The quarantine is coming to an end slowly. For those who have children of school age it will continue for a couple more weeks, but for the most part things are really getting moving, naturally pending no “second wave” of virus infections, which at this stage remains undefined. Will governments really be able to afford to close us down again? Will the aftermath of the precautions not be greater than the actual risks from infections? There will be a lot of opinions on these things in coming weeks and months, and a lot of difficult choices to be made.
I have been back at work and my experience is mixed. It is difficult to accept the world as we know it has changed and there will certainly be some long lasting effects. Maybe everything will return to how it was, but being a veteran of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 in the USA it is as clear in this situation that the world will never look back. At minimum the governments will “help” us become safe again.
Our family has been strong through the whole period but there have certainly been times of weakness and hopelessness. Most remarkable was simply being together and enjoying a sunny day, playing some games, learning to count, and relaxing. If a person tried to forget everything else going on, the time was gold. Social Media combined with constant sources of information make forgetting nearly impossible, but controlling information flow is what we need to do anyhow. It still amazes me that media always manages to find one expert who believes the doom day scenario is the only scenario and then even takes that experts quotes out of context to say that the world is ending.
The calm people probably have this right. There will be some difficult times, we are all still learning, and then eventually there will be some kind of fix. As I read today there are hundreds of other things out there ready to kill us and this will turn into just another virus which affects some people worse than others. Who knew that tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people a year and is also an airborne disease? Hopefully that time will come sooner than later and then we will slowly start refocusing on our daily lives again.
I am choosing to end the series and start focusing on some new content and projects for our newspaper. I wanted to thank all the readers and supporters who have encouraged me during the past 52 days. You are a great group of people I hold dear and hope to see you all again soon. I also want to thank the people who took the time to write me and criticize a point, I am always learning. I hope the rest of you enjoyed the read and it brought to light what some of the others in the world are going through on a daily basis.
Paul Lysek – The idea of writing a daily update came to me by seeing, hearing and trying to understand all the things that are happening around us at this time. This story is a combination of all those sources, including friends, relatives, and experiences with attempts to bring out the satire, emotion and changing environment of the situation. It is entirely fictional, with the exception of my sarcasm.
