The more I read about the coronavirus impact in the United States and here in New York City in particular, the less inclined I feel to go outside if I can avoid it. I think the numbers below speak for themselves:
That’s about a 1% death rate here in New York City. I think the average globally is 4.5%. It’s a good thing governments are taking measures to isolate people. Even if only 1% of Americans died, that would be 3.3 million people. And it would definitely be worse than that because hospitals would be overwhelmed and people with other illnesses would be denied service due to lack of capacity, causing even more deaths.
Shopping time!
That being said, grocery stores are listed as essential for a reason and I had to head down to Key Foods and Antillana today. As nervous as I am about contracting coronavirus, I was pretty stoked to get outside the house for a bit. I’d actually considered going to Trader Joe’s at Union Square yesterday. I need ghee and they don’t sell it around here. But I changed my mind. I don’t want to get on the train just for ghee. I guess it’s a good thing I did, because they shut down that store when an employee tested positive for COVID-19. I probably dodged a bullet there.
The situation at the local grocery stores was about how I expected. They were almost fully stocked. No surprise there. While I was shopping, both stores were actively restocking the shelves.
There were a few things still out of stock, like some brands of flour, ginger at Key Foods (but not at Antillana), some canned beans and canned vegetables, and ground beef at Key Food for some reason. I didn’t even bother to look at the toilet paper and soap aisles because we still have plenty of each.
When I got home, I stripped everything off down to my drawers and then washed my hands. I put away the groceries and then washed my hands again. This stuff can live for hours on surfaces. I wonder how long it can live on my jacket or pants? Maybe I should be throwing everything directly into the washing machine.
I thought about saving my face mask to use a second time but decided to just trash it. We aren’t going outside that often and we have quite a few. It would be pretty stupid to get coronavirus from reusing a face mask.
Anyway, I’m trying to find things to keep myself busy. I want to spend a bunch of time playing video games, but mostly I’m just writing my blog entries and studying foreign languages on Memrise. The rest of my time is cleaning, cooking, some more cleaning, and trying to stay abreast of current coronavirus news. Reading too!
It’s really amazing how fast a day can go by. Even during the coronavirus shutdown there’s not enough time in the day for everything I want to do.
Bradley Farless 