March 26, 2020 – Shut In

It feels like we’ve been shut in forever. But when I look back, I see that the shelter-in-place orders for Oahu and Hawaii only started this past Monday. Four days ago!

Looking further back I see that coronavirus has injected itself into my life for much longer. It goes back to January when Sec. of Commerce Wilbur Ross basically said yeah, people will get sick and die but this is an opportunity for businesses to sort out their supply chains. Foreshadowing what has become this administration’s obsession with the economy over people.

I realize now that we (my immediate family and me) have been slowly dialing back our lives since the end of January. Going out less and less. We already were working from home. Stocking up (but not hoarding). Doing the Costco and Amazon triage of buying and ordering non-perishable things we will need in the months ahead, not just the next week.
By the time the order to shelter-in-place came down last Sunday (five days ago) we had already been socially distancing and washing our hands for what amounts to a month and a half.

No wonder it feels like so much longer than four days. It has been.

Looking ahead we have (at the very least) another five weeks of these restrictions. I’m thinking that they probably won’t end there.

I had picked “resilience” as my watchword for 2020. When I did that I had no idea how appropriate it would be.