Day Sixteen of ORCA in Switzerland – Pandemic Solitude

Day Sixteen of ORCA in Switzerland – Pandemic Solitude

Byrichard

I was writing a Facebook post when I thought of the term Pandemic Solitude and I love it so much that I wanted to use it as a title for today’s blog post. For most people during the pandemic the order is, stay with the people you live with but avoid being close to others.


When you live with no one this means that you should avoid being close to anyone. Yesterday and today I exchanged words with petrol station workers from two meters away, and with a plate of plexiglass between us. I also talked to a scooter shop owner and here too I stayed about three meters away. It might sound distant in other times but that’s intimate during a pandemic.


Imagine if you were in this situation during a pandemic. How long would you cope with it? That’s why the graph for the rate of infections in Vaud makes me melancholic. That graph, although it’s not getting worse, is staying constant, and at that rate of infections, it means we’re in it for the long haul. It has been steady for five weeks and it could go on for another five weeks or more.



As I walked I saw that spring is still moving forward as planned and that’s when I came up with the thought; “This year spring, for Humans, has been delayed, but flowers and trees are budding and flowering.



Usually at this time of year people would be heading to the beaches, to the mountains and to other places and they’d be enjoying the first rays of the spring sun, and they’d be working on getting their summer chrominance, or at least load up on Vitamin D. This year most people are staying home.


Those that you see the most are mischievous children, enjoying a world where parents and grown-ups are not around to tell them off. Imagine all the mischief they’re up to.


As we’re speaking of grown-ups being invisible I’m also puzzled by the lack of people posting on social media. I would have thought that everyone would be using social media and that conversations would be vibrant but there is no vibrancy. Information services are tweeting and posting to social media but individuals are absent. Where is everyone? Why wasn’t this the opportunity that we thought it would be.


It doesn’t matter, but as a result I have kept my Twitter and Facebook tabs closed. During this crisis, social media is failing us.

Day Eleven of Orca in Switzerland – Clothes Have Been Barricaded Away

Day Eleven of Orca in Switzerland – Clothes Have Been Barricaded Away

Byrichard

Today’s joke is that clothes have been barricaded away as you can see in the featured photo. I find the idea of hiding clothing behind a wall of beers amusing. How often would you see this. I hope that your underwear and socks are new because if they’re not you may spend weeks or even months feeling uncomfortable.


The queues to get into the shops are not bad and I did see at least two couples walking together in shops so the rules are not as strict as people thought. Shops are quiet.


We keep hearing the refrain – People should stay home, but people are at home


We keep hearing the refrain that people should stay home but if you walk around villages and other places you see that people are staying home. Parkings are closed. Traffic is practically nonexistent and even pedestrians are rare. You might see one or two people here and there but not more, especially when you walk around lunchtime.


I get the impression that people who are still working feel martyred because they’d like to be off like many others but in my experience you’re better off working than being off. If you’re off then you’re at home with the challenge of finding things to keep you positive.


At work you still have specific tasks to do, you still meet people, and for you life is relatively normal. I see that shop keepers seem normal. They don’t behave as if they’re traumatised. You see them talking together. life has remained normal. I would guess that working in airports at the moment is quiet, with so few flights. If all the planes are parked then you’re an Acte De prèsence. You just need to find how to make time go faster, to get to the end of the current shift.


I didn’t reach ten thousand steps today. I didn’t bother to go for a walk this afternoon. Walks aren’t fun when you need to avoid people who are indifferent. In the shops you have no choice, but outdoors it’s easy for people to avoid you and they should.


As a case in point I could have walked on a side road but because I saw a woman whom I assumed would walk too close to me I took a gravel path. Right after passing her, from several meters away, I heard a severe cough and I’m happy I observed the safety distance. It might have been an ordinary cold. My point is that we should keep our distances at all times.


Another incident involved someone stinking of body odour in the shops. During a pandemic the last thing you want is dirty unwashed people walking around shops. The cleaner you are, the fewer places the virus has to rest and relax whilst waiting for its next connection.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzJclM_KmRg
What I thought of after writing the last sentence.


Now that I’ve lost your attention I can have dinner.

Day Eight of Orca in Switzerland – Herded like Cattle

Day Eight of Orca in Switzerland – Herded like Cattle

Byrichard

Today I was herded like cattle at the shops and walked along the edge of a field I had never walked along before.


At the shops they put tape up, like a maze to force people to walk a certain circuitous route. The circuitous route would be fascinating if the shops were full but they weren’t so it was a hindrance. The issue is not walking. I love walking. The issue is that you get stuck behind people and people then get in closer proximity within the shops. It’s impossible not to with so many blind corners and alleys.


Some of the aisles are still empty. No sauces for those who know how to heat, but not prepare food for example. Sell by dates are long for most product as a result of how fast they are being sold but paradoxically microwave food is not selling fast. I saw that one meal was just two days from being beyond it’s sell-by-date.


At the moment my motivation to go for walks is declining because so many others are doing the same. As so many people are walking it means that it takes a lot of effort, either to slow down and walk at their pace, or conversely just to choose a different route than usual.



Today’s walk took me along the strip of land between the motorway and fields. It’s a strip along which I would usually never walk, due to the possibility of being told not to walk there, the chance of getting muddy shoes, and because I wasn’t familiar with it.


Today I did walk along this path in an attempt to be as far away from those who do not take socially distancing seriously enough. It worked. I saw two men trimming the vegetation you see in this image but no others. Three hundred meters closer to the week you could see groups of people crossing paths.


Washing hands is essential, and staying home is important but going for walks and getting some daylight is important and so is respecting the two-meter rule. If contagion continues, because people don’t follow the rules then the rules will be tightened. Today in Mulhouse they have a curfew from 2100-0600. The less seriously people take measures, the more restrictions will be put on us.


I’m thinking of going to a different shopping center, rather than go through today’s experience again. I think I was shocked. By shocked, I don’t mean surprised. I mean that I had a physiological and psychological response.


Usually, I wouldn’t be this open but I see this series as blogs as a documenting of life during the pandemic. It will be interesting for future historians, i.e. our nieces and nephews to read about how we felt about the experience.

Day Six of Orca in Switzerland – Stricter measures.

Byrichard

Today’ I’d like to discuss stricter measures. Coop and Migros both have online shops set up for home delivery but the system is overloaded by people ordering at the same time. They don’t have the truck fleet or staff to cope with the demand so I suggest a better solution.


Both Digitec and Galaxus allow people to order online and choose which shop they want to pick up their purchases. This idea is relevant today because Migros, Coop and other shops are now forcing people to queue outside shops before being allowed to go in and make their purchases.


Queuing, whilst keeping shops from getting crowded inside, will increase the risk of propagation of the virus outside the shops. People have a tendency not to stand with the minimum of two-meter distance separation. The larger the crowd the longer the queue, and the longer the wait the higher the probability of contagion.


If we could shop online and request distribution from a specific point the time we spend at the shops would be cut down to a minute or two and it would have the added benefit that we would not even need to go into the shop. I don’t want to go to the shops at all if I need to queue but there is no choice.


The system they put in place yesterday will result in more, rather than less hoarding and increase the amount of time people spend in proximity to others.


Vaud has flattened. Source


Having said this the graph for Vaud has flattened but I don’t know whether this is because they ran out of test kits or whether they have failed to update the figures at the time when I wrote this blog post. I hope the worst is over for this Canton.