Scary days, people.

I’m listening to Year One by Nora Roberts and although it’s a fantasy novel set in a post-apocalyptic America, it’s hard to ignore the setup, which begins with a super virus that wipes out two thirds of the world.

This is obviously not the same as the Coronavirus, which at this point in time is a danger to some and a nuisance to most, but the temperature sure feels dystopian at the moment.

The shelves are empty at Trader Joe’s. My friend told me that she was walking through Costco and a customer stole toilet paper out of another patron’s shopping cart. Straight retail victimized her. And the victim in this case was a sweet old lady. I haven’t seen a bottle of hand sanitizer in weeks. And several restaurants have closed in my neighborhood.

This shit’s for real.

Our president, of course, called the Coronavirus a Democratic hoax less than a week ago and now he’s declared it a national emergency. There aren’t enough face-palms.

We’re either all overreacting or under-reacting. (And why the fuck is overreacting a compound word and under-reacting hyphenated?) I hope it’s the former. I do. Because in that scenario, this is just the flu, as so many have argued, and it will fade to memory by summer.

What worries me is the other possibility. That feels like the beginning of a post-apocalyptic novel. Or a zombie movie. Both start with a virus or an infection that nobody takes seriously, and neither end well.

What strikes me is that our real-world behavior–our collective shrug in the face of a pandemic–mirrors the dumb, willful ignorance on display in your average zombie movie. Italy is in the middle of a health crisis. Doctors are warning us to wash our hands, to stay inside, to do everything we can to stop the spread of this highly infectious virus. And what’re we doing? Going to the local mall, the movies, and Disneyland. Doing whatever the hell we feel like, basically. With a level of arrogance typically reserved for the gods.

If another author had written this opening, I’d have thought it lazy storytelling. But here we are. And it seems we really are that goddamned stupid.

My kids’ schools have closed down for five weeks. I’m tempted to grab my bug-out bag and hit the woods with family in tow. (I don’t actually have a solid bug-out bag, and I can barely glamp, let alone survive in the woods.) So that’s as far as that plan goes.

No point to this post. Just letting the fingers get a few things off the chest. Stay safe out there.