Peoria, Arizona in the days of the coronavirus - October 2020
As someone who likes to learn history from first-hand accounts, written while it was happening, I dislike "history books" which tend to be cobbled together from fragments, and poor memories. And I know that my memory isn't what it used to be (not that it was ever good), so I thought this morning I would jot down some observations about the coronavirus.
It's Sunday morning, October 4th, about 9 am. As usual I went out pedaling around Peoria (a suburb of Phoenix), and when I took the photo at the top of this post I was wishing that you could hear the quiet.
Sunday mornings are always quiet, but for the past few months it's been kinda eerie. On my morning rides often the loudest sound that I hear is a leaf rustling, or some birds. There are cats wandering around, of course, and often that's the only movement I see.
I noodled over to the Walmart at 79th Avenue and Peoria, got a small coffee, and took the back roads back. I took the back roads there, too, by the way. But even the main streets were mostly empty.
If you're reading this in the future, or somewhere other than Arizona, you may be wondering if people are wearing masks, and practicing social distancing. From what I've seen, they are. I've learned to recognize what I call "mask panic" in people's eyes and it's given me a chance to do something that I haven't done since my teaching days, to be reassuring. "You're doing just fine" is what I usually say. I spoke to a young man yesterday while I was waiting to get my coffee who was very riled up because he had forgotten his mask in his car and had to go back to get it. We talked a bit, and my gentle suggestion to get his mask up over his nose reminded me of the kindly older people who would tell me to straighten my tie, or that my hair was sticking up in back. He adjusted it without a thought, and we continued our conversation. A mask is now something that a gentleman wears, and wears well. Mine has wiener dogs and cactuses on it!
No, I don't wear my mask while I'm out pedaling around, usually more than 100 feet away from anyone, but I mask up when I slow down, get ready to cross intersections, go into buildings, that sort of thing. Like my bicycle helmet, I do it because I have a basic understanding of what's going on, not to follow some type of rule, or regulation. I'm a conceptual learner, but I understand that a lot of people need to follow carefully-explained guidelines, enforced by someone. I also learned that when I started teaching.
It was too early on a Sunday morning for me to get a feel for whether the Snowbirds will be returning this year, but I'm hopeful. The economy of where I live depends on tourism, and my heart goes out to people whose businesses have suffered, especially as Arizona has tended to be, uh, less than compliant with the coronavirus, and the whole country has heard about it.
Speaking of which, I'm wondering what people will call it in the future. I've tended to call it COVID-19, because I'm something of a nerd, and this is just a particular strain of coronavirus. The labels on old cans of Lysol say that it kills coronavirus, which it does. But this strain is named 19, after the year that it was identified, 2019. Of course, some people call it the China Virus, the way that the flu epidemic in 1918 was called the Spanish Flu. A lot of people in the United States disliked Spain back then!
I'm inclined to think that future historians will call it the coronavirus, and only the most picky people will insist on another name. Well, that's my report for today. Thank you for social distancing, wearing a mask, and washing your hands!
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