If you want to sensationalize a global news story that may or may not to be sensationalized (I’m leaning towards may.), this photo from the Daily Fail is a good place to start. This is a woman who has tested positive being wheeled into a special quarantine unit in Nebraska.

From this article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8086319/Nebraska-woman-coronavirus-36-transported-biocontainment-critical-condition.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

That should do it.

I’m waiting to see which direction this goes. There are two possible scenarios. The first is that it unifies people behind a common foe. The second is that it becomes (more than it already has) a chaotic hatefest. I’m leaning towards the second possibility mostly because the common foe isn’t a group of non-white people and that seems to be the most unifying factor for Americans and many Western Europeans. We’re a whole lot more comfortable when there is someone to shoot at or drop bombs on. A worldwide plague or epidemic is far too nebulous a concept for most of us apes to wrap our heads around. There has to be someone specific to point fingers at and blame. Not to sound flip; it’s born out by even recent history.

I don’t know why the sense of dread I woke up with seems so pronounced. Is my compulsion to go out and stock the house with groceries born of fear, or born simply of the fear that there’s no coffee in the house? With the Italian government about to quarantine the entire Lombardy region and all its 10 million residents it’s hard not to feel some kind of trepidation about what’s to come. That’s an awful lot of homebound Italians.

I guess I need coffee and toilet paper at the very least. Time to shop.