A sign on the door of Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church reads: "All public Masses are cancelled until further notice. A "private" Mass will be offered in church everyday at 9:00am. You can view a live-stream of that Mass on Facebook (www.facebook.com/olrnola) or watch the video later in the day on our parish website (www.olr-nola.org). The church will be open for private prayer every day: 10:00 am - 1:00 pm. Confessions will be offered outside in the parking lot on the Cabrini side of the church Tuesday - Saturday: 6:00pm - 6:30pm. You can schedule another time with Fr. Jonathan by calling or texting him at [###-###-####]. If you need an Anointing of the Sick, contact Fr. Jonathan at the same number. Check our parish website for the latest information: www.olr-nola.org/coronavirus-updates.

The price of gas keeps dropping

It's hard to keep an active 1 yo entertained when the parks are closed, swim class was canceled, and I can't even take him to the supermarket for a light distraction. So, I caved. I broke down after watching him cry and say "I want," repeatedly while stretching his hands towards his sister's paints and paintbrushes. On Friday night, I figured, sure it's going to be a mess, and it might be a disaster, but provided he doesn't eat it, it's harmless.

The local dry cleaning store had a sign to attract business. It promoted the benefits of dry cleaning for killing the virus.

When I went through the drive through at CVS, I noticed they had put a sign on the window to let people know that CVS did not have the ability to give people tests. I assume people must have been asking since they have other Minute Clinic testing options.

Publix tried to create mechanisms to help with social distancing in the store. Some people followed the traffic signs. Others did not. Some people never looked up!

The week of 4/13 Publix began putting up signs to direct traffic within the stores to help with social distancing. Not everyone followed the rules.

