live social media.
It’s eerily beautiful outside. Not too hot. Not too cool. Yet I worried for a second to even open the windows. I did. I’m one of the "over reactors". I figure if you are too precautious what’s the worst that can happen? You make yourself, and your family an friends, a little more nuts for a couple of weeks. It’s a scary time though to be sure. I wore a mask and gloves and was Super conconcious every thing I touched my last two grocery shopping trips. On the 19th we actually wiped the load of groceries down, piece by piece, before bringing them into the apartemt, leaving the paper bags in the hall. The NIH says the Virus may live in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
This was my first week ever “working from home”. I’ve had pretty much the same desk job for 20 or so years. Remote Access took a few days to work itself out. My computer at work is a slow PC and through the remote app it’s even s…l…o…..w…e…r. Residents calls getting forwarded to my phone is a kind of weird thing. As long as they don’t get my number, I guess I’ll just have to deal with the after hours and weekend calls. There is still confusion. Understandably, working from home isn’t everybody’s immediate priority. Some employees are more tech savvy than others. Some have different home lives. I think there are a lot of people still trying to keep some semblance of normal. There is a lot of unnerving tension literally in the air. As of today Hoboken has 15 confirmed cases of COVID-!9 virus. We live in Jersey City, which has 50 confirmed cases.
The virus is said to have started in Wuhan, China at a “wet market”. A “wet market” is a much less than FDA approved market complete with on premises butchering of wild and exotic animals. Many coronaviruses have been found in bat blood and guano. Bats are butchered in Wuhan wet markets. COVID -19is a coronavirus.
China didn’t report the virus to the World Health Organization (“WHO”) until the end of December 2019, but it is said that Wuhan had it as far back as Mid-November. The First case in the United States was in Snohomish County, Washington in January of 2020. The president described the situationon Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
My wife has been on family medical (”parental”) leave for the school year so far, but will start teaching, see working, from home, starting April 1. Unless they stop the “work from home” portion of “stay at home” or at least the School from Home potion. We are lucky our child isn’t of school age. Working and “Teaching” from home simultaneously is a lot. It is very different even doing the work I have been able to do from home, with our 8 month old crawling, trying to stand and letting us know she’s hungry. Not sure what it will be like if my wife is teaching from home at the same time. And in the tension and uncertainty of EVERYTHING right now….
We will see.
We will see what the Virus brings. We watch NY Governor Cuomo give his press conference every day around 11:00 am. Governor Cuomo has been particularly good over the week. Straight forward, calm, empathetic and relatable. He seems to know what is coming and how under prepared we currently are. I am done watching the president’s press conferences. I try to catch Dr. Fauci when I can on TV and the internet. And by the reports coming out from the surge in testing in NYC, we are going to need more beds, doctors, ventilators, masks, gloves, sanitizers, nurses, bio-hazard staffing… Stay Safe. Stay Home. Maybe I’ll see you on Facebook Live, Instagram, Zoom, Microsoft Tables, Google Hangouts.... Not sure which apocalyptic tin foil hat ping is louder, the fascist feel of actual “lock downs’, or our reality and social interactions becoming even more virtual. My buddy Kuz is right. A screening of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” would be a good idea. But not until after the Virus, as the president putt it “washes through” sometime in the future.
As of 4:30pm 3/20/20 there were 24,148 COVID cases in the US and 285 Deaths.
Stay Safe. Stay Home.
David Calamoneri
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