Kingdom of Isolation; March 15 2020

(Picture this in a movie announcer’s voice. If you don’t, then the whole tone will be lost.)

In a world...

Where pandemics are only taken seriously once they spread to YOUR country...

Where hand sanitizer is finite but hand washing is inexplicably repugnant...

One man...

Will distance himself from society.

He is the true hero. He is -

IMMUNOCOMPROMISED.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of hearing about the coronavirus. (By the way, you can stop doing the movie announcer voice now.) I’ll say my piece on it quickly, and here it is: the rest of the world seemed content to brush it under the rug when it was ‘just China’s problem’. We need to do better when it comes to reaching out and helping beyond our borders. The mass panic could have been avoided in so many ways, but that’s a consistent truth.

My kid was due to start daycare tomorrow. We haven’t heard whether or not that’s been shut down, but we’re guessing she’s going to be staying home, further delaying her socialization and speech development. My trips have been cancelled, and the members of my household plan on holing up for three weeks.

Conveniently, there was a big sale on toilet paper before all this went down. We got plenty. Good thing, because apparently this virus can be combated by TP, if I understand the panic-purchasing correctly.

The thing that baffles and disgusts me is how flippant people are being while they continue to panic-buy. I saw a tweet the other day, someone talking about overhearing a man talking about COVID-19 ‘thinning the herd’. Perfectly able-bodied people willing to stockpile necessities while pushing disabled and elderly people to the wayside.

Like that.

Once again, the true enemy is capitalism. It brings out the most revolting aspects of human nature.

I’d love to hope that we learn from all this, that the extension of human rights prevails past a state of emergency and people recognize that we need to do better, do right by our peers.

But they won’t.