The Corona Chronicles entry #5

Day #15

It's truly amazing how much the world has changed in a couple of weeks. I was telling the kids that it was hard to believe that two weeks ago we were picking out new track shoes for Wesley and new glasses for Greta.  We went to Jason's Deli and had a nice lunch and then had our teeth cleaned at the dentist. It feels like that happened months ago, rather than weeks.

Now our dentist has closed. The shoes sit in their box because track and school has been cancelled. Can't even take the shoes back because the store has been closed. 

The country pretty much shut down. Non-essential businesses have closed and the ones that are open have changed their practices in some way or another. Our vet clinic has closed the lobby and you call when you arrive and sit in your car until your turn. Then someone comes to your car and collects your pet and it's taken into the clinic. All correspondences are done over the cell phone. You even pay over the phone. Many retail stores, that are still open, will only deliver things to your car. Restaurants have closed with many now only offering take out or delivery. One story out of Seattle said out of work strippers were delivering food topless, that made me chuckle. Call me crazy but we are avoiding all food except for meals made at home. I want to keep my favorite restaurants in business but I'm not taking the chance of the cook being infected.

Our governor issued a stay-at-home order over the weekend so non-essential businesses are now closed. According to friends on social media most of the state hasn't gotten the memo yet and stores like Lowes and Wal-Mart have been packed with people that are tired of staying home. In our little town people are seen clustered together talking and kids are playing basketball in groups.  I feel like until it hits our community these people won't figure it out. Some sobering predictions came out of the White House today that predict 100-200K people could die in our country alone (that was a "best case scenario").  Needless to say this was a "can't stop watching the news day". It was raining out, what else is there to do?

I found hope in an interview with the CEO of Starbucks. He said they are just now slowly reopening the Starbucks over in China after being closed for 9 weeks. He said we are on week 2, so if all goes well we could possibly be reopening the country in 7 weeks. I find comfort in that number. We can do 7 more weeks.