These are strange times

These are strange times, apocalyptic times (that's sometimes how it feels to me). Climate change, weird weather, extreme weather, bee death, relentless forest fires in Australia, and now the corona virus (I'm waiting for the spread of a zombie virus). I keep telling my husband that I'll know what to do if the zombie apocalypse arrives; after all, I've watched almost eight seasons of The Walking Dead. And I did learn something--that we humans are our own worst enemy, in terms of how we will treat each other, especially if a longer-term pandemic does become the reality concerning the corona virus. But people are afraid and I understand that. As of today, the number of confirmed infected persons in Norway is 56, but there are many people who are quarantined, waiting for symptoms to develop (or not) after exposure to infected people. I work in the healthcare profession, at a hospital where the contagion began at the eye department with a doctor who had recently come home from vacation in northern Italy. Unfortunate circumstances led to some of his co-workers being infected, and also that over four hundred patients had to be contacted because they had been in for consultations during the several days it took to confirm that the doctor was indeed infected with the virus. Information and status updates are one thing; containment is another discussion entirely.
I'm not sure what to make of it all. I take precautions--washing my hands, sneezing into my elbow, working at home when I can, but the scientist in me tells me that it will be very hard to contain the virus. It will spread. Whether or not it will lead to fatalities is another question. I hope not. I understand the difficult (nearly impossible) job that hospital leaders face. Should they tell all employees to stay home? They cannot, because they need their staff to take care of sick patients and to perform scheduled operations and tests. Patients could die of non-virus-related causes if they don't get the care they need. There is a risk associated with all decisions. For example, potentially-infected people can be quarantined, but can you police them day and night? Can you ensure that they won't go outside their homes to shop, walk the dog, etc.? And who will be doing the policing? Can you quarantine whole families? After all, if one person is quarantined, he or she will come into contact with family members, unless he or she is shunned by family members. I'm not sure how it all can work according to plan. The human factor has to be factored in--the factor that says that a sick or infected person will be cared for by his or her family members. How do you avoid that? Time will tell how all of this will develop. But we have already seen the effects of 'pandemic' thinking on global economies and the stock market. It's hard to predict how long all of this will last. We can hope that it will be over fairly soon. The question will be what have we learned from this experience. One can hope that it will help us to prepare better for the next eventuality.