There are so many sources of information regarding the pandemic so I will refrain from being another source of conjecture, guessing, pollyannism, or pessimism.

I will have more to post in the future, but for now, let me assess that sadly there is more in front of us than behind us. We will shelter in place for longer than we have already.

However, we can get through this. Part of how we do it is by looking after one another. We’ve reached out to our elderly single neighbor, a retired UT professor. When we go shopping, we bring him back some meat and potatoes. The only diet he prefers. On our windows, our kids have taken to posting positive messages for the people using our steep street to get their exercise now that the gyms have closed.

And a word on the calling this the “Chinese virus”. That is disheartening. The avian bird flu that threatened to be a pandemic in 2003 originated in Thailand. The SARS of 2005 did begin in China. Ebola was from Africa. MERS of 2013 began in the Middle East. Animal viruses that adapt to humans and spread quickly can start anywhere. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the Spanish flu as it started there. It’s one thing to name a pandemic, it is another to bully people who have ethnic ties to the place for a disease that they had no part of. The way forward is to be together, not to let this once in a lifetime pandemic be yet another thing that divides us.