Can I catch the Coronavirus? Why not? Seems like the Pope has it. Well, his staff members claim the Pope only has a cold, but he is into his second week of cancelling events. Looks suspicious to me. And the Ayatollah’s top aid just died of it. Since I note this virus is zeroing in on those of the “cloth” it has made me more concerned for our own local pastors here around Allen. I haven’t seen any of our local clergy coming down with this yet. But I think we should keep an eye on them.

I saw Buddy Drake, pastor of the Richmond Avenue Freewill Church, at the post office and as a local health professional I felt obligated to use my trained eye on him—to see if he had any symptoms of this COVID-19. After all, we don’t want him going to work Sunday morning and coughing all over his congregants. He looked OK. But last Sunday Chad Kaminski’s First Baptist Church parishioners looked on and listened with a “caring” interest and concern as he did a slight cough during his lengthy sermon out of Corinthians. However, he girded his loins and continued bravely on. So did the sparse and anxious crowd.

South Korea may have been hard hit too but it didn’t slow down Kim up North one bit. He appeared last week on TV, hale and heartily launched two more test missiles—probably to make sure Donald Trump didn’t forget about him. China, meanwhile, in a move to ease the tensions regarding shortages of goods, has taken 80,000 Uighur Muslims out of their prison camps to work in factories in place of sick employees at Chinese manufacturing plants for such as Apple, BMW, Sony, Nike and Samsung. I don’t know how the Uighur’s are taking this but what, you may ask, were they taken to prison camps for? Growing beards, having too many babies and otherwise committing serious crimes against the Chinese State is the answer.

Probably the worse threat to our country is the upcoming drug shortage. How, you may ask, can the situation in China affect the supply of drugs? Over 80% of the heart, blood pressure and other cardiovascular medicines are subcontracted by American firms to China. Again, cheap labor steps in and saves the day. What about quality control you may ask? Well, the Chinese can avoid scores of those pesky quality control inspections just by being in China. Officials in China and America said they will not disclose the names of any of these medicines out of fear that customers and patients will try to hoard these medications.

So, when will we see a vaccine in the USA to control this feared virus? Not until next year, so say the powers that be. Meanwhile, the government fears shutdowns of food sources could easily cause shortages and runs on supermarkets for the usual supplies of milk and bread. Or as a friend of mine once said prior to the arrival of a snowstorm: “I got to go and buy some extra stuff down at the Allen Food Center before those Hoarders get it all.” My solution to this hoarding: “Longer hours and more staff” at the local groceries. In fact, if the Allen Dollar Store would double their number of checkout clerks by adding one, it would help a lot.

On a more cheerful note, congratulations to our Boys and Girls wins in the tournaments. The next and last tournaments are the Area Tournaments and then…we can hope, on to State. Be sure and go to church Sunday. I suggest you stuff a Kleenex in your Bible before you do.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

waynebullard@sbcglobal.net