Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the virus…

A few weeks ago, when I first began to pay attention to the coronavirus, now known as Covid19, I watched the expanding crisis in China, its slow beginning, first a single news story about this strange new virus that appeared probably in a market somewhere in Wuhan, I didn’t think much about it. Yet I continued to follow the stories–next a few more cases, then quarantines, and hospitals being built overnight. Wait–hospitals built in just days–what makes a country do that?

Then one day, it occurred to me, this is not going away soon. And more recently I’ve begun to feel that this virus will be the new “common cold”. This is the future, the new normal. And it brought to mind other memories from my childhood–duck and cover drills, bomb shelters, my mother hushing us because “The President is going to tell us if we’re going to war.“

I wrote the above paragraph only to discover a few minutes later that the present President would also address the nation about a crisis, as Kennedy had–a new crisis–a new kind of crisis. A crisis that will test us as a country, but more importantly, it will test each of us in ways the Bay of Pigs never did.

Massachusetts today declared a state of emergency. More cases will appear tomorrow. The prestigious New Bedford Half Marathon has been cancelled. What’s next?