I hope I'm not too late to the party, but I thought to join Hive account@theycallmedan challenge about the current world situation.

I'm self isolating since March 11th, in my small apartment in Valencia, Spain. Since March 14th, there is a quarantine in place, so we can only get out for basic necessities. The decision to self-isolate was taken in order to prevent infection of other people, I didn't have any symptoms.

I know personally a couple of people who had Covid19 and recovered, with various degrees of difficulty. For one, it took a week in the hospital, with serious flu symptoms. The other chose to "walk it off", and it took 2 weeks to fully recover, but he was very weak after that. I don't know personally anyone who had it and didn't recovered.

I only got out twice so far, for groceries. Every time it was very eerie. Valencia streets are usually full with people, buzzing with laughter and conversations. I hardly saw anyone each time I got out. Inside the grocery shop, it was even eerier. There was a queue at the entrance, and just a limited number of people were allowed inside. It was silent and empty and people avoided each other on the aisles.

The biggest challenge for me was the drastic reduction on body movement. I'm an ultra-runner and I usually do at least 15km every day. Going from this amount of running / walking to a complete stop was shocking. One day I got out on the roof and started to run in a 15 meters lap, but after 5km, the neighbor from below came up and told me he can hear every step, so I stopped. If he didn't come, I would probably go for the marathon, that's how eager I was. For the last week I switched to a combination of HIIT and normal fitness and so for it seems to work reasonably well.

I still have my main job, I work remote as a programmer, and my company is still in business. But since this occupies just a small part of my life, I also started to learn to play the guitar. My fingers are hurting and I'm only one week into it, but it's something that I want to pursue.

In the beginning, the whole stopping of the world seemed ok, but the longer it continues, the stranger it feels. I tend more and more to believe that the entire reaction to this pandemic is blown out of proportion, at best, or just plain stupid, an attempt to enforce a more powerful surveillance state. I still wait to see how / if this will end, in order to have a clearer, better opinion about this.

I'm a geek, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me Hive account@dragosroua.