Matthew Monday: Accommodating the Plague

Just as everyone in the whole world, we have been forced to accommodate to the coronavirus that has permeated the entire world.  One of these days we’ll get the true story of what happened in China to start this monstrosity, but the world has now had to live with a lot of trouble and sorrow.  Frankly, and I hope this isn’t too political, President Trump has done a superb job in containing the situation, coordinating the resources of the country to combat it, and rallying the country to fight it.  I’ll also put in a good word for New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who I really don’t care for.  But he’s done a good job too.

Now two or three weeks into the infiltration of the United States, New York City has become the epicenter for the country.  We’re currently somewhere around 40,000 people testing positive and about a 1000 deaths here to date, and the full brunt of this is still a couple of weeks away.  Everything is shut down.  Grocery stores are about the only thing open.  Matthew has been “teleschooling” for the past three weeks, and I have been teleworking for the past two.  For me it hasn’t been too difficult.  I have email and we have teleconferences where we’re all hooked up by our cell phones.  Some things require a physical get-together but we just put those things off until there is a day we can finally meet in person.  As I’ve been saying, schedules are the same for everybody and are of a secondary concern.  The whole world has slipped schedule. 

I’ve been doing most of the shopping both for us and my mother.  Except for a doctor’s appointment, my mother has been banished to the home.  She is not allowed out.  I wore a mask and nursing gloves to go shopping the other day for the first time in my life.  I used to make fun of people who did that until now.  NYC is the epicenter as you may have heard.  But what you may not have heard, Staten Island, which is the part of NYC that I live in, has the second highest infect rate in the country.  Strangely enough New Orleans has the highest.

Matthew seems to have thrived under these conditions.  He gets assignments from his teacher the evening before.  He reads and hands in responses to the assignments the next morning.  He tells me to wake him before 8 AM.  We go to “work” together, me in my study, he at the dining room table.  He sits in front of his Chrome Book with his school books on the side and does his assignments.  He scoring the best grades of the year on his tests.  On one of his math tests he got 36/36 correct.  He’s gotten really good grades on his other tests too.  The lesson I take away from this is that he does better without the socializing.  He’s such a gregarious kid that his fraternizing makes him lose focus.  Here’s a picture of him at the dining room table.

Thank God we got him that Chrome Book for Christmas.  He wanted one and it was truly an inspiration.

All in all it feels like we're in a horror movie.  I keep waiting for the walking dead to ring the doorbell. 

Keep safe.  Our hospitals are packed.  Right now the heroes are the doctors and nurses fighting to save the lives of those in emergency rooms and ICU. From what I’m reading it’s really hell here in the NY hospitals right now. That’s not to say that it’s not bad elsewhere.  It's bad out there and we're heading into the peak of the situation. 

Lord save us from this plague.  Now we can all say we lived through a Biblical plague.  ;)