Sunday, March 16 - Blind Faith.

Day 51. Anyone can dance to the beat, but it takes character to come to life during a breakdown. George Michael told us you gotta have faith, but real faith is blind; it's complete confidence in someone or something without any reason to do so. You can't teach this kind of character, but it can be demonstrated. Humans are fancy, adaptable creatures, and the ability to adapt and thrive in fast-changing environments has recently been emerging in business environments alongside IQ and EQ. AQ, or adaptability quotient, is going the save a lot of people in 2020.

An old friend told me he would always remember my role in this as 'The Harbinger.' I guess as apocalyptic nicknames go, it fits. A friend of mine DM'd me to ask if he really should go and buy things for a lockdown in his country and I told that if my opinion mattered, well, I've been yelling off the top of a mountain for more than 50 days to do that, so I guess my opinion is pretty settled on the matter. A dear old friend told me that because of my blog, her 74-year-old mother managed to get supplies before the chaos, and it meant a lot to her family. As the veneer of civility is chipped away and the angry beast of capitalism lashes out when threatened by chaos, I believe it will be the small stories of kindness that will shine the light to guide us through the long, dark night.

We get up, and I drink my boots full of strong coffee. I play a game of Hockey with my dad, and unlike yesterday, I whip him 10 to 0. I teach a class 1 to 3, playing some blood bowl in between. I am listening to some dark synth wave and the RZA's guided meditation in one ear, but otherwise, 100% focused on the class, and it goes smoothly. I do it again after a break and a run to get some packages: (cleaning solution, finally! And lots of TP). Why is it by the way that in a disaster, white people (or Western people) want to go buy a year's worth of TP? They care more about the toilet than having food?

2020 vision, the ability to turn the fuzzy blur on the horizon into a clear perspective of what lies ahead, is a measure of AQ and something that can be cultivated with nurturing. Wim 'The Iceman' Hoff believes that he knows things about the human body and our ability to withstand cold, viruses, and emotional stress that have baffled scientists. He is a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures, with Guinness world records for swimming under ice and still holds the record for a barefoot half-marathon on ice and snow. I hope that as this story progresses, we as a species will adapt and grow our collective AQ. It's going to be a rough ride. Still, through adversity, we can build up muscles and overcome obstacles. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Today is the 20th day since we've had a new infection in Chongqing. We are on the road to recovery. The last twenty patients got out of the hospital, and we've concluded our COVID-19 crisis if the precautions hold. All visitors to CQ will undergo 14-day self-isolation. If this process is not corrupted, I believe it's enough that my city will be safe. I hope that other cities can learn from what we've done, a remarkable effort, and entirely possible if the public trusts their governments and institutions and will just stay home until it's over.

I am terrified of the chaos that is building and cracking already strained relationships and systems. Most people literally cannot seem to process what they will soon have to do, the choices they will be forced to make as we as a greater organism trims the fat. It's been about two days since Tom Hanks tested positive, the NBA got canceled, and Trump shut down the border. These were wake up calls that turned 'that China problem' or 'that Italian thing' onto the North American stage. Still, the average person still hasn't adjusted to the fact their March break plans are canceled, let alone economic security disruptions and food and medicine supply chain displacement. They complain that this is the most significant inconvenience they've ever dealt with, but don't realize they're staring at the pinky finger of an elephant. People in restaurants are complaining about not getting tips this week, what will they do next week when the restaurants are all closed? What is coming will shake the western society to its core.

I have not given up hope. Even now, I'm working on assembling a team to draft letters to Canadian parliament and American parliament, delivered by friends with sympathies to the people they represent, asking for immediate compensation for working-class people, and deferred payment for rent and mortgages. If we can take some of the stressors off the table, people can find ways to feed themselves, and we can pull together to get through this. I'm trying to take lessons forged in 52 days of quartine here in China on broad topics such as decontamination of protective equipment and groceries and packages, online classes, meditation and stress reduction, and adaptability into a google doc that can be a living, breathing document to help those in crisis. We can all do so much in our own ways.

But others turn against the system, filled with distrust and contempt for the rule of law. Similar to the microcosm of the prison riot that killed close to 10 and injured many more when visitations were restricted in Italy, the quarantine across Italy is bringing widespread chaos. Burning sheets on the streets, crying for their loss of freedom in crowded riots and protests, the Italians have decided quarantine, despite being an Italian word, is not a comfortable fit at this time. I worry they won't be alone. Spain has thrown their hat into the ring with widespread shutdowns and closures to public gatherings and a cry for self-isolation. France is not far behind, as the Louvre, Eifel tower, and many public gatherings are also curtailed. I wonder how Canada and the USA will react, and we're bracing for a big announcement on Monday to see how far they will go past school closures and many people working from home. The big question will be, how will the gig economy and service sector, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, hope with this colossal curveball?

Why does the COVID-19 spread outside china look like it's an angry nanobot reaching for the moon? The current count: 174,604 across the world. China has 80,880. My go-to data site, worldometrers.info, is crashing because of too many connections at once.

