I have a D&D post in process, but it's been very hard to work on it in the last week and a half. I've finally started some work on one of my miniatures as well that I've been putting off, but my enthusiasm is distinctly lacking, despite my desire to paint this one.
I am worried.
I know I have depression and anxiety disorders. I've been working on them with my mental health provider for almost a year and a half now. The medicines are helping. But my stress level recently has exploded, although I've been trying to keep that more to myself because I want to be funny and uplifting right now.
But maybe funny and uplifting isn't all we need.
Because there is a pandemic happening. And I (and probably most of you) have never had to grapple with what that actually means in real life. Sure, there have been movies about pandemics. But like all movies they like to exaggerate in the ways that bring drama and thrill to the screen. Sure all my friends know and enjoy the board game Pandemic! It's a great co-op game. but the mechanics are very abstract, and as a game it's very hands-on. You're actually DOING something.
But the reality is far different from any of that.
I am trying to approach this as though I'm infected and not showing symptoms. I'm only going out to help the cats at the shelter on Sunday mornings, where we work with strong cleaning substances anyway and they're limiting the number of volunteers present at any one time.
I thought I'd be prepared for this. I'm cautious, and I try to take things seriously without blowing them out of proportion. But I don't think I am at all prepared for reality. (This in itself is nothing new, mind...)
Last week I returned to California from a two week trip to visit my family in Ohio. My mom is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer they found last fall, so even at the end of February I was doing my best to take the pandemic seriously. I was deathly terrified I would catch something, anything in the airport or on the plane and expose mom to it, when the chemo has lowered her immune system already. I'm still worried that I may have done so. So I washed my hands as much as possible in the airports. I washed my hands when I got through security, again at my gate, once before boarding, and immediately upon leaving the plane. I tried my hardest not to touch my face on the plane itself. I washed my hands constantly while I was there. And again on my way home.
By the time I was coming home the country was starting to acknowledge COVID may be a problem. On my way out, it was a message of "wash your hands, don't touch your face". And I took that to heart as best I could not because I was worried about COVID but because I was worried about ANYTHING that I might bring home. On my way back we were starting to talk about social distancing, and possibly self-isolating. But we talked about it as voluntary.
It seems unreal to me that that was only a week and a half ago. Literally 11 days ago I was on an airplane flying from Denver to Ontario, CA. In that time we have changed so much, and yet so little.
The biggest immediate stress here at home is that the colleges Aproustian and Hatstand teach at have moved to online lectures almost overnight. Both of them have been working overtime to revamp their lecture and lab plans to be able to offer their students the best education possible in these wildly different circumstances, with a few days notice (Aproustian) or two weeks notice (Hatstand). In both cases they are having a very hard time adjusting things while worrying about finding the best way to do this, and keeping up with changing directives from the college governance people. (To make things more difficult, Aproustian's dean is in the national guard and may be called up in this crisis, leaving a gap in leadership for her department.) We have converted the guest room into a temporary studio where they have been live-streaming lectures on Twitch and then saving the recordings and uploading them to youtube. Twitch is working 90% well, except for a lag in the chat which makes it awkward for them to field real time questions from students who can attend the lecture time. On top of this, they are worried and trying to find ways to help their international students find support without the Student Services facility on campus. ESL students are especially having trouble with limited assistance. I suggested trying a Discord channel so the students could talk to each other, and that may help. But the whole situation has added a massive amount of stress to our lives that we were not expecting.
We are attempting our best to practice social distancing. The concept is not hard for us; we are a house of homebodies as it is, and there is not much we go out for voluntarily anyway. Aproustian and Hatstand did a shopping trip to stock up on some stuff while I was out, and we did one grocery run last weekend for any other essentials we'd need, anticipating staying here for two weeks to a month. So we're doing alright. But it is still affecting us. I have my weekly D&D group at the local game shop. I want to see everyone, they have been one of my lifelines here for socializing (yes, even a shy, introverted, socially anxious guy like me needs some socializing outside of home), and have been very welcoming to me in the year and a half we've been meeting. I feel like I'm making friends, which is still novel feeling for me. And I'm worried about them, because I know most of them still have to go to work, and some of them aren't sure if they should take this thing seriously. And I suspect several of them are extroverts, and are going to be affected even more than I am by social distancing. I want to help if I can but my social anxiety kicks in and makes it hard for me to know how to offer it.
