"Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die."

This is my personal story of the current pandemic for March 2020. Despite the sudden shift in attitude around the middle of this month, I include the whole month, as context is important, as the crisis had actually started earlier in the year, and was known even in February. Events never really happen as suddenly or all at once as people think.

My experience in life is with social isolation and loneliness, among other things which should be clear from the context of the narrative. After going to Russia for September and October, where I feel a strong sense of kinship (and could even deal with working or living alone without a dog), and after having gone home to visit my parents for the Christmas break, in the US where I feel a strong sense of alienation, coming into January, I was already in crisis. This is why my crisis management / preparation instincts were to go to PI (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics) starting at the beginning of February, until the end of March. There, I had people with whom I could talk, who didn't drive me crazy when I talked with them.

The first week of March I broke down due to feeling excluded in certain political discussions. The main trigger occurred on the first weekend of that month, but the problematic state didn't lift until the weekend after. During this week, I had been talking to people about my situation, and felt like I needed to take steps to move to Russia. This led me to look at the Covid-19 maps, to know what regions were risk zones, to see if I would have to quarantine myself for 2 weeks after travel. The answer was yes -- most of Europe was already over 1000 cases each country, and Moscow and Toronto had already outbreaked. I wondered at that point why PI had not yet shut down their visitor program and discouraged people from traveling.

The second week, my entire research group at Queen's was traveling. I knew because I had forgotten to pay rent due to the previous week's emotional stress. My supervisor, who was at PI with me, was in Vancouver that week (which, like Toronto, had community transmitted Covid-19 cases already). I had thought this was suspicious, but set it aside. People know what they are doing and how to make decisions for themselves, right?

PI had been slowly implementing policies to encourage proper hygiene, people talked about the pandemic and knew the situation and risks. I say signs appear in my apartment building related to Covid-19. Something about them bothered me, but I felt it was good for people to putting more effort into proper hygiene, as while there was no outbreak in the Waterloo region, there was already a Covid-19 case, so it was only a manner of time.

Social distancing, when I had first heard that term in relation to this crisis, sort of set of certain alarms in my brain. I kind of remembered every bad instance I had with getting sick as a child. You know, all those times when you get sick and people freak out about catching it instead of helping you in your time of need? One specific instance I remembered was near the end of my time as an undergraduate. During this period in my life, I frequently went back home to my parents. I had gotten sick with a cold, and was in communication with my mother. She had told me that she hoped I was still going to classes while I was sick, which I confirmed was the case. Then I went home that weekend. She got mad at me for coming home sick, potentially infecting her. I told her that she had told me to still go to class, to which she responded that she had not realized how sick I was. I think, because of this, when I saw what was going on, I knew at some level what was happening.

That Thursday evening we received the order that people were encouraged to work from home and PI was going into partial shutdown. The students I was talking with seemed to take it as a reversal to the previous "don't panic" order, as if "don't panic" and "it is time to discourage unnecessary social contact" are somehow contradictory. I was confused about the timing, but then I was told that there was another Covid-19 case in Waterloo, so I assumed that the change of policy was due to the increased risk that someone traveling had messed up and Waterloo had Covid-19 being community transferred.

My supervisor came to pick me up and take me back to Kingston on Saturday. Since Waterloo had cases and Kingston didn't, I was going to isolate for a week to see if my portion of the Waterloo community had cases appear. Coming home, we saw people on the street, celebrating St. Patrick's Day. My supervisor was annoyed at this, but to me, I saw people in groups of 3, with the groups having ample distance between each other, so while I knew they were probably not being careful, I was annoyed by his reaction, as he seemed to not understand the need for people to enjoy themselves in times of crisis.

By Monday, I decided to take advantage of the situation to organize my life. I had been struggling since getting to Kingston, and even before, all the way back to the start of my PhD. I started with unpacking, then basic organization, making lists as to what I needed to do, etc. I knew I needed to deal with food, cleaning, walking the dog, and ensuring socialization.

Yes. I have been dealing with depression-like symptoms all my life. I know what people are supposed to do, as I am told this all the time, and I know which of these tricks help me.

For this last part, socialization, I started calling or messaging people I knew, to start developing online contacts. But I knew this would not be enough. People don't function without in-person social engagement with other humans, and since I have had this history of struggling with developing relationships, taking care of myself, or being a part of the community, this is even more important for me. I needed to find my contacts in Kingston, and to find a way to meet in person. This turned out to be impossible.

The first thing I thought of was trying to put back together our Gloomhaven group. The people in this group were all from our research group at work. We had four regulars, and we were probably all regulars as we had few, if any, other friends in town. My thought process was that we would close the group, only allowing in the four regulars, who were unlikely to have much contact with others outside the group, and wait until two weeks after everyone had traveled in order to restart the game. My supervisor instead suggested we move the game online.

