Day 45

It's been six months now.  More than that, really.   I started practicing some level of social distancing beginning in early March (not shaking hands, avoiding close contact), but the real lock-down self-quarantine began for me on Friday the 13th of March.  That was the day I saw the supermarket aisles bare and empty of toilet paper, pasta, rice, beans, and most cleaners.  The NBA had already paused their season, as had all other major-league sports, but it was that day, that Friday the 13th when the supermarket shelves were empty, that it started to feel like a genuine panic.  

It was shortly after that the Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, declared a shelter-in-place order for all but essential workers.  Despite the empty shelves, I had already amassed enough food and staples to hold me over for several weeks, a month with a little ingenuity, and I hunkered down to ride out the pandemic.

The infections and deaths from the virus continued from March into April.  Here in Georgia, the first wave of the pandemic peaked in mid-April, with an average of almost 1,000 new cases and nearly 50 deaths per day,  The number of new cases gradually declined in May and June, with a few distressing spikes in the data, and the daily death toll stayed between 25 and 40 fatalities a day before finally starting to subside.

But in late April, the governor reopened the state prematurely and while the numbers remained plateaued in May, in mid-June the number of new cases began rising again, peaking around an appalling 3,500 new cases per day in late July.  Fatalities rose too, with about a two-week lag between the peak of new cases and the peak of deaths.

Even though Georgia was "open for business," I and many of my fellow Georgians stayed hunkered down anyway.  What I initially thought was going to be two weeks in March became all of April, May, June, July, and August as well, and is extending into this month of September. The numbers are starting to come down again, both new cases and daily fatalities, but in both cases we're still well over twice as high as things were at the mid-April peak of the first wave. Out boldest aspiration now is for things to be as bad as they were back in mid-April, when everyone was under order to stay at home.  That's the goal, that's our highest hope.

Of course my initial provisions from March 13th ran out and I was forced to go back to the supermarket.  It took a while to get used to gearing up for food shopping - putting on a face mask, preparing my eyeglasses with a soap solution so they wouldn't fog up, washing my hands and de-conning my groceries when I returned home.  It was a harrowing experience and I'd watch myself for the next several days for any symptoms of the virus.

I'm an old man now and a half-year of my life is proportionally much shorter than a half-year of many other people's lives.  But still, six months is a long time to remain in quarantine, isolated, home alone with only the company of two cats.

I've not gone out to hear live music since mid February.  I've not gone out to watch a game at a sports bar or socialize with friends (although Britney, my adult daughter, has come by and visited a few times).  I've not gone out to lunch, even to dine alone at a fast-food joint.  I've postponed a dental appointment three times now and I've not been to a doctor, an optometrist, or anything since this all began.  I suspect I'm starting to grow more than a little peculiar and strange, but with no one around to benchmark my behavior against, it's hard to know for sure.

I know I'm not unique in this, and I know there are others who are suffering far more than I. Fortunately for me, I'm retired now and living on a fixed income - I haven't lost a job or have to worry about how I'll feed my family.

And I'm not complaining.  I'm just journaling this experience here now to help me remember in the future.  There are the times and this is the record of those times. It helps me to just write it down and get it out of my system.

At this point, I honestly suspect things will continue like this for at least another six to nine months.  If this country can hold it together that long, that is.