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Some thoughts on the novel coronavirus AKA COVID-19.

• What happened to versions 1 through 18 of COVID? Is this like WD-40 where the first 39 versions didn’t work?
• Why is everyone stockpiling toilet paper for a respiratory disease? I’ll try to stay ahead of the game for the next disease outbreak, and if it has gastrointestinal symptoms then I’m going to stockpile Kleenex and Puffs Plus.
• I saw a news story on how restaurants are being affected because people with whatever symptoms were not being allowed to work. That should have been the case already. It seems that COVID-19 is making people behave (regarding personal health at least) the way they should have been anyway. I don’t want someone with a fever handling my food whether it’s coronavirus or the plain old flu.
• Restricting travel to control the spread of coronavirus is like inching your way into a cold pool. You know you’re eventually going to get wet, and all you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable. Ok, bad analogy – stop going into the pool instead.
• All the explanations about how much travel affects one’s carbon footprint were not really being heeded. A couple months of coronavirus has impacted people’s travel plans a lot more than years’ worth of global-warming policies and recommendations.
• I got a COVID-19 email from my bank. I thought the privacy notices were a waste, but if every company I do business with is going to send me not only privacy policies but also personal hygiene tips to avoid viruses, that will be an even bigger waste.
• Dear Politician, if you are going to enact a ban on public gatherings, you must also provide an exit strategy for the ban. Otherwise, I must conclude you are just making a power grab and taking advantage of fear and uncertainty. By “exit strategy” I mean how will we know when things are good again? You can’t ban public gathering and sporting events forever. So what is the indication? When you say so? I want an objective measurement instead.

My opinion, in case you’re wondering, is that our current reaction to the coronavirus is not sustainable. Business and travel must get back to normal eventually (although this has furthered my resolve never to go on a large cruise ship). The virus will spread and won’t be contained, and it will end up either being something everyone has to live with (like the existing cold and flu season) or enough people will get immunity and it will taper off.

My worry is that if this is how the country reacts to an easily-preventable and relatively mild disease, how bad is going to be if there’s something really bad? I can’t imagine the social and political disorder that something with worse symptoms or a higher mortality rate would bring.

And yes, I know the 19 from COVID-19 refers to the year 2019.

Also, I was going to make a image that showed 19 different crows and jays and ravens with the caption of Corvid-19, but several people have already done that so I skipped it.

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