Saturday, April 11, 2020

Day 31

April 11, 2020 Saturday evening 5:48 pm
The Saturday night special is a colloquial term in the US for inexpensive,compact, small-caliber handguns of perceived low quality. Although these are not the guns Americans are buying these days at an alarming rate many U.S. citizens are arming themselves for the current pandemic as if it's the apocalypse (as if).  The number of F.B.I. background checks in the month of March soared to enormous rate and queries to the background check system translated to nearly 2.6 million guns sold, according to Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting. This is just one of several strange occurrences born from the Covid19 virus outbreak. The virus continues to do damage on all countries as the number of cases and deaths increased again.  When will we see a break and a decline? Nobody knows. Experts around the world are searching for answers as the world moans and mourns.
Looking at the numbers, American cases and casualties are still on the rise, but many countries are seeing a flattening and even small decreases in their numbers. Nonetheless, all of us are suffering and will continue to until a vaccine is created. The research and testing procedures being done are innovative and pushing the envelope, but even if a vaccine is found in the next few months (as a best case scenario) it will not be ready for mass production until the second half of 2021. The are currently four coronaviruses that circulate among the human race. None of which we have a vaccine for.
Today we slept in, ordered lunch from Rosenberg's Bagels and stocked up on some extras as this weeks forecast is for snow and cold temperatures. The weather today was beautiful and we enjoyed sitting and laying out back for most of it. Tonight we will continue our Harry Potter movie marathon with The Half-Blood Prince.
I leave you with a passage from Rene Daumal, a french poet (1908-1944) who died of tuberculosis at the age of 36 and knew suffering. He wrote in his unfinished novel Mount Avalone,
"To reach the summit, one must proceed from encampment to encampment. But before setting out for the next refuge, one must prepare those coming after to occupy the place one is leaving. Only after having prepared them, can one go on."
 In a way, I feel as us humans proceed through this pandemic and we theoretically climb it's mysterious summit to conquer it finally we must prepare the future humans for its wraith it it ever rears its head again (as many experts have surmised)
May we climb and conquer this invisible mountain called Covid19 and come out the other side better people and better prepared for future mountains.

No comments: