Coronavirus...A Personal Diary
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March 16, 2020: We weren't anxious about the coronavirus until last Monday, March 9 after we arrived home from our Florida road trip vacation. We plopped on the couch to unwind and catch up on the news after the 12 hour drive, but unwinding wasn't in the cards. It was clear to us that the virus threat was accelerating and out of control not just in other countries, but in our own as well.
Despite the fact that we'd rebounded from the anxieties 2008 financial crisis and the panicked 9/11 attacks, worried looks said this was something different. Then we remembered that the SARS, EBOLA and MERS pandemics were deadly for many, but actually didn't affect our personal daily lives. Perhaps this coronavirus would be the same. But, with a president who can't remember who he directed to close the federal pandemic response team in the first weeks of taking office, we knew it was going to get worse before it got better. We just didn't know how worse.
By Friday, on March 13 (yes, Friday the 13th), our president's head-in-the-sand approach metamorphosed into an all-hands-on-deck with arms swinging chaotically approach. To paraphrase our president, he said that it's serious, but we still have it under control. What kind of control is there as you watch your retirement portfolio spiral down 20% in less than a week, just like a fighter jet hit by enemy fire. It's panic in the markets. What kind of control is there as grocery stores have their shelves swept clean of not only sensible hand sanitizer and face masks, but also of toilet paper and paper towels. It's panic in the public. Now, like most everyone, our everyday lives are Topsy-Turvy. We're closeted away from everything we enjoy -- time with our friends and family, theater, galleries, museums, restaurants, local spring street fairs and farmer's markets. Even my volunteer work is restricted completely to online only.
For ever the optimist, I kept hoping that the threat would decrease, not increase. But just watching the news a few minutes ago confirmed there is not hope that our comfortable middle-class retirement life will return to any kind of normalcy before the end of the summer, perhaps the end of the year. Countries are sealing their borders.
We'd dismissed the idea of canceling or changing our own summer travel plans earlier this week. Surely, this pandemic panic will have settled down by late May, our departure window. But now, today, I have serious doubts. Especially after my sister's 40-day cruise to Australia, New Zealand and the south seas was abruptly aborted half way through. Like me, she's keeping positive despite the circumstances. "At least we got half way through the trip and their refunding and giving us credits for future trips," she wrote in yesterday's email. Then, this morning, my girlfriend vacationing on Sanibel Island is heading home a week early, afraid that an island or Florida state containment order might prevent her return to North Carolina.
When people we know are directly affected, we don't need to listen to the news anymore to make decisions. We canceled our Southern Italy cooking school classes for mid-June. We're waiting for our international air tickets to transform themselves from non-refundable into refundable. Not only would that be a miracle, it would be one of the few events lately that would bring a smile to our faces.