"I go to the store and I am paralyzed," said Mr. Etzioni.
"I thought he died or was paralyzed," said Bob Burnquist, the winner of the Big Air event, his eyes red from crying.
But by then, Mrs. Vliatsi, a retired school janitor whose left arm is paralyzed, said authorities could do little.
"The trade policy of the European Union is paralyzed," said the Italian minister of economic development, Carlo Calenda, during a recent interview in Rome.
"The dissident movement is practically paralyzed," said Vladimiro Roca, who was freed last year after four years in jail for criticizing Mr. Castro's economic policies.
"They are paralyzed," said Mario Daneels, a Belgian writer who first revealed in a book published in 1999 that Albert fathered an illegitimate child in 1968 with his mistress then, a Belgian aristocrat.
"We are in a standstill and things are paralyzed," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, a prominent Shiite politician and former vice president of Iraq, describing the process of political reconciliation among Iraq's three main factions, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
"The risk is that there will be no agreement on the nature of public spending reductions and that on this key issue a coalition or minority government will be paralyzed," said Miles Templeman, director general of the Institute of Directors, which represents small and medium-size businesses.
"He's cautious but not to the point of being paralyzed," says Duke University ecologist Norman Christensen.
"The city was paralyzed," said an office worker who hid for hours inside a building.
