August 9, 2019

Multiple doctors have been bitten in New York, and a hospital had been temporarily overrun by the infected patients before the army and police stepped in as at least a couple dozen of the infected have escaped into the streets.

There was a state of emergency declared in New York and NYC's mayor has instituted a city-wide quarantine and is requesting that everyone stay at home. The army has been deployed in the streets to round up the infected and take them back to the hospitals, and all hospitals in surrounding areas are now required to handcuff all patients to their beds.

No one knows what's happening to the patients in the later stages of the infection. All scientists know is that the infected people lose their initial weakness caused by the headaches and fever and have heightened aggression and want to bite people. I think the disease might be related to rabies, but there's no way that it'll pass through the population this quickly if it's only spread through bites and that still doesn't explain the infected nurse.

I don't know why I'm filling up this diary with just dump-loads of information when I should be spilling out my deepest secrets and desires. It just feels calming to get whatever thoughts and information that I've learned today on paper. I don't know why it's calming. It just is.

I've been looking at my garden, just in case that I'd need to grow food if this situation gets any worse (which I'm sure will happen because that's what the world does to you). It's a bit sad, food-growing wise. Most of it is just quite empty or filled with dead grass. We've got a big pot filled with onions, a rose plant in the corner of the garden, an orange tree (that's like 3 feet tall because apparently it was supposed to be grown indoors and not outdoors), and too much mint. I mean, I've got dandelions in the garden. I guess you can eat them. I can't wait to eat dandelion salads while the world ends arounds me.

No word from Mom and Dad and Nat, though. I think it's the problem on my part. Our internet has been going a bit wild lately, and I wasn't getting a good connection today. Hopefully, it'll be better tomorrow or the last day after. They all have to be alright.

August 11, 2019

So you know that nurse that got the disease mysteriously. Yeah, well it turns out the disease is spread by touch, and not by air, which means that we're not all going to die.

Scientists are now warning that everyone stay indoors and isolate themselves. They have no idea how much touching is needed to spread the virus (Is this me or does whatever I wrote before sound awfully strange), or how long does the virus survive on surfaces or basically anything about how it's being spread. Hell, they don't even know if asymptomatic people that have the disease can spread the virus. All they know is that it is highly infectious and has some unknown death rate because the initial batch of patients had all disappeared.

WHO has upgraded this disease straight from their third category to their fifth category. With everything that's going on, it feels like the US is the only country in the world that's having this problem, but apparently, there have beens reports of the cases everywhere, predominantly in Southeast Asia, though there are an increasing number of cases being reported in Europe. But the US has the most (Go US! We're number one in everything!). I guess we're exceptional in getting diseases and having people die.

Sorry for the dark, messed up humor. It's just that I guess that I'm worried. I would be more worried if this was some flu or something like a super-measles because everything that is happening right now just feels too unreal to be true. It's like I'm hallucinating or taking some drugs or maybe this is a coping mechanism for being alone. I don't even know.

I finally got in contact with Mom and Dad and Nat today, and everything is not alright. They said that they were being quarantined in their hotel and weren't allowed to leave. From what they've been hearing from the other softball parents is that cases are just increasing by a lot in Portland. Orgeon has about a hundred cases right now and 80% of the cases were from Portland.

"Should I head out?" I asked. "Because I think I'm going to run out of food if this keeps going on."

"No," Mom said. "Stay inside. I don't want you to get infected. Just stay inside and everything will be fine."

I could hear that even Mom was unconvinced about what she said. Not the getting infected part. She was very serious about that. It was about everything getting back to normal. I could hear her voice waver and lose the confidence. Everything wasn't going to get better. Maybe tomorrow will have more positive revelations or at least bring some clouds, it's been over a hundred degrees here for this whole week.

August 13, 2019

They're saying that the disease is 100% lethal and that humankind is 100% screwed. (Well not the second part, but the first part is definitely true).

Scientists in Washington (the state, not DC) said that the infected became brain-dead after a rapid collapse in their condition. What's even scarier is that the patients began to go crazy and hallucinate and lose their sense of speech and eventually recognition.

When they did an MRI, they found that the outer portions of the brain, which are the parts that make you you, were getting eviscerated by the virus. It's just unbelievable. And that's not even the scariest part.

