4/1/2021 Coronavirus Journal. A Journal of the Plague Year. A Journal of the Plague Year, being random jottings of personal experiences during the coronavirus pande March 22, 2020 It was about the beginning of September, 1664... Excuse me. I shouldn't ape, or plagiarize (plague your eyes?), the m was actually yesterday, March 21, 2020 (gotta love the number of the year) that I picked up the new lawn mower at Depot, and many of the people there seemed curiously frenzied; I can't quite characterize their behavior, but they ha uneasy quality. Many of them moved faster than they usually do. Later, I walked down to my local shopping center and saw that the parking lots were almost entirely empty. That wa Saturday. Except on Christmas or whatever, they're always almost full. Women walking their dogs were giving me a berth (more than the recommended six feet), pulling the dogs so as not to be within spraying distance if I sneezed or coughed. I walked for about an hour. On the way home, I stopped at Rimann's Liquor and said, "I'd like to support th breweries, but I don't want to buy a six-pack". One of the employees led me to a shelf and showed me the local brew could buy as singles. The cans were lined up, and he touched the top of every can in the front row with his fingers. H clearly was not thinking about the virus. I waited until he left, and took a can from the second row, went to the regis put it on the counter. The clerk said, "Oh! That's a good one!", and touched the top of the can with her fingers, right pop-top and the hole you drink from, thank you very much. I brought it home and put it in the fridge, wondering wh try to sanitize it, or throw it out. Friday, the day before, I'd gone to the grocery store, there in the Village, just around the corner from Rimann's. As I observed to a friend, it looked like Moscow under Brezhnev: empty shelves. Well, partly, anyway. (The other day at was even worse: entire sections of vegetables completely gone. And Susan, my wife, said the line at Costco one day from the registers all the way to the back of the store. I'm estimating that's several hundred feet.) This beggar-thy-ne panic is madness. Best to make the reasonable assumption that the food supply will continue, and not grab up stuff, which will spoil before you eat it, and some of which will deprive your neighbors of supplies. As is usual, there are exceptions (not toilet paper, you wimps!), such as paper towels, which I find myself using a lot, because I constantly my hands. And of course soap. I understand people buying up that stuff, because our consumption of these things is increasing. But milk? The bottom row of the milk cooler was empty for a width of about five feet, and the rest of it w denuded 50%, at least. This is absurd. Man up, people! You're only creating shortages and spoilage. Two of my friends, who, like me, have Parkinson's, self-isolated about a week ago. This, to me, was premature. I sen and some others an email that calculated the chances of infection given the ratio of undiagnosed cases, number of kn cases, etc., and ending: "We're not in N.Y., Washington, or California. Sure, this will get worse. Sure, avoid crowds. Sure, if you have conta infants, take extra measures. Sure, if you're immune compromised stay home. But for the rest of us, it's not time to s quarantine yet. There are other considerations, such as the effect on other people, who will lose their jobs if we don' patronize the places they work. This is an economic disaster in the making. "A final comment: as one of the few people locally who carries earthquake insurance on his house, and the only Par sufferer (to my knowledge, and I know a lot of them) who's lost his sense of smell and gone out and found a natural detection alarm (and hired an electrician to install it at the top of a wall, because natural gas rises), I think my assess risks can be described as conservative, not cavalier." Now I'm enjoying my large helping of crow. This damn thing has accelerated, and most of us locally are ordered to home, starting Tuesday. (By the way, do mayors even have the legal power to do that? Where is it written?) I do thin though, that this will trigger an economic catastrophe of a magnitude far beyond 2008, probably closer to the Depre could well result in the Democrats taking control of both houses and the presidency in November. But we saw in the preceding paragraphs how accurate my crystal ball is. I'm switching to the Magic 8 Ball, online version. [Brief paus just asked it, "Will coronavirus trigger a depression?" The answer was "Yes". Really, it did. Would the Magic 8 Ball me? [Brief pause here.] I next asked, "Will the Democrats take over the federal government in November?" The ans "Without a doubt". I am not making this up, people. Perhaps the most obvious thing about the reaction to this virus is the amazing lack of traffic. There are few cars on t about like Thanksgiving day, when traffic is always minimal. But foot traffic has increased. My neighborhood alway lots of walkers, but the number seems to have zoomed. thusness.com/coronavirusjournal.html 1/137 4/1/2021 Coronavirus Journal. A Journal of the Plague Year. The worst thing about this is that the gyms are all closed. To hold back my Parkinson's I work out every day: three d cardio, three of weights, and one of non-contact boxing, every week. Now I'm working on home routines, but it ain't same. Not at all. Not to mention that I miss my friends. This is a prelude to weeks, and more likely months, of bored How many rock songs will we be hearing about cabin fever? March 23, 2020 Where's Tom Lehrer when we need him? Anyone who could make us laugh about nuclear war would be able to help through this pandemic with a sense of humor. Woke up in the night having trouble breathing. This, combined with the cough I've had for some days (five days?) n me worried. Things to do, in case I have the dread disease: pay bills, cancel dog grooming, send Susan all the stuff s to know in order to carry on ... Later: we took my temperature, and it was my normal reading of a bit below 98 degr False alarm. I'm usually not hypochondriacal. The reason for the cough and transitory breathing problem (and conge must be the dust from all the construction we're having done in the house. Susan had trouble last night, too. Sociolinguistic change? I'm noticing a change in our phatic speech. The farewell that started back in (I think) the ear "Have a nice day", which more recently is often "Have a good day" -- has turned in the last week or so to "Be well" healthy", and the like. Will have to email Phil Duncan about this to get his take on it. Later -- his response: So, ironically I got your email right as I was going into a Zoom meeting. My initial thought was something like, "hm feel like I see these more in writing than in oral speech..." Then, what do the two people say closing the meeting? Sp "Be well!" Speaker 2: "Stay healthy!" My (very loose) impression is that people are leveraging some closing expressions (or phatic expressions, as you say Jakobson's multifunctionality) that may have already been on the uptick (sometimes for other reasons, like an increa interest in and normativity of things related to health/well-being/mindfulness, etc.). In email, I know a good amount people who have been using "be well" as a closing device over the last year or so. Until now, I'd kind of put that in t of a fad-ish type behavior, like when it seemed that a good chunk of academia suddenly preferred to use "cheers" to out emails a while back. And, I can think of at least one person who has regularly used "be well" in both email and conversations for over a year. Of course, the phrase "be well" to say goodbye or end a conversation has been around quite sometime (& sometimes in longer phrases like "goodnight & be well"). On the other hand, people I know who used phrases like "be well" as closings have started to do so only in the last few weeks - and with high regularity to And, as I have heard even more recently, this is definitely found across modalities. So, it does seem that people are quickly transitioning in connection to covid-19, integrating these phrases into every interactions & conversations. March 24, 2020 Susan came home early yesterday. Curiously, the hospital where she works was only half full (because people are st away? because discretionary treatments, such as surgeries, are delayed? must ask her). Management naturally didn't pay a lot of people to twiddle their thumbs, so Susan volunteered to use some paid time off. She stopped at Costco o way home. While she was in the store, the store management limited the number who could be inside, and made cus wait in a line outside.