You see where this is going? No place good.

I did see one thing useful at Wal-Mart: a handheld plastic bag sealer. This would come in handy for your homemade in-house bubble. Let's say your spouse lunges at you with a knife and tears the bubble. Let Bubble Buddy help!

Starting today, let's all become obsessive-compulsive about washing our hands and wearing gloves. Expect a huge leap in the sale of respiratory masks like those cute Japanese wear when they chew gum, now that SARS is essentially gone.

Get the habit of spraying all surfaces with bleach water (cap to quart), and wipe with bleach water rag. Kills germs. Don't make it too strong. It should smell vaguely like the pool at the "Y."

Stock up on drinking water, canned goods, jerky, anything that's left; be nice to everyone, help always, carry firearm.

Dump your office computer into your home system and plan on working in the bubble. Home school your children. If you don't, they'll only bring it home and infect you too. Of course, if they stay home with you all day, they'll kind of be in your bubble, so to speak, so we'll have to fashion some oval bubbles that we can walk in, as if we're inside a tire. Not bad. This would allow us to get out once in awhile, though driving would be difficult. True, we'll look silly walking inside a bubble; then again, who's to notice, given all the slumping figures heaped hither and yon, making us glad we stuffed an extra sheet of Downy in the old mask.

If you are NOT an essential worker, stay home. This includes all of us for the most part, from the President all the way down to, well, me. Essential workers include: newspaper girl, Wal-Mart restockers, gas stations, convenience stores and so forth. The delivery business will boom overnight and become one of the 3 riskiest occupations of 2004.

The World Health Organization doubts it can create a vaccine before the virus spreads. This could be another way of saying the virus has spread.

Rather than dying by the millions I suggest we fool everybody and live through it. We need to stay away from each for awhile and thank God for the internet.

Prepare to hole up for three months.