Self-Isolation Day #31

Easter Monday, Self-Isolation Day #31

Please continue to pray for my husband's mother D. who has been on a ventilator in ICU with confirmed COVID-19 for 15 days. We very much appreciate it, even though we are choosing not to give detailed, blow-by-blow health updates in this public forum. [EDITED: It turns out that D. was taken off the ventilator Monday afternoon, unbeknownst to us, and her husband and family were informed the following day. Joyous news!]


Easter Sunday involved preparing for a severe rain and windstorm which would be traveling through overnight (Sunday-Monday). A massive storm gathered around Texas and traveled east toward us, forming numerous tornadoes and killing at least 28 people on Easter, may God rest their souls.

Given that our house was hit by a tornado nine weeks ago--our roof and fence scheduled to be replaced but the work not yet done--we took the warnings very seriously.

We gathered all the table umbrellas, garden statues, and American flag to store in the garage. John was concerned about the birds who had formed a nest and laid eggs inside his empty hockey helmet box, so he gave it a flagstone base and waterproof cover, all taped together by hockey tape, and then chained it to a brick pillar.

Mary transported her finches in their cage from the glass sun room to the center of the house.

We procured fuel for our tiny generator (at least it can run two refrigerators and charge cell phones). We charged all our devices, stocked up on batteries, and filled the downstairs with flashlights. We stocked the downstairs powder room (our safe room) with stools for sitting, flashlights, a prayer book, muffling ear phones (for scared tiny tots), and a charged iPad downloaded with Blues Clues episodes.

We lugged mattresses and bedding downstairs so we could all sleep downstairs, as our home is surrounded on four sides by towering trees taller than the house. Our four-year-old excitedly called it a "sleeping party!" We had cell phones and our emergency weather radio stationed close enough to hear.

As predicted, the peak of the wind arrived here around 4:45 a.m. and I woke up to an electronic alert. Severe storm warnings and tornado watches (not full-on warnings) came through over the next two hours, but our home stayed safe and we kept our power. About 310,000 homes are without power in metropolitan Charlotte . . . including 410 of the 600 homes in our neighborhood, with the dividing line being right next door. We are so relieved.

During Easter octave, we are on very light school and my plan is to assign only daily math lessons and music practice. Today the various children played soccer and Frisbee on the lawn, studied German for fun, practiced juggling, sewed things, watched our new DVD of "Fury" episodes, and played a board game. We went on a lovely neighborhood walk in which we passed a neighbor's home where they had put out a free bouquet of Easter flowers: we got to take them home to bless our table!

Bonus Reading for Posterity:

• This is one tiny glimpse of why it is problematic to be treating all parts of our massive country the same as New York City or northern Italy: Young Girl Plays Basketball Alone, City Takes Hoop As Part Of ‘Social Distancing’
• Fascinating opinion out of Germany: “So far, no transmission of the virus in supermarkets, restaurants or hairdressers has been proved.”
• Herd immunity is probably spreading rapidly because of scientists' increasingly high estimates of this disease being mild or unnoticeable for many people. Iceland just did a study testing a random 10% of its population and it turned out that 50% of those who tested positive for this coronavirus were asymptomatic. Let's hope this is happening everywhere! Iceland has tested one-tenth of its population for coronavirus at random and found HALF of people have the disease without realising - with only seven deaths in 1,600 cases
• In more good news, Germany performed a population test and determined that an area at the epicenter of the outbreak had an immunity rate of 15%. (Covid antibody test in German town shows 15 per cent infection rate) If that translated to America, that would indicate that about 49 million people in our country alone have already caught the illness, not the 533,115 confirmed cases we know about. And if 15% of our country had caught it, then our death rate would really be 0.00004%, not 0.03% (which, I note is already 100x lower than the 3.4% originally advertised as the reason our entire country had to be locked down). If this data were extrapolated to even hard-hit New York state, then its death rate would be 0.002% instead of the 0.04% of confirmed cases: 20x lower. 
• Los Angeles is launching a study giving antibodies tests to wide swaths of the population. Given that L.A. is larger than 40 of the 50 United States, this will give a good representation. It is so important for antibodies studies to be conducted rapidly on wide swaths of the population so we can adjust our practices to fit reality. Huge Los Angeles County Now Testing For Virus Antibodies
• Meanwhile, one Israeli opinion is that we can now see (now that we could have seen earlier!) that this virus lives on roughly an 8-week cycle and that doesn't alter much based on how much we self-isolate ourselves. Could coronavirus crisis be over in 2 weeks?