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2020-03-13 - 3:55 a.m.
social distancing, day 1
on twitter, cat valente writes, "If you were writing a book about a pandemic set in 2020 America you would 100% have Tom Hanks get it in Chapter 8."
* * *
the virus has reached our town. all of our schools are shuttered indefinitely, and on this warm and sunny afternoon, very few children are playing outside. trucks - the backbone of our nation's economy - fly up and down the highway, unencumbered by the usual traffic. only a handful of cars are on our local roads. my husband stops by the supermarket on his way home from work. it is his last day for a while. a fundraising event that brings in the majority of their annual operating budget has been cancelled. nobody is sure what happens next. the supermarket's robot is dressed in a leprechaun costume. it rolls past empty shelves, alerting shoppers to hazards in their immediate surroundings. toilet paper and hand sanitizer, all out of stock. our nation has elected a television entertainment personality to its highest office. he appears to be more concerned with his ratings than with coordinating our public health and humanitarian response. a historian friend urges me to keep a journal, because these are historic times. so this is it. this is real life. here we are.
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