Lessons from two pandemics: be safe, don't panic

My sister was arriving for a long-awaited visit from a New York area airport. There was a chance that she would be quarantined, so I prepared a "quarantine kit" of 30 movies, the entire Sopranos TV series, a How to Hula video, four long books, biscotti, chocolate, a jump rope and a pack of cards. If she was quarantined, I was going to join her.

We hadn't seen each other for several years. We had a lot of catching up to do. I was certainly not going to have her languish in a hotel room for five days when we could be there together talking and laughing, watching movies and learning how to hula! I was determined to make lemonade if we were given lemons.

When she disembarked without incident, and we flew into each other's arms, we were both relieved. Our time together included many more sights of China than the four walls of a hotel room.