Golis: This week brought to you by doubt and confusion

If you weren't left unsettled by the news in recent days, consider yourself among the lucky ones.

This week we learned more people are suffering from the coronavirus, more people have died and people diagnosed with the virus are hospitalized in Sonoma County.

You know the drill. Wash your hands. Cough or sneeze into your elbow. Don't touch your face. Stay home when you're sick. Get a flu shot.

Most of all, manage stress by being kind and patient with yourself and with others.

In the coming days, people will be weighing the available information and trying to figure out what to do about the coronavirus. Should we add to our store of groceries? Cancel travel plans?

Asked twice if he would want his family to travel to Disney World, Vice President Mike Pence never quite answered the question. “Look,“ he said at last, “this is a time to use common sense. It's a good time to wash your hands.”

Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

Amid the uncertainty, my wife and I were scheduled to travel by air on Monday. Since the odds of contracting the coronavirus remain low, we, of course, kept to our travel plans.

Well, no. We canceled the trip.

Whether this was an act of discretion or something else, you (and Vice President Pence) will need to decide.

This was the week when the travel market was awash in bargains, when bumping elbows became the cool way to greet friends, when the price of hand sanitizer went through the roof (and people shared recipes to make their own.)

This was the week when people tired of singing “Happy Birthday to you” discovered alternative songs, hereafter known as hand-washing choruses.

And this was the week we were left saddened and anxious by the spread of COVID-19 and by the number of people who died from the illness.

Our anxiety was rooted in all that we don't know about this virus, plus the nagging sense that the Trump administration is late in its response. The rush of mixed messages from the White House is confusing, and it doesn't help that masks and test kits are in short supply. (If the president wants to understand why a leader's credibility matters, he only needs to examine the public's skepticism about the administration's handling of the current crisis.)

******

While people were agonizing over what do about the coronavirus, California Democrats were agonizing over a different sort of dilemma - their Super Tuesday primary choice.

Their conversations usually began with the same six words: I don't know what to do.

For Bernie Sanders supporters, the choice was simple. Everyone else was left to worry about whether they should vote for the candidate they liked or for the candidate best able to gain 15% of the vote and reduce Sanders' delegate total.

Opinion polls were no help. Joe Biden finished second in California with a quarter of the votes cast, a week after polls suggested he might receive half that many votes.

Democrats who waited until election day because they couldn't decide did avoid landing among the folks who voted early, only to see their candidate withdraw in the last 72 hours before election day.

The process doesn't always make sense. Sanders appeared on his way to the nomination based on results from three atypical states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada) - states whose combined population is less than a fifth of California's population.

Sanders then won Super Tuesday's biggest prize, California, only to find out that he was no longer the front-runner. After winning 10 of 14 state primaries on Tuesday, Biden now leads in the delegate count.

Some other takeaways from Tuesday's election:

- People will debate whether hefty bankrolls on both sides affected the outcome of Measure I, the sales tax extension for Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit. But the stinging defeat becomes a red flag warning about SMART's propensity for shooting itself in the foot. If you're writing a book about alienating voters in advance of an election, you could devote a whole chapter to SMART. If officials don't get it right for the next tax election, they won't like what comes after that.

- Chris Coursey, who won election to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, now must wait 10 months before he takes the oath of office. The early primary gives California the opportunity to make an impact on the presidential nominating process, but it's weird that so much time will pass before the voters get the guy they chose to represent them.

Coursey used to write a newspaper column. So, if nothing else, his election proves that even newspaper columnists can find redemption. Hold the thought.

Then go wash your hands.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.