The ”lay off” Day 7 Whatsthisday, the 307th of Archpril The clocks changed tonight. I only know because I happened to be awake when they switched. An odd experience. One minute it’s 01:59 and the next 03:00. Yesterday was Earth Hour I’d missed that too, but Magdalena remembered and we spent a sleepy hour reading by candle and lamplight before heading to bed at 21:15. It’s a sort of tradition now. I missed both of these events because the available bandwidth to process news is simply overwhelmed with Covid-19. For a microscopic virus, it’s footprint in the macro world has become gargantuan, undeniable. Even for those for whom denial had become a way of life. I went to bed too early and now I can't sleep, so I’m browsing The Guardian and eating Clementines. We used to call them Mandarin oranges when I was a kid, but in Sweden, they call them Clementines for some reason. The US news is just apocalyptic. That’s a word I use far too much, but it really is the only one that fits now. Multiple, simultaneously accelerating sites of infection, the death rate approaching a thousand a day and the federal response remains jerky, incoherent, contradictory. At every news conference, Trump is like a bear in a trap, enraged, striking out blindly, snout spraying foam and blood with every snarl. He seems to sense a looming future that involves piano-wire and a sturdy lampost on some broad american boulevard. The lunacy is incomparable, without precedent in my lifetime. We are watching the Suez-cide of an empire in real time. In Sweden, things remain comparatively calm, but the undercurrent of concern is electric. We all feel it. We all know the exponential curve is on the way for us too. Our own local "Empire", the EU, is under tremendous strain as well, but here at least the causes remain pedestrian and institutional: the predictable outcome of a deliberately weak central authority rather then some bloated Nero. When this is over, we need to take a closer look at that. The house is cold – I’ve turned off the electric heating as spring pushes the temperatures higher, but it’s 0 degrees out there – so I creep down to start a fire. This is a delicate business at 03:30 in the morning or 02:30, whatever. The point is, it’s the middle of the night, and starting a fire tends to be a noisy obtrusive business, what with the roaring blaze, cast iron stove and so forth. I manage to get it just right, a minimum of metallic pings and ticks, the air flow turned down low to throttle brighter flames but not the coals. Satisfactory. I get back to writing. We’ve been in voluntary lockdown for about 2 weeks now. The first week was just a conventional work from home and then the layoff came. That was week 2. Today/Tonight/This morning, we are heading into week 3. That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything and I’d planned a series of activities with a minimum of social interaction for Saturday. Two things actually, a trip to hand stuff in to the 2nd hand place (Vinden which literally translates as Attic) and the open air recycling center. The fruits of a week with too much time on my hands. To that we've added a trip to ICA Maxi for a final round of supplies buying. The handoff at Vinden was perfect. There were some other people dropping stuff off, but we waited in the car for them to finish and then dumped our stuff. Eight bags of assorted clothes, utensils and older electronic odds and ends. Social interactions? Zero. Then we headed to Maxi. It’s dawning on me that this isn’t ideal. I’ve had misgivings about heading into an enormous shopping center in the middle of a global pandemic. Shopping should really be done only during off peak times and Saturday morning is about as on peak as you can get. This is feeling more and more like an avoidable error. I clutch my hand sanitizer and pull on my gloves. However, when we finally pull into the parking garage I’m encouraged. There are very few cars. We don’t need that much stuff, so instead of a trolley we get one of those rolling baskets and head in. There are plenty of people about, but Maxi (as the name suggests) is very large. It has acres of floor space and I can immediately see that people are distributed for maximal social distancing. There is a weird synchronicity to their movements, as if everyone is generating a repelling magnetic field, they slide past each other with meters of clearance. Even when people are speaking to each other or staff, they seem to be standing on either side of a 2 meter gorge. We pinball our way to the cat food (these goddam cats will be the death of us), traversing a wide arc through pet toys and obscure cleaning products, it’s a very lightly trafficked part of the store and we meet no one. Then down into fruit and vegetables to pick up oranges, clementines, apples and bananas. I read somewhere you can freeze fresh fruit and I want to try it. Magdalena has more practical goals in mind and selects the ingredients for a salad. In the fruit and veg section we actually bump into our handyman, Lars. Not literally of course. He has a heart condition and we don't want to kill him, so we stand either side of the gorge and shout pleasantries. Then onto dairy for milk (reason number two, after cat food, we are here at all) and two big plugs of cheese. Then I decide I want to get a loaf of freshly baked bread, but it’s a dilemma. No packaging. If I touch the bread with my gloves, anything on the gloves will transfer and then I’ll shove that material into my stupid fat face when we get home. I opt to remove the gloves, sanitize, pop the bread into the bags provided, then put the gloves back on. A month ago this aberrant, peculiar behavior would have attracted stares. Today, not the merest ripple of interest. The world has moved on. We head to the check outs. They are well manned and we immediately find one with a single shopper finishing up. I realize then we should have self-scanned all this crap. Now the checkout person is going to touch all our stuff, breath on it and so forth. While they contaminate everything I’m blipping my card. The blipping is great because you just hover the card over the reader. Nothing actually touches anything. You still have to punch in the code on the keypad (I shudder at this even though I’m wearing gloves) but the whole business is so much superior to the epidemiological nightmare of handing physical cash back and forth. Uuurgh. Cash. Filthy lucre. What a mad unsanitary idea cash is. Or more correctly in Sweden, was. Another big plus in Sweden’s fight against the spread of the virus. Cash is no longer king. It’s not even a local warlord and all its Statues were pulled down years ago. We head out to the car, sanitize, and home. Social interactions? Two.

During the COVID-19 stay-at-home order, New Orleanians have flocked to the city's parks to get fresh air, exercise, and socialize. Enforcing social distancing rules in the parks is a grave concern for many trying to halt the spread of the virus. This large sign entitled "COVID-19: Social Distancing in Public Parks and Trails" is on display at the entrance of City Park and details what steps visitors should take to prevent the spread of the virus while outdoors.

