now what?

What's really unclear to me, as it was with the invasion of Iraq, is: what's the endgame here? What are we trying to accomplish, and what will constitute accomplishing it?

It's clear enough that all these societal shutdowns are intended, not to stop the virus, because it's already embedded too much in the population to make that feasible, but to slow the growth of infections enough to keep the hospitals from getting overwhelmed when people start getting sick. But how long do we keep having to do this? Until everyone's exposed to the virus, despite our attempts to keep them away? So ... the better we are at this, the longer we'll have to keep doing it?

And how long will that be? Months, I'd think. Most arts groups I follow started with cancellations through mid or late March and then extended it to the end of April, with no promise it would stop there. One federal health official suggested a complete lockdown of society for two weeks, but that only makes sense if we assume that everyone's already infected and we're just waiting to see who gets sick, and I doubt that's the case.

Maybe the virus will slow down and get sluggish during the summer, as the flu usually does, and people can peek their heads over the parapets and go back to doing a few normal things. But if that's all that happens, it will come roaring back in the fall, probably worse than ever, which is what the 1918-19 pandemic did. And we'll have to go through the whole weary round again, until a vaccine is ready the next year. And will that clamp it down? And what if acquired immunity is only temporary, as it usually is for similar viruses? The 1918-19 pandemic ended when the virus mutated away from more deadly strains (because they killed their hosts too efficiently), but this virus, while deadly, isn't that deadly, so it's not under so much evolutionary pressure.

In the meanwhile, what about commerce? Some cities are shutting down restaurants. Despite one news report saying California is doing it too, it isn't: the governor says food service remains vital. Of course that may change at any moment, as so many other declarations have. I think I read that some European countries are closing all commercial outlets except groceries, pharmacies, and banks. That may be feasible for a short period, a couple weeks maybe, but after that too many urgent needs of daily life that can't be handled by delivery or mail-order will pile up; I won't name any, because you can too.

in a hole in the ground there sheltered a resident

So now the entire urban area is being put under "shelter in place" orders, effective tonight for three weeks. It's kind of exasperating, because if this is necessary at all, it ought to have been done weeks ago when it might have had a measurable effect. Even two weeks ago, which is when the performance cancellations began to trickle in. It's been a steady increase in rules and restrictions since then, each bringing in a new and more suffocating regime. There's no reason to suppose this will be the last, but there is a sense that all this is running behind events, trying to catch up. Each new restriction is generated by the realization of what has already happened. An endless series of barn doors are being slammed behind an endless series of empty horse stalls.

But despite the name (the order actually says "All individuals currently living within the County are ordered to shelter at their place of residence"), it's not the kind of shelter-in-place that the police would order if there were an armed criminal loose. It's full of loopholes, to be Exercised with Caution. We "may leave [our] residences only for Essential Activities, Essential Governmental Functions, or to operate Essential Businesses, all as defined in Section 10." There we learn that we may still go out to buy food and other grocery items (including that restaurants can offer takeout and delivery), medicine, hardware; do our banking and our laundry; get our cars gassed and repaired; and oh good, it looks like I can still keep my appointment with our accountant to have our taxes done.

In the meantime, as I discovered having some shopping to do this afternoon, it's spawned off yet another wave of panic buying, after the one last weekend that emptied the toilet paper aisles of all the stores that hadn't been emptied by the previous wave. Even at 2:30, less than three hours after the announcement came out, and long before the normal late-afternoon wave of post-work customers, the supermarkets were packed with people all breathing each other's air like the ones waiting for screening at airport customs, how productive.

I'd noticed while out at other stores early this morning what had been swiped off the shelves and what hadn't. Toilet paper and paper towels, gone; cleaning supplies, not. Vegetables, gone except for asparagus and brussel sprouts; fruit, not. (Apples, pears, and grapes, that is: berries were kind of absent.) Chicken, gone; beef and pork, not.

Fortunately for me, I mostly work at home anyway. In fact I have so much research and editing to do for Tolkien Studies over the upcoming weeks that I'd have to force myself to leave home. The biggest problem is that my home research on the annual bibliography is always followed by work in proprietary databases in various university libraries which only allow visitors to use them on-campus. My first-resort library is outside of the urban area and at last report remained open, but I'm doubtful about the risk of going there. And the other two are closed to outsiders entirely. But I have a workaround in my pocket.