Triathlon and Coronavirus

I will reproduce what Irvin Yalom says about his way of learning what empathy is. 

Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34219966-becoming-myself

Empathy is what is needed in this coronavirus epidemic.  Most of us will not die from it, but we should have empathy for the most vulnerable people, elderly, chronically sick, etc.  Empathy is needed to improve as an athlete and human being.  It is something lacking in some athletes due to the policies followed by countries where the athlete is created by the system with the purpose of performing as such; Sun Yang is an example.  The developed nations create athletes with the purpose of creating a good human being, college sports were originated for this purpose.  Many filters are on the way in order to become professionals.  Athletes need to pass many filters to end up as professional players; even basketball or football players need to pass filters as school point average –it says a lot about focusing on things other than delinquency.  We have witnessed the problems with some basketball or football recruiters when the recruiters bypass the filters looking for performance without looking at creating a great human being; Aaron Hernandez and many others are examples.  Empathy is a sine-qua-non to create a good human being and coronavirus epidemic is an opportunity to learn it.  The same situation lived by Irvin Yalom when he was confronted by an angry father.

We know the rules to follow to avoid the spreading of the virus, hand washing, hand washing, hand washing, including the controversial mask. The following by Leora Horwitz, associate professor of population health and medicine at NYU Langone Health regarding spreading of the virus:

What are masks good for, then? First, they are crucial for people who have the disease. Remember those drops of saliva? Wearing a mask if you're sick can help catch a large number of them, greatly reducing the amount of virus that gets into the environment or onto other people. Second, they help health care workers, who are constantly in close contact with lots of sick people coughing in their faces, to avoid infection. Third, they may help you avoid infection if you live with someone who has the disease or, perhaps, if you live in an area with a very high rate of disease in the community, as long as you are careful not to touch your face more because of it.

Wearing a mask is not a big deal and it says how much empathy we have for the elderly, the chronically sick or our very small contribution to control the spreading of the virus.