OH, FUCK IT!! PANIC IN THE STREETS, EVERYONE!!!
School closures. Businesses shuttered. Employees forced to work from home, or furloughed indefinitely. Others, who are still expected to work, being beaten over the head with admonitions to maintain a 'social distance' (six-foot or more separation) and directives to frequently wash one's hands, use tissues to cover one's mouth when coughing or sneezing, and otherwise observe and follow what (to me, anyway) are basic personal hygiene practices. Grocery stores stripped of literally anything that isn't nailed down. Cancellation of anything that brings more than three people together — sporting events, public gatherings, family reunions, even church services. The government issuing declarations of "national emergencies" and issuing conflicting advisories. Travel curtailed if not outright prohibited. There's even talk of postponing elections!!
America, if not the world, has come to a sputtering, clanking halt as literally everything that we take for normal in our modern life is turned topsy-turvy due to a virus that sounds more like a slang name for the effects one might experience from overindulging in a popular Mexican beer ('my buddies and I had the Corona virus and were barfing all Sunday morning because we drank up an entire half-barrel at the beach party on Saturday'). Is it just me, or does it seem like we have over-reacted to something that we frankly don't know that much about?
The historic records are clear. There have been other pandemics and epidemics in history — the Black Plague, smallpox, the Spanish flu pandemic of the early 1900s, tuberculosis, the polio crisis (also in the early 20th century), AIDS. But even going back to Biblical days, even taking into account the exile/expulsion of those suffering from leprosy, there has never in human history been such ado over a disease about which — I repeat — we seem to know so very little about.
Let's take the AIDS epidemic. Most of us are old enough to remember when this disease first started making the news. A sexually-transmitted disease, it was at first a near-certain death sentence as the virus swept through the body, affecting one's own immune system and leaving one vulnerable to the ravages of what would be, under normal circumstance, relatively benign diseases. But did we shut down the world? Did everything stop dead in its tracks to prevent the spread of this affliction? Did someone even say, "Hey, it's sexually transmitted, so maybe we should just stop fucking. That'll stop it!!" HELL NO! We were told to practice "safe sex"; avoid certain types of sexual activities, and use a condom.
Same with leprosy or polio victims. Did the entire world shut down as everyone, not just victims, were isolated and/or quarantined? That used to be the norm — isolate and treat the victims, and let the rest of the world go about its business as usual. The answer, of course, is certainly not. Lepers used to be isolated with sharing the same affliction. The story of Father Damian and the leper colony of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands is well known, along with the film images of Ben-Hur's mother and sister in the Valley of the Lepers in the 1959 movie. Sanitariums were built and operated for the isolation, care, and treatment of tuberculosis victims while the rest of the (uninfected) world went on around them. But it is only COVID-19 that has caused us to hide ourselves, to shelter in place, as if the virus were the Old Testament Angel of God walking the earth and striking down every first-born male of Egypt. About the only thing we haven't done is smear the blood of a sacrificial lamb on our doorposts to ward off the terror — and I'm sure it won't be long before someone suggests it!
My feeling is this. We have a new virus on our hands. The human body has faced viruses in the past, and will face new strains of viruses in the future. Many people will come into contact with it. It will adversely affect some of them; it may even kill them (and I've got news for you — certain people are vulnerable and can still die of 'normal' strains of influenza or other 'common' diseases as well). But many others will merely suffer some minor inconvenience until their body can produce, on its own, antibodies to the virus. And, of course, as happened with polio, with tuberculosis, with measles, and with just about every other disease known to mankind, we will eventually find a safe and reliable vaccine for COVID-19.
And then we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.
-"BB"-