The "lay off" Day 21 We broke quarantine yesterday to visit Malin for her birthday. First trip to Gothenburg in about two weeks. We also met up with Richard Brodie (he had agreed to part with an elderly computer screen), ordered pizza in a restaurant and shopped for groceries on the way home. I notice that the cashiers in the ICA are all behind a massive Plexiglas screen now. We talked about and justified it on the grounds that it was travel within a single region (Västra Götaland) we were not infected (Magdalena and I have been in complete isolation for more than the incubation period) and we would only be a group of 3. We were hand sanitizing the bejesus out of our hands all day and grouped several tasks deliberately to limit the chance of getting infected and then passing it on. Still. A lot of brief social contacts. A LOT. Now we need re-isolate and see what turns up in the little petri dish that is us ... Malin was in great form and settled into her lovely new apartment. As a gift, we had brought the closest thing we have that can pass as a family heirloom. Basically our first piece of furniture, a battered old chest we bought in Dún Laoghaire in 1994 when Magdalena was pregnant with Malin and we we're planning our move to our new apartment in the City Centre of Dublin. Some nice symmetry there. Every 14:00 CET on weekdays we all tune into the Daily Folkhälsomyndigheten Show to be reassured that all is going well. So far so ... uncertain. Deaths in Sweden continue to climb and Stockholm is pretty bad. In terms of EU averages, Sweden in the aggregate is on the upper end of the mid-range, a little worse than Ireland but much better than the UK or the Netherlands. Only Stockholm can be compared to Italy or Spain, but even here, the gap remains wide. Västragötaland and Skåne remain stubbornly flat and intensive care occupations across the country have been flat for weeks with 20% capacity still available. I'd really, really like to see either the death rate or the number of new cases flattening, but honestly, we just are not seeing anything statistically significant yet. The direction on all metrics continues upward and I have to admit that worries me. It seems like every week we're saying, "we'll know NEXT week", then next week comes and things are a little bit worse, but still clearly (apparently?) under control. Another week it is then. The nightmare scenario is that magical tipping point where all the curves suddenly hockey-stick upward. When that happens - and we have seen this in multiple places around the world - you are looking at weeks of chaos, overrun hospitals and rapidly escalating death rates. The only thing that gets things back under control are severe lock-downs. A more intensive Swedish lock-down could be coming if these metrics don't start flattening and then dipping appreciably soon and it's vital to not leave that too late. If we've made a mistake in our approach, we need to change course. That's good science. So, y'know, don't fuck this up Anders. But this is a marathon not a 100 meters sprint. There will not be a vaccine for 12 - 18 months. There may be effective medications, but these will require months to test, manufacture and distribute. Strict, military lock-downs cannot continue for more than a month or two and cycles of lock-downs are surely going to play havoc with peoples mental health and the economy. From that long-haul perspective the Swedish strategy continues to have merit. What are the rest of you thinking? Worried? Concerned we've been too relaxed?

A lawn sign outside of City Park advertises Big Easy Corona Clean. The sign reads "THESE PREMISES HAVE BEEN CLEANED BY BIG EASY CORONA CLEAN." During the COVID-19 stay-at-home order, new businesses have started up to address sanitation concerns.

A view of the Broadview Seafood storefront, signage limits occupancy to 10 customers in the store at a time.

Broadview Seafood displays signage to limit the store occupancy to 10 customers at a time during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Domino Sound Records closed during COVID-19 stay-at-home order.

Normally, this street is very busy and consistently filled with traffic. However, it is not in this nearly minute long sample. Unheard of.

Domino Sound Records closed during COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Sign on the front door reads: "Hello record lover this here store will be closed until who knows. We're looking forward to having the doors wide open, the music pouring out, and records available for much needed music therapy sooner rather than later. Check in by walking by, phone [###-####], or on the website, dominosoundrecords.com. Best to ya, thanks for the support. - Domino Sound"

Ivorians fear contraction of COVID 19 due to the testing center in Abidjan

My grandma recently moved into an independent living facility and now I am not allowed to go visit her. If she comes to visit me she will not be allowed to go back to the facility or she will be completely quarantined in her room for two weeks.

