Holy Schmoley! Isn’t this something?
The empty shelves at the grocery–even Wal-Mart–the panic buying of all sorts of things( some necessities, like toilet paper, some not), the cancellation of a myriad of events and programs all over the country…Whooeeee! The cancellations and reschedulings of everything from Broadway to baseball seasons and basketball madness is just stunning, across the board.
When the bishop of the whole East Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church tells everyone to stay home, you’ve got to know this is serious. I was wondering about the rest of the country; did other bishops in other conferences do the same thing? Was it like the superintendents calling schools off for a Snow Day? Do they ask around to see what other bishops are doing? Do they call up the head of the biggest hospital in their conference if there is one? Do they call their mothers for advice? No church bells ringing on Sunday morning. Will there be Bingo on Tuesday? Are people making plans for events to be happening later this year going around looking “snatched bald headed” from tearing their hair (or several hairs, actually) out trying to discern what might be happening when their event is supposed to be going on?
Are all of the athletes who were looking forward to competitions–championships, and so
on–staying in shape or resigning themselves to just recording everything so that they can tell their children and grandchildren about how they lived through the COVID 19 pandemic?
And about that name…. It was specifically given that designation as a clarification of the original title and the origin of the disease. See, it was originally referred to as a “novel” (meaning new) strain of the corona virus, a whole family of the little bad guys that give us various diseases of various seriousness and mutate, change their shapes and severity just lickity-split all of the time, at the drop of a hat. That’s why your flu shot is slightly different every year, because researchers try to guess what particular virus is going to be running amok in a particular year. Sometimes they get it mostly right, sometimes they don’t. Any flu shot is better than none but some years the guess is better than others and most people don’t get very ill at all. Then, every so often, all hell breaks loose.
We saw SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002-04, an H1N1 outbreak(sometimes referred to as the swine flu) in 2009-10 (This one was particularlynasty and had its own special tag–H1N1pdm09). The Hong Kong flu (H3N2) was in 1968 and the Asian flu (H2N2) was in 1957-58. The grandaddies of them all were the Russian flu in 1889 and the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. That last one was estimated to have wiped out approximately one-third of the world’s population, aided and abetted by the troop and population movements caused by WWI. Notice the use of national names in connection with the diseases. Whoever–whatever country– wasn’t very popular at the time got stuck with having the disease named after them.
You’ll notice too, that our chief executive keeps calling this current outbreak a “Chinese virus” or a “foreign virus”. Viruses have no nationality and no respect at all for boundaries. (Which reminds me of a book I read some time ago which pointed out that for many years any number of sexually-transmitted diseases were referred to in England as “the French pox” and in France as “the English sickness”; Spain and Greece got their innings too a being blamed for whatever maladies were, basically, incurable. God knows they tried cures, some of them pretty horrible and maybe worse than the disease–try ingesting mercury, for instance, or the current scam, which involves swallowing Clorox…courtesy of the internet.)
Just greeting people has become problematic. You’ve got your fist-bump, mentioned above; you’ve got elbow raps (Not after you’ve sneezed into them, please). You could go “full Asian” and just do a Japanese-style shallow bow or “Namaste” with hands together in front,
Indian-style, or even a Muslim salutation, “As-Salaam Alaikum”, replied to with “Wa-Alaikum Salaam” (Peace be unto you. Unto you be peace). Not the Three Stooges version : “Salami, salami balony”. All of the folks out there who are habitual huggers and/or kissers are, no doubt, finding this all very difficult. Not being one of those, I’m O.K. with a wave and a smile but a roomful of Rotarians or UMW (United Methodist Women) ladies is not faring well.
One final thought–if it can be so characterized–something that Becky Moser would have gone for–a Finnish expression (She was SO all about being of Finnish heritage) : Calsari kanet, which means “staying home and getting drunk in your underwear.”
Try that.
