This is the first time, in my lifetime, that the world has collectively felt the toll of a pandemic. Every day, we hear of a new trait of the coronavirus. How long it stays on a surface, which kind of sanitizers work and which don’t, how some people may not show symptoms and what’s really engendering the death tolls in Italy.
Today, in yet another Whatsapp text blast, I read that the virus feeds on Ibuprofen*. I worried that I had taken an Ibuprofen pill three days ago. I worried that while I was sanitizing everything I touched and used, I forgot to wipe down the earphones that touch my face every day! What else had I missed? What had I reinfected? What about the steering wheel in my car, did I miss a portion when I wiped it? If “the coronavirus lives on surfaces for 12 hours” What did I miss in the last 12 hours?
We want all the information we can get to protect ourselves, but a lot of it has felt frankly defeating and inescapable.
The only way to maintain our sanity is to make a conscious effort to keep it.
I am confident we will come up for air again soon. That the sun will shine again, and while I wait, I continue to pray and trust in the God who promises peace and who holds tomorrow. The one who keeps us night and day.
It is comforting.
March’s Photostory, a photograph from last month’s New York Fashion Week, seems to me, an inadvertent replica of today’s story.
I do not know this to be true as of yet. It is advisable to check on the CDC’s website for proven facts and information on this new virus*