Coronavirus, Elections (2020/Mar/12)

Corona-virus
(Just to let you know: apparently SARS and MERS were also due to earlier Corona-Viruses.  The present one is Covid-19.)

• Hand-washing.  This is a good thing.  The virus attacks the lungs; to get to the lungs, it has to find its way there through, most commonly (A) inhaling, e.g. in a crowded situation, (B) through the eyes or the nose, if the virus was carried there due to touching the face with virus-laden hands.  Note that the virus is a microscopic thing, though they're shown as enormous explosive mine like things in pictures!
• Touching the face.  This is a difficult thing not to do.  But experts have ideas about how to make avoiding face-touching a little easier; wear a mask, or wear gloves, or keep tissues handy.  The masks suggested here are simple things; they need not look smart, they could be any old thing that simply reminds you not to touch your face.
• Water.  All this washing will surely have repercussions later in the year.  There will be water shortages.  So by all means wash your hands, but try not to waste water.  If you have been one who uses gallons of water to wash anything, this is the time to learn how to use as little water as possible!
• I'm trying to clean kitchen counters and tables as frequently as possible; e.g. 5-6 times a day.  Instead of using detergent and a wet sponge, I use kitchen wipes, which come out of a container (like Babywipes), and use much less water.
• We're going to stop bathing our pets, and washing cars.  We haven't watered our lawn in many years.

• Colleges and Universities closing; meetings canceled.  This makes sense, though students are, understandably, unhappy about it.  Someone said that "Colleges are meant to be a haven for students; throwing them out is very unfair and hard on the students."
  Now, wait a minute.  Haven makes sense in times of violence.  We do not allow people with guns or machetes to walk around campus.  But a contagious disease is completely different; no college wants to entertain the possibility of even 1% of the students dying due to an epidemic.  It is quite possible that some students find college a more pleasant place to be in, with all their friends, than home.  Students must now understand that college, and school, are wonderful places for viruses to flourish, and find new hosts; and few colleges, or none, really, are equipped to handle a medical emergency.
• Class lessons via the Internet.  For the serious student, who eagerly anticipates each lesson, this is a wonderful opportunity.  Any missed item of information in a broadcast lesson is easy to rewind to, and replay.  There will often be a typed-up summary of each lesson, which obviates the need for taking notes, and condensing them.  For the lazy student, who depends on classmates, this is an opportunity to try learning the material another way!
• We have lots of relatives who regularly travel to meetings.  Some meetings are essential.  But are they worth the risk of contagion?  Some few of us are probably considered expendable by our employers, and those can go to these meetings, and meet their end with impunity!  But the rest of us should stay home, and get reports of the meetings via whatever mechanism is provided.  Bear in mind that before the meeting begins, we're thinking of the risk of catching the virus from someone.  After the meeting, we become potential carriers, and people will have to avoid us like the plague, if even one of the attendees is identified as infected.  So far, the statistics have shown that almost any meeting results in at least one attendee testing positive.  Being in quarantine, or even self-isolation, is not fun for anyone, unless the person concerned is a congressman, for example, and anxious to give the impression of working industriously for the good of his or her electorate.

The next debate will be between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, without an audience (to avoid risk of infection).  This could be a wonderful opportunity to see the candidates argue the cases for either resuming life as it had been with Obama, on the one hand, or making at least some of the changes advocated by Bernie and other Democrats who have been labeled as "radical".  As I have written before, all these changes cannot and will not be made at once.  They must have the backing of Congress, which is a notoriously stubborn animal, and that of the Senate, which is arguably a bigger bunch of stick-in-the-muds than Congress.  Finally, a lot of Bernie's plan involves cooperation of the State Houses, which will probably not cooperate.  (Or maybe they will; who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of State Houses?)  So, backing Joe Biden out of fear and anxiety makes absolutely no sense.  Joe—and my apologies for saying this—does not have a single original idea in his head, and an administration headed by him will have to be led, de facto, by his advisors.  The same is true for an administration led by Bernie, to some degree.  In either case, we will have someone in the White House who will not veto progressive legislation (though in Biden's case, I have my doubts).

Anyway, remember that half this nation is people who 'know not their left hands from their right,' in the words of the book of Jonah, and there are 'also much cattle,' as the author of that book adds.*  There have been such amazing progressive gains in the last ten years, that we have been tricked into believing that either we have brought everyone along with us, which is clearly not true, or that those who are not comfortable with these changes are unwilling to fight back.  Also remember that there are many people who do not fight fair, and who distort the truth, or who fabricate alternate truths.

Archimedes

* Jonah, Chapter 4
[10] But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
[11] And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”