We receive a message, not from my school yet, but through the grapevine, a friend tells my wife Chongqing has a plan to get back to normal. March 17, public busses, and subways will all resume full service. My March 18, all markets and offices will be working. By March 22, all special places should be open. 25 highway, airports, trains, roads open. By April 6, high school and middle schools and universities will start. By April 20, we expect to open movie theaters and kindergarten and primary school.

"People sometimes say we need to be really almost on a wartime footing if you want to change. Our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels, which is taking CO2 out of the ground and putting it up into the air." - Elizabeth Kolbert

The day has arrived, when the U.K., much of Europe, Canada, and America have either declared a wartime footing or are on the verge of announcing their own state of emergency and wartime measures. As someone who's been screaming on the top of a hill for 52 days, I've got to say, it's about time.

In the U.K., there is significant controversy about how their current policy of essentially throwing bodies in the hungry mouth of COVID-19, hoping they somehow infect their entire population at once and get herd immunity before their economy tanks. That is entirely against the WHO calling upon all nations of the world and all citizens of Earth to work together to stay home and flatten the curve of infection, spread it out over months rather than all at once. Why? Why do we want to prolong this misery? Because it's the difference between every patient having the dignity of a hospital bed and the care of a doctor and life-saving machinery (and a case fatality rate of 1-3%) and having everyone that needs critical care to live dying in their homes, in large camps, or in the streets (and a case fatality more like 10-15%). We're talking about saving millions of lives here, so this is no small detail.

The U.K. has about 5,000 ventilators, which is enough at 5% for 100,000 sick people at any one time. If a million people get sick - they're going to need 50,000. They are already asking all factories to start producing ventilators and oxygen compressors. Italy is working to create a unified European sharing of medical goods, but this can only work when there are epicenters to throw resources at, like when all of China sent medical supplies and teams to the frontline of Wuhan and Hebei. If it had escaped to all over China, or if it escapes to all corners of Europe, everyone will be fighting for themselves.

In places like Ethiopia, where this 1 doctor for every 10,000 citizens, the situation is even more grave, and the chances for the 10-15% of cases that need medical attention to survive are much lower if the WHO can not produce fast-acting and far-reaching resources to appear at critical epicenters.

In New York City, we've got 400 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Broadway is closed, but a 6 lane COVID drive-thru is open. They test 200 a day but hoping to get up to more than 3000 a day soon. You need an apt, if you qualify, you wait in your car, similar to South Korea. Hazmat covered health care workers come to the car, get a swab, and it's sent to the lab they get a phone call in 2 days. Telemedicine is on the rise.

Canada has 145 cases 3 times what it was a week ago. With exponential growth, that number is going to rise fast, unless people stay home. I read that China's outbreak would have been 68X worse, infection millions of people if we hadn't done our quarantine.

Not everything is closing up. Some Rome churches reopen after angry pope steps in, demanding a place for the worshippers to go and pray.

As I process another day, teaching, relaxing, reading, and drinking too much coffee, I find out an old friend of mine from the east coast, Jacq McNeil, is missing. She was last seen leaving the Pearson airport in Toronto about two weeks ago. Her sister said she had some business to take care of with a violent and shady ex, and now she's been missing. We used to be close friends. Jacq is a funny, understanding, smart, and talented young lady with a great singing voice and a great listening ear. Oh, Jacq, where could you be?

I order some Vitamin D3 off the internet. I hope it arrives soon. The WHO has now announced the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic to be in Europe, as the number of official new infections in China has all but been wiped out, and America and Canada are still testing and bracing for the true rate of infection to be uncovered.

For 3:30-5:30 class, our eyes feel fried. We've been teaching all weekend on screens, and I've been writing when I'm not teaching, so while the kids are watching a video via video chat, we take the chance to rest our weary eyes with some of my masks. Xiaolin uses my memory foam sleep mask, and I have a cybernetic futuristic warming face massager. I move around the room, operating on blind faith while sending my voice through the phone to deliver the English lesson to a handful of 12 -year-olds.

I am going to get a couple of contracts this week for my diary as a book. One from a friend in Canada to release one day in the near future, and the other, from Beijing, manuscript due this month, and to be out on Amazon in a matter of months. I'm still writing my story, but if I could get my quarantine methods to millions of people while they were trying to figure out how to fill their endless days, that could be a kindness. So I am tempted to go that route.

After the class, we are doing great. My focus has impressed Xiaolin, and we enjoy each other's company in the silence of the break. We rest, and afterward, we have dinner. Xiaolin's tummy is still miserable from the super buttery Johnny Cash's Mum's pineapple pie I made. She makes Chinese noodles. I make myself some wacky pasta with peanut butter, broccoli, tunafish, wasabi, and olives in a marinara sauce. It's odd, but I like it.

I watch movies in bed, relax, and write. At the end of the day, we must all have blind faith.