Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles

I never thought I'd be so scared of a package that I was expecting. Like a lot of people, my partner and I have resorted to ordering things to be shipped to our door rather than go out and buy it in person. However, thanks to how little is known about if/how long COVID-19 can transfer via surfaces, each delivery we get is met with a mixture of excitement and terror. I suppose everyone has a different level of comfort with how they approach the opening of a package, but here's generally how the process has gone at our house: Either my partner or myself claims responsibility for retrieving the package, and they are applauded by the other The responsible person puts on some outdoor footwear, clears a surface on a table or counter, and then retrieves a box cutter (optional: gloves are worn) They then go outside and cut the box open while touching it as little as possible The contents are pulled out and placed onto the ground The box is broken down and taken directly ...

The idea of starting a third whole week of this isolated lifestyle is suffocating, as I'm sure you agree. Fortunately I have a little bit of good news. We were keeping tabs on my brother-in-law's progress through his unknown illness since he revealed it to us , and based on his description of the symptoms and his incredibly quick recovery we've determined–insofar as we can without being medical professionals–that he had a mundane cold or flu and not COVID-19. Not only is that good for him and my partner's parents, but it meant there was once again the option of our family seeing them on the regular again. After talking about it and discussing the pros and cons yet again, my partner and I have decided to resume taking our child to her grandparents' house for the mornings of the workweek. We have no idea how long this pandemic and resulting isolation is going to last, but we're going to take advantage of what little luxuries we feel comfortable with for...

Last night I played Team Fortress 2 with two of my friends from the Vertigo Gaming Inc. team for two hours. We had been talking about doing this for a while as a way to hang out despite the distance between us, and while we were slow to pull the trigger at first, the pandemic obviously made that idea all the more appealing. As I learned, online gaming with friends is a great way to feel less isolated. Being able to talk and interact, even within the confines of a video game, felt very freeing compared to the last two weeks. Definitely give it a shot if you haven't yet. In keeping with our promise from yesterday, my partner and I still avoided the news today. We know things are bad, and reading about exactly how bad they are without being able to do anything about it isn't going to do any good. We did our best to make this just like any other weekend. My partner applied more plaster and painted the bathroom wall to finish that project, we blew bubbles for our daughter...

Today, in addition to vowing to stay away from the news, my partner and I decided to tackle some of our long-overdue house projects from the Quarantine Projects list . For my partner, that meant scraping the paint and plaster off the slightly water-damaged wall in our bathroom. Then, after cleaning up the mess on the floor, she applied the first coat of fresh plaster—the final steps will have to wait for another day. For me, that meant hanging up two strands of outdoor all-season lights over our back patio—but not before unwrapping and screwing in every individual light bulb, which was kind of annoying. Oh well, the end result looks nice, if a bit uneven (I'll fix that later, I swear). Our daughter, however, is fortunate enough to not have any house projects. She just got to enjoy some indoor bubbles. Overall it's been a pretty productive day. Plus, staying away from the news helped us keep focused and relatively sane. We'...

Here we are at the end of week two of self-isolation and it's already been more dramatic than I originally expected. So much has changed, and yet everything is the same. One thing that has been helping my partner and I get through these two weeks is  Ben Gibbard's Live From Home , a virtual concert series in which Ben Gibbard (lead member of Death Cab for Cutie) performs songs and answers fan questions online every single night. He even debuted a new and incredibly appropriate song called "Life in Quarantine" during one of these shows. It's kind of surprising just how comforting it is. Similarly, yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my favorite band, Nine Inch Nails, recorded and released for free two long-overdue sequel albums to their 2008 instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, titled "Ghosts V: Together" and "Ghosts VI: Locusts," to help fans get through these unique times. While the only thing that we've done to reall...

As a brief update to my post from yesterday, I did end up going for a run outside and it was absolutely wonderful! While I anticipated it would be difficult and expected to need a break or two since I haven't run outdoors in months, I ended up running even further than I planned without a single break! I ran for 4.3 miles, which is pretty close to my all-time best distance of 4.9! Unfortunately I also have bad news. The situation I detailed yesterday regarding my toddler spending the mornings with her grandparents may be compromised. As a result, she's home with us while we work today and will be until we can guarantee (to whatever extent that's possible) that it's safe again. Yesterday while my partner was visiting her parents to pick up our toddler, her brother stopped by to pick up something. Unfortunately, after getting closer than 6ft to his parents, he disclosed that he had been feeling mildly sick since Monday but was feeling relatively bett...

