I guess you could say I was done in by the coronavirus without ever having contracted the disease.

At least that’s what I’ve written in response to those who have expressed surprise that I retired from teaching. It caught me by surprise, too.

I was thoroughly enjoying the job - possibly more so than ever before - before last year’s shutdown. I thought I’d teach this year for sure and probably three or four more.

But on Aug. 11, I attended a virtual In-Service day explaining the ways classroom instruction would change in the Palmerton Area School District as a result of the coronavirus. Many of the things I do best and enjoy the most in class would now need to take a back seat on the “new normal” school bus.

Information technology, something I already feared was being used too extensively - and often as a babysitter or time killer - would now drive it.

School just wasn’t going to be school. After more than 36 mostly fulfilling years in the classroom, I didn’t want my last ones to be ineffectual and frustrating, so I bowed out.

Now I did not write about my retirement in the hope of getting job offers ... but if a few local businesses do need some writing or editing done, I’ll gladly hear them out. I did so because it’s typical of the myriad of the changes created by the coronavirus unforeseen only months ago.

Who, for instance, would have predicted in February what ABC News reported this July? That the food service industry would lose almost $120 billion in sales in the first three months of the pandemic (let alone that there would be a pandemic!) and more than 15,000 restaurants would close permanently?

Certainly not the president. On Feb. 10 at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, he said, “Looks like by April ... when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

But here’s a prediction I’m willing to make - and even bet on with a hefty part of my pension! - based on that ABC News report. That 1,500,000 Americans, the equivalent of 100 people for every restaurant lost, lost weight and significantly improved their health during the pandemics’ first three months.

Last January, the Journal of Nutrition published a report compiled by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. The report reviewed data already accrued as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) on more than 35,000 American adults who dined at full-service, fast-casual, or fast-food restaurants over a period of 13 years.

It used a dietary assessment created by the American Heart Association (AHA) to evaluate foods and determine whether they favorably or adversely affect your heart and metabolism.

According to it, restaurant meals do not fare well.

In the most recent NHANES data gathered between 2015 and 2016, 50 percent of full-service restaurant meals received a “poor” rating. Predictably, fast-food restaurant meals received a “poor” rating even more frequently: 70 percent of the time.

But what’s especially noteworthy from the Tufts University review is the likelihood of eating a meal at a full-service or fast-food restaurant that receives an AHA “ideal” rating.

It’s 10 times less than 1 percent.

That’s another way to say 1 in a 1000, and why my prediction that 1.5 million Americans lost weight and significantly improved their health during the first three months of the pandemic is simply an understanding of cause and effect.

The NHANES study found that between 2003 and 2016, the average American received 21 percent of their calories from restaurant meals. More often than not, those calories are not healthy ones.

In the final year of the study, restaurant meals earned a collective score of 37 percent when the AHA assessment is translated into a percentage. That’s 21 percent below a passing grade in the Palmerton Area schools - at least before the nobody-fails rule instituted during last year’s shutdown.

Just before last year’s shutdown, I reminded one class of something Shakespeare wrote: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” What I’d like to think is that there’s a silver lining in the coronavirus cloud.

That America’s consumption of fewer “poor” quality full-service and fast-food meals will continue as the restaurant industry rebounds.

But I’m not delusional.

I know restaurants owners need to turn an immediate profit, so they won’t suddenly create a new menu that focuses on health as much as taste - and profit. But if restaurant goers stop ordering the “poor” quality meals, menus will eventually change.

Remember, by the AHA’s form of assessment, 50 percent of full-service restaurant items are considered “intermediate,” hardly “ideal,” but much better certainly than “poor.”

Order those items repeatedly and menus will change. It’s cause and effect.

You can bet on it.