Personal experience: I live in the USA during a pandemic

March 27 US came outThe United States came out on top in the world in the number of cases of COVID-19 in first place in the world in the number of cases of coronavirus, overtaking China and Italy. Took out to the streets of New YorkFor the first time since 9/11, NYC has set up makeshift morgues. This time, it's in anticipation of coronavirus deaths mobile refrigerators to store the bodies of the dead, experts predict that due to the pandemic, one in five Americans will loseOne in five Americans predicted to lose their job due to coronavirus work, and doctors are already complaining about the lack of equipment.

Lifehacker talked with the founder of Ecwid, Ruslan Fazlyev, who has been living in the United States for five years. He told how residents, to the last, refused to believe in the danger of a new virus, what measures the government was taking and how the life of the country changed in a matter of months.

Do you know such an old-old way of accepting the inevitable, from denial to humility? America went through it.

For a long time people could not believe that there was something really serious in front of them. There is something racist about this denial: "The coronavirus is something for the Chinese, for us big white people it does not apply." People really thought that the disease could not cross the US border, and did not take any action. No one was in a hurry to buy disposable masks, hospitals did not stock up on equipment - in general, there was no preparation. This continued literally until the beginning of March. In the middle of the month, the government sounded the alarm, but awareness came to ordinary Americans much later.

Not just a cold

Americans are quite irresponsible about colds. It's perfectly normal to come to work in snot, sneeze and cough, and infect all your colleagues here. People are used to getting colds on their feet. Someone, in principle, do not have sick leave at work, and someone works on the PTO (Paid Time Off) system, according to which you have a paid time away from the office, and how exactly to allocate it, you decide myself.

At first I thought it was great, because you can set work and non-work days yourself, but in practice everything looks different rosy: when a person gets sick, he prefers to endure a cold on his feet and spend the free time on prolongation vacation. Many people with coronavirus habitually ignored their symptoms and kept going to work hoping to save vacation days.

In addition, they have not been tested in the USA for a long time.The Dangerous Delays in U.S. Coronavirus Testing Haven’t Stopped those who did not seem to be in contact with the infected and did not travel abroad. Even if a person had all the symptoms, but he did not go to China, he was not given a test.

So the moment of distribution was hopelessly missed.

Most Americans still didn't think the new virus was dangerous for them. So, in New Orleans there is a beautiful Mardi Gras carnival, which attracts more than a million people. Before February 25, when this festival was to be held, cautious voices began to sound that the event should be canceled. But it was still carried out, and today an abnormal mortality from the virus has been recorded in the city. While my business partners canceled meetings, other people held a carnival that attracted half the country - and then spread the infection to their cities.

First changes

When it became clear that the virus had reached the United States, anger began to show. In the newsLA Community Leaders Worry Anti-Asian Racism is Being Fueled by Coronavirus Panic every now and then slipped'Coughing while Asian': living in fear as racism feeds off coronavirus panicthat the townsfolk literally attack people with Asian features: they say, you bastards have brought us the "crown". The life of citizens of Asian origin has become more complicated: many of them were generally born in the United States and have never been to China, but for some reason they were expected to answer for the whole nation.

There was also the approach “we do not get sick, and if we do get sick, then we do not die, because we have the greatest medicine in the world”.

People still made long-term deals, bought real estate, walked around the city and did not worry about the future at all.

The mood changed when he died in the USAFirst death from coronavirus in the United States confirmed in Washington state first American with COVID-19. It was a shock, there was a general awakening.

The first measures that the government took were unsuccessful. I live in Del Mar, near San Diego, California, and the state has tried to impose quite healthy social restrictions:California banned meetings of 250 or more people due to coronavirus in large groups, if possible, work from home, do not go outside unnecessarily. But all the rules were of a recommendatory nature and were not strictly followed, and the government itself did not make sure that the residents strictly followed them.

