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By Jamie Etheridge
Wake up and make coffee. Start breakfast and check the news.
Nearly 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world, almost half a million recoveries. 126,000+ deaths. I try not to think about their families, the ones who died. The dads and moms with little ones at home. The breadwinners who supported their families.
7 am: Start work from home. Get online. Read and respond to emails. Check the news again for latest updates and get going. Write the column, talk with reporters. Plan the day.
The US leads the league tables with more than 612,000 confirmed cases, nearly 50,000 recoveries and almost 26,000 deaths. It's expected to worsen before it gets better.
8 am: Wake up the children and get them ready for e-learning. They have breakfast, dress and head to their study desks.
Kuwait begins bringing home more than 50,000 citizens from abroad. The infections here have been rising exponentially for the past week but yesterday's numbers were promising. Only 55 new infections. Hope this is the start of a downward trend in new infections.
9 am-5 pm: Work. Actually work happens all day long from waking to sleeping but I need some sort of structure so this is what I tell myself. I often forget to take breaks, to get up from my computer. The news is mostly heartbreaking.
Small businesses in Kuwait start to go under. An estimated 250,000 people here are now out of work, have lost their jobs or had their salaries cut. We're only one month into the lockdown.
6 pm: Dinner and family time. We play Pictionary and the girls draw stick figures coughing into their elbows. I pretend not to notice.
Some places are starting to plan reopening, utilizing the twin Ts of testing and tracing to locate and lock down pockets of outbreaks and keep the economy open. Praying that this works.
9 pm: Bedtime for the children. I check the news again, do more work. Wait for statements from the Cabinet. Wait for normal life to return.
10 pm: Another day passed. Stay at home orders obeyed. Doing our part to flatten the curve.
