It's my late brother's birthday today, and usually I dedicate this date to him as a sort of holiday or time of reflection. But today is so incredibly bizzarro with Covid-19 declared as a pandemic and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo shut down, that I'm just totally discombobulated, like a person in a corn maze wandering around lost.

I always try to think how my late relatives might feel about current events, as a means of putting it all into perspective while attempting to access some of their wisdom. 

My brother would probably make rude comments about Asians and wet markets and what animals certain people are drawn to eat. Then he would probably flip right around and tell me that it's none of my business what people of other ethnicities are eating, and that I should learn not to judge. My brother fought against his bigotry on a daily basis. His granite colored eyes would glaze over when he struggled with something ethical, reminding me he was nobody to underestimate. Remarkably rough and uncivilized at times, he seemed to have an honest affinity for dogs and babies, but everything else was dispensable. 

My Uncle Alfred would sputter angry curses and blame the "women."  He taught me everything I know about horses and random acts of kindness, but he was a total misogynist from day one. 

My mother, in spite of periodic fits of anger and drama, always remained calm and logical in a complete meltdown of all social or family norms. In the midst of this pandemic, my mother would recommend stocking a few groceries and making some good cocktails even though she never drank herself and didn't cook much. She would be on top of everything for at least a minimal length of time, and then she would wither away into her room and start making threats via phone or letter that would make the pandemic seem unimportant. 

My grandma could manage the whole crisis from the top of her cookstove, ordering people around as if they were drawing a salary from her neat and well computed check book. Her hand, extremely calm and nurturing, could quickly clip a grapevine for a sound thrashing if you dared get lippy in the midst of an emergency. Grandma would have a lot to say about Trump, and none of what she would say would be feathered in any notion of kindness. She would hate his guts.

Tonight my relatives would wonder why specific questions weren't answered by their president. They would all sit around the kitchen table and talk about how our lives are going to change. They would wonder why the Republicans are so selfish.

No doubt this virus is nothing to joke about because of its dark nature. Look at all of the souls it has recently dispatched, and the intense suffering that it's causing around the globe. If the Trump administration and the CDC are resistant to calling this calamity a pandemic, if WHO doesn't want to call it that, then what exactly are we dealing with? It's certainly more than an inconvenience, especially in the United States.

For us, this pandemic could endanger millions of people because of our lack of a basic social safety net. No one from the Trump administration has said that our government will pay for these long hospital stays and thousands and thousands of tests for individual citizens. If our profit partnerships with hospitals and insurance companies are in charge of billing for this disease, then we could be facing a financial collapse for thousands of individuals with insurance and the certainty of long term debt for those without it.

People are buying food and supplies in bulk, at least around my town. Yesterday, one lonely bag of jasmine rice remained on the shelf, and the dried noodle aisle was almost completely empty, as if a big storm was rolling in. I'm finding sales on weird items like holistic cough medicines and immune support supplements. Name brand vitamins are getting pushed, and so are some off -brand cold and cough medicines.

The liquor store had quite the run yesterday considering that most people were down at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Bar B Q event. I guess maybe this isn't that unusual, except if you follow what people are actually saying around town they pretend they aren't concerned at all. I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask, but I have seen an uptick in people rubbing on hand sanitizer. I, in fact, purchased the last bottle of 365 Lavender Hand Sanitizer at my local Whole Foods.

I am going to go ahead and act as weird as possible. I'm a nerd anyway, so no one will notice (not that I think anyone should care what others think about them). Since I pick up nearly every single virus that my kids bring around, I'm spraying all surfaces liberally with Lysol. I'm using hand sanitizer even when I don't need it, and I have picked up quite a few extra things from this place and that place just in case I decide to park myself at home. I'm unabashedly unashamed of my paranoia because I feel as if I am on a winding mountain road with a drunk at the wheel. This morning's visit to the Sunday news shows by Alex Azar the Human Health Secretary, previous pharmaceutical lobbyist, did nothing to assuage my fears. He's not a doctor, and this is not a political hoax as Trump has tried to declare.