The impacts of COVID-19 are really not upon us yet. But some of them are hitting, and I thought I’d jot some notes about how it’s hitting us here in SF.
I think I’ll make the time to blog to try to provide updates. I won’t post them all to social media since frankly I’d rather not have my musings monetized by tech companies wiht questionable ethics. Yes, Facebook, I’m talking about you.
Ella’s high school is closed for nominally 2 weeks. Right. It will be more. All SF schools closed. Luca is waiting to board a flight as I write this, coming home from CU Boulder where classes will be virtual for the remainder of the semester. Can’t wait to get him home safe. I usually work from home, but all Cisco employees are WFH now. My normal is the new normal. Erin is fine, worried as hell and wanting her kids here and not let them out.
It’s all about social distancing right now. Seriously folks. Don’t mess around. Erin has family in Northern Italy and they are saying it’s no joke, it’s not a hoax. 300+ dead TODAY in Italy. This thing is going to sweep like wildfire and we need to flatten the curve. To all my younger friends who are out partying: go home. You can carry it. You’ll infect someone who is more at risk. You can KILL PEOPLE. Just go home. Watch some movies, read a book. Make some babies. Drink a nice martini, or a bottle of wine. Now’s the time to explore that wine cellar you bought anyway!
If your hands aren’t dry and a bit sore you are either not washing them enough, or you are using a good hand cream to keep your skin happy. Wash. Obcess about it. Clean everything, then do it again.
Erin laughed at me because I bought 60 pounds of rice. Have you ever thought about how fragile our just in time supply chain is? If the folks who drive the trucks that stock your grocery all get sick then the shelves will go bare. And then what? What will you eat when there’s no food to buy in the store? I may be overthinking this, but rice lasts forever and I spent enough hungry nights as a kid when we had jack-shit to eat. My family will eat. I’m a big boy. I can handle you all laughing at me. I pray I’m not the one with the last laugh.
With luck, we flatten out this curve and we can ride this out. Luck and some enlightened leadership. Which is not going to happen at the Federal level, but it seems a lot of states are getting their act together. A lot of people will die from this. A lot of small businesses are going to go under. A lot of service industry folks are going to really get hit. A lot of people are going to go into really bad debt trying to save their family members who get this really bad. We are going to have to come together as a country, as a world, and put things back together.
Until then, my family is hibernating. Once I get Luca tonight we’re hunkering down. You know where to find us. We’re online - not the mega-corp controlled online that some folks think is the “internet” but the real Internet. And I’ll tell you that the difference between 1918 and today is that today we have access to the real facts. I hope all the folks that only get their news and facts from certain narrow sources (Fox News cough cough) learn to read wider, study more. Sure, some of the sources are biased (so is Fox) but if all the scientists around the world are saying one thing and any news outlet is saying somethign else… then folks, you need to trust the scientists.
Flatten the curve. That’s it. Flatten the curve.
