The View from the Hermitage, Day 45

I used Zoom last night to chat with a friend I haven't seen in too long. Zoom wasn't too bad, but then I was speaking with just one other person. The husband's department had a faculty meeting this morning using Zoom. That's harder for me to imagine. In Zoom's favor, it was actually very easy to install unlike Skype which I never did get completely installed right before the start of the pandemic.

He Who Shall Not Be Named doesn't want to be unable to get his Big Macs, so meat processing plants have been deemed essential and must be kept open. Never mind that the workers while not dropping like flies are less than safe from the virus there. And now that the plants must be reopened or kept open, employees who choose not to go to work for their own safety will not be able to draw unemployment. Like too many other people right now, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I've read reports that polls show most Americans would rather things stay unopened than reopen so quickly. Still, cellphone location data compiled by the Maryland group investigating quarantine fatigue show that last Friday marked the second in a row that people stayed home less than usual. On Friday, April 24, 29 percent of Americans stayed within a mile of their home; on April 6, 35 percent did. Officials in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia say that while the rates of increase have slowed, there has been no downward trend in new cases or hospitalization rates. I haven't seen odds offered on what the numbers or rates will be like in reopening states in a week and a half, when the magic two weeks since reopening mark is reached. Could be interesting.

My alma mater, Radford University (it was Radford College when I attended) in Southwest Virginia has announced that it will reopen August 3, with in-person classes beginning August 24. I wonder if that will put pressure on the other state universities to follow suit. Virginia Commonwealth University would like to go with in-person classes in the fall if you believe their reaction to the Radford news. Virginia Tech is supposed to announce its decision by mid-May. I think that's about the time UVA will announce its plans, too.

The UVA Health System will start furloughing employees; they're losing $3 million each day. I told the husband that if I hadn't started to retire a year ago, I'd likely be laid off this summer. In a previous budget crunch, the university put all non-student wage positions on hold. I spent a short time--several weeks, I think--not putting in any hours. Of course, when things got better and I went back to work, I basically worked longer to catch up on the time missed, so they saved no money on my position.

The whole tenor of the pandemic has changed from health issues to economic ones. The headlines are not about the number of new cases or deaths or recoveries. They are about unemployment or the costs of reopening. The health numbers are now cited in terms of economics. How must the numbers change to make reopening the economy as safe as possible. Feature articles in print media are as likely to concern unemployed workers as they are to concern first responders or health workers. I wonder how much a decreasing emphasis on the health side contributes to the protests to ease mitigation measures and reopen businesses. I would think that daily reminders of just how many people are dying from covid-19 would make someone think twice about protesting the quarantine and social distancing factors, especially if the protest involved being shoulder-to-shoulder in a large crowd. But hey, that's just me.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 42

The lead article in the Metro section of today's Washington Post is "Experts worry 'quarantine fatigue' is starting." Researchers have looked at smartphone location information and say it indicates the first increase in travel within the US since mid-March, when the pandemic really hit home. People are going out more and not just to necessary places such as the grocery store. Lei Zhang, the lead researcher at the Maryland Transportation Institute at the University of Maryland notes, "We saw something we hoped wasn't happening, but it's there. It seems collectively we're getting a little tired. It looks like people are loosening up on their own to travel more." The declines are not huge--the numbers of people staying home in Fairfax County, Virginia dropped from 46 percent to 44 percent--but they are there.

Virginia's governor and chief health officer have said that there may be some restriction of activity until there is a coronavirus vaccine, which they estimate could take two years. I know a few people who would love to keep teleworking for that time or longer. Teleworking never got old for me, and I did it for twenty-some years.

But what about just staying home? Going nowhere. Existence measured by the distance to the main road or the other cul-de-sac in our small subdivision. I told the husband yesterday, when first reading the comment about its possibly being two years until full activity could resume, that I had no real desire to do out into the world. I'm actually getting spoiled here. I am doing laundry every day (older son leaves his workout clothes when he heads home each morning), but I'm free from another household task that's not my favorite--grocery shopping. That said, I feel bad that older son is doing it for us, to keep us old folks virus-free. I don't think I'd be comfortable with his doing it for two years, though.

I did find myself considering which of various activities I would miss were the current lifestyle to continue. I would miss seeing my mother, though it's not as if I can see her now. And who knows when senior care facilities such as the one in which she lives might relax their restrictions. There are certainly friends I would miss seeing, but I could certainly chat with them on the phone or via Zoom (I still have yet to try that). I would miss working with a trainer, though I guess I could have someone send me workouts to do here. I go somewhat back and forth on quilt guild chapter meetings. I still feel very much as if I don't belong there. People will start talking about some quilter who is a book author or workshop giver, and I've never heard of him or her. I look at the various things brought in for show and tell and know that I could never do the level of workmanship shown. So that one's up in the air. There are certainly people there whom I enjoy seeing; still ...

As someone with no real desire to go to a re-opened anything, I am interested to see what happens with coronavirus rates in two weeks in the states that started to re-open Friday or will start tomorrow. If they have to close everything back up and send people back home, it is not going to be pretty. Once again, I am happy that our governor is a physician and that he seems to have surrounded himself with very reasonable officials. And I do understand that I am not most people when it comes to coping with hermitting. The article cited above concludes with a quote from a public health professor at George Washington University: "The isolation is real. The loneliness is real. We need to add that in our messaging ... We have to acknowledge that it's not easy to stay home."

Tomorrow we start our seventh week staying at home. If it gets harder, I'll let you know.