[Image: infographic from the American Society for Microbiology (as of March 6, 2020).]
Short answer: we don’t know yet. Long answer: we actually had put tickets for the flight to London on temporary hold (without paying for them yet)… but let the hold expired. We just haven’t made up our minds.
It’s complicated, you know. One of us is 72 years old; the other, pushing 69. (This is cause for apprehension but also an argument not to put off travel: how much longer can we travel, even in a healthy world?) Neither of us is seriously unhealthy, but we’re not models of fitness, either. One of us is inclined to a “the world is a dangerous place” point of view; and the other, to something more like “the world has dangers, always has and always will, but is not dangerous per se.” If we get the tickets and make at least initial accommodations reservations, which won’t be an insignificant splurge for our just-retired selves, can we be reimbursed if the situation changes drastically? And so on.
Compounding the uncertainty is that we’d made no serious alternative plans. We know that the lease on our apartment is up in early June. We’d “planned,” sort of, that when we returned from Europe we’d visit with various family members and then set off to tour the US for a while, by car. (It would be at this point that we’d acquire a Pooch II, to accompany us.) And then, finally, we’d settle down somewhere. House, apartment, condo, whatever. It was all a bit vague.
But if you subtract that initial six-month plan, however rough-cut it might be… well, the rest of it all goes to hell.
We could switch the Europe-then-US sequence, of course — with the understanding that we will of course (duh) be another year older in a year; that the state of the world, vis-a-vis “the” coronavirus, is even less certain one year out than it is now; and that if we acquire Pooch II and travel the US, we’ll have to face the trauma of separation from the creature (and vice-versa) for six months, since we couldn’t realistically expect to travel overseas with him/her/it.
We’ll wait a couple more weeks before deciding for sure. A major change in circumstances — ours or the world — isn’t likely by then, we know. But for now, we’re all sixes-and-sevens.
Susan Milord says
I fear this is no time to visit Europe, John. I don’t need to tell you about all the risks, or even about potential problems returning to the US. I can only speak about what it’s like in Roma at this very moment. Roma has been less hard hit than many other places in Italy; that said, in certain ways the city is unrecognizable. There’s a heavy sadness everywhere, as people hole up in their homes, as schools are shuttered, as businesses suffer from lack of commerce, as everyday activities are tinged with distrust and despair. Things will eventually return to normal, but it’s predicted that things will get much worse before they get better. (I suppose the same could be said about the situation in the US, too.) I suspect it’s much the same in France, the UK, etc.
Put the trip on hold for a year or so. Use your exceptional planning skills to create a Plan B. I think you’ll be glad you did.
John says
Thanks, Susan! You know as I read the news reports of the virus’s spread in Italy I’ve thought of you — especially after the report of Zingaretti’s infection, and what it suggests for the disease’s progress through Italy. I hope you are well, and hope fear has not become the predominant emotion of your daily life.
Even here so far, it’s hard to remind ourselves (the mass media being what it is) that by far, most are and will remain uninfected. No one wants to die, of course, and no one wants people they know to die. Even simply getting sick isn’t on anyone’s wishlist. But I fight to remain philosophical about it all… not quite “Well, we all die sometime” fatalistic, but more like “What will be, will be” pragmatic. And pandemic or not, I continue to believe there are many, many reasons to be awed and beauty-struck by the world around us. If I let myself be taken over by fear, that will mean I’ve closed my eyes to the things NOT to fear — the things to be happy and excited about.
…and I also know that yes, this “feeling philosophical about it” is a luxury I can enjoy at the moment. Maybe the time is coming when I have to finally surrender it. But, well, y’know: I’ll cross that bridge when etc. Not before.
Stay safe, Susan. Do what you must, don’t do what you must not, and enjoy the things you can enjoy with no sense of compulsion at all! :)
John says
Susan, here’s one person’s account of Rome during the last week of February/first week of March:
The New Yorker: The Strange Terror of Watching the Coronavirus Take Rome
Marta says
That’s tough. I’m still unsure about my decision to visit my dad. And I don’t think I’d have it in me to visit Europe (though I dream about it!). I’d be at sixes-and-sevens too. It’s a place I know well.
John says
Yeah: maybe not a good time to be as indecisive as (I think) you are and (I know) I am! Suddenly I find myself thinking of this song…
…not that I necessarily agree with all the decisive adult decisions being made around me (I surely don’t), but I do envy all the adults their freedom to make them!
Froog says
Sorry to see your months of planning and dreaming get derailed. I hope you can just re-schedule; Europe might be past the worst of it by late May or early June.
