For a long time I've been waiting for some evil microbe to spring from duck guts on the other side of the world and cause a pandemic, so the coronavirus isn't a surprise.
Note: This sort of concern does not make me a hypochondriac. Other things make me a hypochondriac, but not this.
I don't mean to downplay the danger of a pandemic, although this week is possibly the last window in which we can have a nervous chuckle about the subject. What's interesting to me are the news stories suggesting people have a plan in place in case they have to stay home a few days because there's a quarantine.
This is where the people who've been preparing for this sort of thing for years lean back, put on a grim smile, and say, "Oh, do go on."
We — oops, sorry, those people — live for crises so they can demonstrate forethought. Sometimes they're a bit too focused: "I haven't put away a dime for retirement, but I've got water purifying tablets!" But, for the most part, they are regarded as a bit odd — until everyone else starts looking around nervously and wondering whether it would be a good idea to drop 'round the drugstore and see if they have any masks.
I won't be among those lining up at the drugstore. Not because I don't see the need for masks; because I have masks leftover from the last pandemic. I don't remember if it was MERS or SARS or that one that only affected Scandinavian men, LARS. I have water purifying tablets in case Day 23 of the quarantine is designated "take a bucket to the lake day."
I have waterproof matches in case I have to light a cigar in the rain, a windup emergency radio that doesn't need batteries and gives you up to 16 words of Civil Defense transmissions after 200 cranks and enough candles for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on Christmas Eve.
None of these things will be needed, of course. A quarantine does not mean the people in charge of electricity, gas and water shrug, turn everything off and go home.