What ‘viral’ means to me

As might be imagined, I have certain concerns regarding the coronavirus outbreak in China.

My son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and the Chinese grandparents were visiting family in Nanjing over the Chinese New Year. Their holiday (along with that of many other people) was lengthened by order of the government, and when they finally decided they had to get back home, they rented a car and drove rather than risk public transportation. Both Kevin and his wife Mei-li are working from home for the present, and they’re going to see how long they can continue that till things are back under control. Meanwhile, Amber (my granddaughter) is staying home also, both from family decision and because schools are closed till further notice.

I keep telling myself that I need to keep things in perspective: there are several thousand known infected in a nation of 1.4 billion, and the government directives on citizen behavior are exactly the kind of thing to reduce the likelihood of spread. And the Chinese people are taking this matter seriously: Mei-li sent us a video of a man picking up takeout at a street shop, he and the server both wore face-masks, there was a no-closer-than-this barrier to keep customers from getting too close to the serving window, and the server slid the order down a slanted board to the customer. (I briefly wondered how payment was made, but then decided it was probably done through the WeChat app, which is like a mélange of Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and PayPal; Chinese use it for practically everything.)

On the other hand, the same government focus on control raises questions about the reliability of their information. We don’t actually know how many infections have been confirmed, we only know how many have been admitted in official reports.

And, however diffuse the spread may be, the biggest concentrations are in China.

I’m not really worried. Not really. But I can’t make my concerns go away, because there is, in fact, reason for concern.