[Image: infographic from the American Society for Microbiology (as of March 6, 2020).]

Short answer: we don’t know yet. Long answer: we actually had put tickets for the flight to London on temporary hold (without paying for them yet)… but let the hold expired. We just haven’t made up our minds.

It’s complicated, you know. One of us is 72 years old; the other, pushing 69. (This is cause for apprehension but also an argument not to put off travel: how much longer can we travel, even in a healthy world?) Neither of us is seriously unhealthy, but we’re not models of fitness, either. One of us is inclined to a “the world is a dangerous place” point of view; and the other, to something more like “the world has dangers, always has and always will, but is not dangerous per se.” If we get the tickets and make at least initial accommodations reservations, which won’t be an insignificant splurge for our just-retired selves, can we be reimbursed if the situation changes drastically? And so on.

Compounding the uncertainty is that we’d made no serious alternative plans. We know that the lease on our apartment is up in early June. We’d “planned,” sort of, that when we returned from Europe we’d visit with various family members and then set off to tour the US for a while, by car. (It would be at this point that we’d acquire a Pooch II, to accompany us.) And then, finally, we’d settle down somewhere. House, apartment, condo, whatever. It was all a bit vague.

But if you subtract that initial six-month plan, however rough-cut it might be… well, the rest of it all goes to hell.

We could switch the Europe-then-US sequence, of course — with the understanding that we will of course (duh) be another year older in a year; that the state of the world, vis-a-vis “the” coronavirus, is even less certain one year out than it is now; and that if we acquire Pooch II and travel the US, we’ll have to face the trauma of separation from the creature (and vice-versa) for six months, since we couldn’t realistically expect to travel overseas with him/her/it.

We’ll wait a couple more weeks before deciding for sure. A major change in circumstances — ours or the world — isn’t likely by then, we know. But for now, we’re all sixes-and-sevens.