This terrible pandemic that is keeping us all isolated caught a lot of people by surprise. In Wuhan, China, where it started, people initially had no idea what was going on. They were in the dark about what this was, how it was transmitted, and the extent of the damage it could do to the human body. But now we know that if we are clean and careful, our chances of getting infected are pretty slim. We know the symptoms are similar to the flu and we can get tested to make sure we don’t have it. We know that in the majority of cases of infection, 80% of the people recover from the scary experience unscathed.

Thinking about all this made me remember my now deceased father, may he rest in peace. He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1903. He lived through the first world war from July 1914 through November 1918, then came the Spanish flu from January 1918 through December 1920, which infected about 500 million people worldwide (about a third of the world’s population) and killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people. After that came the Great Depression in August of 1929, my father used to tell me stories of people who, having lost all their money, committed suicide and how he and his family would go to the supermarket with a cart full of cash and come out with a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread. Then he was faced with the second world war from 1939 through 1945. A jew, my father was one of the lucky ones to escape Nazi persecution during the holocaust. He left Austria at the tender age of 27 to look for opportunities elsewhere. So trying to put things in perspective, compared to all this, coronavirus is a piece of cake. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I’m just trying to make the point that many of our close ancestors had it a lot tougher than we do.

Advances in medicine and in computer science make it much easier for us to analyze and find solutions to our problems, including rapidly spreading diseases. We will get out of this much faster than anybody thinks possible. I believe that by the end of May 2020 or June we will have some kind of drug cocktail to lessen the complications of the disease and things will begin to get back to normal. Sometime in early 2021 we will most probably have a vaccine. The economic side of this will probably take a bit longer to resolve, but we will bounce back!

Let’s face it, we live in a material world where there are no guarantees. In fact, from the minute we are born our own bodies start to decay and begin to kill us. Then we have to confront the three miseries of material nature: the misery caused by our own mind and body (depression, old age, etc.), the misery caused by others (thieves, diseases, etc.), and the misery caused by natural disasters (earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc.). These things are practically inevitable in the lives of all of us, but in spite of this the world is a wonderful place where we can be very happy if we know how. And I’m not just talking about those occasional moments of happiness that we all rarely experience. I’m talking about being happy all the time, in spite of coronavirus or whatever. Trust me, it is possible, but to achieve this takes time, effort, and a complete change of our mental perspective about life in general. My novel B.R.A.I.N, which you can currently read for free on the http://www.Inkitt.com platform, briefly describes the ancient wisdom that will allow you to achieve true and permanent happiness in your lifetime.

The very best to all of you, may God bless and keep you safe in these trying times.