I embrace the need for “social distancing” – isn’t that a peculiar term?

I embrace the need for businesses to close or operate with minimal, only necessary personnel.

I embrace the need to “stay at home.”

I embrace the need to abstain from flying in planes, traveling on cruise ships, and taking subways and buses.

I embrace the need to prevent people from going to church and to close schools.

I embrace the words of the Secretary General of the UN who stated that we are all in this pandemic together – the largest crisis since World War II.

However, I have a question for myself, shared by several others, judging by the phone calls I receive:

What will happen if there is a tragic event in someone’s family in Greece or Cyprus? How do you get there in a reasonable amount of time?

This question is making people crazy.

There are also friends and readers who, when they called me to congratulate me on the 105th anniversary of The National Herald, asked me:

“Will we be able to go on vacation to Greece (or Cyprus) this year? Will the planes fly? Will this pandemic end in America and there by then?”

I answer that I cannot make predictions because I do not have the information one needs to do so.

But also from what I can discern in the cacophony of the information being offered, no one is yet able to make definitive predictions.

President Trump himself has been forced to change his predictions several times, such as that the churches would be full on Western Easter!

We can’t even predict with certainty if the rising temperatures that are coming will help.
We just don’t know.

CΟVID-19 is a novel virus that has appeared for the first time and as a result, we have no data. So we don’t know how it will react to warmer weather.

All I can say to those that call is this: if this situation lasts until then, there will be nothing left standing. We will wake up from the nightmare of the coronavirus in a new and unrecognizable world.

I will also say something else that is somewhat chancy: I can’t imagine that no medicine will be found in the next couple of months to fight the coronavirus.

I believe that every laboratory in the world is ‘burning the midnight oil’ in the race to develop a drug to combat this virus.

I can’t fathom that at a time when scientists have discovered products that transcend the limits of the imagination, at a time when science – and medicine – have reached such heights, that they will not be able to create such a drug.

In the meantime, let’s be prepared to postpone, if necessary, our dives into the Aegean and the Ionian seas for a month or two.

We will enjoy them even more later.

Be careful, dear readers, and have a good rest of the week.