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"Hail Mary": The story of a woman discovering the naked truth about herself.
The Age Of Corona Virus Anxiety
But because of the coronavirus and the latest Center for Disease Control directives to people in our age group on avoiding contacting and/or spreading the disease, I spent the better part of this past Saturday cancelling our trip, which process consisted of:
- a couple of hours spent on the phone on hold waiting to get through to the airline whose representatives were evidently being stampeded by customers like me wanting to cancel their flights;
- cancelling our hotel room;
- cancelling our rental car reservation;
- calling my daughter and son-in-law to tell them we'd cancelled out trip;
- contacting the parents of La Quinceañera (as the birthday girl is also called) to give our last-minute regrets.
But even as I went through the motions of cancelling our trip, in truth I kept second guessing myself as to whether calling off the trip was really necessary. After all, as of Saturday there were two cases of coronavirus in Arizona, none in Wickenburg, a tiny town in the middle of the desert,
But the CDC was calling nationwide for the elderly and those with underlying health issues not only to avoid traveling, but to stay home altogether - no movies, no restaurants, no church, no crowds, go out once - at night, when the store will be more empty - and stock on two-weeks' worth of food and then stay home. And by elderly was meant anyone over 60 years old.
But surely that directive wasn't meant for Tom and me? I kept thinking while I bided my time on hold on the American Airlines customer service line. Sure, I'm 68 years old and Tom is 69,
Surely we're not elderly.
Elderly is my 99-and three-quarters-years old mom and her friends whom I visit every day over in the Sunrise Senior Living Community.
And even if Tom and I are (gasp) elderly, do we really need to stay home now, before there are even any confirmed coronavirus cases in our state? Should we not at least wait until the virus shows up before we start quarantining ourselves? And for how long must we stay inside our house? (I mean, the Spanish Flu, lasted for two years).
Meanwhile the World Health Organization says that most of the world is probably going to contract the coronavirus but that people in my demographic are at the greatest risk of dying from it; the Center for Disease Control wants people my age to stay home;
...my son's girlfriend, grad student in Health Care Administration at Ohio State, has conjectured that the coronavirus invasion of Ohio might hit us like a tidal wave next week when all the Ohio State Students return to school after having been off and traveling around the country for their spring break; |
Still, it all seems so surreal.
Epilogue: It was announced today that the first three cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Ohio, in Cleveland, which is 140 miles from Columbus.
It just got real.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/health/coronavirus-older-people-social-distancing/index.html
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/global-pandemic-harvard-public/2020/02/15/id/954244/