Quote of the Week...from Robert Heinlein

Don't ever become a pessimist...a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.                 ---Robert Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-88) was one of the greatest science fiction writers of the past century...in recognition of this fact I am reading (sometimes rereading) and reviewing some of his earlier short stories and novels.  I was going through one of those "quotes" websites when I came across a few of his...they're just as true today as when he coined them decades ago, if not more so.  Here are a couple more: "The United States has become a place where entertainers and athletes are mistaken for people of importance" and "Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner".  His above quote about pessimism and optimism is especially true in today's environment of fear...if not panic...about the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, which has just been classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization.  With such a disease it is important to be able to test people for it and isolate them so as to help protect the most vulnerable people, i.e. the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, from exposure...the only problem I see with this approach is that we may be closing the barn door after the chickens have all escaped: this disease appears to me to be freely circulating among us already.  Wednesday night the National Basketball Association suspended the rest of its 2019-20 season after a Utah Jazz player tested positive and the NCAA yesterday canceled its popular March Madness tournament, theme parks and schools are closing indefinitely...Washington's governor just banned meetings exceeding 250 people: the word "draconian" seems to fit this trend of actions.  We have had viral invasions periodically over the last few years, some dwarfing the effect that coronavirus has had: the swine flu epidemic a decade ago saw several tens of thousands of deaths in the USA and over 300,000 hospitalizations...but no stock market panic, no major closures or disruptions or travel bans then. And I think people are letting themselves get freaked out by the totally out-of-scale depictions of the virus as a large red spherical alienlike creature with nasty-looking spikes coming out of it...last night's local news show had a mural background of this spectacle. So I can see how it would be realistic for me to be pessimistic about this situation we are currently confronting, but being that way won't help me or anyone else. I see a light at the end of this gloomy tunnel and look forward to getting there. In the meantime, we should all exercise our own caution for the next few weeks as well...keep your hands from your face especially when in public, wash hands often, avoid hand-shaking and similar types of contact, stay away from large gatherings, stock up on some necessities in case of a quarantine (which is never expected until it suddenly happens), etcetera.  As a pessimist might say, things will most likely get worse before they improve.  But as an optimist I am looking forward to getting beyond this terrible period and returning to normality...and that includes health and prosperity!