The Great Confinement: Looking for Light in the Current Coronavirus Crisis

In another post, I ranted about how social media can bring out the worst in people, especially during a crisis. The news media is similar, reminding me of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Then, like now, news programs focused on the crisis for weeks, even months. At first, there's some novelty. They even called the stupid thing the "novel coronavirus"--as opposed to its official name SARS-Cov-2. Why Covid-19 and not SARS-2? Apparently, the World Health Organization did not want to create "unnecessary fear" by connecting this disease to the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. My imagination registers this as support for the conspiracy theory that China bribed the WHO into removing China's culpability.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, as I mentioned in my earlier post, my college's alumni group on Facebook is inundated with conspiracy theories. When one individual or cohort of people blames PRC or CCP for the SARS-2 outbreak, another individual or cohort responds saying that playing the blame game doesn't help anyone. Ironically, these people are the ones blaming the Trump administration for allowing this virus to devastate U.S. public health resources. Outside the alumni group, I see friends and colleagues from different phases of my life offering varied opinions and analyses. One person pointed out that the 2019 Military World Games, hosted in Wuhan, took place in October 2019. The implication is that, perhaps, this event brought the virus to Wuhan through foreign agents, possibly biowarfare operatives from the U.S. In my opinion, this is a dangerous conspiracy theory as it feeds into the CCP's narrative that the U.S. created the SARS-2 virus--which they claim caused the vaping sickness in fall of 2019--as opposed to the widely-accepted zoonosis hypothesis. I mean, SARS-2 likely came from the same source as SARS-1. In my opinion, China could have taken steps to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases like SARS and, due to lobbyist pressure, chose not to. Now the entire world has to bear the consequences of a small minority of people believing they are entitled to eat animals slaughtered in unsanitary markets. Some folks would argue that a disease outbreak could have easily started in the U.S. and that China bought the world time. Again, I think part of this is dangerous because it's exactly what the CCP wants to establish as the de facto narrative: China bought the world time by facing the disease head-on. The facts as I remember them were that the WHO and CDC downplayed the magnitude of this issue and left the entire world believing for months that the disease posed no serious threat. Anyways, I will give credit to the notion that a disease could have started in the U.S., given the modern agricultural practice of shoving antibiotics down the throats of livestock.

Now that I got that out of my system, I want to shift the tone towards positivity. The Great Confinement is an unprecedented global experiment in quarantine, self-isolation, and remote work. Social media platforms, formerly criticized for replacing meaningful personal relationships with anxiety-inducing posturing, have become many people's primary form of communication. Among these, platforms like Medium and (to a lesser extent) Wordpress offer a soapbox for people to voice their opinions, not that anyone will really read them without advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Nobody reads my posts, after all, and if they did I'm sure they'd either be mildly offended or spicily disappointed.

Apart from distributing conspiracy theories, postulating armchair theories about Covid-19, writing self-indulging blog posts, and conducting business-as-almost-usual work from home, how are people spending their time during this shelter-in-place?

Here are some options, starting with the ones I'm personally invested in:

Learning. One of my 5 L's, if I'm not learning, I'm not happy. Currently, I'm taking an online class in cloud computing, which is forcing me to learn a lot of abstract content relating to data centers, distributed computing, and virtual machines. While I suspect this will not be very useful for my career, I hope it gives me a well-rounded perspective on current and emerging technologies.

Cooking. As I said before, I believe that to cook a few different dishes or to cook from a couple different templates is a responsibility that every adult should partake in. I haven't done anything really fancy, other than maybe some food science experiments. For example, to exploit folk remedies for sickness (cold, flu, tenably SARS-2), I've brewed a 1-gallon batch of my golden mead potion. It's been brewing for almost 2 weeks, and I'm hoping it gets to 10% ABV by the end of week 3. I might be too impatient for fermentation. For reference, my previous batch landed about 4% ABV and did not taste very palatable. A good brew requires substantial aging, I've found.