A private home displays homemade signage from its balcony reading "GOD BLESS OUR HOMETOWN HEROS" during the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My grandma is in an independent living home and normally they all go to the dining hall for their meals. Now all meals are being brought to their rooms by employees in masks.

Storefront of Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club. Closed in the face of the pandemic, Sweet Lorraine's offers free meals to unemployed musicians.

Animated signage outside of Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club tells the public they are closed due to the pandemic and offering a free meal to musicians once a week.

This photo was taken on a boat to escape the quarantine. My family and I were going stir crazy so we decided to go out on our boat and take a break from staying inside all day. I took this photo for others to appreciate the beauty of the outdoors. #FlaglerCollege

It’s Saturday night, March 21, and my son and I have spent pretty much all day creating an iMovie Sunday morning worship service for my two congregations. Now we can’t figure out how to upload it from Aidan’s school-issued computer onto YouTube. This is the first time I’ve had to do this all online. I call Allysen, a teacher in the school district and a member of one of my churches. She suggests I try putting it on a flash drive. It’s 11:55 p.m. My son’s computer is set to turn off at midnight and won’t open up again until 6 a.m. I frantically run downstairs and search for a flash drive in an attempt to transfer the iMovie of the worship service from his computer to mine. My kitchen drawers are a mess. I can’t find a flash drive. I can never find anything when I need it in my disaster of a house. On Facebook Messenger Allysen says, “Just sleep for now and do it in the morning. Your church goers should be a forgiving lot even if it isn’t ready right at 8:30 a.m.” I can’t go to sleep. In a world where nothing is going right, where everything has changed, where this is the first opportunity to prove that I can adapt and lead and be of help to the congregations I love as we navigate these unchartered waters, I need this to happen. I realize my iPhone has iMovie on it. It’s 12:10 a.m. when I open a new “project” and begin to import all the pieces I originally worked with on Aidan’s computer. The video clips of Mom and Jill singing the hymns; the video of Allysen reading scripture (the video that had taken hours to download via Google drive); the short little clip of the Smorstad family sharing the peace, sweet twin boys—age 9 months—giggling and drooling. God, I miss them all. Aidan had told me it would be too difficult to add the words of the hymns to the screen, but I do it. At 1 a.m. I figure out how to add photos of the hymns as cutaways to the movie. I discover this by mistake. I’m pressing buttons without knowing what I’m doing. I swear it feels like the Spirit has given me the button I need. I forget to give thanks. I’m too busy making a movie that is somehow also a worship service for two congregations that can no longer meet in person. Seminary has not prepared me for this. I have a YouTube channel only because I had used it to share videos of my sister’s senior trombone recital years before. I had never made an iMovie. Now I’ve made one between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. It’s done and I’m proud of it. I’ve gone from waking up at 7 a.m. on Friday morning with the idea of including multiple parishioners in the making of the movie—to being ready to upload it to YouTube at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning. In the future, I’ll allow more time. But it won’t make it any easier. For each piece that becomes routine and knowable, another piece becomes a challenge. How to convert files that aren’t allowed by iMovie? Google it. Pay $6 for an app that will do the conversion. Problem solved. How to create hymn files when your mom refuses to keep singing for these worship services? Sister to the rescue. She discovers openhymnal.org. I play the midi file of the hymn through old, donated speakers attached to my work computer, place my iPhone at the perfect distance from the speakers (too close and it’s fuzzy; too far away and it’s too soft—this I learned through much trial and error), hit the voice memo record button on my phone and try my best to have some sort of decent breath support as I sing the public domain hymns that I can include without worrying about copyright infringement. It would help if I could breathe. It would help if I could sleep. It would help if I wasn’t trying to do this, basically, all alone. It would help if I could turn over the movie production to some high school student who loves such things and who could do it all easily and maybe even enjoy it. But now I feel like it’s my job. I think I should be spending more time calling my people, but I can’t seem to manage much calling. Each conversation leaves me absolutely spent. I sob after each goodbye. I miss these people. I don’t want to make phone calls or iMovies. I want to give hugs. I want to talk face to face, leaning in to listen well, holding hands as we pray for hope and healing. The night before Easter I can’t sleep. Awake at 2 a.m., I watch the worship service created by my good friend, a volunteer music director in a neighboring town. The service is beautiful. I love my friend. And I miss her. At 3 a.m. I watch another worship service created by another dear friend, a pastor in my corner of Iowa, skipping ahead to get to her sermon. I’ve already read it, as she asked me two days before for input, but now I get to hear it. Receive it. It’s beautiful. Needed. At 4 a.m. I click on YouTube news and lay in bed listening to death counts. It’s Easter morning. At 5 a.m. I get out of bed and go to church. I’m supposed to join an invitation-only zoom gathering by 5:40 a.m. My computer is sluggish and won’t load the meeting. I hate technology. I hate being so damn dependent on it. Christ can rise from the dead but can’t make this computer do what it’s supposed to do. I finally use my iPhone to connect to the meeting. It’s a gathering of women from around the world, an informal worship service of sorts that grew out of a single Tweet. “How to faithfully celebrate Easter this year: Only women on the Zoom call. Call is scheduled before dawn. We speak only of impossible things that would topple the empire.” It turns out to be the most meaningful Easter worship service I’ve ever experienced. As each woman is called by name—just as Jesus called Mary Magdalene by name in the garden outside the empty tomb—we give our testimony. We talk about where we’ve seen the Lord. I think I’m going to say something about the church in which I grew up. How they used the Bible to tell me women couldn’t pastor—I couldn’t preach—but God said yes! But instead, a song I’ve written comes to mind. And my testimony is this: I know that death is real but it will never be the end. I know the song goes on and dancing feet are powerful. I worship later with my family, watching myself lead worship on the television screen in our living room. I smile at my on-screen self. I can’t help it. I want to dance.

