Archived Facebook Coronavirus Posts: Feb 24th

[I'm transitioning a bunch of Facebook posts I made on the Coronavirus to my blog.  This was from February 24th]

OK, so--realistically--the coronavirus is a pandemic now. Community spread in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and (from what I'm hearing though this is not confirmed yet) Africa is now happening.

What does that mean for us?

1. At the governmental level, I don't think it changes a lot. Any government that wasn't already preparing as hard as possible for the pandemic was foolish. Furthermore, restricting travel and trying to track down sources of infection and quarantine them off is still worth doing. I don't think it's realistic to think we can *halt* the spread of the virus, but it should still be possible to *slow* the spread of the virus.

This is very important, because however bad this virus will be, it will be much, much worse in areas where it hits *suddenly*. The worst danger is the overwhelming of medical resources, where we are unable to care for all of the seriously ill because too many are infected at once.

So I think aggressive travel restrictions are still a good idea.

2. At the personal level, again I think the most useful thing is to do things that will slow the spread of the virus. That means, cutting down on unnecessary travel, cutting down on unnecessary social mingling. Stop shaking hands; try to keep more social space between you and other people. If you can, avoid visiting hospitals.

More importantly, I think it means responsible self-isolation. Do you have one child with a fever? Keep them all home. (Note: this is good advice even in normal flu season). Do you feel just a bit sick, but still well enough to do things? Unless necessary, stay at home! This particular virus spreads as badly as it does largely because it can spread from people with little to no symptoms.

For Catholics, if you are even a little bit sick, I'd recommend not receiving Communion on the tongue. I'd recommend either receiving on the hand or just abstaining.

I'm not suggesting here that we paralyze society and freeze all social activity--for now, I think we should all just add reasonable restrictions that we can practice and still function. All of these restrictions exist in a continuum, and given that there is no evidence of community spread here in the States yet, I think we can decide to practice just the "low hanging fruit" restrictions for now. We can decide to ramp up the restrictions as circumstances dictate.

Finally, we should all take care to practice impeccable hygiene. Wash your hands frequently and for 20 full seconds (the time it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice). Stop touching your face with your hands. Cover your mouth with the inside of your elbow when you sneeze or cough. Etc. There's no recommendation here that's not also a good idea in regular flu season, so I think now is a good opportunity to learn how to tighten up our regular hygiene practices.