Day 9: wtf

It has been two weeks since I last got to see trophy BF, but it feels like a million years, and I MISS HIM. I took him to the airport for his regular Monday morning flight back to Seattle - we were worried enough about COVID19 then that I didn't want him taking BART to the airport - but we didn't have any sense that it was going to be a really long time before we saw each other again, whereas now... months? who the hell knows. I do not want me or la p'tite to be the one to get him sick, however, so I don't know if I even want to try to see him. Urgh. He sent out a very articulate precis of what's needed w/r/t data collection to a data guru friend yesterday, which made me feel very proud of how smartypants he is, but also made me miss him more.

Anyway. So the people who are taking all this seriously here, scrupulously following all the 6' distancing & shelter-in-place rules and sewing home-made facemasks to donate to hospitals are me 'n' my hippie lefty friends and neighbours, whereas Trump & co are busy squashing cheek to well-fed jowl onto stage at press conferences while his supporters frolic on beaches by the thousands in Florida, organizing themselves into flashmob middle-finger formations pointed at the CDC. I am curious as to whether this has played out along political dividing lines in other countries as well - in the US, at least, it seems that until enough people of all walks of life and political ideologies get sick and die and make it obvious that this virus is not picky, the self-reinforcing tribal identities of the two camps seem likely to continue to diverge; from what I have read, this has not happened (at all) in Italy, Spain, or South Korea, but is happening (a bit) in the UK; the us v. them lines are apparently drawn strongly enough here that even a 1% threat of death isn't enough to shift them (yet). I don't know whether this has to do with
a) size - it's hard to maintain a cohesive sense of national identity when there are 250 million of you spread over thousands of miles
b) relative youth as a nation - it's hard to maintain a cohesive sense of national identity with very little in the way of shared history & accumulated culture - or
c) chronic intractable bloodymindedness - it's hard to maintain a cohesive sense of national identity when the only shared culture that we do have is apparently an unshakeable belief in every-maverick-for-himself.

Off I go to urgent care shift with my cute new fabric surgical mask over my reused N95 mask. La p'tite has days-of-the-week undies; I've got days-of-the-week N95's. At least hers can be washed...