Scary stuff here

From the Deacon’s bench:

Earlier today, the C.D.C. said Americans need to be prepared for what may be coming:

Top U.S. public health officials said Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the spread of the coronavirus in communities across the country.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the head of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a media briefing Tuesday.

The CDC said that Americans should prepare for the possibility of disruptions to their daily lives if the virus were to start spreading in the U.S. That could include school closings, working from home and delaying elective medical procedures.

“We should all be dusting off our pandemic preparedness plans and rehearse them very quickly,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said. “The core concept is social distancing.”

Business leaders, Schaffner said, should start considering which employees could work from home. Perhaps the time will come, he and other experts said, to observe religious practices and ceremony at home, rather than attending larger community gatherings at places of worship. And families should start asking themselves how they would handle a week or two at home, without travel even short distances for food, medicine or entertainment.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us…