Who Would Have Thought? A Pandemic!?

In January, we started hearing about this new virus circulating in China.  It's called COVID-19 or Corona Virus.  This disease is crazy!  For some reason, it has a very high mortality rate in the elderly, and kids are mostly unaffected.  People can have it and not even know.  But, others get it, and it kills them reasonably quickly.  Some end up on ventilators and have a 40% chance of living, while many just get a small cold.  It's VERY contagious and has a 2 weeks incubation period.  It spreads rapidly without any sign.  Until it's too late...

But, I wasn't too worried about this disease because it was in China.  We'd had a few scares over the last 15 years or so, but they have always managed to stop the illnesses from getting into the US population.  But, this time, mistakes were made, and it is here.  In Fact, it's everywhere.

So much has happened in the last 6 weeks, and I want to put some of it here for a record.  COVID popped up in Washington in a nursing home.  Then it spread to New York and California.  Once we had heard that, we knew there was no avoiding it.  It had to be everywhere.

I will never forget Thursday, March 12, and the entire week after.  Things got very real, very fast.  First, President Nelson canceled church and gathering for General Conference.  Nobody would gather at the conference center.  Every national Athletic Association and then college athletics canceled events until further notice.  Schools all over the nation began to get canceled and announced that online school would begin until further notice.  Eventually, the governor ordered us to shelter in place, which means we need to stay home unless we had an essential job.

I made three trips to different stores to be sure I'd have what we needed and some extra to get through this.  I think I spent around $1000 on food.  Thankfully, I had saved some money because we were supposed to be going to Palmyra, New York, on March 25.  Everyone seemed to have the same idea as me. Only they bought toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and every cleaning supply you could find, and I didn't think of that, so we don't have much of that.  But we've been ok.  The stores are finally starting to catch up with the demand.  All stores, pretty much are taking online or phone orders and bringing them to your car.  Life is just so strange right now.

It's hard to explain all of the emotions I felt.  Fear, uncertainty, unease, shock, and I just kept asking myself if this was really happening.  This doesn't happen in the US in our day.  For many mornings I'd wake up, and a few minutes later, it would dawn on me that we were in this crazy situation.  I am now my children's teacher with the help of the online school, and we are stuck at home.

Almost 6 weeks later, it's almost hard to remember what life was like before.  We don't really see anyone, and if we do, we are supposed to stand 6 feet from each other.  It feels weird.  If I see someone who isn't following the rules, I instantly judge them.  I know this is horrible, but it's just so odd to have these kinds of feelings.

I found this post on Facebook and took a screenshot because it perfectly described how things have gone.

I love the end of it because it says, we have so much!  Be Thankful, Be grateful.  Be kind to each other-love one another-support everyone.  We are all one.

It begins to talk about the silver linings I've seen.  This post is getting long, so I'll post next about the blessings we've seen through all of this.

March 29, 2020

April 19, 2020