Rant #2,380: Cover Me

This is a big week as far as the coronavirus--and life--is concerned.

Our medical leaders and legislators are telling us that in New York, this will probably be the beginning of the worst period for the spread of the disease.

Thousands of people are supposed to test positive for disease during the next 10 days to two weeks or so, and there will be thousands of deaths from this scourge.

Whether we reach the height of the spread of this disease during this period is up for speculation, but our leaders believe that the next 10 days will tell us a lot about the disease, how it spreads, who gets it, and how we, as a civilization, handle it.

And to top it all off, this is one of the most religious periods on the calendar, with both Easter and Passover coming pretty much at the same time as the expected apex of the disease hits us.

Those two holidays are among the events on the calendar that are family oriented, but this year, to fight the coronavirus, we are being told to shy away from such gatherings, and to celebrate these religious holidays only with those you have been holed up with for the past month or so.

Therefore, in my family, that means we will have a seder for Passover on the evening of Wednesday, April 8, but it will only include myself, my wife, and our son.

Usually, we gather together with my parents and my sister's family, but not this year. They will do their own seders.

I would assume that most Christians will follow this no-gathering rule and celebrate Easter Sunday with only their very close loved ones.

That is the way it has to be this year, and hopefully, once we kick this virus, we will never have to do it again.

And on Friday, the nation was told that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suggested that wearing masks when outside is something that all people should do.

It is a voluntary move, so you do not have to wear any face protection is you do not want to. Showing strength, the president said he will not wear this protection, and other leaders, at least when they are speaking to us to give updates, aren't wearing this protection either, at least on camera.

It is your choice to wear such protection, but it goes hand in hand with spacing six feet apart when in a place with other people, washing hands thoroughly, and everything else we are being told to do to nip this disease in the bud.

Funny, I see most people kind of doing this, with some people doing it half-assed, so to speak.

I was in the supermarket on early Saturday evening, and yes, most people wearing some type of mask.

But when I was on the line waiting to pay for what I wanted to purchase, a woman came up behind me on the line. Me, I was clearly at least six feet behind the woman ahead of me, and I was last in the line at the checkout.

But others came after me. The woman who stood on the line after me was covered up from head to toe with protection, yet she stood about three inches from me. I did not say anything, but I certainly could have. What is the sense of wrapping yourself up like this if you aren't going to follow proper distancing rules?

I did give her a couple of looks to try to get her to send her my brainwaves that she should move back about five feet, but she was so wrapped up due to the virus, and evidently her own self, that those brain waves never could get into her impermeable brain.

On Friday afternoon, I went to the local drug store, and I saw a sight that I wish I had taken a picture of. I saw a worker, also dressed head to toe for the virus, putting up her facial covering just so much that she could smoke a cigarette.

Yes, she was protected from the coronavirus, but cancer? Who cares!

I have come to the conclusion that people can be such idiots at times.

As for my family, I actually found some face masks in our "everything" draw in the kitchen, stuff that has been holed away fro who knows how long.

I must have found about 10 of them or so, so now we have something to wear to protect our noses and mouths. They are more geared to wearing when you are doing vacuuming and don't want to breath in the dust and exhaust, but they will do fine for what we need them for now.

I gave a couple to my parents, and my mother lately proudly proclaimed that she had made her own face covering, so my father and her are covered, so to speak.

And funny, this week, at least I won't need to wear the face coverings much, because as I look at my calendar, unless something comes out of nowhere, I won't be outside too much during at least the next seven days.

Yes, I will have to go food shopping, and yes, I will have to go to the bank, but I really do not have anything else doing on my calendar. This is the first week in many weeks that I do not have to take my parents to any doctors, so I really won't be using my car too much.

But at least when I go food shopping, I will have something to supposedly protect myself, although I don't really think these things do that much good physically for wearers ... it just makes people feel that they are doing something to protect themselves against this scourge.

If it makes people feel better, even if it doesn't really do anything else, I guess that is OK in my book.