Life Sustaining

I was doing really well today - busy with work, lots of meetings and catching up with people, even showered and did my hair and makeup for the first time in a week. I was making tacos for dinner, as I'd been promising my husband for days, now that I had some fresh ingredients.

They cancelled the state standardized tests for the year, which is a pretty big step and I think a good sign that school will not re-open this school year.

There is now a gas station in Kentucky with gas at $.99/gallon, and it's expected that nationwide gas will be $.99-1.99 soon.

And then, as I stood in the kitchen cooking my ground beef, peppers, and onions, I saw a "breaking news" alert: the governor has ordered all "non-life sustaining" businesses to close their physical locations as of 8 PM tonight. They have a day to get things in order, and starting at midnight Saturday, any that don't comply will be fined and could lose the chance to apply for disaster aid.

This is basically just enforcing what was politely requested a few days ago - only essential businesses should be operating, to keep as many people out of public and contact as possible. I think the problem was that he didn't specify the first time what is considered "essential," so a lot of places stayed open, like video game stores, hobby shops, etc. that really shouldn't have. And with stores open, people had an incentive to go to them and not stay home. With this order comes a very specific list, broken down by category, of what is considered life sustaining: farms and food manufacturing, medical care and supplies, banks, building materials and auto parts (but not car dealerships - so just repair the car you have), grocery stores (but not "specialty" food stores), restaurants (take-out only), newspaper publishing and TV/radio broadcasting, and everything having to do with transportation and utilities and such. There is no specified end date.

I don't know why I'm so shaken and upset by this. It's what should have been done this past week, just enforced more strongly. I think the "life sustaining" part just sounds so ominous. I lost my appetite - too bad about that beautiful looking taco bowl - and am ready to just crawl under a blanket and cry.

Also, the US has more new cases today than Italy. I have a friend who's putting together daily line graphs of new cases by country, and the US line is basically going straight up, overtaking France, and in pretty much the same place Spain was two days ago - so much for flattening the curve! Now, the graphs are not really accurate or scientific, and there could be a number of reasons for this. Maybe the US numbers were artificially low before, and now with more widespread testing we're seeing them rise more quickly - and seeing how bad it really is here. Hopefully all the measures being taken now will be reflected in the graph in the coming weeks...