Coronavirus and the situation in Ohio

Hi everyone! I wish I was writing about happier events, but unfortunately that is not the case. I know that we are all likely staying updated on all things regarding the coronavirus, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts about recent events. As of writing this on March 17th, there are 67 confirmed coronavirus cases in my state of Ohio, only 8 days after confirming the first case on the ninth. 31 of the 67 are in my county, Cuyahoga. If you look at the picture below (from cleveland.com), you will notice that 5 of the 16 affected counties are not touching any other affected counties, which likely means that there are many more cases that have simply not been discovered yet. In fact, the Ohio Health Department predicts about 1% of Ohioans to be currently infected with the virus, about 100,000 of our 11.9 million inhabitants. 

Overall, things have changed very quickly. Two months ago, I had naively thought that this virus would not affect me. Now, my school is cancelled for the foreseeable future, along with my senior prom, college revisit days, graduation, sports seasons, even the Ohio primary. It's possible that my first semester in college won't be in college, but online. Three weeks ago, I was stressing about a physics test, and now I'm staying inside my house and stocking up on frozen food.

Although these are difficult and confusing times, I think it is very important to keep things in perspective. Beyond following what health authorities recommend, like staying inside and limiting your contact with others, there are only so many things we can do.

There are still a lot of people not taking this seriously, and when one person decides to travel across the country for a vacation, they put their family and everyone else they come into contact with at a higher risk of contracting the virus. I think it is important to understand that it only takes one person following the guidelines to stop another path of transmission.

Depending on your age, you might be somewhat disconcerted by the younger generations' response to our new circumstances. Many of my classmates joke about our situation, and I believe it is important to recognize that our attempt at humor is our way of dealing with our circumstances, because we have never dealt with something like this before. It is easier to hide our fear behind laughter than behind a straight face, and it is hard knowing that our graduation will be online, that things like senior prank day—which we have been looking forward to for years—are cancelled. Granted, in the grand scheme of things, being upset about no prom is laughable. But for my generation, we have envisioned those things as integral to our teenage experience, and they are not things that we can just redo next year. Losing them is really just representative of how much all aspects of our lives are changing.

Anyway, I would like to end on a slightly happier note. I am very proud of the example that Ohio is setting in our response to the coronavirus, and I believe that Governor DeWine is acting in a very educated manner. Ohio has recently closed all schools and universities, bars and restaurants (though take-out is allowed and encouraged), gyms and recreation centers, and more. Most recently, our primaries were delayed. Governor DeWine goes live everyday at 2 p.m., and today he and Dr. Amy Acton (Director of the Ohio Department of Health) urged all doctors, dentists, and veterinarians to delay any non-essential surgeries in order to preserve medical protective equipment for when we need it. With "only" 67 confirmed cases, all of this might seem like is overkill, but acting preventively is really the only way to address situations like this, because by the time the danger is confirmed, we lost the most critical response time. As the World Economic Forum puts it, "Over-reacting is better than non-reacting."

I highly recommend reading this article from the Washington Post. It helped me put all these measures into perspective, and to realize that all of this is not an overreaction, but extremely necessary.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully next time, I will be writing about something happier. In the meantime, I urge you all to stay inside, be clean, and keep your hands away from your face! These next few weeks are a great time to do whatever it is you've been putting off. For me, that means reading a couple books and teaching myself more about finance. My family is also hosting one of my sister's Brazilian friends, as he cannot return home without the possibility of being prohibited from reentering, so perhaps I will also learn Portuguese!