If it weren’t for a certain virus plaguing the world at this moment, more than half the American population — an estimated 57 percent — would be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday. Cabbage consumption would have increased by 70 percent; 13 million pints of Guinness would have been consumed; rivers would have been dyed green; 70 percent of revelers would have worn green; and an estimated $245 million would have been spent worldwide on beer — much of which would have, of course, been green.

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - Orla Sweeney, manager of Connolly’s Irish pub in New York City, expected St. Patrick’s Day to once again be one of her bar’s most profitable days of the year.

Instead, the pub near Times Square was shuttered on Tuesday, like hundreds of thousands of dining establishments across the United States as state governments enforced closures to control the spread of COVID-19. Sweeney broke the news to her employees on Monday after Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered all restaurants to close that night, and they broke down in tears.

The Feast of St. Patrick is subdued this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Touchstone events, such as New York’s parade, were wisely postponed for the first time since 1762.

March 17 is a bigger deal in America than in Ireland. There was no doubt whom the Irish were back home: known and persecuted for their Catholic faith, Celtic ethnicity, Gaelic language (spoken out “beyond the Pale”), and rebel tendencies.