I’m hanging out in SE Asia, trying to stay one step ahead of the damn virus – avoiding ‘hotspots’. I’m waiting for an opportunity to go back to my school in China, but that might now be a long time, as they’ve started quaranting EVERYBODY who flies in.
That’s probably sensible. I have a hunch China is going to erupt again: premature slacking off of the ‘social distancing’ etc., another unrestricted travel binge over the Tomb-Sweeping Festival looming at the beginning of April, the threat of imported cases from overseas, and so on. And cases outside the ‘upper tier’ cities have probably been going unnoticed or deliberately concealed anyway. I suspect it’s just as rife as it is in Europe through much of the country; and, if it isn’t, it will be in another month or so.
I have been uncannily prescient in all my observations on the outbreak so far. Back on 27th or 28th of January, only a day or two after China had finally acknowledged it was a catastrophe, I wrote an e-mail to a friend back home which said:
“With the pre-Spring Festival travel bonanza, it will have gone all over China in the last two to three weeks, and must have started trickling out to other countries too. If we expect that it might take 4-6 weeks to progress from a few isolated nodes of infection (often probably going unrecognised) to the beginnings of a full-on epidemic, we’ll have to wait until the beginning of March to see just how much of a shitstorm this is going to become. But my guess is a very, very big one.”
Call me Cassandra.
John says
Cassandra — hello! I’m so glad to have heard from you; I know no one besides you who might have been close to Ground Zero as 2019 pivoted to 2020, and I have worried! (The present perfect tense is meant: I continue to worry, because I have not believed for a moment the reports coming out of China, reports of that country’s having turned the corner, of the decline in confirmed cases, and so on.)
And now as the US starts to shut down, not only walling itself off at international borders but also within (city- and state-wide lockdowns and such), the landscape here begins to feel psychologically Daliesque. I began working at home on Tues. (March 17); had an audiology appointment Thurs. (the 19th), after which I went up the road to a pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions for The Missus, but have otherwise not been out of the apartment since the start of the week. (The Missus hasn’t been so “lucky”: she’s the only person in her small office who still needs to work there rather than at home.) I’ll write more about our experience maybe later today, in a regular post, but the main thing I wanted to communicate here was that the sense that the pandemic is not just biologically but culturally and psychologically indiscriminate — more or less contemptuous of the lines which humans draw around themselves.
As you mention, there’s always the fact lurking behind whatever the statistics du jour might be: the fact that the number of actual cases will always be an unknown. Among other things, (a) the symptoms are so deceptively mild in many (most?) people who report any symptoms at all; (b) not everyone can be tested, especially continuously; and (c) institutions in a position to test and publicly report the results don’t — here, anyhow — have enough test kits in the first place, and themselves comprise “communities” which are walled-off themselves — walled off by fear, by selfishness, by all those other individual human frailties.
Sigh… All I can say is that I hope to gods the world’s electronic/digital infrastructure holds together long enough to genuinely get through the worst of it. In the meantime, I shall count on you and Susan Milord (above) to occasionally let me know, here or in email, that you’re “okay” (choose your definition thereof!) — and I’ll try to do the same at this end. Do take care, wherever you might decide to stop traveling for a while!
Susan Milord says
I thought I should write to say I am well (despite the report of yesterday’s alarming death toll in Italy), and hope that you, the Missus, Marta, and Froog — names I recall well from when I first discovered you around 2010 (mamma mia, that’s ten years ago, John!) — are as safe and sane as this global pandemic allows.
I have little problem putting up with all the restrictions (even if I long to see my Italian sweetie, something that will have to wait who knows how long), but if there is any I really miss it’s taking long walks. I hardly ever just go for a walk, instead I usually set out with long, determined strides to do errands and/or with some far(ish) destination in mind. I suppose I should start doing jumping jacks on my terrazza or in my garden, but a brisk walk, skirts aflutter, is my favorite form of exercise and it’s sorely missed.
Stay well, all of you, and keep in touch.
Fondly from the eerily silent city of Roma,
Susan
John says
Hello, Susan — hope your status remains very much quo, if not better by now.
Long walks are still an option here, although our address doesn’t lend itself to walks with a destination in mind: undirected walking-around only. I could probably hoof it to a supermarket within 45 minutes or an hour, but The Missus really (and, really, understandably) does not want us going out anywhere at all if we can help it. For the time being, we’ve switched to delivery-only supplies (especially groceries), wiping everything down when it arrives, and so on.
Also for the time being, she continues to go into her office every day (the only one in her office who does); she has too much to do which requires resources she can’t access from home. I of course am “still retired” — all of a week’s worth! — so have an easier time with self-isolating, for now.
Know that you and those around you, including the ones I’ll never “know,” are very much on my mind. Stay well and I’ll look for you on the other side of this chaos.