A T-shirt for sale during the coronacation

This item shows the resentment to stay at home orders in the US. This t-shirt was created by an unnamed company out of California. This shirt is being sold in order to resist the Stay at home orders.

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COVID-19 has been particularly hard for Chicago’s homeless. My auntie and I tried to help out on the West Side, by making turkey and Italian beef and serving them. We also provided kits to individuals, so they could use them to feed their families. #DePaulHST391

Since the COVID-19 pandemic many businesses and housing facilities have closed common areas to promote social distancing. Since March many residents have not followed through with the warnings and now landlords and managers have taken measures to keep people from gathering such as at One North Apartments, a University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign student housing facility where they have taken the hoops off the basketball rims #DePaulHST391.

This work is an attempt to visualize my desire to escape quarantine. Using an entirely fabricated soundscape and footage from the French Riviera from exactly a year prior, I created an alternative space that is neither entirely real nor entirely fiction.

I woke up this morning and decided to write. Why today? What’s different about today than yesterday, or the day before? I have no answers to these questions. It’s Day 25 of the quarantine. The sky is dull gray and it’s raining, my windows streaked with wet wavy lines that make them look like etched glass. Today is not so different from yesterday, except yesterday it wasn’t raining. And yesterday we went to the supermarket. That place fills me with terror. The aisles are not wide enough to keep the required six feet social distance. In the produce section it’s inevitable that two or more people will end up inspecting the bananas or the lettuce at the same time. When that happens we move apart as far as we can but we don’t walk away, as if the lettuce or the bananas or whatever are a territory we refuse to surrender. We do avert our eyes, ashamed to look our adversaries in the face. Upstairs in my bedroom I hear the rain against the roof, a soft, steady patter. The marsh is enveloped in a fine mist with ochre and green grasses and a few trees yielding small mauve flowers. I’m waiting for phone calls from the dead: my father, who passed away nineteen years ago and my mother, who passed away three years ago. Why do we want what we cannot have? Or is this the nature of grief, that after the sharp stabbing pains of loss a knot of slow sadness begins to form and 2 wind itself around our hearts, once in a while tugging so hard we’re reminded sharply once again of those who are gone? Maybe that’s what writing is for: not the documentation of what we have but the recovery of what we’ve lost. I’m reading a book by Lydia Davis called The End of the Story. It’s a novel about a woman writing a novel about a brief but intense love affair that ended thirteen years earlier. She can’t finish the novel because she can’t find the right way to end it, or so she says. But we know she can’t finish the novel because finishing it will end her connection to her lost lover, and she doesn’t want to experience such pain and grief all over again. The rain has stopped and the sky has shifted to a softer gray. The yellow and dark greens of the leaves are startling and bright in the thin light. Lydia Davis is a descriptive writer. She paints vivid pictures of the natural world: sound of ocean waves, piquant scent of eucalyptus, aggressive jade plants. But in her obsessions and delusions and isolation from friends she is not the best companion for me right now. ** Day 26. I am a witness to the pandemic. Everyone is a witness. But I’m not risking my life like the nurses and doctors and other workers on the front lines. I feel like a coward. 