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 PAN
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