Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday Morning Diary (March 16)

by Sam Juliano

Public school systems have been shuttered with home schooling via online options being employed by teachers on call.  Across the nation public events have been cancelled or postponed.  Here in Bergen County, New Jersey movie theaters have been ordered closed and a restaurant ban for patrons eating inside is being considered as of this writing.  I’ve been told by reliable sources this may not come to pass but the fact it is even being entertained says a lot.  Friends in Italy have related horrific stories of stress and the death of people in their buildings which are difficult to even fathom.  Opera houses, music venues, professional sports, and even in two states -Louisiana and Georgia- scheduled primary elections have been postponed.  In view of mounting numbers the fear is palpable, the threat all too real, the containment and quarantine seemingly not wrought by overreaction on any level and at any region.  I am 65 years old and cannot remember anything like this in my lifetime.  If Allan were here to impart his noted witticisms he’d surely buffoon the stories of madness in supermarkets and malls by people now trampling others as if they were in the throws of the apocalypse.  Some feel the precautions are way over the top while others will always prefer to stand by the adage “It is better to be safe than sorry.”  I was prepared to talk about the election, tonight’s planned debate without an audience and the Tuesday elections still on in four states, but interest and all that and other matters seem little more than a diversion, though we need that badly right now.

Lucille and I haven’t dared to venture out to our normal cultural haunts, though as I said earlier that option as of a few days ago has closed anyway, and we have been watching the reports on CNN and on other networks attentively with a tinge of grimness.  But our readers no doubt are surely in the same state of limbo at present.  The staff at Wonders in the Dark are urging all to play it same in your everyday movements.  My hometown of Fairview, New Jersey has still to report a single case, though the much larger Teaneck (Bergen County’s most populous community has roughly have of the 31 cases in the county to this point.  The above map illustrates the places where the virus has surfaced and daily these figures are mounting.  Wishing the best to Jim and Valerie Clark, J.D. Lafrance, Andrew Hunt, Sachin Gandhi, Todd Sherman and Barry Germansky up in Canada and to  our many US and worldwide friends.  With any luck the peak could be at hand.  Please talk about your own situation in the comment section.