It is now less than two weeks until the publication of my first novel Vulcan’s Forge and the world is gripped in crisis. A novel corona, Covid-19, that emerged from China towards the end of 2019 is now rapidly spreading around the globe, shuttering entire cities, overwhelming hospitals, and killing people.

Far more important that my debut is fighting Covid-19. We have to keep our distances from each other, we have to disperse any large groups and gatherings, we have to flatten the curve because it is too late to halt the spread of the disease, Chinese and American mismanagement has assured us of that failure, but we can slow the growth enough, maybe, to keep from crashing ours and the world’s healthcare system.

The virus appeared in China in early December but reports were suppressed and people endangered by their government for speaking the truth. Reporting bad news is a bad thing to do in authoritarian systems, China refused concede that there was human to human transmission until later January, wasting vital time for the world to take the precautionary action required to stop the virus.

President Trump dismissed early warnings about the virus, berated staff for bringing it up, and lied to the public about the seriousness of the threat. We do not have an authoritarian system we do have a man-child for whom bad news is a forbidden subject.

Compounding the mismanagement by the presidential administration we have the bad decision making about testing and test kits. Test kits for identifying the virus were available for US agencies to mass produce and use but the decision was made to develop new test kits that would be able to detect a spectrum of corona viruses not only the specific virus causing the pandemic, Those new kits turned out to be faulty, and in limited supply, hamstringing our ability to know the facts on the ground as the disease established its beachhead in the United States.

We’re now facing serious troubles, but we can still do thing that matter. Soap and water is your best defense and the best thing you can do to protect those around you. Limiting social contact is essential.

I’ll admit to being depressed over my debut as a novelist during this crisis and to feeling guilty about being depressed. I’m no good at being noble but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of one little novel doesn’t’ amount to a hill of beans in the world. Yeah, I use movie quotes all the time in real life. Read my novel and you’ll understand.