Today’s Sick-O-Meter lists 5057 cases of COVID-19 today in Illinois.  Actually, I believe those are yesterday’s figures, so we can expect a few hundred more by day’s end.

I’ve stopped watching both the federal and state government’s updates on the virus.

What’s the point?  My watching is not going to change the outcome or my personal situation.

My personal situation is physically healthy but I am sliding towards fiscal disease.  I am not working and have a mortgage and other bills to pay.  Thanks, COVID-19.

I have one friend I am desperately worried about.  She has called and is hyperventilating.  She is prone to anxiety and is worried about her own wellness and her sons, both of whom are adults and still working and are adults and living away from her.  She lives alone, and while still working remotely she has to go into her job site to finish monthly reports.  She is afraid to go in. There is little I can say to calm her down.

“I can’t even hug my sons,” she blurted.  “I’m just here by myself.”

Many of us are.

There is only so much cleaning a person can do or feels like doing.  Same with home projects.

The Novel Coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, is only spread by humans, so the thinking has been to keep humans apart as much as possible.  Supermarkets do this by placing X’s on the floors, there are no large gatherings allowed, and every “non-essential” business is shuttered and sinking into insolvency.  We are alone together.

Nun wearing mask, 1918. NY Times

Soon the US Center for Disease Control  CDC is expected to announce that masks are necessary for everybody when in public, reversing the advice given previously that masks are not needed because they do not stop the transmission of the virus and because we, as laypeople, just are too darned stupid to know how to put a mask properly.  This sentiment has been dutifully echoed by a media here in the US that never bothered to question the efficacy of masks to fight the spread of COVID-19.   The World Health Organization WHO stands by the advice still that people do not need to wear masks.

What are we to think with contradictory messages coming from the same source?   Are we to believe that new data suddenly appeared to change the official advise, or will w believe that somebody’s been lying to us from behind their masks?

What will my friend think all alone in her house, having been to the supermarket without a mask just two days ago?