Today is Thursday, 12 of March. 24 hours ago I was watching as events slowly began to get canceled and a few universities began to transition to online classes.
Now, I feel like I’m living inside a dystopian novel. My next thought after that was: damn Cora, why aren’t you writing about this?
I went to bed last night rather peacefully, having heard the last number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Netherlands at 273, nothing really to worry much about. I woke up to a 30-day travel ban to the US from Europe, now 600 confirmed cases in the Netherlands, and the NBA suspending its season. Over the course of today, nearly every sporting event in the next month has gone from no fans allowed to canceled or suspended until further notice.
Twitter is an absolute madhouse, with a new league suspending play every hour. The United States is losing its mind over the distinct possibility of March Madness getting canceled–I would be surprised if it didn’t at this point.
A couple hours ago I had a conversation with my advisor about what the international office is doing moving forward. Apparently the two options are: let the student decide whether to stay or go, or pull all students abroad out of the countries. Right now, I’m hoping for the first option. I would rather chop off a finger than get on a plane for 8 hours right now. But I guess we’ll see.
My university, along with every public university in Michigan, has announced all classes will be online for at least two weeks. Some universities have gone as far as the entire rest of the semester.
When COVID-19 first broke out in Wuhan, China, I would have never foreseen what has happened. I watched it slowly spread and read article after article–every one of them with an asian person in their photo, don’t even get me started–about new cases in other countries.
I’m not going to lie: at first, I didn’t see this as a serious thing. I really didn’t. It’s like the flu, right? Thousands of people die from the flu each year, why is everyone freaking out? It’s not a big deal, right? Wrong.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, their estimates for the seasonal flu last year during the flu season were 35.5 million cases, 490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths. Know what that death rate comes out to? 0.00096%
COVID-19’s death rate right now is sitting at about 3.4%. Seems like a small number but if the seasonal flu’s death rate was 3.4%, 1,207,000 would have died last year. That’s a hell of a lot more than 34,200. That, and there seems to be a shortage of tests everywhere in the US and it takes three days to get results?? I saw a story that a man who got tested in the US didn’t wait for his results before hopping on a plane and then get informed ON the plane he was infected. This is how the world ends. This is why it’s spreading like fire. Because people are idiots sometimes. Because they don’t take health professionals seriously.
Because will that man most likely survive? Probably. But will all the people he came into contact with survive it? If they’re older than 70, more likely not.
I get that people shouldn’t be panicking. I do. Mass hysteria does no one good. But please, people, use your brains. Think of people other than yourselves. Think of your grandmother, your friend with an immunodeficient disease. Your friend or sibling with asthma. If you’re a young, healthy person, the precautions aren’t about you. They’re about those who can’t fight this off and you’re being selfish if you don’t follow health professionals’ instructions.
While life in the Netherlands is just now slowly beginning to change, the atmosphere has changed a lot. It’s suddenly all anyone talks about or is concerned with. There’s an air of suspicion every time someone dares to cough after deciding to be present in class.
And while I understand the frustration with pretty much everything getting canceled–trust me, I’m studying abroad and can’t go anywhere or to anything–can we all refrain from the complaints about how stupid it all is? It’s been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Getting ahead of it is the best plan of attack. It sucks, it really does. I was looking forward to streaming March Madness over here. I look forward to it every year. But some things are bigger than sports. Some things are bigger than concerts, conferences, etc. Saving our health professionals from overflowing hospitals and decreasing the deaths suffered from this virus seems like one of them.
If someone tells me I have to get on a plane and go home, I might lose it. It seems like the worst option for me right now, but I’ll keep you updated. I’m going to keep writing as much as I can, because this is the weirdest time in my life I can remember.
Stay safe, wash your hands, and don’t touch your face.
a midwestern girl in a European world 