It’s Sunday night, the 100-day plaguaversary of my personal pandemic experience. One-hundred days ago today, xgf (or just gf back then…) and I had that fateful phone call when we agreed things were getting too dangerous to be around other people. The following day, we began our AirBnB odyssey across Ontario and Quebec, a journey that lasted 72 days. Today is four weeks since we returned and parted ways. It’s also ninety-seven days since Trudeau declared the state of emergency and declared that the US-Canadian border would get closed. It’s also one day since the summer solstice, which I’ve completely missed. The year is past the halfway point. I wish I could say the same about the pandemic.

The first mention of the US death toll I found on my own blog was 1,045 – way back on day 12. The current official estimate (which doesn’t include the excess mortality above the baseline) is 122,000 Americans, or at least 1,375 people per day since I posted that first number way back on March 25th.

The world has changed so much… If you went back in time even 100 days ago and described what has happened, no one would’ve believed you. At best, you’d have been accused of being a fear-mongerer. I wonder what strange tales a time traveler from 100 days in the future might tell us. Guess I’ll look back at this in late September and find out.

There was a miniature alarm on the personal front today: I woke up to the sound of my landlords’ son coughing. Didn’t get a chance to talk to him, so I just called xgf and said it might not be a good idea to meet today. We compromised and sat very far apart in a sunny park while we had a picnic, and cut the day short after an hour. The whole time, we were talking about whether it’d be better for me to get a month-long AirBnB or just build my own mini-kitchenette in my room so I wouldn’t have to go downstairs at all. When I got back home, the kid said he always coughs when he wakes up because his throat is dry… False alarm, then. I’m not a fan of having to be so hyper-attentive and far more anxious than I’d been before the pandemic. Then again, can’t be too careful, right?

Not much is new in the world covid news. At last night’s rally, Trump openly admitted that he ordered less covid testing because he wanted to bring the numbers down. There’s no way to estimate how many people died because of that alone. There’s some fist-shaking over this, but it got relatively little media coverage. It may get used in a campaign ad or two, but even in the best-case scenario (barring unexpected covid casualties), he’ll still be in power for another seven months. I left the US partly because other horrific things had gotten normalized: things like concentration camps for children whose families tried crossing the southern border. And now it’s just a fact of life, like so many others… I’m glad I got out. I’m sad none of my friends or relatives followed.

I’ll keep this blog going daily until a) there’s a working vaccine, and b) I get vaccinated. Something tells me it’s still far away. I fully expect there to be a “Day 200” post, and maybe one for “Day 300” and beyond. Whatever else happens, this should never get normalized or forgotten. I’m just one guy writing random stuff on an outdated, unfashionable medium, but hey – it’s better than nothing. Happy plaguaversary, y’all.