Please Stay Home!

Source: Dear Pandemic

For many, yesterday was the first "official" day of social distancing. My county was locked down, then schools were closed at the state level, and as of today, neighboring counties are also being locked down except for "essential" services. And I've seen a lot of people organizing playdates, going out for drinks, asking what restaurants and stores are open, offering babysitting services, etc. Please, I know it's no fun, but refrain from doing that! Otherwise, you're undoing all the good that sacrifices like cancelling sports and closing Disney World are meant to do. You'll have to just socialize with the people in your household (hope you like them!).

There's been a great article going around, Social Distancing: This is Not a Snow Day. Please don't consider this an extended break from work or school, a time to get together with your friends or go to the movies or hang out at the mall. The government hasn't gone as far as the total lockdown and quarantine that has been used in China, but they could. At this time, you still have freedom of movement, and can go outside, get supplies, or go to work at a private office if you have to. That could be taken away in an attempt to control the spread of this virus, so please don't ruin it for everyone by making bad choices. If you have the ability and luxury to work from home, and order in what you need, please, for the greater good, do so!

In other news, guess what, the stuff they said about tests in yesterday's Rose Garden address was false. It was a surprise to Google that they were supposed to be working on a diagnostic site for patients. Verily, Alphabet's (Google's parent company) life sciences research company, was working on something for healthcare providers, but can switch over to make something for the public instead. But they are just rolling it out in the Bay Area, for testing, it still wouldn't be broadly available for some time. And then there's the problem of not having enough testing supplies, especially reagent (the substance that causes the chemical reaction in the test). Most reagent comes from Spain and Germany, and those places are in crisis too, plus the product is in high demand all over the world. So for all these reasons, they're being very restrictive about who even gets tested, and we probably only know the tip of the iceberg.

My biggest concern right now is that cases are going to continue increasing at a fast pace for the next couple weeks, due to the long asymptomatic period of this disease. We won't be able to see for a few weeks if the social distancing we're doing now has had an effect. And I could foresee people getting frustrated, saying, "See, it doesn't matter that we've closed schools and are staying home!" and start living life as usual again. So I think the next awareness campaign, now that we've drilled #flattenthecurve and social distancing into people's heads, will be something around the time it will take to see a change in the curve...