So basically, we got into an argument. He told me it would be irresponsible, and a bad example as a leader to participate in a game in person, even with a closed group with three girls who have struggled with depression or social isolation, two living alone, one with him. The language he used invoked memories of my time at computer camp as a CIT. One such memory was when I refused to play dodge ball, the other was when I got sick and couldn't participate in any exercise, only to be yelled at for having avoided exercise afterwards. Then my brain suddenly realized what was going on. These steps and stages were not rational policy in order to combat a crisis, they were emotional reactions with little thought, analysis, or long term planning.

I might also point out that in this, despite this individual refusing to try to meet in person with someone who probably needs it, he also didn't self-isolate after traveling. He went into the office on Monday, saying that there was nobody around, so it was not an issue. He offered to buy me groceries on Thursday, when I was really struggling, not eating, and sleeping all the time.

As far as I can tell, what happened is this: The brother of the crack smoking mayor of Toronto is our current primer (governor). He shut down Ontario in response to Covid-19, specifically as a response to the St. Patrick's Day celebrations of the students. People kind of went "insane" as a response. They switched from a pseudo-denial phase to a pseudo-panic phase seemingly overnight. I think it is difficult for people to both not panic and to be aware of danger and take protective measures at the same time.

But part of it, as far as I can tell, is how people prioritize things. When work is the most important responsibility, people keep traveling, despite the crisis, because work priorities come first, and canceling meetings would be wrong. When everything snapped, Covid became the top priority, and its needs came first. Hence a lack of realization that socialization IS a necessity for people. (Yes, loneliness kills, including by increasing the risk of infection.) Instead of what is supposed to be going on, a cost-benefit analysis of all the factors in a situation to determine the correct course of action, people instead have this internal priority chart, and everything on top trumps that coming beneath it. Basically, people can't multitask.

Hence, instead of preventing deaths or a breakdown of society, people just focus on trying to prevent Covid-19 cases, and therefore prevent Covid-19 deaths and the overflow of hospitals due specifically to Covid-19. However, the virus is merely the trigger, one piece of the crisis, not its entirety. Healthcare was underfunded long before we had a pandemic, even as we knew this was a possibility.

Everything in this world seems to indicate that people do not understand moderation, long term planning, cost benefit analysis with complex systems, or even thinking for oneself. Denial or panic are not the only options in a crisis; we can make rational decisions.

The lack of long-term planning also seems to be endemic in this situation. What is the end game? Do we need everyone to get sick eventually to prevent future coronaviruses from being so disruptive? Are we expecting that we can make this go away? Are we waiting for a vaccine? How long do people really think this will take? Because it will, almost certainly be more than a few weeks. For less than a couple months, like in China, the current situation may work. But if it will be 6 months to years, we need to talk about shifting our economy and daily life rather than shutting it down. Trying to even out the risks and workload across the healthy population while still minimizing the risks to everyone. So people don't go insane. And we really need to be honest about the situation.

But maybe I am just one of the few strange people who actually likes to sit, talk, plan, strategize, map out cause and effect to help catch counter-intuitive system responses and positive feedback loops, rather than just jump into a situation and do things. That has certainly been a major factor contributing to my feelings of social isolation and loneliness in life.

I also think my attitude to death and crises freaks many people out. Perhaps people are so used to acting on emotion or impulse that they don't even realize it is possible to actually think for themselves about a situation without either being emotional or taking orders from the top. I say that I am not afraid of getting sick or dying, and people assume that this means I am not aware of the risks or that I don't think it is appropriate to take protective measures.

The fact of the matter is that I am aware of practices in experimental science as well as many other situations -- mitigate danger, take precautions, but don't avoid everything because it may be dangerous.

However, my generation, and those who are younger, do come from a world where we were told to do exactly this, i.e. don't do things which are potentially dangerous. People have this instinct to protect others from potential harm, and often cause more harm than good as a result. I know this; I experience this. My mother tried her best to avoid doing such things, but the modern world is as it is.

One of these things that I realized within the past few weeks is that this is normal. Crises are normal. War, famine, disease, we keep thinking we have overcome these things, and we have not. They are a part of life. They have always been with us, and will always be with us. This is not the first crisis we have seen, this is not the worst one for many people, (a fact especially obvious when I talk to Russians who remember the 90s, listen to a couple from the separatist region in Ukraine talk about how they have their own government destroying their city from the sky, listen to Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, etc, read people describing the other coronavirus epidemics, remember all the coverage of various hurricanes or earthquakes, or even remember all the World War II monuments in Russia ... ), and this will not be the last.

I guess we need to also remember that people can be alone when surrounded by people in a crowd, and can still feel connected at a 2 meters distance. And of course, that just because we are in a crisis, and all are attention is on this crisis, doesn't mean all the other facets of society have gone away, good or bad.

There is a part of me that wants to see there being something good which will come from this pandemic. Perhaps it will force the world to slow down. Perhaps it will give me the chance to catch up, to recover and figure out how to live on my own. Although in this last case, it may be less do to being forced to live on my own as it is due to hatred of people. I don't know. I guess only time will tell.