Pandemic Anxiety

I don't know what to make of what's going on right now. Honestly, the way things feel right now reminds me of the days after 9/11, or Columbine, or Waco, or the OKC Bombing. Something major is happening, but no one really knows anything, and we’re all just speculating.

My kids aren’t going back to school until March 31st. Their regular spring break started yesterday, but they were originally slated to return to school on the 25th. The district has instead extended it through the end of the month and has cancelled all activities that were scheduled during spring break, including sports. All facilities are locked down, meaning only support staff can get in, and all facilities will be deep cleaned.

Apparently, Des Moines Public Schools acted unilaterally, and caught the rest of the metro off guard. West Des Moines, Johnston, and Urbandale didn’t want to close, and I’m not sure what their plans are. Usually the school districts work together, so this is odd.

There’s a run on toilet paper right now, which some people see as odd, but makes sense to me. It didn’t really bother me when my Target is out of toilet paper, or when I read on the Des Moines reddit that people are having trouble finding it. It bothered me when I checked Amazon, and no one has any TP there. The supply chain is being disrupted, and this is something that bothers me.

For all of the America First rhetoric that’s been thrown around lately, we live in a global economy. Even within this country, the supply chains are all over the place. Very little of what I buy is produced locally. I’m not so worried about the shipping sector—one truck can carry a lot of goods. I’m worried about the retail sector. Working in retail is an inherently germ-y situation. I got sick every winter when I worked in grocery stores. Cashiers, especially, are handling money, and money is inherently dirty. It’s been handled by everyone, and you don’t know how clean their hands were.

So I’m worried about retail workers getting sick and not having adequate health care or sick leave to cover the expense of getting sick, and I’m also worried about retail centers acting as transmission points for the virus. But I also know that retail is a precarious game. In order to make it in retail, you have to keep your margins low and rely on a steady stream of customers. As a former front end manager of a grocery store, I know how the number of customers affects your bottom line.

I just don’t know how a lot of businesses are going to survive two weeks or a month of little to no traffic. It’s really going to hurt, and I’m afraid that the first response is going to be to cut payroll. There’s only so many jobs that can work online from home. A universal basic income makes a lot of sense right now, doesn’t it?

Also, I’m just worried about not knowing how rampant the virus is right now. All I know is that 8 people tested positive in Johnson County here in Iowa, I think people related to the university who had just gotten back from overseas, people who somehow qualified for testing. I don’t know if any testing has been done here in Des Moines, which is the largest population center in the state. Testing isn’t scheduled to ramp up until sometime next week, and even then, we don’t know what that means. Not knowing how dangerous it is out there is driving me crazy.

Yesterday was my son’s ninth birthday, and today we were going to go out to lunch to a Japanese restaurant and then to a movie. We think we’ll still do the lunch, but instead of going to a theater, we’re going to rent a movie at home. Our other son’s birthday is next month, and we had rented a pavilion in a park for his party, but yesterday we cancelled the reservation.

In the next few weeks, I guess we’ll get a picture of what is actually going on. I don’t know if my kids are going back to school in April. My job is secure—I work from home for a large corporation that isn’t going away anytime soon. My wife’s job is secure, but her hours aren’t, and it’s not a job she can do from home. I hope the grocery stores don’t close, but I’m worried about how this is all going to play out.