Visiting the Doctor in the Lockdown Interregnum

The traffic on Highway 101 was the lightest I'd ever seen--and I've lived in the Bay Area 47 years--as I drove to the clinic for the monthly allergy shot.

The door to the parking garage was locked, diverting everyone to the front entrance. The nurse scanned my forehead and pronounced me safe to enter at 97.4°F. (Temperature scans as a COVID-19 detector are prone to false negatives and positives but are better than nothing.)

Half the chairs in the waiting room were marked off-limits to force social distancing. Most of the clinic's patients have respiratory problems and are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. After getting the injection I waited 30 minutes as standard operating procedure against an anaphylactic reaction.

Parking was free on a weekday, another first.

Later and probably keeping it to ourselves, I suspect we'll miss a few things from the lockdown interregnum.