We decided to be proactive, and on March 13, our company closed offices around the world, and employees were transferred to work from home. It turned out just in time: the next day I learned about the first case in the city of Encinitas, where one of our offices is located. And already on March 16, the state limited SD County Prohibits Gatherings of 50+, Orders Bars to Close, Restricts Restaurants the work of public institutions: schools, restaurants, entertainment centers were closed.

We were forbidden to run around the street unnecessarily, in restaurants they were allowed to order food only to take away. Jogging is also allowed if the person follows the rules of social distancing.

It is interesting, by the way, how the concept of acceptable distance differs in different cultures: in Russia, the boundaries of personal space are narrower than in the United States. When I first moved here, I did not understand why Americans keep backing away from me all the time: what for me was a space of dialogue, for them is a distance for hugs. And it's funny how, now that medically determined social distancing rules are in place, for Russia and the United States, they also differ: in America it is six feet, which is close to two meters, in Russia - one and a half meters. But even in normal times, an American is unlikely to come closer than one and a half meters to you: for him it is like touching his shoulder.

Beach Fight

I went for a run on March 16 and was amazed. The point is that nothing has changed. Yes, restaurants did not allow visitors inside, but people literally breathed down the back of each other's heads, standing in a long line for food. The weather was great, the temperature was around 20 ° C, and the crowds went out to the streets and beaches. Thousands of people. There was no overcrowding on the beach: I ran 10 kilometers, and it was 10 kilometers of a continuous crowd. Anticipating questions: jogging is not prohibited by quarantine rules, but companies do go out.

The general festivities lasted about a week: every day there were more disturbing news, and fewer people on the streets.

It was bargaining. Well, can you go to restaurants? No? And the beach?

The right to it was lost: at first, the authorities seemed to be allowed to approach the ocean, observing social distance, but when they saw that people all the time violate the regulations, they closed the beaches for visits.

I saw on the news that in many states, people are still trying24 Pictures Of Americans Failing Horribly At Social Distancing During The Coronavirus Outbreak make excursions to the ocean and even go surfing, but they are caught by the police and issued fines.

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Something to remember

Publication from Ruslan Fazlyev (@aznakai) March 28, 2020 at 5:22 am PDT

Living by new rules

What began next could be called depression. We in Russia are accustomed to the most different crises. How many of them there were only in my life: the country in which I was born collapsed, the ruble fell more than once - yesterday you could buy an apartment with your savings, and today only a VCR.

In Russia, they are used to adapting their life to any tin, and for us the situation with the coronavirus is just another crisis. America was in a real shock.

This is a completely different approach to money and spending. If we got used to for years hoard for large purchases, the average American chooses instant comfort and takes out a loan for the house or car he likes. As soon as he receives a salary, he literally immediately gives it away, paying off a million debts to banks. In this case, missing one paycheck is a disaster.

According to forecastsOne in five Americans predicted to lose their job due to coronavirus, more than 20% of the population will lose their jobs: these numbers are comparableThe New Great Depression: How a Pandemic is Destroying the Global Economy with indicators of the times of the Great Depression. The blows to the very bottom of the economy, to ordinary people, knocked out the support from under the feet of an entire country. Small businesses are suffering: everything is closed except pharmacies, grocery stores and medical centers.

Some businesses have changed the rules they used to play by: for example, one coffee shop, which I often went to, stopped requiring a signature on the terminal. Contactless payments are not very common in the USA, they are supported by a maximum of a third of establishments: after all, when you sign a check, you can enter a tip there. They can be up to 20% of the bill, and you literally have no right not to leave them: for the staff of the institution this is a uniform robbery. It is a huge gesture that a small coffee shop has given up such a large portion of its income.

Couriers who deliver goods to your home have also stopped requiring a signature. They bring a package, leave it at the door and shout: "Will you sign?" You say: "No, let's do it yourself." Their signature looks like this for you: the mark "COVID-19" and your last name next to it.

All shopping, even grocery shopping, goes online. Everyone uses delivery, and courier services have begun to work intermittently. My wife was recently surprised: “Ruslan, it seems like the mass hysteria 'prepare and buy' has passed, why not is it possible to order anything? " But if earlier only part of the population used delivery, today it is do everything. And even if people do not order a ton of goods, couriers still do not have time to reach everyone.