The scariest part was after the patients were declared dead and the doctors went to dispose of the body to the biohazard disposal area, that the body started twitching. The doctors thought it was the usual body moving after death because of gasses and stuff like that, but apparently, the body's legs and arms started twitching and then flailing, and after a couple of minutes, the patient's eyes reopened. It tried lunging at the doctors, but luckily the patient was handcuffed to the gurney.

No one knows how this even worked or really just anything. It's just so scary. It's like, I'm kinda tempted to say this, but it's like they became zombies or something. I know that's crazy, but it's true, and it explains all the mysterious patient disappearances from the New York hospitals.

We're in the middle of the zombie apocalypse now! Writing this out makes it seem less real, but it's about as real as gravity or evolution (though some Christian-creationists would vehemently disagree with me here for some reason) or climate change (though some corrupt politicians would "disagree" with me here too). It's one of those things that you know are real, but feel fake.

This is completely random, but apparently, those red things that are on top of roses are edible. I'm not going to eat them since it's the middle of summer and the roses only bloom in the spring, so the red fruit on top are very dry, but yeah, you can eat them. You can also eat clovers for some reason. There are tons of random stuff that you can eat for some odd reason. I've got to stop rambling. My brain is literally going to shut down from tiredness.

August 15, 2019

They've given it a name. ANCR (Acute Neurological Collapse and Resurrection -- I know, what a handful to say). But everyone in the media has dubbed it the Zombie Infection.

WHO has advised that all patients be strapped down in the hospitals because when they die, they'll go and, you know, kill everyone. They also warned that the disease is highly infectious and seems to be spread by touch and advised states to make their citizens stay at home. Luckily, I've already been doing that for the past two weeks, so that makes me such a responsible citizen.

The problem right now is that I'm running out of food at home. I've already finished all the milk and eggs (and ice-cream too -- sorry Mom and Dad) and pretty much all fruit and whatever leftovers they have dumped in the fridge. There's a couple of frozen foods in the fridge and a whole bunch of stuff in the pantry (but who knows how expired most of them are). If this keeps going on, I might starve.

But there's no way I'm going out of my house, except for my backyard. I think I'd rather starve than turn into a zombie or whatever creature people turn into when they get infected. At least right now, I'm going to stay put at home, much on whatever snacks and food that we have here, and wait the pandemic out while watching the sunset (which today, was very pretty, with streaks of pinks and oranges slicing through the purple twilight).

August 17, 2019

Cases are steadily increasing, and New York has passed strict lockdown laws: no going out unless it's for essential businesses like groceries, gas, or if you're sick and need to go to the hospital (if there's even any space in the hospitals).

There have been about five hundred cases reported in New York, but the scientists are warning that this disease has the ability to stay on surfaces and is easily spread by touch. They still don't know if people who have the disease and aren't showing symptoms have the ability to spread it, but it is a distinct possibility, which is just terrifying.

Imagine just standing next to someone who looks perfectly fine and then in a couple of days, your brain is slowly liquifying as you slip into insanity and become a walking corpse. That's just horrifying. Truly horrifying.

On another note, there have been about a hundred cases here in California, and that's pretty scary. That's only the amount of reported cases. Who knows how many actual cases are out there and whether those zombie / infected people are just roaming the street? I'm kind of freaking out.

On the other hand, school opening got pushed back a week. They said that the disease presented too great of a threat to re-open schools, so they're going to wait for the guidelines by WHO, the CDC, and the district's public health department before making a decision.

I mean, I'm pretty happy about this. It's terrible that people are dying, but I just hate going to school and seeing everybody and just feeling all the stress for the future, like colleges and internships and everything. Even with the zombie pandemic going on, it's, in a twisted way, almost calming that there are bigger things to worry about instead of these trivial schools things like grades and tests.

I've also been thinking about food in the long term. I remembered that our family had some seeds lying around in the house because my sister and I once had a gardening obsession, but I wasn't able to find them today. Also, I completely forgot that we had an aloe vera plant in our backyard. It's in the corner of the garden and hidden by the dead grass, so I just remembered that it existed today.