I just want everyone to be ok. But I know that's not how this works.
And with all this going on in the foreground, in the background my anxiety is getting the best of me with keeping track of the news. I have lost hours on social media reading updates and posts about how things are going. And it's hard to keep track of what is good current information, and what is out of date. Things are happening so fast, that it feels like this has been years despite only being a week. I've tried only to share things that are general information about why we need to take this seriously.
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I recommend this (long, involved) explanation of exponential growth and how the virus is using that against us, and tricking us into thinking this isn't as bad as it sounds: https://medium.com/@Jason_Scott_Warner/why-we-are-not-doing-enough-to-stop-the-pandemic-in-simple-math-1722a5053cda
Summary: the virus spreads before you know you're sick. The number of infected people doubles every 3 days without social distancing, maybe every 12 days with social distancing. So in a month we multiply the number of cases by 1024 without social distancing. And the number of cases reported here is only the number of CONFIRMED cases. We only test people who have severe symptoms and already need medical treatment. So the number of ACTUAL cases is much higher. Minimum 10 times as many people as reported, but probably more like 50-60 times more.
Right now, in LA County, there are 292 cases reported. So ACTUAL cases are closer to minimum 2,920, but realistically probably more like 14,600. And in thirty days... we'd have close to 3 million cases minimum. Of which 15% are fatal. Thats nearly 500,000 people if we do nothing. Even with current social distancing measures, slowing the spread by 75%, we'd have 112,000 deaths in a month. From the virus alone. Add to this the point where our hospitals are overwhelmed, and can no longer provide help to other people. They will have no beds for new patients, whether it be heart attack victims or broken bones or more COVID patients. And more people will die.
That all said, we also need to be conscious of what a serious lockdown will do to those most vulnerable among us. The people who will lose their jobs. The people who will be evicted. That is why if the government does declare such a thing they MUST ALSO provide relief to the people who will suffer in the economic slowdown. There should be a freeze on rent, and all debt payments. This is NOT the time to be worrying about those things! We need to work together to help those who are physically vulnerable to the virus, and we cannot do that if we still need to go out to work in order to survive! (To say nothing of medical bills. Every medical bill should be paid for at a government level at LEAST until this is over...)
And there should be extra compensation for anyone who works in essential services right now, be it medical workers, grocery store workers, gas station attendants, garbage collection. Because these are people who risk more than those of us who can stay home in order to keep us alive.
Even in places (like California) where the governments are finally taking the virus itself seriously and starting to order people to stay home, there also needs to be official consideration for these economic factors as well.
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So this is getting to me. I've been having anxiety attacks on a nearly daily basis, where I have to go sit in a quiet room and just try to breathe. I'm worried about all of you. I want us all to be safe through this. And I've been having trouble reaching out, because I don't want to burden anyone else with my worries, but for once I think my worries are justified (the whole anxiety/depression thing is not helpful to sharing.)
I hope everyone is taking care of themselves. If there is anything we can do remotely that might help you get through the social isolation, let me know. We can do FaceTime chats or Discord groups or try the whole synching a movie to watch together. (I'm always ope to watching Mystery Science Theater or Rifftrax together with friends!) We can do Final Fantasy XIV, or Destiny 2, we could do a remote painting/crafts party where we get in a chat room and talk while we paint miniatures or whatever you want to do. We could do a book club, where we read a book and then get together on a chat platform to talk about it. Or if you have ideas, let me know. (Just know I do not do well with horror movies or zombie movies at the best of times, so I may have to rule those out... but, for example, I've never seen any of the Fast and the Furious movies. And I love watching bad movies as well, I miss SciFi channels bad movie Saturday...)
If you made it all the way through this, thank you. I've needed to write this out, and finally decided my blog was the place to do it. I love you all.
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