DON'T PANIC!!

Stay calm. Take a deep breath. Sit quietly and have a cup of warm coffee or tea. Doesn’t that feel better?

What is with all this panic?

There have been health alerts before. Remember getting your flu shot? There have been HIV and Ebola and somehow you came out on top. So why is this one so scary?

There is no medical solution yet, but from the data seems many of those who are contracted get over it. Unfortunately the news alerts are of the body counts and everyone panics.

Plan on stocking up for a 14-day quarantine (or more)? Packs of toilet paper and cases of water fly off the shelves. Cleaning and hand washing fluids are in short supply. Not a bad marketing ploy?

Working at home sounds like a way to keep sick people apart until they beg to come back to work from going stir crazy. Where is the overtime? Where are the conversations in the lunchroom? Where are the endless meetings in the boardroom? Where is the pressure of the boss looking over your shoulder to make sure you are working?

How will you get any work done when your kids are home too because they have closed all the schools?

For that matter the Irish Festival has been postponed, also the championship basketball game and annual barn dance. There will be no assembly of more than two people and they must be three feet apart.

The congress and local general assemblies will be dismissed. The security personnel will wear HAZMAT suits and must take your temperature (sorry, they are not oral). Hospitals will run out of beds and even the Red Cross will stop giving away donuts.

This is a pandemic or at least that is what the news tells us. They also tell us when the lettuce is bad or the milk should only come from cows. How old is that cheese?

No one seems to listen to the folks talking about the pollution of the waterways and the landfills as long as it doesn’t smell bad in their backyard.

No one has looked on the brighter side of this ‘situation’. It is an invisible enemy that you cannot bomb or chase away so wash your hands and cover your face when you sneeze.

You can walk the streets with placards and signs and chant to rid the area but it won’t go away.

The bright side is that you have more time to spend with your family. No need to wander outside to the grocery for you have stocked up on toilet paper (and after that are the magazines and the leaves of spring). The gas will be really cheap but there is nowhere to go. The commute would be fast due to lack of traffic but you are told to stay home. There are adventurous quarantine cruises that go nowhere and those cheap prices on air travel on 747max that are more exciting than Disneyland (which is closed).

If you have a seasonal summer business, you can take a vacation. Hotels and restaurants can cut back on staff and free up their orders. Event planners can start looking for real jobs like trash removal or disinfectant specialist.

No worry about additional health day’s off for you won’t be working that long. Without a paycheck you and the homeless will be in the same class.

You don’t have to go to the gym or dress up for work. You don’t have to stress out about not having the minutes ready for the meeting due to the network being down.

Delivery may be questionable due to sneezes that happened before you picked up the box. What about the pizza?

What about the animals? Will they start dropping out of the trees? Will the cute little critters so beloved start to stagger around and then fall down dead? Will the birds start falling out of the sky?

No one has looked down the road of what this ‘pandemic’ is doing to us.

It is an electoral year for a new (or old) president. A couple of years ago we gave the excuse of a foreign intervention into our voting process. The news presented the numbers but what happened before that?

There were all sorts of distractions. Strange E-mails and embassy burning and possibility others kept the eye on the prize fogged and confused. Most were accused to the Russians who had already shot down a passenger plane and taken over the Crimea without resistance.

There are still many months ahead for the social media to try and suave our opinions and biases to the final vote.

Wear your mask and take your cough drops. Put on your gloves and look away if someone sneezes. Stay away from others.

Who is going to line up to vote?