A lot of news today about states and regions dropping stay-at-home orders. Even the voluntary ones.

A bit of me understands. The last couple months have been hard for a lot of people. I think many are forgetting why we started, or have stopped believing it helps.

I’m not even really sure where to begin. I mean, it is a lo. It’s a lot of trust in people we don’t really know. The media, the doctors, and even the politicians.

I think the numbers are screwy, because it’s hard to get a jump on understanding them, too. Not a lot of random population has been tested, because testing is hard. Tests tend to be reserved for people who suspect they’ve got it, or who are suspected to have it. I do like that they’re putting the qualifier of “of confirmed cases” in a lot of the reports, but even that’s skewed because not all of those who are sick are being diagnosed.

There’s a huge part of “medicine until feeling better” in this, too. We’ve all been given those ten days of pills, then around day six we feel great, and maybe by day eight give up on taking the pills. Lots of the time we end up just fine, but sometimes we get sick again a few days later.

That’s what’s going to happen here. We’ve tempered the impact of this thing by successfully socially distancing and staying at home when possible. We haven’t done anything to beat the virus, though. Stopping social distancing is like stopping our medicine; we’re probably going to get sick shortly after we stop staying home.

It’ll be the case that a vaccine will be developed, or a good treatment to curb fatalities and ease the severe cases. After enough exposure, herd immunity may happen.

But we’re not even sure of that! The spotty (and shoddy) reporting and information is unclear about whether you might be able to re-contract the virus after passing through it once. Further, they seem to be identifying respiratory and cardiac impact left behind, even in not-severe patients.

I’m probably past that hump of believing I’m invincible. Maybe that’s put some caution in me. I didn’t do anything really different when MERS and SARS went around earlier this century. I knew people who had loved ones impacted by H1N1, which I learned about when we went to lunch.

This is different, though.

The number of infected, even with the screwy testing, and even with the misleading reporting, do show that it’s very easy to get. The anecdotal information shared by the few people I’ve seen interviewed, and the aggregation of those interviews in other reports, indicate that most of those (interviewed) infected didn’t know where they got it, because they didn’t recall symptomatic people.

That’s how this is so bad. It’s easy to get, from sources you can’t identify.

I’m all for responsibly opening businesses. We’ve continued to shop, with our simple attempts at safety by being distant, not touching, wearing masks, and wiping things down. We’ve wandered our neighborhood with the kids for bike rides, keeping a distance from those we pass, but without masks. We’ve gone for take-out and had food and groceries delivered. The mountain of shipping boxes in the garage, as we’ve overwhelmed our generous recycling bin, shows that we’ve not stopped shopping with shipment, or even drive-up.

We’re not standing in lines, though. We’re not shaking hands or hugging people. We’re not lingering in our favorite places, or even going to them when they’re too busy.

I fully expect to catch this thing before there’s a virus. I’m optimistic that we’ll be in the “just a little sick” 80% of people that don’t need hospitalization. I really hope that if one or more of us ends up hospitalized, it’s in the 15% of people that don’t need ventilators. It seems most that need one die, and those that don’t die, “recover” with severe impact.

I sadly believe that if one of us starts showing symptoms, all of us will have it. I don’t worry, but I am concerned what might happen with the kids if all four of us are laid up, in the house or some to a hospital. I hope it’ll be bad cold like, and symptomatic relief will keep us calm until it passes. The kids are in the young age group that seems to be largely unaffected. We’re in our fifties, which isn’t the worst group, but is up there.

I think these places that are dropping their guard are in for a rough ride. I hope I’m wrong, and we can all breath a sigh of relief that we went too far down a cautious path.

I don’t think that’s going to happen, though.

For the rest of the day, normal work, lunch, nap, bike-ride, dinner, bed... Not a lot of crabbiness, because the weather was nice enough to allow lots of jaunts into the back yard. One of the dogs dug a big home, which I’m not happy about, but otherwise everyone is fine.

Everyone’s healthy.