3 Today is sunny, with a cloudless sky of soft, washed blue. When you are quarantined weather becomes very important, like a prophecy or a sign of progress, or stagnation. On fine days I could go outside for a walk but usually I don’t want to. On the days I’ve gone for walks there’s an unspoken tug-of-war on the sidewalk when others approach: who will be first to step out of the way. My husband and I are always first to move. We agree we tend to give a wide berth earlier than necessary. Still, each time we veer into the street so walkers can pass I feel we’ve offered a consideration that was not reciprocated. This gives me a feeling of victimization that makes me even more irritable than I already am. On a recent walk I couldn’t help noticing that everything in my neighborhood reminded me of the virus. Small shrubs with crimson buds. A mask in the middle of the asphalt, awaiting asphyxiation. Street signs that say Dead End. I never realized there were so many dead ends where I live. When I’m overcome with anxiousness I prepare a meal. Before the time of corona I was a reluctant cook, and we often ate dinners at the local trattoria. But of course that’s no longer possible. I don’t have the patience or creativity to be a decent home cook. But now I find comfort in assembling a dish or two. I experience a sense of accomplishment in completing what feels like a meaningful activity. Food is no longer readily or easily available. If I’m missing an ingredient I won’t run to the supermarket wearing with my mask and disposable gloves. With every trip to the market comes the risk of 4 additional exposure. Grocery shopping demands enormous amounts of energy. So I try to plan ahead, which isn’t easy when you’re anxious all the time. Today’s side dish is quinoa tabbouleh with scallions, tomatoes, feta, and fresh lemon. Even writing the word “fresh” refreshes my depleted spirits. Before preparing the tabbouleh I looked out the window, my gateway, my connection to the world outside my home. My attention was drawn to a single orange-breasted robin stepping across the grass. I watched for a while, since now I have time for such contemplative activity. The robin began to peck at the ground, circling and wandering, circling and pecking. I had the idea he was searching for food and not finding any. I turned away. Things I never noticed before. The whiskered tips on the scallions, like a man’s white-gray beard. The amount of plastic and paper towels I waste even though I claim to be pro-environment. I think of my mother growing up during the Great Depression with barely enough food and not enough money. I have coats in the closet, sweaters in the drawers, a stocked refrigerator. Was I really so clueless and ungrateful? ** Day 27. Be mindful, stay in the present. I am trying to be present but the news on the morning radio announced 40,000 Americans are dead from the virus. How is this possible? The future has become our dystopian present. 5 Last night we visited with our kids on Zoom. Such interactions are one of the challenges of this particular moment, the physical separation from loved ones. These meetings in cyberspace reinforce the sense of enforced isolation: my adult children isolated in their homes within an hour or so of mine. I miss them. They might as well be living on the moon. I’ve heard stories of doctors and nurses sleeping in their garages so as not expose their families. This is worse than my experience, much worse, because their lives are in imminent danger. Nonetheless, their experience does not erase the pain I feel as a mother and new grandmother who can’t touch or hug my children. In my home state of New Jersey, 40 percent of more than 4,200 coronavirus deaths have been linked to long-term care facilities. My mother was a dementia patient in one such facility for six years. I thank heaven I do not have to worry about the virus killing my mother in a nursing home. The past seeps into the present. The present is the future, for the time-being. I’m reminded of the words of T.S. Eliot: “Time present and time past/ are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past.” Perhaps our sense of separation between past, present, and future was always illusory. My brother contracted the virus a few weeks ago and was ill with a fever that spiked as high as 102.8. Mercifully he is recovering well. Past, present, and future, they are merged into the nightmare of the virus. I just read about a 25-year-old woman, a Latino grad student studying marriage and family therapy, who died of complications from the virus which she 6 likely contracted while working at a clinic for Latinos in one of the corona hotspots in Queens. I am overcome. I can’t write anymore.

