Quarantine- just the word itself has a bit of a negative connotation, doesn't it? Like there's something wrong with you and you need to be separated from the rest of society. Even when I was a kid, that was a form of punishment imposed by schools: if you did something bad, you went to the timeout corner ad spent time away from everyone else. In prison, only the delinequents who do not follow the rules of the guards get relegated to solitary confinement. Even now, I have been separated away from my wife, who I can't get to without having to risk getting on an airplane and becoming affected by the coronavirus.
And yet, it seems like we are getting closer and closer to a mandatory quarantine here in the US, something that was imposed in China weeks ago to stop the spread of the disease but didn't really hit home or seem realistic until it started affecting us all here in the US......as of this writing there was a rumor that there would be a mandatory quarantine on all US citizens for 2 weeks under the Stafford (Emergency Relief Act)......seems a tough mandate to impose, as America is a free country as opposed to China, and the amount of land mass a quarantine would cover seems impossible to make sure everyone stays inside insid their homes. From a containment perspective a quarantine seems the most aggressive but most effective approach effictively cutting off human contact and the virus's ability to spread to new people, but those 2 weeks would be extremely harsh and detrimental to the psyche of the nation, not sure how long it would take to recover from something like that, financially, spiritually, and supplies/provisions-wise. My parents already reported today that the line at Costco was out of the store and wrapped around the entire warehouse; hard to imagine how magnified it would be were a quarantine would be declared and everyone knew they needed enough supplies to last 2 weeks at home.
(What a difference 2 weeks makes). 2 weeks ago I was getting ready to have a brief work from work, to visiting MJ for spring break beginning the next week, looking forward to baseball and fantasy baseball starting in a couple weeks, to March Madness, to any variety of events, group gatherings, and possibly taking trips to various cities, countries. Now those hopes and desire seem like luxuries and pipe dreams, of having taken granted the ability to move around freely without fear of contracting disease. If anything, the coronavirus has been a wake-up call that even with all our fancy technology and advanced communication methods and information and network, we humans are still frail and weak compared to mother nature and at her mercy, and not just exclusively due to earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters. Humans evolved, but diseases can too......coronavirus is so catastrophic because it can go undetected for days after infecting a human being, allowing that human being to pass it onto others without knowing they are a carrier. A disease for our time.
But I guess if there is a lockdown, gives me a chance to brush up on language skills, binge watch the heir apparent to The Wire as the Best TV show ever made, Succession........catch up on reading, and do what many people do during quarantine: ponder life, how we got to this point, and where do we go from here; in what is quickly becoming a global crisis, it might be nice to press the "reset" button and reassess everything about ourselves and what's important to us, and how important global health is and how quickly it can be taken away from us. And treasure pictures like these when we could go outside freely and enjoy the outdoor world with large groups of other people, something that we might not be as willing to do after this is all over.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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