I’ve had it so good in this world, you know. The odds were fifty-to-one against me being born in the United States in 1930. I won the lottery the day I emerged from the womb by being in the United States instead of in some other country where my chances would have been way different.

Imagine there are two identical twins in the womb, both equally bright and energetic. And the genie says to them, ‘One of you is going to be born in the United States, and one of you is going to be born in Bangladesh. And if you wind up in Bangladesh, you will pay no taxes. What percentage of your income would you bid to be the one that is born in the United States?’ It says something about the fact that society has something to do with your fate and not just your innate qualities. The people who say, ‘I did it all myself,’ and think of themselves as Horatio Alger — believe me, they’d bid more to be in the United States than in Bangladesh. That’s the Ovarian Lottery.

— Warren Buffett, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”

Do you know how insanely lucky most of us who are alive right now are?

If you’re reading this, you’re living in the most advanced epoch in the history of human beings. The most modern version of man came onto the scene, somewhere in what is now Africa, anywhere from 1.3 to 1.5 million years ago. The time that’s followed has seen the species evolve … kinda. But what we have now is far better than the fire-starting and rock-throwing crowd.

Just being here, in 2020, makes you better off than those over the centuries who dealt with pain by using leeches, for example, or stuck their head in a bowl with electric fish.

If you’re reading this in a house, or apartment, you have it really good compared to all but a fraction of all the human beings who’ve ever lived on the planet. And if your home or apartment is heated or has air conditioning, you’re even better off than just about every other homo sapiens, ever.

If you’re reading this on a laptop, or an iPad, you’re almost certainly in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent of every person ever when it comes to income, education and level of comfort. And your good fortune — again, compared to the whole of human history — only improves depending on your gender, race, economic station, etc.

So the notion that we may be deprived of being able to go to an NBA game, or attend the NCAA men’s or women’s basketball tournaments, or that we may not be able to see our favorite band in concert, or go to that convention because of the coronavirus … are you serious? Are you really complaining about that?

We just stood upright about 10 minutes ago.

We have to stop doing everything that isn’t essential. Now.

Check your privilege at the door. Stop resorting to third-grade arguments: Well, I don’t feel sick; why should I be deprived of my first-world fun?

We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. This particular coronavirus causes a disease called COVID-19, which is at least 10 times more deadly than the regular flu, according to testimony given by the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases before Congress on Tuesday. It’s extremely contagious, and our best medical minds around the world have absolutely no idea how many people have the disease. We have about two weeks to get on top of this thing, or we’re going to be dangerously close to having to go through what Italy is going through now. You remember Italy; it’s the country whose entire population is on lockdown. Whose businesses — all of them, other than pharmacies and supermarkets — are about to be shut down so people don’t congregate and make each other sicker. Three weeks ago, Italy had fewer cases of the coronavirus than we did.

So there was no decision for the NBA to make Wednesday. It had to put its season on hold — now. Immediately.

On Tuesday, I wrote that the league had to seriously consider pushing its schedule back at least a couple of weeks, and consider moving everything further back into summer, until we — human beings — have more information about the virus. But I allowed that there could be games played in empty arenas, as the NCAA has decided to do for March Madness, and numerous college conferences have done and are doing for their respective tournaments. But Wednesday’s cancellation of the Thunder-Jazz game in Oklahoma City just before tipoff, with fans in their seats at Chesapeake Energy Arena, with no one having any idea of what was happening before The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, was scary stuff. It was jarring. No one knew why the game was suddenly postponed, but everyone was thinking the same thing.

And that’s a nightmare scenario.

You can’t have players, coaches, staff, fans, security, vendors, ticket takers — everyone — scared to death and not getting up-to-the-second information. I’m not blaming anyone; it would be impossible to disseminate that kind of information without running into HIPAA laws and the like that protect patient confidentiality. So … you might be sick, really ill, but we can’t tell you for sure, or how, or why. Don’t kiss grandma when you get home.

Many others have pointed this out, so it’s not like it’s a revelation: If one person, whether he or she is a player, coach, team official or someone connected to a team, winds up testing positive for the coronavirus, the entire league has to shut down. Everyone on that team has to be quarantined for at least a couple of weeks, which would impact every upcoming team on its schedule, not to mention every team it has played in, say, the last month. I’m not assuming there’s anyone else in the league with the virus, but there isn’t a control group on Earth with more contact with more people around the world than the 30 NBA teams.

And every other major sports league will have to shut down, too.

This isn’t a game. Americans don’t have superior genes. Germs don’t recognize borders. We have to do everything possible to keep the disease from growing exponentially and overwhelming our existing hospital systems around the country. If the virus spreads, it will swamp the available hospital beds, ventilators and other medical devices — which means someone you love who suddenly falls ill, and maybe not from the coronavirus, will have that much more difficulty getting immediate care and treatment.

Every time you have a large group of people together, it increases the chance of the virus spreading, and almost always, unwittingly: The people who have it often don’t know they have it, nor do the people who contract it from them. You have to eliminate everything that can help spread it, until we can find out with certainty exactly who has it, as well as develop enough tests to make a real dent in the population — and then we can work on potential vaccines and cures. But we have to stop the spread first.

Giving the NBA a timeout helps to do that, just as canceling parades, concerts and conventions do too. Stop it. Stop all of it. Now.

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)