The Eye of the Storm

Today I journeyed into the eye of the storm of the coronavirus pandemic: I flew cross-country on not one, but 2 separate airplanes, from Los Angeles to Phoenix, and from Phoenix to Durham. Don't try this at home, especially while we're all supposed to be at home.

It was not ideal to fly while the whole country and seemingly the world is under a stay-at-home lockdown, but I apparently wasn't the only one who had the idea: approximately 65 fellow passengers were on my Southwest flight from L.A. to Phoenix, and about 25 more were on the one from Phoenix to Durham, which is a much less popular flight. LAX Terminal was unsurprisingly barren, but not so barren as to be deserted: still some coffee shops and souvenir shops open, not the ghost town I saw from social media just 2 weeks ago. Almost all the passengers I saw were wearing some sort of mask, but surprisingly some of the airport workers and flight attendants on the flight were not wearing masks, prompting me to question whether they know something the rest of us don't. Plenty of social distancing going on even on the flights, but that meant everybody got to sit in their own row! I'm going to miss the ample amount of leg space once everything gets back to normal. One thing to remember is that flights are not serving water or snacks (or meals), no food of any kind, so make sure to bring something on the flights. Overall, it wasn't like a hurricane or even a bumpy ride to the center of the store, certainly didn't feel like I was gambling my life to get on a plane; a bit surreal and actually somewhat satisfying doing something other than my regular routine of wake up, work, afternoon jog for an hour, and then stay at home some more. I did smell my own breath way too much while wearing a face mask at all times, but that's the price we pay for protection nowadays.

Overall, my attitude towards the pandemic has never been jump-off-the-bridge pessimistic; in most situations I absorb all the information without overreacting to it too much, then take a measured approach. It's like Elon Musk said once on the Joe Rogan podcast: I'd rather be optimistic about the future and wrong than pessimistic and right, especially if we end up being in the same place anyway. Obviously I don't want to be too complacent and lackadaisical in preparing for the worst, but sometimes believing the absolute worst case scenarios on the internet can make us feel foolish later when it doesn't turn out to be that bad. MJ and I just watched Contagion together: the first 30 minutes of the movie describing their fictional Mer-1 virus have eerily similar aspects to Covid-19 (even though Contagion came out like 9 years ago!), identifying key terms like social distancing, R-naught, CDC, WHO guidelines, and protocols for finding the origin of the virus (something we still haven't pinpointed for Covid-19), but then Contagion goes way further, as the disease mutates, causes millions of deaths around the world, public looting and government shutdowns of the roads forcing entire cities to stay where they are. Luckily, it appears as though Covid-19 has not gone the way of the Contagion virus, and we are progressing on our way to a vaccine faster and with a lower death rate (albeit, still a dangerously high death rate) than Covid. It appears like the plan is working. And as for when the country will get back to normal, it's still too early to say, but even just last weekend my lawyer friends were discussing maybe September, October. And no sports coming back until then neither. I keep going back to the fact that roughly a month ago I was still going to work in downtown LA, NBA games were still being played, and the world was still operating somewhat normally, Tiger King was still an obscure documentary on Netflix. And just 2 months ago (February 16 or so), I was just getting back from a Big Bear trip with my friends, the stock market was making all-time highs, and no one would have predicted the situation we'd be in just a month later. Isn't it possible things change just as fast the other way, on the way up, and that unexpected things happen between now and September? It's still only April, so who knows what the next 2 months will bring. Just a month ago stock market PROFESSIONALS, experts, gurus even, were predicting a prolonged bear market, at least a recession and even maybe a mini-depression, stores not opening for the rest of the year, etc., etc., and that there was NO WAY there would be a V-shaped recovery, and no one should put money back into the market. Well, a month later, the chart sure looks like a V-shaped recovery. Granted, the stock market does not reflect how the economy is doing, and the economy and especially small businesses have taken an enormous hit, as has the unemployment rate (heck, I technically lost my job as well too), but I would posit that a similar principle applies: the world can get recover quicker than expected. I choose to think positively about that than to be mired in negativity.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan