CQ: Day 16: Pennsylvania Lockdown

March 28, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 121,500 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S.

Blog: And... it's finally reached us in Central PA. 

Counties have been added daily to the list of Pennsylvania stay-at-home orders for the last 10 days. Today, it came here to Centre County. We are now prohibited from driving anywhere except to get groceries or medicine. Not that we haven't been self isolating for over two weeks already, but now it's official. It's a chilling realization. 

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: Day 11: "No Rush Hour" in NYC: Times Square Empty

Cities are empty, and the webcams stand watch.

(From my AccuWeather.com blog today):

Outdoor webcams (such as those at Earthcam) are robotically, with no knowledge of the virus and no political bias, recording the lack of humans worldwide, something heretofore unseen, as the Earth quarantines from the coronavirus. Here are a few examples I've captured over the last week. This footage was recorded in Times Square last Friday at rush hour and again this Monday rush hour (see also widescreen higher-res version):

This next one was recorded around 9 a.m. ET on Friday, March 20, and shows the lack of people and vehicles in Prague, London, Dublin, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida: [video not available] 

The same day, I also recorded a slideshow of traffic cameras across North America. These were mostly captured around 9-10 a.m. ET, and most are stills. Shown: Altoona, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Detroit, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and, from Canada, Montreal and Toronto.

You don't need a webcam to see the effects of coronavirus quarantine... there are plenty of other ways to measure our isolation. These are scenes not unlike those in apocalyptic movies... and the webcams will continue to watch us as we work through this maze of confusion.

(read more on my blog, including satellite & drone footage...)

CQ: Day 1: Big Crash

March 16, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 4,300 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. NOTE: This was the big crash, but it wasn't the last. My "two-week" work-at-home policy instituted was extended to at least 6 weeks (as of this writing). The Penn State closure for "three weeks" mentioned below would later be extended for two months, ending the Spring semester at Spring Break.

Blog: So... The Dow Jones $DJIA just fell almost 3,000 points, or 13 percent, the #2 DAILY percentage crash in history, further than the 1929 crash. Only 1987 was worse. It was surreal to watch on television.

And just after the crash, I did something I never thought I'd do. I gathered up my belongings and left work, without a return date. It was weird. I think I said, "see you on the other side" on my way out.

We were told to work at home starting Monday, but my wife is not feeling well so we're starting tomorrow, Friday. I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home, to get a couple week's worth of groceries, just in case things got bad. Nobody was really panicking, but I was wary.

I filled the car up with gas and got some cash just in case. The local paper in the checkout told about the closure of Penn State.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 3 Days Before: Second Crash

March 9, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 514 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S.

Blog: Today's stock market crash is quite unusual. The plunge of over 2,000 points was the 2nd-biggest percentage drop since *1987* (#1 was the slightly-worse October 2008 crash).

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.

CQ: 4 Days Before: Mask Hysteria

MARCH 8, 2020 NEWSPAPER HEADLINES & GRAPH: There are 450 cases of Coronavirus in the U.S.

Blog: I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. Confirmed that, as the media has been saying, you can't buy dust masks anymore. They put signs out to remind people they don't protect against Coronavirus, but obviously people didn't listen.

*NOTE: This is part of my series "Coronavirus Quarantine" about my family's (and the world's) experience with COVID-19 during the stay-at-home orders and self isolation of Spring 2020. You can read all the blogs in reverse sequence by clicking here. Blogs before April 2020 were written after the fact, but the thoughts and photos are from the publish date indicated. For reference, a graph of cases and news interest in the U.S., and newspaper headlines from each blog publish date are included in each entry.