Update: Sonic Month + Discussion on the Coronavirus/COVID-19 Situation

Hello. I've been pretty silent all month so far. Apologies for that... though, don't worry more content is coming to the blog soon.

I've been promising it for years now, I am finally going to get around to doing it: April will be a Sonic Month. I'll be posting 4 reviews of Sonic games. If all goes according to plan, the reviews should be:

Sonic CD (2011 digital remaster) - April 3rd;

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 (WiiWare/Steam) - April 10th;

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (Wii) - April 17th-20th;

Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii) - April 24-27th- continuing into May if necessary.

After which, I should continue with a review of a relatively simple Nintendo 3DS game, and do a series of quick reviews of Steam games as well.

Do note that I am still working despite the very peculiar situation the world is in right now, because gas stations are an essential service.

In fact, let's address the peculiar situation; let's not hide it anymore, it's the coronavirus, the dreaded COVID-19. You might be fed up of hearing about it, you might be tired of the forced isolation, the economy going to Hell, the constant paranoia. It's understandable. If you were unlucky enough to catch it or test positive for it, you have my best wishes and I hope you will come out strong from the estimated two weeks of intense respiratory pain the disease causes. I also wish a cure for it is found soon.

I will try to provide content to distract from this dire pandemic, because that's a thing I, and all content creators, can do thanks to the Internet. I am glad that everything I do for this blog only requires me to be at home, so it's not too bad. That said, I just write this blog; if anyone's worthy of praise, it's the nurses, first responders and doctors out there, fighting this new and dangerous illness, detecting cases before they spread to too many people... and the many workers who must go to work due to fulfilling essential jobs, even in the time of a pandemic.

I work nights at a gas station, so barring a number of tasks removed from my workload, my situation there hasn't changed. The government of Quebec has closed all non-essential businesses/work places, so I have a much smaller number of customers than usual; however, there is still the risk of serving a customer who carries the disease without them knowing. I am at risk, and I know it.

I am personally terrified of catching the COVID-19, and this for two reasons. The first is that I still live with my parents, my father, 68, and my mother, 71, both of whom would struggle far more in fighting the virus than I would, especially when considering the death rates of the disease. The COVID-19 has an approximated 14% death rate for people over the age of 70, meaning about one person out of seven of that age, infected with the disease, will die from it. The death rate greatly decreases the younger the infected person is, but it can still be deadly.

The second reason is that I read the newspapers, and I've read several stories of people either battling the disease or freshly coming out of it. It's scary; they speak of a loss of the senses of taste and smell for a while, horrendous respiratory failures (some have likened it to trying to breathe broken glass), and an extreme muscular weakness. People in great physical shape and with a better-than-average immunity system have come out of it feeling like they were going to die. On top of it all, it's extremely contagious, living within someone during an incubation period of a few days to two weeks before striking, and the person is at risk of infecting surfaces, objects, and other people, while they may be asymptomatic, AKA before they even know they are carrying it.

All the safety measures the governments are putting in place are not jokes. This is a new disease that the human body has never faced, has never built up an immunity against, one for which we have yet to create any sort of medicine or vaccine for, and while existing medicine is being tested, it will take some time still. It spreads like wildfire among people. As annoying and paranoid as these words of advice might sound, they're the only precautions we have right now. Wash your hands as often as possible for at least 20 seconds each time, disinfect surfaces that need to be disinfected. Try to touch your face (eyes, nose, mouth) as rarely as possible. Be mindful of others, by coughing in your elbow, by keeping 6-7 feet of distance between you and another person. Stay home as much as possible and only go out when absolutely necessary. If you come back from a trip, self-isolate for two weeks. If you have symptoms, self-isolate for two weeks. If you test positive for it, SELF-ISOLATE FOR TWO WEEKS. Avoid group gatherings. Take all of this advice and then some if you have a weaker immune system, if you're elderly or living around older people. And most importantly: Do NOT take it lightly.

Mankind has seen worse throughout its history. We've always survived. Though science has improved drastically over the last decades, and we're better equipped to fight such an illness than we've ever been, this will still be a battle on all fronts. We can fight it. We can't prevent all deaths, but we can collectively do our best to prevent as many deaths as possible. We can flatten the curve of the infection. I'm not going to pretend that it's going to be easy, that it will be over by Easter, by May or June or even July; we can wish, but it's unlikely. Our lives will be a mess for a while, and the pandemic will have ramifications on the economical, personal, and social sides that we can't even start to envision yet. But hope isn't lost, and if we all do everything we can, each and every one of us, we can pull through.

Man, my talk of reviews at the start of this article feels so out of place with all this. But if it can bring a smile to a few readers, I will consider my task accomplished.