So, my PCT hike is off. The hike I quit my job for. Rearranged my life for. The only thing I've been excited about in a long time. Bleh. Transitioning from hiking every day and physically prepping to be backpacking for ~5 months to mostly being cooped up due to Covid lockdowns has been...rough. To try and prevent myself from spiralling too quickly into a depressive episode, I made a schedule for myself to stick to despite being at home. I set my alarm every morning. I've been walking and running around the neighborhood in the mornings while it's quiet. All of California is under shelter in place orders, but San Diego in particular also had all of its beaches and parks shut down because people were not recreating responsibility (no respect for 6 ft distances, illprepared hikers needing rescues that put additional strain on our healthcare workers, etc). So hikes are no longer an option. But I'm working out at home as best I can. Trying to eat well. Shower daily. Normal human things. My dad works at a hospital in NY. He's nearly 70, so he's in the high risk group. He could stay home. But he's going in anyway because they need all hands on deck. He tells me ICU admittance is rising 20% every day. Meetings about who gets ventilators, who gets beds. Because they don't have enough. Don't have enough PPE. Don't have enough nurses or doctors. Don't have a plan for when nurses and doctors drop off due to infection and or fatigue. So staying home is maybe not what I want to be doing right now but it's the best thing I can do to help my dad and other health care workers, by mitigating both my risk and potential for infection exposure. I hope everyone stays home. America seems to be the perfect storm for handling the pandemic terribly. The US sense of entitlement - "no one can take my civil liberties" attitude with people thinking their perceived individual freedom is more important than stay at home orders. The belief that "I'm healthy, I'll survive!" - which is increasingly showing to be both 1) selfish and ignores the collatoral damage of, y'know, other human lives but also 2) untrue. Young folks are getting sick and dying too. (Also - as someone who's had pneumonia... Surviving doesn't give an indication of quality of life. Post-pneumonia I had permanent lung damage, $300 inhalers I had to take daily, and thousands of dollars in medical bills). Plus the failure of our gvt to provide accurate tests, enough tests, adequate containment measures, or even just....an attempt to take covid seriously before it blew up? Yeah.
So. You know. Please stay home, I guess is my point. The sooner everyone stays home the sooner (and more safely) we can get through this.
Can't even begin to speculate on what the world will look like after this.
