Many, many, many people have contracted COVID-19. I would say "countless" but for the first time probably in the history of the world, we know more about the actual number of people who have gotten an illness or condition than we likely have about anything else so significant.
I've looked at the statistics on and off since the beginning of the year. I've gone through periods of looking every day at the world, country, state, county, and even zip code numbers and calculated "how many people in X" have COVID-19 around me. Statistics can sound both good and bad at the same time. Saying only 1000 people in a million are infected sounds rather low, but saying one in a thousand somehow sounds more ominous. How many people might have gone through the doctor's office, grocery store, pharmacy or, now, are connected in some way to my son's classmates at school? In that light, it seems like a much higher probability we'll encounter someone who is positive for the virus.
My son's school is taking exceptionally vigilant measures to keep everyone not only socially distanced, but surfaces, objects, doors, toilets, etc. sanitized and safe from one students to the next. The school had an email come out today saying saying again that they highly recommend families do not travel if at all possible and if they must and go out of state, they should quarantine at home for fourteen days. That was the prior message. Today, that message was strengthened with a requirement that families who travel for the holidays must now quarantine for fourteen days.
Any student or parent who has been potentially exposed does not come to school until the have a negative test result. Any such situations are reported (anonymously) to all families, listing only what class the potential exposure happened in. So far, we have had no confirmed cases at my son's school. My daughter is at home, so her only exposure risk is from our situation here.
Up until today, I know of people who know people who've had COVID-19 in our area but no one I know personally. I looked at the statistics for our county and was both surprised and saddened by the death statistics. There have been deaths, but not a lot of them. While some cases can't be helped with any amount of medical intervention, we do live in an area heavily focused on medicine. The sad part was that nearly fifty percent of the deaths were from outbreaks in two nursing homes. I can't imagine the guilt of the administration and staff, knowing this happened to their patients. I don't know the dates so this could have been early on but it still was tragic to see those numbers on my computer screen.
Today my husband told me one of his clients had called. She was planning on going to sign some documents for the upcoming sale of her house but had just found out her daughter had tested positive. She had seen her several days before. Her daughter is one of my good friends and was my matron of honor at our wedding.
My husband and our family are fine as he hasn't seen my friend's mother in some time and although that's comforting for us, I'm more worried about Bonnie, who is older. Hopefully she, and our friend will both be fine.
The Big Boy Update: Blake took my son to the beach today on a day trip to fish off a pier. My son hasn't been fishing before but apparently, he had a great time. We now have a fish in our refrigerator with both guts and scales still intact. We're going to have to do something with him tomorrow lest it goes bad in our refrigerator
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I (as her sous chef) made "Dirt Cups" today for her Friday fun VI Google meet. My husband got the ingredients in advance (chocolate pudding, Cool Whip, Oreo cookies, milk, and gummy worms) and today, we made ten little cups with pudding mud, crumbled Oreo dirt on the top, and gummy worms crawling out from the depths of the "dirt". There was a lesson entailed in this: my daughter had to read the ingredients list and description (page 1) and then follow the directions (page 2). She had to keep mentally organized where she was on each page and where things were on the counter without being able to see anything. She went to get things such as measuring cups and a cutting board. She also had to decide when she should ask for help. She did well but had a bit of a challenge reading the directions start to finish and then going back to find each successive step without re-reading most of what was on the second page. Her teacher is exceptionally patient and always has something positive to say about what she's doing. My daughter called me her sous chef the whole time after her teacher dubbed me that at the start. After that meeting, she had another meeting with her favorite braillist, Mrs. B. They were going to play a game and my daughter, learning from the last lesson, asked me for some help, calling me the, "sous game" which I didn't get until I realized she'd swapped 'chef' for 'game'.
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