Diary of an Essential Worker

It's Saturday, April 4, 2020, and I live in North Carolina, in the United States of America. I am a 57 year old woman, and I am an essential healthcare worker, my husband is an essential truck driver, our kids are grown, and live on their own, we have a dog, and a cat. Today, as I start this dairy, the number of COVID-19 infected people around the world is growing larger. COVID-19 is a new respiratory virus, scientists around the world believe it is caused by a novel, meaning new, coronavirus that apparently started in bats, then jumped to an animal, then to a human in a place called a "wet market", where they sell, slaughter, and eat exotic animals in Wuhan, China. After the virus jumped to humans, it then mutated, and became contagious through respiratory droplets, spreading quicly from human to human. Wuhan, China tried to contain the virus, virtually locking down, and quarantining 12 million residents for two months, but it was too late, because the virus was already spreading around the globe. By the time China figured out how dangerous the virus was, it had already spread through our modern, global transportation systems, and all this happened in just two short months. So, that brings us to today, the novel coronavirus is being excreted from unknowing infected humans, and can take up to 14 days for any symptoms, and sometimes there are no symptoms. Basically, asymptomatic, infected people cough, sneeze, and touch their face, and then leave the virus floating in the air, and on everything they touch. Experts now know the virus can live for hours, and maybe even days on surfaces, and the infected people don't even know they are infected, some don't even get sick, while others get really sick, and some will die, I know all this must sound kinda crazy, like some sci-fi fiction novel I am trying to sell, and for awhile I even tried to convince myself I was asleep, just having a nightmare, and I'd wake up, and it would all be over, but no, this totally strange, novel virus is very real, and we are all living the same nightmare, we are characters in a real life pandemic, we are writing this story as we go. The super scary part is that it's hard to predict who will get super sick, who might die, and who is just infecting the entire community, and doing it totally unaware. So folks, here we are, we have all been told to social distance, to stay 6 feet or more away from each other, and as I start this blog diary, there are 1,199,064, that's one million, one hundred ninety-nine thousand, and 64 souls already infected, and 64,650 lives already lost. The whole world is under a "stay-at-home" order of some kind or another, hospitals in the populated cities are overrun, ventilators are desperately needed, but they are in short supply, PPE, (Personal Protective Equipment), such as masks, gloves, and gowns are disappearing. People are wearing "homemade" masks, bandanas, and scarves. There was a run on stores a couple weeks back, everyone frantically buying up all the disinfectants, hand sanitizers, bleach, and toilet paper, and everyone is still trying to figure out the toilet paper, just why people were hoarding it for a respiratory virus. I think it was just panic buying, and maybe people thought that having lots, and lots, and lots of toilet paper would give them some control, and somehow make them feel safer, but I guess we'll never really understand that phenomenon. Anyway folks, it's getting late, and it's time to rest. Tomorrow we will wake again, and with God's grace the numbers of new infections will have fallen. Peace be with you all.