The United States Pandemic

It's almost April 2020. Normally we anticipate showers to bring us May flowers. Instead, COVID-19 aka Coronavirus continues to dominate and tantalize in real-time. Americans are consistently dropping like flies. Clinicians and other Health Care experts have become unnerved as the stats reveal the United States is now the hardest hit. Its cases, as well as deaths, has surpassed that of every country on the planet.
New York has already escalated as the epic center. On the Hudson River the USNS Comfort a hospital ship docks awaiting patients. Not too far away, the Jacob Javits Center has been converted into a make-shift hospital. While multiple white tents are pitched in Central Park to accommodate the infected.
The big city is like a ghost town at nights except for busy Paramedics, Police and Fire Department vehicles. The daytime is eerie with a scarcity of pedestrians who, avoiding each other by occupying the opposite sidewalk.
At Times Square, it's a lockdown except for one or two parked NYPD SUV. About every half-an-hour, an MTA bus passes through with a masked driver. Inside the uncrowded bus, in addition to passengers maintaining their distance, a thick yellow chain separates them from the driver. The bus stops at the next stop. Instead of entering through the front door, passengers enter and exit through the rear.
Meanwhile, neighbors line up outside a local supermarket maintaining a distance of six feet apart. The sign on their glass door reads Only Three Customers Allowed Inside. The streets are partly empty of vehicular traffic except for parked trucks unloading produced. More than 95% of all businesses are closed with signs indicating such.
The US, branded as the biggest, baddest military force on the planet has succumbed to chemical warfare. Brought to its knees.
The death toll now peaks to between 500 and 1,000 daily. Never before in the history of America has parishioners been forced to avoid church fellowship on Easter Sunday – the biggest worship day of the year.
Not since Pearl Harbor has the US been invaded by an enemy. Coronavirus has attacked like a brush fire spreading and torching every state and territory daily with infections and killings.
Abandoning our workplaces and stay-at-home has become the new normal. This shelter-in-place draconian measure has become our premier defense against this invisible enemy – COVID-19. Yet, if perchance we contract the virus, we either get hospitalized or get housed on a 14-day quarantine.
It is a normal human tendency when we're attacked, we fight back. On the news, it is reported: "gun sales are up as well as alcohol." Yet, we can't shoot and kill this pathogen.
We can't see this adversary but if we touch where it's been or even breathe it, we become symptomatic or asymptomatic. Any characteristic, we stand a chance of possibly infecting others. Thanks to Facetime because we can't even hold the hand of our loved ones as they cross over to the other side if they were attacked by this virus – Rona.
On the television, an AD states: Our War Is Here! Followed by video footage which portrays global results accompanied by a longitudinal insert depicting the worldwide numbers for this coronavirus pandemic. Hitherto, no bullets have been fired, no bombings, no scud or ballistic missiles launched, no deployment of the military except for the setting up of makeshift hospitals. Thousands of deaths are daily reported. Meanwhile, US unemployment numbers soar to over 16 million as 6.6 M more file for unemployment benefits.
"Could this be war?"
Asks a TV Reporter.
A peace treaty by this novel, ferocious, invisible-tyrant is all we can hope for at this point. This demonic virus outbreak, allegedly cooked up in a test tube in some remote laboratory possibly in Wuhan, China and fed to bats. Between 2002 and 2003, those same communal scavengers were blamed for transmitting its prequel SARS: An outbreak in southern China which caused an eventual 8,098 cases, resulting in 774 deaths reported in 17 countries, with the majority of cases in mainland China and Hong Kong. Like bats, it loves close quarters, there it thrives best, multiplies and infiltrates. According to New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo: "This is a silent killer that just ripples through the country".
A vaccine wrapped in a Christmas stocking or the early arrival of convalescence serum is our pleading wish in the way of antibodies.