Canceled Races and Some Coronavirus Views

Well, due to this coronavirus outbreak and the calls for social distancing, the springtime running race season I've been regularly participating in over the past few years has been canceled.  I'm still getting Facebook reminders about a coming event...seems they forgot to notify Zuckerberg that it's off.  Instead, I'm continuing my running but on my own, not around others.  Last Friday I slowly ran 9.3 miles on my extended course through my subdivision and the adjacent one...a good run but not the half-marathon distance I had been planning to run that weekend in Ormond Beach in their race, which had it not been canceled due to the virus would have taken place in Tomoka State Park north of town on the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway.  Oh well, maybe next year, and in the meantime I can still run around my neighborhood as much as I want...

As for the coronavirus response, I'm a bit confused about something I'm hearing from Dr. Fauci (of the coronavirus task force) and New York governor Cuomo. Fauci has said that we shouldn't get ourselves tested for coronavirus unless the symptoms stand out, the reason being that we "consume" health care professionals' protective gear with each test, gear that will be needed for future treatment of the disease.  Cuomo, on the other hand, has been pushing widespread testing in his state with the aim of isolating those with positive outcomes...even those with no discernible symptoms...to help curtail the disease's rapid spread and "flatten the curve".  His rationale is that coronavirus is destined to eventually spread throughout the general population and that the social distancing efforts are not accomplishing enough to provide time for increasing our protective gear, hospital beds and most importantly, ventilators, to meet the upcoming demand for them.  Of course, neither you nor I make the decision whether to administer the tests, so this debate on how often they are used needs to be reconciled at a higher level...

I'm also noticing an even higher ratcheting up of the nastiness I'm hearing on TV and radio, even within the U.S. Senate chamber where informal rules of comity have been generally observed.  Everybody seems to have their own theory on how to deal with this crisis and what merits top priority and what should be pushed to the back. It may seem like a long time already, but it's only been going on for a few weeks and this disease will be with us for much, much longer.  The point of all this inconvenience and economic displacement right now is to reduce the early incidents of serious and critical cases while buying time to increase the needed stockpiles of medical equipment. And on that latter issue, the different states should not be competing with one another on the open market for them, which only drives up the price.  The federal government, led by the President, needs to step up to the plate and coordinate these efforts...