Coronavirus: Stay Home!

Stay Home Executive Order in VA

On Monday, Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia issued Executive Order No. 55 (2020) which ordered all of us Virginians to "stay home" until June 10, 2020, effective immediately.

Actually, we have been staying home on a voluntary basis for the last two weeks, along with most businesses, schools, restaurants, hotels and just about everyone else, unless they are classified as performing an "essential service." (I don't think I have ever done anything "essential" in my life).

Now we will stay at home under threat of being charged with a Class 1 Misdemeanor.  Why?  Because of this little trickster, the brand new Coronavirus known as COVID-19.

The "Stay Home" Order has a few exceptions such as going out to get food and medical supplies, walking the dog and exercising outdoors, while staying six feet apart from anyone and avoiding any "large gathering" (more than 10 people).  So, no concerts, sports events, church or any other big group activities.  

I never thought that my first blog of the year (yes, I am getting lazy), would be on such a bleak topic.  However, I wanted to reach out to family and friends, to wish them well, encourage them to wash their hands, follow orders, be sensible and to tell them about our "Stay Home" life so far.  Here are a few thoughts and reflections.

Living in an Empty Mall

As you know, our apartment building is on top of a huge shopping mall, opposite a Sheraton hotel, three major restaurants and a 16-screen AMC cinema.  To say that this is a "busy" place is an understatement.  Viewed from our 21st floor eyrie, the Plaza below is bustling with people at all times of the year--they even have big fire pits out there to keep people warm in winter.   It is especially bustley (I don't think that is a word) in the summer months when they also have food markets and big concerts on the Plaza.

This photo was taken at noon on March 17, well before the Executive Order was signed.  Tysons Corner Plaza is totally deserted.  No people, no traffic on the road and no cars jam-packed in five story car parks. 

The Mall itself is still "open" to foot traffic because there are two restaurants in there that are preparing meals for take-out.  It keeps a few people employed.  But all the big stores like Macys, Nordstrom, L.L. Bean, Bloomingdales and hundreds of other stores are shuttered.  

I walked in there the other night to go pick up some food from our favorite restaurant, Coastal Flats.  There were two chefs and a manager preparing and putting out your boxed orders on a table just outside the restaurant.  The manager told me that they were "surviving" on the take-out trade but hardly.  It was so sad to see a totally empty Mall at 6PM.  You sort of expected to see Zombies staggering around looking for someone to eat.  I don't think they do take-out.

We are also ordering take-out from several other small local restaurants a couple of times a week to help them keep going.  Are we performing an "essential service" by eating?

VITA Apartments

Our 30-story apartment building has about 380 apartments.  I don't how many people live here but well over 700 probably.  Just like the Plaza below, in normal times, there is a certain "energy" in this building. People are whizzing up and down in elevators, using the gym and swimming pool, BBQ-ing on the roof and third floor terrace, using the big TV room, playing pool and shuffle board and generally milling around the Concierge desk trying to pick up their mail and boxes from Amazon and elsewhere.  In other words, it is a circus.

You can hear every language from Arabic to Urdu and Russian to Swahili.  You see ladies wandering around in full burka mode in the corridors; and young things in skimpy bikinis on the way to the pool on the roof.  Very international and very entertaining.  If you love people-watching, this is the place for you.

Fast forward to today.  All common areas except the Lobby are closed.  There is a rail around the Concierge desk to keep you six feet away from the ladies and gents who serve there. You rarely see anyone in the elevator any more and if you do, they tend to cringe in the corners.

The corridors are empty, the four levels of car parking in the basement are full because everyone is home, the Management Office is now "virtual" and everything is done by e-mail or phone, the Leasing Office ladies have all disappeared and even our friendly security and maintenance guys seem to have melted away. We are in Lockdown.  Maximum Security. Lights Out.  Silence. No Banging On The Bars. And other words starting with Capital Letters.

I used to talk to all sorts of people all the time.  I patted a lot of dogs in the elevator and knew many of them by name--Bear, Tai Tai, Frisky and an adorable little French Bulldog puppy called FiFi who had a pink collar and liked to chew my ankle. No more.

Now you tend to just smile at complete strangers because they are your "neighbors." Some actually talk to you or just look embarrassed.  How can 700-plus people stay so quiet and absent?  It feels like that spooky hotel in the movie "The Shining."  It will be just my luck to bump into Jack Nicholson with an axe in the Recycling & Trash Room one day.

All I can say is that people are going to retreat ever further into the recesses of VITA Apartments for the next 2.5 months now that we are actively and forcibly being ordered to STAY HOME.

Life in Confinement 

If you are retired, life is more or less the same.  You get up in the morning, have a leisurely breakfast, read the news online and, in a state of shock at Trump's latest outrage, quickly switch across to Entertainment, Books and Weather to help you calm down.  You then might plan an expedition to the local supermarket (one of the permitted external activities), go for your daily walk across the Metro bridge and into Tysons 2 or, before the compulsory Stay Home Order, drive into Maryland to walk along the C&O Canal.

After a light lunch, a nap maybe. Then read e-mails, pay bills, read books and, perhaps, another quick breath of fresh air.  Then about 5.45PM hunt through the cocktail cabinet or open a bottle of wine to prepare for the 6PM BBC News.

Dinner is prepared and Netflix or Amazon Prime is fired up for a movie or documentary or some Spanish tele-series which seem to be more gripping than the Turkish ones.  And certainly more exciting than Agatha Christie murders in small English villages and French slashers in large Burgundian  towns.

(Confession: my all-time favorite series is "Berlin Babylon," the darkest and most devious German thriller set in the Weimar Republic with Nazis and Communists engaged in murderous intrigue. Nobody else I know has ever watched it.  Hmmm....I wonder what that means)?

Next day, repeat process!

Now, the above may sound rather unexciting but a lot of baking and cooking is also going on.  You are discovering new things.  You are experimenting.  You are reading books that you bought some time ago but never read.  The Life of Trees.  Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister.  Hilary Mantel's doorstopper The Mirror and the Light (771 pages printed on very thin paper).  An Impeccable Spy--Stalin's Master Agent.  And so on.  

You are sorting through 27, 287 photos in your iPhoto Library and trying to delete as many as possible.  You are creating a few Shutterfly photobooks.  You are actually doing some Spring cleaning, pulling out furniture and hoovering and Swiffering.  An odd blend of cleaning fluid smells and the aroma of scones and pandesal waft through Apt. 2102.  Yes, Regee is making pandesal and they are divine.

We make calls to family and friends wherever they may be.  Last weekend, Regee and I spent 1.5 hours on a Zoom session connecting us to her scattered family in New York, Boston, Hanoi, Zurich and Amsterdam at the same time.  The wonders of modern technology.  And, before the boom came down on Monday, I was able to walk Sarah's dog through the woods outside her house in D.C. in glorious Spring sunshine.  Life was good.

I doubt whether it will change very much under the new Executive Order; but the thought of staying home under duress until June 10 is a little daunting.  But it is necessary if we are to survive the Coronavirus and the other great menace--Donald Trump!

COVID-19

I started doing a little research on this latest member of the Coronavirus family.

When I think of a virus, I imagine some microscopic organism bent upon mischief, cunningly plotting to take over a few of your cells and to wreak havoc via flu, HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS etc.

I was a little shocked to discover that COVID-19, according to a Johns Hopkins website, is NOT a living organism.  It is feeble, fragile and mostly inert.  It is a protein molecule (DNA) covered by a layer of lipid (FAT) which, when absorbed by cells in your eye, nose or throat, changes their genetic code (MUTATION) and turns them into aggressor and multiplier cells.

Holy Mackerel, put that way it does sound really horrific.  Essentially, a Zombie waiting to latch onto some living cell and then going into wild replication.

We know that several members of the Coronavirus family originate in a specific species of bats, that the virus is passed onto another animal (a civet cat in the case of SARS or a dromedary camel in the case of MERS or monkeys in the case of Ebola) and that the virus can then be transmitted to humans.

They still don't know what animal transmitted COVID-19 from bats to humans.  I have read that it was from Malayan pangolin which were smuggled into China.  They are found in wet markets in South-East Asia and prized for their so-called medicinal qualities.

The COVID-19 strain has allegedly been traced to the Wuhan Seafood Market in Hubei Province, China, which sold a whole range of fish and both farmed and wild animals.  At least, some of the first people to go down with COVID-19 were stall owners, employees and frequent consumers of live or butchered produce at the Wuhan Seafood Market.

However, I found it interesting that one study (origin not stated but maybe Chinese) found that the very first person to be treated for COVID 19 in Wuhan on December 1, 2019 had absolutely no connection whatsoever to the Wuhan Seafood Market!  A mystery waiting to be solved.

Whatever the origins of COVID-19 and related Coronaviruses, we know that humans pick them up from contact with animals carrying the virus and, in large part, from EATING animals that carry the virus.  I admit to being a meat eater (chicken, beef and pork, but not in vast quantities) so I don't want to sound holier than thou about meat eating.

HOWEVER, it is about time that the human species started think about eating a lot less beef (a horrendous contribution to climate change); less meat in general that is produced on an industrial scale; and certainly less wild or exotic animals that have mythic medicinal qualities.

I totally get that people all over the world have to eat whatever protein may be available; but do they have to eat wild animals that are now KNOWN to carry dangerous viruses that might kill us all off very rapidly if we don't change our eating habits. Who would have thought that this "fragile, feeble, inert protein molecule" known as COVID-19 would have the power (as of today) to kill 44,155 people and affect 883, 225 other people?  And the pandemic is only just getting started in many countries in the world, especially here in the USA.

Some reflections

I have seen photos from around the world of clear skies, clear waters, empty city centers and major highways with little or no traffic.  The world has only been confronted by this pandemic for a few months but, remarkably, is cleaning itself up rather quickly when humans wind down their activities.  I can see distant mountains which I have never seen before. But the sunsets are not so dramatic without the traffic and general pollution.

We are staying at home for the next 2.5 months because it is estimated to be the peak period here in the USA.  Peak periods will be different in different parts of the world.  Economies will stagger back to life at different times and with different success rates.

But here are some of the the big questions we should be asking about the future even in the midst of this vicious pandemic.

Do we really want to:

• go back to horrendous pollution on a global scale? 
• ignore the real costs of not preparing for the inevitable next pandemic(s)?
• maintain our sick dependence on fossil fuels when we have so many proven alternatives?
• continue with our insatiable hunger for meat produced on an industrial scale? 
• spend our national wealth on wars, standing militaries and conflicts around the world which are just plain stupid and promoted by sick old men and sick old ideologies? 
• continue to pay the most important and most giving people in our societies lousy and unsustainable wages: first responders, nurses, mid-to-lower levels of medical staff, teachers, care-givers in general, agricultural workers and anyone else who is surviving (or not) on so-called minimum wages?
• tolerate the leadership that has been on display around the world during this pandemic when many governments have lied, misrepresented, obfuscated, denied, distracted and dismissed warnings and facts about the spread and consequences of this pandemic?  Names like Xi Jinping, Putin, Trump, Johnson, Duterte, Oban, MSB and many others spring to mind. 

I am sure there are many other questions too.  But if we cannot do any or some of the above, then we will be condemned to a lot more "staying home" in the future.

You may want to have a look at this article from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/human-impact-on-wildlife-to-blame-for-spread-of-viruses-says-study-aoe?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVS19XZWVrZGF5cy0yMDA0MDg%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK

In my humble opinion, we have to fundamentally change the way we live if we want to survive as a species.  We MUST change if we want to leave our children and grandchildren a world which can support its population in a sensible and sustainable way.

STAY CALM, STAY SAFE.