A Plus Attitudes

I live in the United States. Up until about a week and a half ago we were all going about our business as if nothing was changing. Then we started to hear what was going on in Italy, because China wasn’t enough to make us be concerned, and the exponential spread that was happening in a very short time in Italy was making some of us stand up and take notice of the seriousness of this disease.

As of yesterday, March 20, 2020, Italy has 47,021 confirmed Coronavirus cases. The number of deaths so far are a staggering 4,032.

Regardless of where we live, we have to accept that COVID-19 is a global issue, it’s a Pandemic.

How we choose to go about our lives right now is important. The best thing we can do is stay home, if our occupation is non-essential. If we have to go to work or if work is a matter of meeting our basic needs(food, shelter, water…) then we have try our best to keep our hands away from our face, keep a safe distance of 4-6 feet from each other, keep our hands clean by washing them after using the facilities or blowing our nose, sneeze and cough in our sleeve or Kleenex/kerchief and lastly don’t socialize.

I have a mother who is 85. I am holding off visiting her until after we know we are in the clear with this virus. She lives independently in a senior community. Her basic needs are being met and the community has put strict restrictions on socializing. All dining facilities have been shut down, food is being delivered to all the residents who have a dining plan, visitors temperatures are taken before they are allowed to enter the facility and if the visitor is given access, they must go directly to the resident’s domicile.

We have to resist the urge to do what we normally do. I feel somewhat guilty and sad that I can’t visit my mother right now, but that would be foolish of me to do so and would put both of us at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and also a greater risk to her senior community and our community at large.

The only way we are going to stop this virus is by accepting that it exists and it is a global problem. Other countries have put measures into place to slow down and stop the spread. So the data is available for us to use as a guide to put into place the proper measures needed to tackle this disease effectively.

It’s times like these that I am truly grateful for and appreciative of science. It’s all in the numbers and Numbers Speak and It’s Not Pretty. So, please pay attention to the data, be smart, be safe and mindful of your actions. You could save a life, including your own.

If you want to see how or where your country stands with the Coronavirus, here is the source I used for this article:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Source: worldometers.info/coronavirus