Golis: Three months and counting, life inside a pandemic

On Wednesday, we will pass the three-month anniversary of the shelter-in-place order. We like to pretend we have fallen into a routine, but the truth is it never feels normal. We keep thinking we'll wake up and learn it never happened.

Last week, we baked two loaves of sourdough, pulled weeds and harvested lettuce and chard. My wife cut my hair and sewed more protective masks. I sorted a long-forgotten box of family slides.

So one day moves into the next. Welcome to life in the Pandemic of 2020.

We walked on a beach last week and sent our adult kids a photo. The ocean is still here, we said. For almost three months, the ocean (and almost everything else) existed only in our imaginations.

Judging by the people and cars along the coast, we weren't the only ones desperate to be out of the house and out of town.

On the internet, we read everything we can find about what it will take to stay safe and begin a return to the life we used to take for granted.

If we have learned anything about this virus, however, it is that we still have a lot to learn.

The dissonance of opinions from government and from experts hasn't made it easier to understand best practices. We read conflicting stories about the radius of the airborne emissions from a cough, about a formerly obscure drug used to combat malaria, about the length of time a virus lives on a cardboard box and about when it will be time to open up again.

The confusion also makes it more difficult to maintain some sense of shared purpose. Who knew the wearing of a protective mask could become a political statement? The New Yorker told the story of an Oregon store clerk who wore a mask and was accused of pursuing a socialist agenda. The public health officer of Orange County asked people to wear masks in public and then resigned after her life was threatened.

Even liberal Sonoma County found itself in a nasty squabble over enforcement of public health orders. Along the way, more people learned the name of the Sonoma County sheriff, Mark Essick, who may or may not enjoy his newfound celebrity.

Though the number of new cases hasn't declined, leaders in many communities are loosening the rules, having concluded that the economic and social life of every city and town has to start again some time.

Still, familiar activities — sporting events, concerts, the county fair and more — will remain for now as memories, and we continue to worry that we may have to return to sheltering in place if the virus begins to spread again. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,861 points on Thursday, analysts blamed a spike in the number of cases of COVID-19.

'I'm very concerned about the pace,' John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert, told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'It's like the reopening has taken a life of its own. There's this momentum behind it, and it's very hard to stop it and pause it.'

'In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Tuesday, 'and it isn't over yet.'

Going forward, It seems likely that the most vulnerable populations will need to live by different rules than everyone else.

Beginning now, we are engaged in a real-time experiment in managing risk and gauging risk tolerance, making rough calculations that compare risk and reward. To see East Coast family this year, should we risk traveling this summer because the virus may spike in the fall? What is our comfort level when it comes to boarding an airplane? Do we need to worry about public restrooms? The list goes on.

This weekend, we will be seeing our grandkids for the first time in three months — that is, we will be in the same physical (outdoor) space with them. We've 'seen' them plenty in recent months, but we've also learned an image on a computer screen won't be confused with the feeling that comes from being together — even at a distance.

There is something sad about seeing a 4-year-old in a protective mask — but not as sad as a 4-year-old (or a grandparent) on a ventilator. We even read stories last week about the safest way to hug your loved ones.

While we complain, it remains that we are among the lucky ones. Tens of millions of people are living without a paycheck — and no one can yet predict what the American workplace will look like when we come out on the other side.

And as the protests of the past two weeks remind us, millions of African Americans continue to suffer from injustices that began centuries ago, injustices often manifested in health disparities. The Los Angeles Times reported that black people in L.A. County are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.

Here in Sonoma County, we have experienced two seemingly once-in-forever emergencies in the space of 2½ years — the fires of 2017 and now this pandemic. It's been painful, and yet we persevere.

We will need to be smart and tough and generous, but then, that was always true.

Stay well, everyone.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.