Kindred,
Tell your friends to be responsible and honorable.
In this pandemic, the suffering is real. The numbers do not lie (and are probably underreported).
But the world has seen a worse pandemic in 1918 and still made it through.
In that time, the Spanish Flu, spread worldwide inflected over 500 million (one third of the world's population at the time) and killed at least 50 million people, 675,000 of them in the United States.
The worse was, that unlike the virus pandemic of today, the Spanish Flu killed mostly the young, 20-40, and those under 5 years; the old over 65 suffered too.
Follow the CDC guidelines on keeping a safe distance and good preventative practices.
Keep in mind, we all need to work together to minimize the crisis and prevent further spread and more deaths (in U.S., over 41,000 and counting), but also work to prevent another pandemic from occurring; therefore, early warning systems and quick response protocols a necessity.
