Life Under Lockdown: Day 3, Montreal, Mar. 26

9:19 a.m.

Can it only be three days since they put this place into a lockdown? I listen: normally, the streets below on a Thursday morning at this hour would be exploding—a continuous roar of traffic. Now? Nothing.

Yesterday when I went out to get some groceries the streets were pretty quiet . . . not dead, but, well, Sunday quiet. On a Wednesday.

And the grocery store has become a nightmare.

I suppose for the workers it's even worse, but the way they've set things up are a puzzle: they've reduced the Human checkout lines—that's where you get served by an actual human being—to one, so that means everyone has to go through it. That means both the people, like me, with two or three items, and the people with their week's worth of groceries, plus another cartload of un-necessities, like toilet paper, because pandemics have a side effect of making people stupid.

But of course they have on hand this bank of automatic checkout machines, which they've had in place for about six months, and which I refuse to use; putting them in meant that several people lost their jobs, and in the machines' case they're extremely difficult and unintuitive to use, so they need someone on hand (who could be working a checkout line) to explain to all the dolts how to use the machines.

So that was the situation yesterday. They had some guy standing out front asking stupid questions in his almost-unintelligible Quebecois French: had I been out of the country in the past two weeks? Did I know anyone who had the coronavirus? Did *I* have the coronavirus?

I guess the surgical mask and the gloves I was wearing wasn't enough to persuade him that I was not about to start infecting the shopping carts or sneezing on the produce.

But now there's this new paranoia (completely unfounded, in my opinion): that objects can harbour the virus and make you sick. Quarantine that Amazon package for 24 hours because the virus lives for 24 hours on cardboard!

What they mean but seem unable to say is that the virus is detectible on the surface after 24 hours—that means that they can find fragments of its RNA and capsids—not necessarily that whole viruses lie there, pulsing like leeches, just waiting to leap from the box onto your unsuspecting face, then covering your nose and mouth like the Face-hugger from Alien . . .

In fact, you need a whole bunch of viable viruses—a whole lot more than have been living on cardboard for 24 hours—to cause an infection.

So they're wiping down shelves—shelves emptied of things like Ritz crackers (you need six boxes of Ritz crackers, people? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?) or toilet paper. Wiping down the empty shelves, as if that's going to stop anyone getting infected with Globus-16, or Crowsfeet-26, or whatever else nasty virus is lurking there, waiting to leap onto your face like a—oh, sorry.

I know the likelihood that I will catch this thing are literally a million to one: I haven't had a cold or the flu since my son was a baby, and that was 18 years ago. I've always been ultra-careful when going out of my house. It's why I have a fur-covered key case; all the better to push elevator buttons or cover door handles so I don't accidentally touch them.

I've always carried hand sanitizer and I've always used it. I really don't think that I will get this thing in a month of Sundays, but just in case I've upped my game, if that's even possible. Now, I wear the surgical mask everywhere when I go out, even though "they" say that they won't prevent me getting infected. I say, no, they won't if a coronavirus patient is standing in front of me, coughing into my face.

But otherwise, it's just one more barrier. My N95 mask is in the mail. I use my gloves wherever I go. It will only become a problem when the weather gets too warm to wear gloves, but never fear; I have rubber gloves.

They've closed my favourite coffee shops, so I can't even go get a cup of coffee (and play chess with my friend, but it looks like those days are over for a long, long time).

And with all the contradictory news flying around, I really don't know just how dangerous this virus really is. This guy's report (normally I never link anything to Twitter—I despise it, but of some reason this respected doctor seems to think it's the way to get his message across) has put the fear of Bob into me—someone who has actually HAD Ebola says he's more scared of Covid-19 than he is of Ebola?

12:20 pm

Just got back from shopping. To be clear, I'm currently wearing one of those surgical masks—you know, the blue one that attaches around your ears—which is definitely not an N95 mask. And I'm wearing my usual winter gloves. So imagine my surprise when I get to Metro—it's a large grocery chain here in Montreal, and the one near me used to be open 24 hours (I believe they've been limiting their hours from 8 to 8 every day, to "give the staff a rest and to restock," although the empty shelves of toilet paper seem to be permanently "unstocked," so I'm not sure what they mean)—and am confronted at the entrance by one tall guy carrying a spray bottle. There's a security guard stand just behind him at the side of the entrance.

I saw this guy yesterday. I held up my gloves, as if to say "I'm not touching anything," but he didn't seem to understand—he just started waving the spray bottle. As there was a line forming behind me, I ventured "I just wanted to go in and check the apples—then I'd be coming right out again," but they both said in chorus "Non, non."

