[kj] how is everyone?

[T.B.]

Checking in from Huntington Beach, California about 30 minutes south of LA.

There's still a small number of people out and about on a daily basis.  Thankfully due to a combination of unseasonably rainy weeks and people slowly getting the message, there's fewer and fewer people congregating at parks and beaches on rare really nice, sunny days.  The notoriously packed SoCal freeways are always Christmas Day light, everywhere is full speed, no traffic jams.  There's a few mom n' pop stores scattered around still open that shouldn't be, like a corner video rental store run by this Asian family. A few small diners, etc only offering take-out, but far from consistently or efficiently done and there's zero law enforcement.

Grocery stores and big box stores like Costco imo, are the biggest issue as far as (lack of) germ spread containment. There's always huge early morning, poorly managed lineups, very little order as far as number of people allowed in the store.  Paper products and cleaning supplies remains the biggest scarcity.

About two days a week since we here in California went on so-called lockdown 3 weeks ago, I drive my wife to her mall (just to get out of the house) which is on the other side of LA and completely closed down (she's the assistant GM) to check on things, make sure the skeleton security and maintenance crew is doing their job and also to bring her office PC hardware back home to set up her home office.  The first thing that's striking walking through a huge mall like this is that it's exactly like the 1979 "Dawn Of The Dead" zombie flick minus the zombies. Eerily quiet, very clean and sterile in appearance. A lot of stores for whatever reasons have left lights on despite everything being shuttered.

Everyone knows there's going to be a gargantuan economic impact even if businesses went back to work tomorrow, much less late May as being discussed. She's already fielding a lot of store owners asking for rent relief of some kind. A lot of the small shops live month to month, one bad month sinks them. The thing is, some people don't get that a mall itself needs cash flow to pay lenders and financiers as well as all sorts of local, state and fed taxes and fees. In this case the mall or multi-business property get the revenue from their 100s of tenants from Macys to the little Asian nail shop, most of which goes right back into daily, weekly/monthly operating expenses, etc.  The cash coming in and back out per month is well over a million dollars and there's maybe a couple months' worth of cushion.   April 1st was the quarterly due date for business taxes.

Being stuck at home hasn't been too tough for my wife and son.  I do find that days and weekends are beginning to blur into anonymous "Sundays" where we sleep in, stay up very late watching movies, etc and nap a lot in the middle of the day.  I listen a lot to music only on headphones right now, I'm usually used to listening on the big stereo system full blast for a couple hours during the day when everyone else is out but that ain't happening now.  The anxiety of knowing especially my wife is in the high risk category (she has chronic asthma and is in her late 50's) plus the fear of losing her job at any time is stressful.  On the other hand, my wife already has me coloring her hair and doing her nails while making sure her little home office is running smoothly.  By the time this is over, I'm gonna be a combination beautician and IT guy.

A lot of people that are working from home who'll return to their offices in a month or two are gonna be about 15+ lbs heavier from eating too much canned crap, take out/delivery, shaggy haired from no one cutting hair, and used to having a beer while still in their bathrobe at their (home office) desk mid-day.  This will probably be my first years since I started seeing live music all the way back in 1977 that I won't catch a single live show for a whole calendar year.

To switch gears, just over a week ago, my older cousin who has asthma was showing very mild symptoms, went to the hospital, was tested and informally diagnosed (because it takes days to get test results here in California), sent home to self-quarantine and several days afterwards, developed the typical serious pneumonia issues requiring hospitalization.

While in the hospital, her initial test result finally came back positive. She was close to being put on a ventilator, she was on max oxygen spiking a high fever for 48 hours and was put on Hydroxychloroquine + Z pack regime as a last measure before being intubated and within hours showed dramatic improvement.  This past weekend, 5 days after she was admitted, she went home and is expected to make a full recovery.

2020 is going to be known as The Year The Earth Stood Still.