That is probably still the case...
However, since I am self employed, I can't stay home locked away in a safe room. I have both a home mortgage and office mortgage to maintain. We live hand to mouth. I'm a young practitioner, no savings, no emergency fund whatsoever. So if I don't work I lose everything.
Since I'm a foot doc, I treat a geriatric population, and I'm always catching whatever is going around. If smallpox is "going around" then I'll probably get it.
Russia's smallpox is supposedly a very virulent form, more highly contagious/shorter incubation. Iraq would have gotten it from Russia. Terrorists here would have gotten it from Iraq.
I cannot obtain vaccines, even as a doc. There are only 12,000,000 full strength vaccines stockpiled in the USA. Some studies suggest this stockpile can be diluted up to 7 fold and still be effective. This makes approximately 90,000,000 doses.
There are over 280,000,000 citizens in the USA.
Bottom line? Not a darn thing really I can do to prepare temporally. I have to work. I will not lose my house and practice because I might get a virus. I am obliged to fulfill the duties in my state in life. I will not leave my family for a few months so they can be in a safe house while I work. We sink or swim together.
What is left? The spiritual. Forgive me my vanity, but I feel it may be appropriate to post this piece here now:
Tonight the Sun No Longer Shines Through the Chapel Window
by Dr Brian J. Kopp
10/23/2001
Every Tuesday night at 7:00pm, I escape to my little place of refuge, an hour of quiet and solitude for just me and my Lord. Our parish opened a Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel two years ago, and I have withdrawn to this place of solitude and peace weekly ever since, to be with Our Lord and pour out my joys and sufferings and fears. I write quietly now from the rear pew, scribbling these notes on the blank pages at the back of my copy of the book "Providence" by Fr. Garrigou-LaGrange, OP.
Tonight I finally noticed that the sun is no longer streaming through the stained glass window at the front of the chapel beside the altar. During late spring, through summer, and into early fall, at some time during my hour of Adoration, the setting sun shines brilliantly through this window. It dazzles my eyes as I look at Jesus Christ present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the exposed Holy Eucharist in the monstrance.
This chapel once served as a place of refuge for the nuns who lived in this convent beside my parish church. The convent now sits quiet and empty, while our faithful pastor has made good use of its old chapel.
Often, as I prayed here during the seasons just past, the gleam of the sunset through this window represented to me the blinding light of His Presence here. It warmed my body and my soul as I came before the Lord, weary, looking for a place of refuge.
Tonight that light is gone. Sunset passed long before I arrived. Darkness shrouds this chapel, but Christ's presence is not dependent on my senses nor the sunlight of the natural world shining above.
Yet this darkness mirrors the melancholy of my soul. "The Winter Blues." "The instinct to hibernate." "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (to use the aseptic terminology of psychology). Regardless of the name, many get varying degrees of this melancholy of mind and soul beginning every year at this time. Each fall for me it is the same, the melancholy descending with the shortening days and falling leaves, withering flowers and migrating geese, my psych and soul mimicking the changes in nature. It abruptly accelerates and grows deeper with the passing of daylight-saving time.
Yet this fall seems to descend more quickly and more harshly. No light shines through the chapel window this evening. And that melancholy of psych and soul is so much more acute this year for myself and for so many souls with whom I have spoken and communicated. That melancholy is amplified many fold by the events of this fall.
Talk to anyone who is deeply spiritual. Even if unable to articulate it, they sense it. There is that sense that this fall is different from all the falls that came before it, for many years, at least in the lives of most who live today. There is a sense, if not of foreboding or fear, then at least of resignation. Anyone with a spiritual sense feels that suffering approaches, suffering on a level and of such a nature unseen in America in many seasons. It is not wise to dwell long on such things, but people of faith, spiritual people, feel it in their souls, and think it quietly, in minds troubled over its implications.
We stand in a Garden of Gethsemane. We know in our soul something awaits. Even if we do not have the perfect foreknowledge Christ had in His Agony, even if we know that we as a nation are sinful while Christ was without sin, we know that this cup shall not pass. Others may deny the cup exists, and some may know in their souls but refuse it. But people of faith know it is time for us to drink of the cup. No one asks for it, but we say, "Not my will but Thy Will be done."
A leader with the moral and spiritual foundation of a Mother Teresa can look politicians in the eye and say, "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war." A leader with the moral and spiritual foundation of a Mother Angelica can look the camera in the eye, with the face of a benevolent pirate, a saintly Italian smile, and a soul of steel, and tell the world that, "We will suffer. Don't ask me how I know, but we will suffer."
They can say publicly that which we can hardly admit to ourselves, or only share with our closest fellow believers. They simply articulate that which our souls, quickened to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have already warned us.
Our season is passing into the shadow of the death of winter. Our melancholy of soul must not win out over our hope in the Lord. We must steel our souls for the time ahead. Yes, there will be suffering. There will be darkness. The darkness in men's souls will sometimes seem to mimic the darkness about us. Some men's hearts will grow as cold as the winter wind closing upon us. How shall we respond? How shall we persevere?
Nature's God answers, "Do not despair, for I promise yet another spring lies waiting. Persevere. Gird your hearts. Do not let your love grow cold. I will renew all things." His only begotten Son answers, "Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come follow me, and I will give you rest."
A stooped old Polish man, frail and seeming to carry the world's weight on his shoulders, repeats the anthem to all who will hear. "Be not afraid. A springtime of the faith awaits. Persevere! There is hope! The darkness shall be vanquished! Be not afraid!"
*******************
Tonight, the sun is no longer shining through my Adoration Chapel window. A weight still lies on my soul and on the souls of many, as we depart from the garden and begin the climb towards Calvary.
I write these words on the blank pages in the back of a book, "Providence," by Fr. Reginald Marie Garrigou-LaGrange, OP. He taught spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome. One of his greatest students was a young Pole, now a stooped old man known to all as John Paul II and beloved by many, traveling across the globe crying out in the darkness, "Be not Afraid!"
Fr. Reginald Marie Garrigou-LaGrange concludes his book on "Providence" with this brief footnote:
"In times of great affliction not a few interior souls have found peace and even joy, though circumstances continued to give immense pain, when through God's inspiration they have conceived the idea of making a vow of self-abandonment to Providence.
"When a soul is prompted by grace to make such a vow and is firmly resolved not to divorce self-abandonment from fidelity to daily duties, the following form [of prayer] may be used. It should be renewed daily during the prayer of thanksgiving:
"Whenever the will of God is expressed in a cross, I will yield myself to it entirely and with a note of joy, paying no regard to what was instrumental in bringing it about. In difficulties that in any way distress me I will avoid all self-probing, introspection, and idle preoccupations; I will steep myself more deeply in confidence, and seek to solve my difficulties through the action of grace. I will take up this attitude of mind and heart and plunge myself in God the instant something occurs to wound me.
"And all this I will do with an exceeding great love."