Notice shows restriction on how much alcohol can be bought in Australia from liquor outlets. The amount had been reduced from previous week.

Another image of a closed down business in regional Australia

An image of a closed business in my home town during the lockdown.

Shows a notice on the front of a closed down business, Ballarat, Australia

A picture of a closed business in Ballarat during lockdown.

Image of notice on closed business

Everything is different now. Who would have imagined? If I or anyone I know was told in the fall of 2019 that in the start of year 2020 there would be a world pandemic that placed most of the world on lockdown, we most likely would have laughed or scoffed. We would have thought it impossible. And yet it happened. And it happened quickly, dawning a new decade with an event that will most likely damage societies. What a way to start a decade. Here is to 2020. May the middle and the end be more fortuitous than it’s destructive beginning. Everyone is in quarantine within their homes in hopes of preventing the spread of the new corona virus. A subtle virus that nobody would have expected to cause a worldwide emergency. After all, there are many diseases and viruses that appear to be worse than Covid-19 such as SARS. However that’s the danger, it is so subtle and contagious, it spread from China to the United States of America in a number of weeks. There is an estimated 800,000 confirmed cases of the virus with the States. Who knows if that number is accurate. It may be larger. It may be smaller. The world has changed in a matter of weeks. People rarely go out to areas where they are likely to encounter other people. If they do dare to venture outside, it is often with a face mask, disposable gloves, and hand sanitizer. Business has never been better for Amazon as people flock to their website in order to avoid having to go to the grocery store. Netflix is probably being used more now than anytime before. Schools have shut down and transferred online, many using Zoom as their platform of communication. Most people are stocking up on supplies. My father went to the gun store and said he had never seen the place busier. Toilet paper has become a valuable commodity. There have been more people on walks in my neighborhood than ever. All trying to escape the boredom and the feeling of wasting from remaining still. My sister and I have been placed on quarantine about two weeks before everyone else. I don’t believe I have had a physical interaction that was not digital with another person besides my family in 2 or 3 months. The only place that I have been to besides my house is the National Forest in Flagstaff, Arizona where I am allowed to go for hikes for miles. It is beautifully refreshing in comparison to the same color of wall wherever you turn. I’m allowed to take my truck out for a drive as long as the only destination is my house. I like to drive with the windows down on the highway and be reminded of the movement of nature that is absent in my daily circumstance. It is interesting how affected people become by fear and paranoia. I was driving through the neighborhood when I saw a couple walking. I waved as any friendly person would. The couple glared at me as if I was a threat. As if I would somehow give them the virus while contained in my car on the other side of the street. I found this behavior odd. But then this odd behavior occurred on several other occasions during my drives. I fear what this virus will do to our country. It has already changed our daily lives. I would hate for the coronavirus to turn America into a country where friendliness is unwelcome.

An account of how lockdown has affected delivery of some medical services

Opinion piece on why virus denial resembles climate denial.

Essay likens COVID-19 virus to Zombies, because both infect a host to become viable.

