YIKES..!!

Welcome to the Coronavirus 2020.

I don't know what's more shocking...the empty grocery shelves...the mandatory closing of all restaurants and bars in Illinois...Iowa public schools closing for at least a month...

Because, c'mon -- NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THOSE THINGS has ever happened in my lifetime.

So, yeah -- it's a lot.

And I'm probably not the only one who didn't take it very seriously.  At first.  There was so much confusing information....for many people, it's like having a cold...many more people die from the flu...blah, blah, blah...

Also -- I live in the middle of the country...I haven't traveled anywhere for over a year...nobody I know is sick...there are no reported cases in my county -- or for miles around. I was not worried. I was smug, even. This thing WASN'T ABOUT ME....besides, it really hits the old people hardest....and THAT'S NOT ME...

HEY -- WAIT A MINUTE. I'M GONNA BE 71 YEARS OLD...ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT ME??

Then -- I read this article in the Wall Street Journal about how difficult it has been to get the Baby Boomers to take this thing seriously...and it really got my attention.

Because...altho I have never considered myself to be "elderly". I have always known I was a Baby Boomer.

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Boomers who consider themselves healthy are especially stubborn....and have been reluctant to take the virus seriously.  Caroline’s dad, who’s 64 and a freelancer, feels “invincible.” “He tells me, ‘You can’t live life being afraid of everything because anything could kill you,’” she said. “That’s his general outlook.” One person told me that the thing that worked on her similarly invincible-feeling father was sending him a vivid testimonial from a previously healthy 48-year-old:

He said, the illness hit him “like a hurricane.” He struggled to breathe. His lungs filled with fluid, and nurses in Hazmat-style suits had to drain them every two hours. The worst part, he said, was the feeling of choking. “You feel like you’re asphyxiating, and you’re panicking because you can’t breathe.” He kept telling himself, “Just get through the next hour, the next hour, the next hour.”

At one point, he was aware that a priest in protective gear was about to administer last rites. He wrote a note to his wife saying that if his lungs collapsed, he did not want to be put on life support. “I was one inch from death,” he told the WSJ on Tuesday. “It’s alarming when I hear people minimize it as a simple cold,” he said. “It almost killed me.”

Okay.  I get it.  Finally.  This is epic. 

And here's another thing I've learned....the actual BRAND of toilet paper is not something anybody really cares about....