Corona Views

Lamigo Lions Cheng Kai-wen hit the first home run of the season off of Ariel Miranda of the ChinaTrust Brothers. Some of the victims of the Great COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020 are millions of rabid sports fans around the world. With the National Basketball Association (NBA) shutting down before it really got started, and NCAA sports getting cancelled before the Final Four, there were many disappointed fans. The 2020 Summer Olympics may be postponed or cancelled. Sports, in general has taken a big hit. All of a sudden, there seems to be nothing to watch on ESPN. I am not a big basketball fan, but I do enjoy watching competitive sports on occasion. I was pleasantly surprised to see a news article announcing, Amid pandemic, Taiwan first to restart baseball . According to the article, in the first game of the 2020 season for the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), the visiting Uni-President Lions beat the home team, the Chinatrust Brothers Baseball Club, 4-1 at the Taichun...

 The pain and suffering are real. It is difficult to imagine the scope of the pain and suffering in the world today, as the pandemic ravages the world. People are losing their loved ones in a terrible way. The COVID-19 pneumonia is not discriminating, and the suffering does not stop at the gates of exclusive communities or at the cardboard shantytowns. According to World-O-Meter, there are currently 1,521,912 cases of COVID-19 and 88,653 deaths. With a global population of 7.53 billion (2017), that means 0.019 percent of the world is suffering from the disease. But there is a more insidious suffering going on.  The fear of uncertainty is the bigger enemy. Billions of people are worried, as they are being forced to make drastic changes in their lives. There is a level of uncertainty on a societal level that I have never seen in my lifetime. For some people, that is leading to anxiety and in extreme cases, panic. Entire regions and entire industries are getting shut...

I am sitting in my home office today looking out at grey, dreary skies. A thought just hit me. My wife and I had a discussion yesterday about possible in-home activities during pandemic lock downs, and somehow, we pondered if this was a good time to have another child. Strange how thoughts we wouldn't normally have are entering our minds during these strange times. We thought about how many couples would be making babies during their extended time together indoors. If there are millions of couples spending more romantic time together and a fraction of these people end up resulting in pregnancies, could we see a boom in our population similar to the post-war baby boom after World War 2? If we do have a baby boom, will we call these children Corona Babies or COVID babies? Or perhaps some other catchy name? Should I coin and copyright these phrases now and print t-shirts? Also, will children have catchy new names like Shelly Corona Cooper? Corona King Williams? Anyways, I ...

Another day during the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the kids are still home from school for a 4-day weekend. Taiwan has so far avoided a national lockdown. The growth of new COVID-19 cases in Taiwan is steady, at nine new cases yesterday. Enforced quarantines on the sick seem to still be working. Citizens are wearing masks in public places and standing in lines to get their weekly allotment of masks. Restaurants and business are still open, as practical measures are in place to keep the risk minimized. Staying at home, letting our kids be weaned on a steady diet of XBox, YouTube and Netflix seems unreasonable and irresponsible at this time, so we decided to take our dog out to find a scenic nature area to enjoy a walk. We drove our scooters to explore a forested area in Guantien District of Tainan City. There was plenty of space to stretch our legs without needing to get too close to crowds. Most of the hikers did have masks on. We enjoyed a fresh pineapple chopped up by a local ...