Wisconsin's "Safer at Home" order went into effect today. The gist of it is that we should stay home unless it's absolutely necessary to travel, such as for groceries. Fortunately, "essential travel" includes to care for minors (under definition 15b) and "essential activities" includes taking care of others (under definition 11e) so for now my partner and I are still driving our toddler to and from her grandparents' house for childcare in the mornings. It's a decision that my partner and I talk over at least once every single day and will no doubt continue to reassess each day of the forseeable future. Here are the points that it always comes down to: Reasons against: Nobody wants anyone to get sick. Symptoms take two weeks to show and some people are completely asymptomatic but still infectious. What if we're being stupid? Reasons for: All of us are taking every possible precaution with cleanliness and health. None of...

Today the governor of Wisconsin has announced the "Safer At Home" order. Basically everyone needs to stay home and all non-essential businesses need to shut down for a month starting tomorrow. This is good for helping to stop the spread, of course, but it's upsetting that there's nothing similarly intelligent happening at the national level. I'm getting sick of being embarrassed about my country. We have more resources than others could dream to have and yet our leaders repeatedly ignore them. That's absolutely unforgivable in times like this. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the pandemic right now that I don't quite know how to express. I don't even really know how to feel about it. Should I be thankful that everything in my bubble is relatively alright for the time being or terrified that the WHO says the USA is on track to become the epicenter of the pandemic? Are the people I care about going to be okay or is that a dumb question to e...

Remote work was the future and the future is now. Seriously though, the concept of remote work started way back in the 1990s when personal computers and the internet allowed people to work offsite for the first time. I've been reading about it "being the future" for quite a long time now, and while many organizations have adopted remote work in some capacity, it feels like a lot of organizations are stuck in the past in this regard. Or at least they were until COVID-19 pushed them kicking and screaming into the future. Adapt or die, I suppose? I'm curious to see how popular the concept is once things start going back to normal. I've been fortunate enough that my employer already had a pretty nice remote work policy, in that they allowed each department to determine the specifics of their rules for themselves and all employees have a laptop with a travel bag and power cord ready to go. Specifically, my department allows everyone to work from home four t...

So yesterday I stumbled upon  this article in which a respiratory therapist describes in detail what the worst of COVID-19 looks like in the hospital. These disturbing descriptions were all new to me, which is worrisome given how far into this pandemic the world already is. The details of the disease shouldn't still be unknown or downplayed at this point. I began to reflect on my experience learning about this disease and how long it took for me to take it seriously versus how quickly everything seemed to go wrong. I was away on business in Boston for PAX East (a big video game convention) from February 25th through March 2nd. There was talk of the "novel coronavirus" at the time but I didn't know much about it. While I worked my booth and walked the convention floor I couldn't help but notice the (relatively small but nonetheless) increased number of attendees wearing face masks at the event. I just kind of shrugged it off, thinking it was good that peo...

Like many of you, I find myself with an abundance of time essentially trapped at home. This is especially difficult because spring is finally here, meaning that after an entire winter of waiting, the zoo, farmer's markets, and even going out in comfortable weather to lunch at a restaurant are still elusive activities. This isn't so bad for my family during the week because we've got a toddler who keeps us on a pretty tight schedule that hasn't changed since the pandemic. The weekends, however, are another story. We have a family zoo pass and a membership at the local children's museum, both of which we were looking forward to using as soon as spring arrived and the risk of catching the seasonal flu passed. Both are closed, along with—hold on let me just double check this fact—just about everything else that's fun. But even if they weren't closed, the fear of catching anything from anyone at this point is enough to keep us home. Don't get me wrong...

Hi there. My name is Ryan and this is an interesting time to be alive. SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 is making its way around the world and like many other people I'm now confined mostly to my home for the foreseeable future. I've often described myself as "a really easy-going guy" and an optimist. My partner is the worrier in our relationship and I'm the one always reassuring her that everything's going to be alright. Our discussions about the COVID-19 epidemic have followed this pattern so far, but I'm starting to think that maybe her reaction is the more rational one in this scenario. As an optimist, that's pretty scary. It's scary to think that it's not going to be alright and it's scary to think that I've been a fool to think so. Mostly, it's scary to not know exactly how scared I should be. Anyway, today I happened upon  this article  in which a University of Virginia professor urged his students and everyone els...