Writing. In addition to this self-indulgent form of content, I've been making progress at a snail's pace in my sci-fi novel. Honestly, I'm wondering whether I should fold in the coronavirus crisis into the story. The question is whether the crisis' outcome will significantly affect working culture, with more people prioritizing work-from-home even across engineering sectors. See, my initial conception of one of the characters poked fun at the Silicon Valley housing crisis, in which high salaries drove up rent and mortage prices, forcing many workers to commute across long distances. In the future when my story takes place, autonomous vehicles mitigate the effects of these commutes by facilitating naps. If work-from-home becomes a more standard practice, I may have to adapt accordingly. Additionally the emergency response, though slower for a pandemic than the impending robocalypse, may influence how my characters respond to a new crisis. Beyond my modestly meager progress in developing my yarn, I've assisted a couple friends in editing their creative works. As one of them pointed out, I've watched so much anime and read so many manga that I have a pretty good understanding of how to critique a story.

Watching. Streaming video services are killing it, right now, as people yearn for entertainment to break the doldrums of their confined lives. I finally got around to watching Mr. Robot on Amazon Prime (although I keep confusing it with iRobot). Netflix rolled out some docuseries called Tiger King and I have absolutely zero interest. Mainly that's because I've found Netflix docuseries to be colossal timewasters, extending what could have been a carefully edited 2-hour documentary into over 5 hours. Honestly, my brain can't handle this especially after Angela Moss drove me crazy through Mr. Robot. Seriously, I can not remember the last time a fictional character made me so mad. I hate that her character knows some twist that will be revealed in the final season but she can't tell anyone else so she just looks crazy. I thought hacking and cyberterrorism were central to the plot; actually, they take a backseat to poor communication between characters. And this is a fictional story written by people paid to write content. Go ahead and say, "But truth is stranger than fiction," and I'll say that's still not enough to draw my interest. In anime news, Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun closed out a few weeks ago, followed by My Hero Academia Season 4 last weekend. Both were pretty solid, though I favor the former for its comedic cast. This season doesn't offer much, at least on Crunchyroll, other than Tower of God. That's an anime adaptation of a Korean webtoon. The first episode really confused me in an annoying way--no explanations, just teases and hints--but the second episode redeemed it. To keep mine eyes busy, I started rewatching Gundam Wing for the first time in 20 years. Ignoring nostalgia, this series sucks in a humorous way. I've picked up Code Geass as well for a rewatch.

Reading. I haven't read any actual books in a while. I have been burning through some manga. Komi-san is really good, the last great manga I binged. As a fan of Urusei Yatsura, I recently read a good amount of Ranma 1/2 and I put Maison Ikkoku on my list. Rumiko Takahashi is brilliant! I've also decided to reread Part 6 and 7 of Jojo's just because I miss it. It'll probably be 2022 when Stone Ocean gets an anime adaptation, 2025 for Steel Ball Run. I might give Tower of God a try.

Listening. Another L. I've neglected my trumpet practice more than I'd like. Mainly, I feel self conscious when everyone is at home and can hear me fool around. My ear training is going pretty well, though. I've been stuck on the Japanese city pop. Taeko Ohnuki's Sunshower in particular has really tickled my fancy. The YouTube algorithms noticed that I'm into this music and suggested some young Thai artists who sound like they're influenced by the city pop revival. Among them are Numcha, Phum Viphurit, and Yonlapa. Yonlapa actually performs her acoustic set regularly at Moment's Notice! I hadn't had a chance to see her because she plays Tuesday night, when North Gate has their weekly open mic. I hope next year I can revisit Chiang Mai and catch her set.

Working. HA! I've been ready to work for months but the SARS-2 pandemic had other plans. I haven't done anything monetarily advantageous in weeks. Hopefully this will change soon.

Drawing, crafting, cultivating. I haven't done much of these, though I'm sure many others have.

I'm pretty much out of steam, having dropped over 1500 words into this post. How have you been spending your time during the Great Confinement? I'm curious to hear!