Pandemic

Everything just went to hell over this damn virus.

Virtually every sporting event has been cancelled or postponed.  Broadway theaters in New York have shut down. Schools are closing, as are libraries and museums. There are over two thousand coronavirus cases in the United States.  Italy is closed and Denmark and Spain have followed suit.  People are dying faster than they can be treated.  The wife of the prime minister of Canada and the mayor of Miami has tested positive for the virus, as have Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson - in Australia, where it's summer, when respiratory viruses are supposed to recede - and Trump, even as he declared a national emergency on Friday, talked up the private corporations helping out to pump up the stock market.  And he isn't taking responsibility for calling the outbreak a hoax. 

All of this is happening as the Northern Hemisphere goes into spring.  For many, it's been a cold, brutal winter, and a season they've been looking forward to for relief and renewal promises only more cabin fever.  (Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom you all know about, has suggested the disruptions could last three to eight weeks more.) Where I live, we've had a benign winter - dry cold snaps followed by warm, rainy periods that resulted in no snow or ice (though there were a couple of close calls).  The school district in my hometown only needed to use one emergency day.  Now it may have to use the rest of them and push the end of school into July, if that's even legal, as it has closed due to the pandemic.  

What are my sacrifices?  Well, I had already decided not to attend the New York auto show - before it was moved to the week before Labor Day.  So I might still go.  Far less certain is another annual spring event I go to, which was scheduled in May for a day of the week much more convenient for me than in years past - figures, right? -  and what's to come of that is still unknown.  As for other events, I still hope to go once they've been rescheduled, provided they don't get cancelled altogether.  I'll try to concentrate on the positives of spring - the daffodils and the hyacinths, the milder weather, Easter - but somehow it doesn't going to feel like spring with the Masters golf tournament not delaying "60 Minutes." (I make joke! :-D )

Most places that are closed could be open again in a few weeks, but that's not a given.   I hope we can get through all of this with as little disruption as possible.  Well, maybe one small disruption, some trifle that will disrupt Trump's re-election hopes.

We can get through this.  We will get through this.