The "We Will Survive - Won't We?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just opened the front door to accept a package from the Postal Service.  Ordered a box of exterior light bulbs a day ago for the outdoor lights we have on our back deck.  Opened the box to make sure they were what I really wanted and across the interior box read: "Made In China".  Carefully opened it, examined the bulbs, placed one in the string of lights outside our rear door and washed my hands.  The final step I just listed was my wife's idea, since we had no idea if someone may have touched the bulbs or box and then came down with the Coronavirus.  

Are we being too careful?  Are we paranoid?  I DON'T KNOW!!  Every day we hear more and more about how many people in each state of the United States has contracted the disease which at times can kill you; especially those older citizens which would include both my wife and I.  We're still struggling with going on or canceling our upcoming vacation to St. Martin, since we aren't sure how reliable hospital care might be on the island if we would need it.  But...haven't we gone through this a few other times in our life?  We have lived through the AIDs epidemic, the EBOLA epidemic, the Influenza scare and a variety of other medical problems in our life.  We've been lucky so far, so why worry now?  Don't we have some resistance to the current virus after all these years of living?  We've lived through quite a few quarantines in our lifetime as have many others have.  If a quarantine is issued by the airline or by the island of St. Martin, that is something we have no control over and would naturally have to stay put in Lancaster.  But, exactly what is a quarantine and for how long does it usually last?  There are two listings under the word in the dictionary.  One is the enforced isolation of patients suffering from a contagious disease in order to prevent the spread of disease while the other is isolation to prevent the spread of infectious disease.  The word is primarily a verb, but can be called a noun in rare circumstances.  The noun usage is what Carol and I have to worry about in reference to our trip.  As I press the keys on my MacBook Air, a quarantine (noun) has just been announced for all of Northern Italy due to the Coronavirus.  President Trump doesn't believe the Coronavirus is anything we who live in the United States have to worry about, just as President Wilson did when the Spanish Flu arrived in 1918 and infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide - about one-third of the planet's population, and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans.  Yesterday morning's newspaper highlighted books about pandemics of the past such as (1) MALARIA - "The Fever": How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years" by Sonia Shah, (2) SMALLPOX - "Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82" by Elizabeth A. Fenn, (3) THE PLAGUE - "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century" by Barbara Tuchman, (4) INFLUENZA - "Flu - The Story Of The Great Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It" by Gina Kolata, (5) EBOLA - "The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of The Origins of the Ebola Virus" by Richard Preston, (6) CHOLERA - "The Ghost Map: The Story Of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and The Modern World" by Steven Johnson, (7) AIDS - "And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic" by Randy Shilts.  All these book about previous pandemics offer context, history and scientific information about the spread of disease.  Our country needs someone who has perhaps read all, or most of, these books and can use the knowledge they have gained from their reading to help lead our country out of any crisis, but I believe that's not going to happen anytime soon!  Im afraid I will miss my vacation this time around and hope that at least I can survive to give it another try in the future.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.