Saturday, March 7, 2020

3/7/20 Change Of Plans, Let's Hide?

    Unless one is to become a bubble boy, like the one played by John Travolta in 1976, or Jake Gyllenhaal more recently in 2001 (both referenced the same case), you can't really hide from this new Coronavirus.  You can delay meeting it, but if it is a new virus, it is just a matter of time.  My folks were going to come, then my mom said she hurt her knee so they wouldn't be able to, then she changed her mind and said it would be nice to get out of town and go to Austin, but then she called last night that "they" had decided not to come because more specifically, my brother was worried about contracting the coronavirus.
    I certainly do not want to contract it, but I also feel that if it kills less than 3% of patients that contract it, it means that 97% of people are surviving it.  Like it or not, it is spreading.  It is now in 28 states, as of this morning, so we are not going to stop its infestation into all 50 states.  We are all connected to each other.  Like that Kevin Bacon 6 degrees of separation.  We can all probably do a 6 person degree of separation to China, or some other highly infested area.
    One good thing about Boy being furloughed, he was constantly being introduced to Chinese people at his work.  They would come in as representatives from other companies for various reasons.  This would be a good place to say he picked up the disease, luckily, that was shut down.
    So, on to my bro-bro.  He is a teacher in a small town next to our hometown, that means every little kid is a tentacle reaching out into the world.  Yes, most are little brown small town beaners, but it only takes one to have an uncle from Houston who picked up a friend from the airport who happened to walk next to someone who was on a plane flying in from China to any part of the US.  That was only 4 parts of separation to get to a person from China.  My mom loves to work for free at the elementary there in our hometown, some call it volunteering, and that opens her up to sharing the same air as maybe two hundred other little souls.  My sister is in the main office now, in charge of the principals, so she is exposed to the leader of every school and they talk to all the teachers.  My dad is hanging out in the little illegal casinos and yes, it is mostly locals, but it only takes one visitor from some exotic place to destroy the natural floral and fauna.  Then there's Wife who lives and breathes there during the week.  She is literally all over the state, at conferences, schools, and then here in Austin.
    What I'm saying Bro, is you can run but you can't hide.  You can't wait out the virus, like it will go away.  100,000 people with the virus in the world is about as many people fit in the Longhorn stadium, which is not a lot of people, in the big picture.  Where are you going to hide when the number is 1 million?  10 million?  100 million?  You gotta live.  We live in the country with the best doctors and the best medicines, I'll take my chances and live.

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