Instead of arguing with them I just left. There is no sign explaining what they're doing, although when I got home and called to find out they told me that "They would spray your gloves, m'sieu!" and to that, I had absolutely zero comment.

It seems that with great calamity there must also be great stupidity, and this phenomenon is manifesting itself in droves.

GLOBAL PANDEMIC

Life Under Lockdown: Day 1, Montreal, March 24

Note: I'm hijacking my Microbiome blog to post about life in the time of the coronavirus. Check back every day for a post on how we're coping here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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Tuesday, March 24, 7:44 a.m.

esterday was the day the premier of Quebec declared that "gatherings of more than two people will henceforth be banned."

I entered into a semantic argument with my chess pal Nathan, the frontline ER nurse, that "more than two does NOT equal two. Therefore you and I can still get together at the Second Cup and play chess as we have been doing at 7 a.m. twice a week for a year and a half."

After all, I argued, if the ban was for "more than two" it did not include two—only more than two. Alas, semantics notwithstanding, the entire point was brought to a screeching halt after I called the Côte des Neiges branch of the Second Cup coffee shop and was told by owner Hassan that his superiors, the coffee chain magnates, decreed that he could receive heavy fines for allowing us to play chess in the back room.

(No, the management didn't specifically mention Nathan and me by name—public surveillance has not yet reached that degree in Quebec—but Hassan had earlier yesterday informed me cheerily that "It will be okay if you and your friend play chess in the back room, away from any other customers!"

Now he realized he would have to be shuttering the entire shop—there was no way he was staying open just on the hope that a few people would be dropping by for takeout.

"Now I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay the rent," he mused almost tearfully over the phone.

I was speechless.

I called the Duke (Duc de Lorraine pastry shop) in the vain hope that they would be able to allow us to sit at their table and play chess while drinking coffee. "We're sorry," the girl on the other end of the line informed me, "we can only do takeout. The restaurant is closed."

So that seems to be that . . . no more early-morning chess for the foreseeable—and maybe even unseeable—future.

I was horrified.

Mind you, it might be for the best. You see, Nathan works as a triage nurse in an emergency room (ER) at a large hospital on the island. He's the one who will be the first medical worker to see the people off the street as they hack bits of their lungs over the Triage Desk while he takes down their vitals. It might not be in my supreme interest to be greeting Nathan a couple of hours after his shift with a bear hug and a "How ya doin'? The bug getcha yet?"

And it must be admitted that Brigitte too has greeted all this with a sigh of relief. After all, her immunocompromised lungs—she has a severe form of COPD that can't be treated, and is undergoing treatment for rheumatoid arthritis that leaves her immune system severely weakened—would be swiftly overwhelmed by the coronavirus.

She wouldn't last 24 hours.

So our Lockdown had begun.

Yesterday the count for the coronavirus in Quebec was 628 confirmed cases, one death and one recovered, but these numbers are sure to explode as more testing comes online, mirroring the experience in many other countries (although despite what some Quebecois would want you to think, it is not a country. Yet.)

So for me there was only one thing to do: go back to World War II and go walk in the cemetery.

So I turned on my earphones and prepared to go out, only to be horrified that only one ear of my earphones was working. This was truly bad news, because I listen to audiobooks throughout the day while either walking in the cemetery, shopping at the grocery or drug store for essentials, and then doing chores around the house.

I certainly could not survive all this without both earphones working.

No matter, thought I, I'll just order up a new pair on amazon.ca. They'll be here the day after tomorrow with my Prime service.

I went ahead and created the order for the exact same earphones and then prepared to go out. But a last-minute doubt prompted me to check the delivery date on the earphones.

April 21st? I was aghast. I double-checked. Yes, it was a "Prime 2-day shipping order." So why would it not be shipping for another month?

I checked other pairs of earphone brands.

All were the same: Prime delivery on April 21st.

I tried to call Amazon using their "call me at home" function. They called all right, but delivered a message about getting help on their website and hung up.

I tried again four times with the same result. "No one is answering," Brigitte commiserated. "The banks, the doctors, the stores, no one is answering their phones. You can't even leave a message."

Luckily I managed to rustle up an old pair of earphones I had discarded a year or so earlier because I had lost a collar clip for it. It worked fine. Pretty damned well, in fact.

So I was back in business . . . now I'm looking forward to a month or more of audiobooks about World War II—my current book is about Torpedo Squadron 8 in the Battle of Midway and next I plan on a 30-hour tome about the Battle of Saipan—so my downtime is already booked.

I'll go walk in the gorgeous cemetery across from my house and feed the crows while Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto gets his comeuppance for the 25,000th time and I lose myself in an age before the coronavirus came along to kill my chess game.

Here's to April 21st. May you speed to me my old life back, ASAP (As Soon As Prime).