And now that has got me thinking, can you even eat aloe vera? I heard there were some aloe vera drinks, but the stem seems too gross to actually eat because it's slimy and sticky on the inside. Yeah, I don't think that I'm desperate enough to start sucking on the aloe vera stems for food.

August 19, 2019

Cases are just skyrocketing, and I'm never going to leave my house.

New York went from three hundred to one thousand to two thousand today as people are just rushing into the hospitals. The city has begun strapping down all infected patients because they're worried that they might zombie-fy and infect everyone in the hospital.

Less cases in California (for now), but the cases are just increasing at a crazy rate. Same thing with Oregon and Washington. Infections are just spilling out from New York and into the states next to it. Connecticut and Pennsylvania have gotten a couple of cases and all the states around them are panicking about getting the ACNR virus too.

Our state has been put on a lockdown. People are advised to stay at home and self-quarantine themselves to make sure others don't get sick. I've already been on lockdown for this entire duration, so good job for me! Everyone better stay at home to feel the same pain that I have felt. But on a more serious note, it's getting really freaky out there, and I don't know what's going to happen.

I tried contacting Mom and Dad today, but there was no response. Cases in Portland were just swelling, even with a bunch of people being quarantined. Some people are saying that the end of the world is nearing and that we should all give up and just sacrifice ourselves to the god of death. All I can say to those people is that they can feel free to do whatever, but I'd prefer not to join them.

I tried to cook frozen dumplings in a pan today, but they ended up burning pretty badly, and probably almost triggered the fire alarm, not like any firemen would come and un-set the house on fire. They're probably too busy being sent to the hospitals to help transport all the infected patients around. Luckily, the great and mighty pot was invented, so I wouldn't burn my food because you can't burn water (and then watch me do this a couple days later).

I've gotten pretty bored today, and with no news from school and nothing to read but death and destruction in the news (which gets pretty tiring after some time), I've decided to attempt to restart my strange gardening obsession from when I was seven or eight years old.

I got some of the dried peas and mustard seeds laying in my pantry and soaked them in a damp paper towel because that's just the way that you hatch seeds. I also cut up some of the egg cartons to make mini-planters out of them to hold the seeds when they start germinating (or more accurately, if they start germinating. I don't think I inherited my green thumb from my grandparents).

August 22, 2019

It's been three days since my last entry, and everything has changed.

School has been cancelled, and they're trying to move to remote learning, but all the retraining and re-scheduling will mean that school will start in mid-September, if it will start at all. I mean I'm happy that I don't have to go to school, but it's like the whole world around me is falling apart.

New York is a bunch of craziness right now. A couple of days ago, they ran out of straps to hold the patients down, so they've begun to resort to using handcuffs. I know, handcuffing sick civilians to chairs is a bad look, but apparently, it was the only option that they had. No one has survived this virus, and it just keeps spreading and spreading.

Anyway, chaining patients to chairs was obviously bad publicity, and there were tons of protests all around New York about this, people calling it unjust and cruel. There's some part of me that agrees with them, but I don't know. This disease seems to be unstoppable, and with them being in the streets and spreading and catching the disease, I just knew that the cases were only going to get worse.

And they did get worse - much worse. Something must've gone wrong. Maybe people were too afraid of visiting the doctors because they thought that the doctors were killing them, which were spread by conspiracy theorists on the internet (PS: Screw you conspiracy theorists. You're killing people). Maybe some patients were not strapped down properly or someone purposely sabotaged them because when I woke up the next day (which was yesterday), the news was blaring that many of the New York hospitals had been overrun with the infected, and there were no non-infected left, as far as they knew.

Now, the whole city has been put under a quarantine, and the national guard and US military are working together to help deal with the situation, but who knows how long they're going to be able to. Cases are skyrocketing everywhere, but especially here in California and down in Texas and Florida, and they're likely to keep spreading faster and faster. The US isn't the only country to get this virus, cases are increasing rapidly all across the world even though it's only been less than a month since we discovered this new virus.

There's just so much stuff going on right now, and Mom and Dad aren't even responding to my text messages, and even though I'm scared to talk to them, I'm even more scared that they aren't going to be alright. I don't think the texts are being received. I'm getting really worried about Mom and Dad. Let's see what's going to happen tomorrow. Hopefully, as the sun rises tomorrow morning, it'll bring a better day along with it.