@Kellydavio writes "What zombie movies got wrong about the actual apocalypse, part 1,487: they omitted scenes of people on the street demanding the right to be eaten by zombies." Kelly Davio refers to recent protests in Michigan and Denver, CO where protestors took to the streets to protest shelter-in-place guidelines in Michigan and Colorado. Commentary includes Memes that show protestors as Zombies.

The first few weeks in quarantine, like for many, were pretty difficult for me. I would have good days and bad days. I would go through waves of sadness here and there and get depressed thinking of all the things I was unable to do or accomplish, and all the opportunities I had missed and would seemingly never get back. This was supposed to be the time of internships, widening my professional network, shadowing professionals, and preparing for my professional future. How was I supposed to prepare for my impending future trapped inside my home wearing pajamas all day? I felt like the whole world was put on pause, but my life was still passing me by. After two weeks of self-pity and baking an extensive amount of bread (stress baking anyone?), I realized I was in desperate need of a new perspective. How can I benefit from this situation? What can I do with this time to prepare for my future that I wouldn't have the opportunity to do otherwise? I had a quarantine awakening. I decided that this time at home would not go wasted. I put together goals for the year 2020 that I could achieve from the comfort of my home. I realized that there was, in fact, a lot I could do to prepare for my future that didn't involve other people. I began to research online workshops that I could complete and add to my resume, I began reading articles and books that related to my career that I never had the time to read, and I set aside time to practice the things I used to love, like photoshop and web design. I gave myself the opportunity to self reflect and really dissect the life choices that had brought me to this point in my life, and decide if the path I was on was still the one I wanted to pursue. My time in quarantine has helped me realize that the best way I could help my future self was not by networking or interning for a big company in the city, but was by focusing on me. I needed time away from the productive life the world told me I was supposed to be living to decide if all that productivity was really taking me where I wanted to go in the first place. Where do I want to go? Finding out what I like, what I don’t like, figuring out what my skills are and focusing on how to apply them, deciding what kind of future I wanted and setting goals to get there were all things I’d sidelined before the quarantine. I realized how lucky I was to have this time to be allowed to focus on me. Quarantine has gifted me with a new perspective on life and has shown me how capable I truly am.

Normally the beaches are crowded in April. Covid-19 has closed the beaches. The regulations are enforceable by law.

Denver artist painted mural of a healthcare worker to show appreciation for medical workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I am residing in a sober living house following rehab for alcoholism. My sober date is Feb 14 - and I have been living in a house of ten ASICS in recovery now for 6 weeks. I will say after 40 plus years of drinking, and now one day at a time, lessons learned in rehab and recovery are coming in very handy. We start every day with a 7 am iremote 12-step meeting, and since being under ‘house arrest’ have had plenty of time to meet informally, prepare meals, and walking - my primary exercise now. I notice the overflowing recycle bins when walking - had I not sought treatment for my alcoholism I would no doubt be living a bottle 24x7 during the last month or so, since my work has ground to a halt. I think we were deluded in thinking we used to know what tomorrow and the future would bring. Know we know we don’t have a clue, and never really did. It’s out of our control! I am a huge fan of the serenity prayer, and recommend it to all - including my agnostic friends! God, Give me the serenity to,accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. One day at a time! I with you peace and serenity!

A C-130 military aircraft loaded with medical supplies from Egypt is scheduled to land at Dulles International Airport on Tuesday to help fight the coronavirus, a U.S. official said Monday, a gesture meant to show support for President Trump and the U.S.-Egypt alliance.

President Trump says in a tweet that he'll sign an executive order “to temporarily suspend immigration" into the U.S. because of the coronavirus. He offered no further details. Nor did the White House immediately elaborate on the announcement.

During the pandemic, I have been manic and have had to keep busy to fight boredom and despair. So I have spent a lot of time practicing softball by myself.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the quarantine has left me feeling manic. To ward off boredom and melancholy, I take my mask, music and moves into the woods for some solo dancing.