COVID-19 Update: March 24, 2020

It's already been two months since the first cases of the coronavirus popped up here in Taiwan.

It's already been two months since I started worrying about the virus.

It's already been two months since it was the talk of everybody here in Taiwan.

It's already been two months, and I'm so tired of it, and I feel so numb. I check the numbers daily, but it feels as if they won't ever stop rising.

The world is spiraling into chaos. Countries are now shutting down borders, and it feels like hope is so far away.

Just right about a couple of days ago, we only had around 59 or so cases. Today, it's 215. It's almost quadrupled in a week.

Last week, there was an anonymous high school (Though we all knew which one it was. High school gossip spreads faster than wildfire. I only wish it was faster than the virus) which had the first case of a high school student. The class had to self-isolate for 14 days. It was the rule, for the whole class to isolate themselves if they had one infected.

A second case was found in the same class, a classmate of the aforementioned student. The school was shut down. A few days ago I checked the news, and there was a third student (also in the same class) that was tested positive.

My mother's worried that the city might have to undergo lockdown sometime soon. My family and I are worried, but we can't do anything. I still have to go to school now. I can't leave the city. So now we can only hope and pray.

I saw on the news today that a man had filled fake personal information in the papers required for entering the borders. He's now on the run from government.

Seventeen years ago, during the year of 2003, exactly the year I was born in, there was SARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (at least that's the name that I remember). My mother was pregnant with me at the exact time SARS was at it's peak (I was born later in the year). She told me that people were freaking out.

SARS had vanished suddenly when summer rolled around. And now a lot of people are comparing this virus to the previous one. Saying that everything will be better when summer arrives. But I always question myself every time I hear that, how do we know that it will be true this time?

For the random people who have stumbled upon this message during the crisis, I wish you all luck. As for the people reading this, the ones from the future that are already free from this horrible nightmare, please take care of yourself and make sure to never, ever let this happen again, for yourself and the whole of humanity.