Together…

Ok, I thought I’d add some graphics. I am a designer after all.

It’s difficult to wrap you head around this pandemic. As I saw the people being brought back to the United Sates, from the Princess Line, I was concerned.

They did the same thing with Ebola patients, and that scared me at the time. Why would you risk introducing something that deadly by willing bring people into the country that were infected. Best to keep it off American soil. My fears were eliminated as Ebola patients were successfully treated and no new cases were reported. Maybe, I had over reacted.

This time was different. The Princess line patients were isolated and being treated, however, suddenly there was another case, and then another. Then a case that couldn’t be tracked back to a infected person surfaced. Oh Shit!

Thats when I started making plans. What would happen if I get sick? I was not considered to be in a high risk group. More infected people started to surface. Just how sick you would be if you got the virus? The news was saying, that for 80% of the population, the symptoms are mild. Pretty sick for one day and then, feeling better day by day. They did mention that it was followed by a persistent cough for about a month. I wonder if that means you are contagious for that month? So the 80/20 rule applies to this virus. I dont consider my self to have the best luck, but was surely hoping I would be in the eightieth percentile.

Something that I have noticed over the years is how well the systems we have in place work. For instance, I had a 40 minute commute to work each day. At first I thought I would hate it. I found that I actually enjoyed it. The drive included one exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a connecting highway. It was an easy drive, 40 min too be alone with my thoughts. By the time I would get home, I wound have planned my evening, and probably planed what I would work of first, the next morning. The commute became a integrated part of my routine. That is unless there was a accident or weather event, or some other unexpected break in the system.

What happens then? Chaos! Because the turnpike was exit to exit, there is no getting off once you are on the highway. Our perfect infrastructure quickly collapses and everything fails, one-by-one. If you are on the turnpike when the event happens, it grinds to a halt, until the accident is cleared. If it involved a fatality, it will be hours before your moving again. If you’re fortunate enough to be alerted, before entering the highway, you can take a alternate route home. These are back roads, and they quickly become clogged with everyone else that had the same idea that you did. Soon these roads fail as well, and stop lights and stop signs quickly back up. Like dominos alternate system start fail.

Im not trying to be a black cloud. I am just pointing out how fragile our infra-structure systems are to each community.

My thought is that we will all need to work together to keep our little microcosm in check.

• Together…by social isolating…
• Together by checking on the health of our friends, family, and neighbors.
• Together as this get all-the-more-real in the coming weeks.
• Together as we see and end to this pandemic and begin to heal