matthearn.com

The best day to start documenting what’s going on during a quarantine is during the first day of the quarantine; the second best day is whatever today happens to be. Today, six days in, is when it finally occurred to me it might be wise to start noting what’s been happening, what might happen next, and any other thoughts that occur to me.

So, after 5 years of zero updates, I’m resurrecting matthearn.com, at least for the Duration of the Current Emergency.

A brief glimpse of what’s happened so far, just for posterity; the details can be found at many other sources far more reliable than I.

• A new (“novel”) coronavirus erupted in Wuhan, China in late 2019.
• It reached the United States via cruise ship and other travelers in early 2020, and rapidly began to spread throughout the country.
• The Trump Administration, in its collective “wisdom,” played down the severity of the outbreak, even implying that it is a “Democratic hoax.”
• In mid-March, the first cases were confirmed in Delaware; a professor and three of his students who apparently picked it up at a conference out of state. Other cases began to be confirmed over the following days.
• Friday, March 13th, Governor Carney ordered schools to be closed for two weeks, and asked people to begin to use “social distancing” to slow the spread of the virus and avoid overwhelming the healthcare system, which only has so many ventilators and ICU beds.
• Shortly thereafter, following the lead of other states, the Governor orders restaurants and bars to become “take-out only”, with no eat-in service.
• Saturday, March 14th, the Hearn family goes into more-or-less complete lockdown. Our eldest asks if he can still play with his friends; we decree that he can only do so outside, not trapped in the same room sharing germs.
• Tuesday, March 17th, our eldest and his friends spend the afternoon writhing all over each other on the trampoline in our backyard.
• Wednesday, March 18th, one of those friends is now reportedly “sick.”

So we’re playing the waiting game to see if any of us contract some sort of virulent illness. The good news is that none of us is in the demographic that’s in significant danger, so I’m not terribly concerned about any of us getting sick to the point of hospitalization or worse.

There is much to be concerned about, of course. We’re lucky; my jobs can be done from anywhere, and Sarah’s office completely closed, so she and I have both continued to work, while trying to keep our children’s brains from atrophying. We’ve been making them try to do a little bit of schoolwork every day, though at this point they’ve completed everything that had been assigned before schools closed their doors, and have mostly moved on towards educational videos and Duolingo. I’m hoping we can start doing some actual instructional time, because it’s looking increasingly likely that schools will be out for far more than the two weeks that the Governor originally decreed.

I’m worried for people who can’t work remotely, or whose jobs depend on folks actually being able to leave their homes. We’re going to try and get in the habit of getting take-out from local restaurants on occasion to help keep them afloat. It does look like the Federal government is actually doing its job; we could see billions of dollars spent on actually helping people, which is more novel than the virus itself.

My main concern is for anyone over the age of 60. Not just for their health, though the virus seems to be far more dangerous for them, but the stock market tanking seems to be hitting everybody’s retirement funds pretty hard. I know the value of mine has dropped 25% in the last 3 weeks. Luckily, I’m 17 years away from being able to withdraw anything from mine, so I’ve actually increased my 401K contribution to buy while the funds are cheap. Plenty of older folks are in a tough spot right now, particularly if they didn’t move their money from the stock market to less volatile investments as they got closer to retirement.

We’ve decided that it’s possible for us to “isolate” but still spend some time outside, which is good. The kids and I have played soccer in our yard every evening this week, and yesterday afternoon we drove to the DuPont Environmental Education Center (the funny-looking building in Churchman’s Marsh south of Frawley Stadium and the Shipyard Shops in south Wilmington); the center itself is closed, but all of the walking paths are open. There were a fair number of other people there as well, taking advantage of the warm sun. The Jack Markell Trail was also open and busy; I might need to take a bicycle down there and go for a ride if I can break away for a few hours. We hope to start going to state parks, particularly as the weather warms, but have to deal with the fact that the younger kids will want to use playgrounds where they found them, and I have to assume that every inch of a jungle gym is crawling with COVID19 and my children cannot stop touching their own faces.

From reports, China is starting to recover from its outbreak; hopefully more good news comes from there. Meanwhile, hunker down and wash your hands everyone!