Killing off coronavirus might require child’s play for Arizona families

We’re using the word “unprecedented” in an unprecedented fashion these days because the COVID-19 coronavirus has changed everything.

People are asking each other, “Do you ever remember a time when EVERYTHING seemed to be — or soon will be — shut down?!?”

The 9/11 attacks are the only semi-close equivalent I can think of. But this beats that.

When we started hearing about the early stages of the pandemic from China, I thought, “Hmm, this has the potential to be a big deal.“ Then Europeans and Americans started dying and I thought, “This is getting to the ‘big-deal’ level.”

Despite his attempts to downplay coronavirus, when Donald Trump spoke from the Oval Office, I said to myself, “Have you seen Wall Street? This is a big deal.“

Then, every major sport stopped playing, we got emergency declarations from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and President Donald Trump, 8 million events got canceled and suddenly I’m like, “Coronavirus is REALLY a big deal!”

But what finally made my jaw hit the floor was the announcement from Ducey and Kathy Hoffman, our state school superintendent, that they were closing down Arizona schools for at least two weeks – a decision that Ducey said they didn’t take lightly.

I certainly like that Ducey, a Republican, and Hoffman, a Democrat, made this tough decision together. But still — did you hear what they said?! Schools are closed!!

Then the governor really scared the bejesus out of me when he added that health officials recommend that kids who aren’t at school remain home!!

We, the human race, can survive COVID-19. But I’m not so sure about us surviving the onslaught of 24/7, constant kids. It might be more than we can bear.

I mean, even if you’re blessed to be able to work from home, it’ll be like having three full-time jobs. In order to keep the paying gig, the second job will be keeping kids occupied at home. And the third job will be keeping them quiet while keeping them occupied (so we can actually get some work done). 

But because Job Number One — for all of us — is killing off coronavirus, we’ll figure it out.

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