Weekly Mail Special: The Coronavirus

        Regular readers of this post know that I don't like to compare bad things that happen to 9/11, and I am loathe to say that something is worse than 9/11. A couple years ago, I wrote my 9/11 special about those of us who would take difficult situations that arose and say “This is as bad as 9/11"

The closest I've ever come to that horrible helpless feeling I had that day was the day after Superstorm Sandy, seeing my town in ruin. Then a few days later, seeing Rockaway 10 times worse. That period of my life was rough. And I thought or maybe just hoped, that it would be as close to that 9/11 feeling as I would ever come to again.

Until these past few days.

In my entire 46.5 years on earth, I have never seen the world in general, or our country in particular brought to it's knees the way we all have due to the coronavirus. We have almost literally come to a halt here, the likes of which I could never fathom.

Thursday was apparently the worst day that the stock market had since the October 1987 crash. Twice this week, they had to stop trading. Twice so far this week, literally stop the stock ticker. The stock market is not my area of expertise, but last week all I heard was that this was the worst since 2008, now this week we are talking about 1987. How soon are we going to be talking about 1929?

Scary.

They had been talking about playing sporting events in empty arenas and stadiums. Then Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, and the NBA suspended their season. Thursday afternoon, the NHL did the same. One by one NCAA conference tournaments were being canceled, and now perhaps the most exciting three weeks in sports, the NCAA Tournament has been canceled. Forget about the billions of dollars in revenue that is going to be lost, just the spirit of fun that is now gone is so deflating.

Speaking of fun, St. Patrick's Day Parades all over the world have been cancelled, including the grandaddy of them all, here in NYC.  I'm not saying these weren't the right measures to take, I'm sure they were. I know we have to protect our bodies, I just hope we don't lose our spirit.

Because that's where I am right now.  This is as on edge as I have ever been. I feel like I'm in one of those futuristic movies.

It's surreal.

I'm not going to lay all of this at the feet of President Trump. I'm not going to blame him for the virus itself, the way that idiot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to blame President Bush for Hurricane Katrina (not the poor relief effort, the hurricane itself)

But as usual, he's not helping any. He tried to downplay this whole thing, tried to say it was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats as another way of getting him ousted from office. It wasn't until the stock market starting diving that he took notice and then he lied about how many testing kits we had on hand, among other things.

But again, to me this isn't about Trump and his perpetual bull$hit. This is bigger than the president, this is bigger than the entire federal government. This is bigger than any world leader.


But that's not what scares me.

Not getting to watch my wife as her beloved Dayton Flyers enter the NCAA tournament as a number 1 seed, saddens me, but doesn't scare me.

Watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average lose points like the Knicks scares me, but it's not the scariest thing.

I went to Costco tonight. The shelves were empty and the lines were long. On social media, there are those who are mocking folks who are stocking up. Really? They have cancelled all these events and several school districts here on LI are closed. You don't think there is any possibility they might declare martial law around here and we are all confined to our homes? And that scares me, but still not the scariest thing.

No, the scariest thing is I worry about our soul.

As bad as 9/11 was, there was also those blood banks with lines around the corner. There was the Shea Stadium parking lot, collecting and sending out supplies to the workers at Ground Zero, much of that donated by local businesses, and loaded onto trucks by volunteers. There were the cheers for the first responders.

We were shaken, but our spirit was intact.

Now I'm not so sure.

There were no fights in Costco tonight but there was definitely an edginess. An uncertainty. And what I'm not seeing is that spirit of "Let's stick together and get through this."

Maybe these are the times we are living in now. Maybe we've all been through too much these past 20 years. Terror attacks, war, about 19 different storms of the century. Now this. Maybe we're just too beat up right now.

But maybe, and it's a definite maybe, this is a sign. Whether you believe in God, or some other higher power. Maybe this is a sign from somewhere that the only way we are going to get through this thing is to somehow come together.  I'm not optimistic that people are going to see it that way, but maybe I’ll be wrong about that.


What I do know is that I have never seen time stand still like this. And I just hope we can get back to some semblance of normal really really soon.