Containment for All: Central Coast residents get the order
NOTE: KION's Josh Kristianto currently shows no symptoms of COVID-19 (coronavirus). He is self-isolating by his own choice for the benefit of his family and the public after returning from the United Kingdom in a recent trip. News-Press & Gazette Company, who owns KION, has also mandated he stay and work from home to safeguard those working in the newsroom.
SALINAS, Calif. (KION) It's Wednesday morning, and Central Coast residents collectively woke up to a new order of things.
Of course, over the last few days, it's something that I've endured already: staying at home, working from home, keeping away from people. After I returned from the United Kingdom on Saturday for vacation, I knew I had to make sure I and my belongings were clear of any contamination.
That was the easy part. Now begins the long haul. In order to keep everything clean at our house, I've been wearing a mask everywhere I go inside except my room and the bathroom. If I'm sitting in the kitchen for a bit, I'm wearing that mask. It's all to prevent my spit or water particles from my mouth from landing on surfaces.
On top of that, I've been using disinfectant wipes to routinely clean anything I've touched like doorknobs, remote controls, light switches, you name it.
Washing your hands is also key. I'm overdoing it right now, hitting the sink and soap way more often than usual. It's not that anything is wrong with your hands, of course. But if you touch your face or nose or eyes and touch other things in the house later, that's a bad thing if you want to keep everything clean.
The hardest part about all this is not doing the acts themselves, but enduring them on the daily. You become more anxious, more prone to being afraid, not touching certain things as frequently as you used to. I'm barely touching the TV remote now because everyone in my house uses it.
The isolation could be worse, if it weren't for the company of my parents. My girlfriend, who went with me on the UK trip and who also works for KION (and is self-quarantining from the station premises), is living in isolation in a small rented room in Carmel Valley. She's trying to stay away from her older roommate, so she's barricaded herself in her quarters.
It's been tough for her, mentally and emotionally, to be kept in isolation. Her family is in Arizona, and she has no means of interacting in person with anybody.
These are all things many of us on the Central Coast could be experiencing right now. With shelter-in-place orders announced for all residents in Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Counties this week, we're all coming to grips with how we're going to handle the next few weeks mostly isolated in our homes, apartments and trailers.
But times like these usually show us what we're made of. Endurance, character, long-suffering, will power, all things we'll need to reach for together as we go through something the likes of which most of us have never experienced before.
I'm taking this isolation day by day. It's about finding the little things that make life a little less miserable that'll get us through. Play backyard fetch with your dog, read a good book with your kids, watch that one movie you've been wanting to see forever with family.
Before we know it, the sun will rise again and we can get back to fighting each other in traffic on Highway 68.
