coronavirus

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — March 17th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 17th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on March 17, 2020, just as nearly everyone in the United States was being ordered to stay at home, to shelter in place due to an outbreak of coronavirus.

No, No, No

No sports
No late night comics on TV
No bars and restaurants
No school
No entertainment
No movies or shows
No concerts
No gatherings
No toilet paper
No fun

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But happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Just stay home.

Truthful Tuesday — Holidays

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Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts. Frank is changing things up a bit on this Truthful Tuesday prompt. Instead of asking us specific questions, he is giving us a topic and asking us to discuss it. This week’s topic is “holidays.” Frank wants to know…

Whatever holidays you may celebrate this time of year, how ready for them are you?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes Omicron. While Omicron sounds like it should be the name of a high tech company or the latest Android operating system, it’s actually the name of the latest coronavirus variant. Omicron is supposed to be highly contagious and because it’s so new, scientists don’t know how effectively the current batch of COVID-19 vaccines work on Omicron. So much for holiday plans.

Our extended family is a mixed bag of Christian, Jewish, and atheist, so we celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah. Chanukah this year is already underway and our plan was to have our kids and grandkids over to our house this coming Sunday for a Chanukah get together. And we were all planning to get together again around Christmas at two holiday gatherings, one at the home of our daughter’s significant other’s parents and the other at the home of our daughter-in-law’s parents.

This Sunday’s Chanukah party has been postponed until we know that our jabs (and we’ve all gotten our boosters) are effective against Omicron. Hopefully, by the time the Christmas gatherings come around, we’ll know whether the vaccines we’ve all gotten will keep us safe against the latest variant.

We thought, up until this past week, that we were safe and ready. And we had planned for the holiday season accordingly. Now everything is sort of up in the air.

Welcome to life in the second decade of the 21st century.

Who Won the Week? 03/21/2021

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FWWTWThe idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

This week’s “winner” of Who Won the Week is March Madness.

For those of you who live outside of the United States, March Madness is the The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. It’s a single-elimination tournament played each spring, featuring 68 of the top college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), to determine the national championship.Last year at this time, due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the annual tournament was abruptly canceled. It’s not that I’m a huge college basketball fan, but I’ve always enjoyed March Madness. So I, along with millions of college basketball fans, was disappointed. I understood why it had to be done, but that didn’t reduce my disappointment.

But this week, a year later, the annual March Madness tournament kicked off. And I’m happy about it. Not only because this annual college basketball ritual is in full swing once again, but also because, to me, anyway, it symbolically marks the beginning of what may be a long awaited return to normalcy.

What about you? Who (or wha) do you think won the week?

Who Won the Week? 03/14/2021

Fandango6 Comments

FWWTWThe idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

This week’s “winner” of Who Won the Week is getting people vaccinated for COVID-19.

The United States is working to vaccinate a high percentage of its population against COVID-19 as soon as possible to stop the spread of the disease and end the outbreak in the country.

Since vaccine distribution began in the U.S. on December 14th, more than 101.1 million doses have been administered, reaching almost 20% of the total U.S. population, according to federal data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. is currently administering over 2.3 million shots a day.

President Biden has repeatedly promised to get 100 million shots into Americans’ arms by his 100th day in office. His pledge appeared ambitious when he first made it before Election Day, but now that more than two million people are being vaccinated a day, the country is on track to surpass Biden’s 100 million goal. And he said on Thursday he would direct the states to make all adults eligible for the coronavirus vaccine by May 1. His aim is that the country would be able to achieve some kind of “normality” by the Independence Day holiday on July 4.

Isn’t it great to have someone in the Oval Office who makes plans for combating COVID-19 and who delivers on them rather than someone who closes his eyes and hopes that a miracle will make it all go away?

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

#100WW — The Annual Halloween Picnic

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“I promise to get it done,” Bonnie said.

“You didn’t get the word out, yet?” Laurie said. “Halloween is just three days away. You said you’d disseminate the info to everyone that the picnic at the park this year is canceled due to the pandemic.”

“This whole virus thing is chilling to me,” Bonnie said. “So many sick, so many dying.”

“Well, it’s probably just as well, “Laurie said. “Everyone gets drunk and causes quite a fracas at this event, anyway.”

“Maybe this nightmare will end soon and we can return to our jocular selves again,” Bonnie said.

“Yeah, right.”

(100 words)

Written for Bikurgurl’s 100 Word Wednesday prompt. Photo credit: Bikurgurl. Also for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (promise), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (disseminate), Word of the Day Challenge (chilling), Ragtag Daily Prompt (fracas), and Your Daily Word Prompt (jocular).