In offline stores, everything is deplorable. Toilet paper was swept to hell.

Its shortage has turned into a real accident: in Southern California, reports of clogged sewers began to arrive. Since the paper is nowhere to be found, the Americans began to use whatever they hit as an alternative.

There is no canned food in supermarkets, no ready-made frozen food, no chicken or meat. I went shopping and just didn’t know what to take: nothing was left on the budget, everyone dared. In the end, I grabbed the freshest Mediterranean sea bass, cool steaks and grabbed eight lobster tails - I had to stock up on what others did not buy. Some products are sold today with a limited number of per hand.

Snapped up and sanitizers: my wife bought a green one with a hippie image and an Organic mark - nobody wanted to take it. Everyone hoped to snatch something more powerful: they say, we, please, the same powerful as "Dichlorvos". In critical conditions, those who yesterday were proud of their "green" habits, sweep away the most difficult chemistry. Antiseptic manufacturers are clearly winning today: our Australian client, for example, sold half a million dollars worth of sanitizers in a matter of days.

Hope for change

Now is the stage of acceptance. Fewer and fewer passers-by are going out into the streets, there are no more vacationers outside my window. For some time, the builders in the neighborhood continued to work, but now I do not hear the rumble of their equipment.

Communication with citizens in the United States is built much more transparently than in Russia: information on the number of cases arrives very quickly and is sobering well. We got SMS notifications from local authorities quite early. Many learned about the first person killed in my city from such a notification. Today we are no longer notified of every death from coronaviruscoronavirusbecause their number has increased dramatically. But there is a positive effect from such messages: people actually began to prefer the house to walks much more often.

Employees are gradually getting used to working remotely. Our partners replace meetings with videoconferences. The state is trying to help ordinary citizens: the population is going toUS Senate Approves $ 2 Trillion Allocation To Support Economy During Pandemic to distribute money, to small businesses - loans.

But even with this approach, I see colossal losses. Government aid seems like a drop in the ocean.

It was relatively easy for Ecwid to switch to work from home: my business is built on what we give people the ability to sell online and all the actions the team takes every day are easy to replicate remotely. We have seen a huge increase in the number of clients - entrepreneurs who are moving from offline to online. For them, we have become almost the only chance to survive. We made a special offer, according to which you can get our service now, and pay later: 2020 did not go to anyone, so we will not take money from you so that tomorrow you will not close and we will not be left without clients. Since we are a company with venture capital financing, we have the opportunity to choose the latter between short-term and long-term interests.

My town of Del Mar is very small - but even we already have six cases. True, I did not understand exactly how this was counted: if they took only the inner region, where about four thousand people live, then the numbers are catastrophic, worse than in Italy. But, most likely, sociologists looked at statistics for the district with adjacent territories, where 40 thousand residents live - in this case, the statistics are equal to the average for the United States.

In San Diego, 3.3 million people haveCoronavirus in San Diego County 600 patients, 120 of whom are in hospitals, 50 are in intensive care, 7 are dead. I am deliberately leaving this proposal, but it was written a week ago, before the article was published. Now it is already 1,400 patients, 270 of whom are in the hospital, 100 in intensive care and 19 more dead. And when we talk about 270 people in a hospital, we must understand that American hospitals are not admitted with mild symptoms. Here, even after heart surgery, they can be discharged on the same day.

I will not surprise anyone if I say that I start to worry at the slightest symptom of a cold - now this is familiar to many.

I almost never go out and try to adhere to a strict routine: in working conditions from home, it is very important not to degrade. I put a table on the refrigerator where I regularly record my weight and athletic performance. I was disciplined before, but now I tightened my own rules: I count calories, I began to play more intensely, although, of course, I no longer attend boxing classes.

How long the self-isolation regime will last is unknown. I think a month or two. The restrictions will be lifted gradually, and I would not expect to return to normal life before June. We can only hope for the best.