Recently my 11-year-old, fifth-grade daughter implored me to listen to a meme that was circulating around her school. I normally shrug these things off as wastes of time, but I was driving so I was was a captive audience.

It was a loop of Hispanic male voices of varying tones saying, “It’s Corona time! It’s Corona time right now” with this devastatingly '80s-sounding, Beverly Hills Cop-reminiscent synthesizer melody. The pseudo beer ad was playing over a video of people in China wearing facemasks amid the coronavirus.

Let me say immediately that people dying from this virus, and the disruption it is causing to the global economy, is not at all a laughing matter to me. But clearly the coronavirus has cult status, even among young kids, and that says as much about the spread of information as it does the spread of the virus.

Covering the coronavirus as it relates to the meat industry, and learning more about it in general, has given me some perspective. Yes, the speed at which viruses can spread throughout the world is breathtaking, and we need to be more and more prepared for them as the populations rises and intercontinental travel increases. The level of disruption (see meat containers piling up at Chinese ports; airports and corporate offices emptying; stock markets dropping and skyrocketing within days) that they can cause is eye opening, too.

How quickly news spreads, and how it perhaps fuels some level of hysteria, is also alarming. Splashing “3,000 deaths” on social media feeds alone does the trick. That number of deaths is, without a doubt, newsworthy. But it pales in comparison to the damage that influenzas cause regularly — with nowhere near the same level of media coverage. Go back to 1918, when the Spanish influenza killed upwards of 100 million people around the world. Or, heck, go back to yesterday. Flu is still by far the bigger killer; the World Health Organization estimates that anywhere between 290,000 and 650,000 influenza-related deaths occur across the globe every year.

As coronavirus relates to the United States, California is a hotspot; with 20 infections reported as of mid-day Tuesday, it was the nation’s leader. It’s there where a family living within a mile or so of me here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago reportedly had traveled and become infected with the virus. All that, and the fact that I’m now traveling to the San Diego area to attend the Food Processing Suppliers Association’s annual meeting, had my nervous wife asking me if I am nervous about coronavirus. (She also tried to attach a travel-sized bottle of Purell to my backpack, some bling I refused. I did include it among my toiletries, however.)

I am not nervous about coronavirus. But I don’t discount it. In all seriousness, I do not laugh at it or take it lightly. I will try to keep my hands clean. I will try not to touch my mouth without having cleaned my hands. I will try to remain aware. But then, these are things that we should be doing at all times anyway.

I also hope that our coverage of the topic is cool-headed, that it is not sensational or hyperbolic. I hope to soon report on meaningful efforts among major meatpackers in China, home to more than 2,900 of the coronavirus deaths, to help that country modernize its biosecurity measures so that it stops being a launching pad for such outbreaks.

I'd drink to that.

“It’s Corona time!”

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