Threatened

I’m not one to usually feel threatened. When I’m running or biking and dogs run up, they typically don’t bother me; if they get too close, I make loud noises, and they usually back off.

Even with people, I’m not usually bothered. Occasionally I meet a person for work who isn’t too thrilled to speak with me, and I’m usually able to develop some rapport and have a dialogue, even if it’s not overly productive. Also, it probably helps that I’m 6’4″.

I’ve never felt more threatened or afraid in my life than I do now.

World problems always have seemed so distant. Famines and wars are on different continents. Economic collapse is something that happens to other countries.

Not anymore.

This is the world war of our lifetimes.

I looked back at my calendar; a month ago, we met friends from out of town at a museum, then they and their kids came back to play at our house, and we had pizza and ice cream. Stuff was happening in China, but we were fine; the adults chatted about it in a “have you seen how crazy that disease is?” tone.

The following weekend, we were at an academic competition for our oldest kid. It was regional, and there were lots of other schools there also. Our kids won their division, and the privilege to move onto the State competition, and we all booked hotels the next day. Again, if the adults talked about COVID-19, it was more in a “how about that stuff in China?” sort of way.

Even the following weekend, we went to a regional spelling bee. At this point, we were to the “don’t touch anything and wash your hands” phase of things. While the last few kids finished the bee, I took ours to an adjacent library, where I was vigilant about them using hand sanitizer after playing with the puzzles and wooden train. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant, which turned out to be our last time eating out.

That next week, cases started to appear in the US. While I’ve always been reasonably vigilant about hand washing and sanitizing after meeting people, pumping gas, etc., I reached a militant level while out and about for work, and also quit touching my face pretty quickly (and realized that I touch my face A LOT).

Then we got word that I would be working from home exclusively (I’ve already got a job where I’m based in my home office) and school was canceled, both for at least three weeks.

At that point, with still not many cases reported officially in the US, reviews on these policies were mixed. Many thought the response was overblown; that this was just another type of the flu, and what about cancer, diabetes, etc.

I hope it was enough.

Now, as of this afternoon, all non-essential travel is restricted in Ohio. We were already on a recommended stay-at-home-unless-absolutely-necessary advisory, but now it’s essential business and travel only, everyone else stay put.

I hope it was soon enough.

I worry for the older adults in our family. Most are in decent health, but they were also slower to heed the warnings. I worry for the health care workers in our family and friend group, and that they can get the PPE they need to keep themselves healthy.

I worry for our immediate family. This afternoon, my wife thought she may have had a fever; after checking, it went up about a degree, and then came back down. Still, that was an anxious hour.

I worry for our kids. They seem fine, and know that there’s a virus that’s keeping us home. We haven’t gone into details about deaths and hospitals, but hopefully we won’t need to. Hopefully they don’t notice that mom and dad are a little more tense than normal.

I worry for everyone. We live in a small community, and while we haven’t yet had anyone we know be directly affected, it’s coming; there are presently cases in our surrounding counties. I’ve seen social media posts of people I know say here’s a person they know who has it, here’s their story, etc., which is scary.

I just want everything to be ok.