The year of October/November 2020
I keep sitting down to write this, to explain how the last month has felt like a year. But it’s very much a “let me explain…no, there is too much; let me sum up” situation. So let me sum up.
One of our kids got coronavirus. They were exposed at school and so were already home on quarantine when symptoms (just a stuffy nose!) developed. I had to make a flurry of phone calls after we got the test result, mostly to inform the school and arrange for the kids’ books to be brought to us, but thankfully, none of those calls were to people our positive case had spent time around since they’d been home on quarantine already.
The rest of us, somehow, did not get coronavirus. Our positive case isolated within our home but it seemed like it couldn’t possibly help that much since our house is so small. I had experienced a lot of anxiety in the spring imagining how we would possibly have someone isolate within our small space. It has been hard to read advice recommending giving over an entire room, bathroom, or even floor of the house to a positive case when that just wasn’t an option for us (or many, many other people around the world). We ended up designating one bathroom for our positive case, and keeping that person’s hygiene items separate from the rest of ours. We also kept windows open (brr!) and sanitized surfaces and high-touch areas like light switches and faucet handles frequently. Who knows if that made any difference, but in any case, the virus did not spread to the rest of us.
The University of Turku has been online-only this whole semester, but I had been going in to campus to teach over Zoom from an empty classroom at least (I miss my standing desk SO MUCH). Once we were suddenly in quarantine, though, we were all at home trying to do work and school online. It brought back unpleasant memories from the spring!
The university will be online-only for next semester as well, they announced a few weeks ago. It’s a totally expected decision, and it’s good to know so far ahead of time so we can plan our courses accordingly, but it’s so sad to realize that by the time I am teaching students on campus again, it will have been at least a year and a half since the initial uni closure.
Oh and did you hear that there was an election in the US? That was quite the rollercoaster to be on while in quarantine. And there wasn’t just one rollercoaster, there were several: my time zone roller coaster, west coast time zone roller coaster, east coast time zone roller coaster, Biden supporter roller coaster, Trump supporter roller coaster, etc. It was surreal to experience all of those in waves every time I turned on the news or went on Twitter or Facebook. When the news came in that Biden/Harris had won, it was Saturday evening here. On Sunday morning, I got to wake up to a Twitter feed FULL of the best and brightest memes, takes, observations, clips, and musings that had accumulated for me all night long. It was brilliant.
As for coronavirus in Finland as a whole, our numbers are going up like anyone else’s but we still have the lowest 14-day cumulative number of cases per 100,000 of any country in Europe, by a lot (53.4 vs. next-lowest Iceland’s 104.5). There are mask recommendations in place but compliance is not 100% (except at church, the last time I went in September? October? what is time even, anymore).
One last thing: having had a coronavirus case in our house (it still feels bonkers to write that!) did a lot to calm my fears on some fronts, and increase them on others. Unknowns are always scary, and now that a great big unknown has actually happened, I am less worried about being able to isolate someone in our house. I now know exactly what is and isn’t feasible, and that is very calming. I also came out of this experience with trust in the system - infection tracking, contact tracing, and quick testing worked.
What remains terrifying is the thought of passing this thing on to someone else who might not get such a mild case. And I think that might be the point some people are missing when they complain that all this fuss is ridiculous for something that’s “just like the flu.” It is just like the flu…except when it isn’t, and those are extremely scary dice to roll for yourself, let alone someone else.
Now that this year of a month is over, we are back to “normal” - keeping our bubble small, working hard at work and school, bracing ourselves for another Finnish winter, and looking forward to January 2021 when there will still be a lot of things to worry about, I guess, but at least Trump in the White House won’t be one of them!
