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mallorys_cameraMr. Pugliesi—Not His Real Name! — was coughing so hard, I fully expected bits of lung to explode from his mouth. I figured they would look like pieces of coral only coated with bloody, gooey froth.
He was grey. I mean, like for real.
He was also sweating profusely.
Bari, where Mr. Pugliesi is from, is 500 miles away from Veneto, the Italian coronavirus epicenter, and of course, Mr. Pugliesi hadn’t set foot in Bari in years.
Nevertheless, I found myself uneasy: What if coronavirus virions were actually aliens from the planet Glork orbiting Proxima Centauri b, and they had developed collective consciousness and could jump backwards and forwards in time and space so that they had infected Mr. Pugliesi—details on the mechanisms behind cross-geo-chrono transmission shaky, I admit—so that he was Patient Zero in the great Hudson Valley Covid-19 epidemic?
I was bound to get coronavirus, too, right?
###
Legacy of my RN days: I always travel with bottles of hand sanitizer.
I think I used up half my current bottle solving Mr. Pugliesi’s tax problems.
Hand sanitizer does absolutely nothing to airborne respiratory droplets, of course.
And I was pretty pissed off that Mr. Pugliesi had shown up at all.
Was Mr. Pugliesi showing off how American he had become? Is this a peculiarly American phenomenon? To parade your mettle and your commitment to the Puritan virtue of Hard Work by showing up at your workplace or whatever other ordeals of duty are on your daily list when common sense dictates self-quarantine?
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Mr. Pugliesi is a chef, by the way.
I made a careful mental note of the name of the restaurant that employs him so that I would never, ever eat there.
###
The CDC is telling us the pandemic isn’t a matter of if but when.
I’m not sure how helpful this kind of rhetoric is.
If I were the CDC’s PR flack, I would have stuck to statistics. People seldom erupt in irrational panic when you barrage them with statistics because numbers make most people’s eyes glaze over.
Of course, the best part about reading about some great disaster taking place in some part of the world that’s far away from you is all those stories about empty supermarket shelves. You plan your own Disaster Shopping List!
Let’s see, I’ll want to buff up my immune system, you think. That means vitamin D and vitamin E and vitamin B6 and selenium and zinc!
Fortunately for me, I’ve always been fond of tinned sardines and kippers, so on my way home from TaxBwana, I ducked into Ocean State Lots and bought a whole mess of them.
And then ducked into CVC and bought more hand sanitizer.
###
Honestly, though? I can’t quite figure out why this particular coronavirus strain seems to be panicking the world to such a degree that economic supply chains are being disrupted at a massive level. At 2.3%, its death toll is considerably less than MERS or SARS.
I mean, c’mon—it is not the fucking bubonic plague.
It’s a mutated form of a virus that’s been causing common cold symptoms forever. One would assume that most people with reasonably healthy immune systems have some level of preexisting immunity.
Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to kill children at high rates. It targets Boomers like me! Since we're such a drain on the health care system and the patience of our Millennial children and grandchildren, why not kill us off? Coronavirus is doing the world a favor! Bernie Sanders might win the Presidency after all! Unless he, too, dies of coronavirus!
Also, men have a much higher probability of dying from it than women do (and one might think that would give some clue as to its mechanism of action; there’s possibly something on the X chromosome that helps immunity.) And its comorbidity rates are highest with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, which is also interesting since as a respiratory virus, one might hypothesize that its highest comorbidity rate would be with chronic respiratory diseases.
Anyway.
Enough dithering for one morning.
He was grey. I mean, like for real.
He was also sweating profusely.
Bari, where Mr. Pugliesi is from, is 500 miles away from Veneto, the Italian coronavirus epicenter, and of course, Mr. Pugliesi hadn’t set foot in Bari in years.
Nevertheless, I found myself uneasy: What if coronavirus virions were actually aliens from the planet Glork orbiting Proxima Centauri b, and they had developed collective consciousness and could jump backwards and forwards in time and space so that they had infected Mr. Pugliesi—details on the mechanisms behind cross-geo-chrono transmission shaky, I admit—so that he was Patient Zero in the great Hudson Valley Covid-19 epidemic?
I was bound to get coronavirus, too, right?
###
Legacy of my RN days: I always travel with bottles of hand sanitizer.
I think I used up half my current bottle solving Mr. Pugliesi’s tax problems.
Hand sanitizer does absolutely nothing to airborne respiratory droplets, of course.
And I was pretty pissed off that Mr. Pugliesi had shown up at all.
Was Mr. Pugliesi showing off how American he had become? Is this a peculiarly American phenomenon? To parade your mettle and your commitment to the Puritan virtue of Hard Work by showing up at your workplace or whatever other ordeals of duty are on your daily list when common sense dictates self-quarantine?
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Mr. Pugliesi is a chef, by the way.
I made a careful mental note of the name of the restaurant that employs him so that I would never, ever eat there.
###
The CDC is telling us the pandemic isn’t a matter of if but when.
I’m not sure how helpful this kind of rhetoric is.
If I were the CDC’s PR flack, I would have stuck to statistics. People seldom erupt in irrational panic when you barrage them with statistics because numbers make most people’s eyes glaze over.
Of course, the best part about reading about some great disaster taking place in some part of the world that’s far away from you is all those stories about empty supermarket shelves. You plan your own Disaster Shopping List!
Let’s see, I’ll want to buff up my immune system, you think. That means vitamin D and vitamin E and vitamin B6 and selenium and zinc!
Fortunately for me, I’ve always been fond of tinned sardines and kippers, so on my way home from TaxBwana, I ducked into Ocean State Lots and bought a whole mess of them.
And then ducked into CVC and bought more hand sanitizer.
###
Honestly, though? I can’t quite figure out why this particular coronavirus strain seems to be panicking the world to such a degree that economic supply chains are being disrupted at a massive level. At 2.3%, its death toll is considerably less than MERS or SARS.
I mean, c’mon—it is not the fucking bubonic plague.
It’s a mutated form of a virus that’s been causing common cold symptoms forever. One would assume that most people with reasonably healthy immune systems have some level of preexisting immunity.
Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to kill children at high rates. It targets Boomers like me! Since we're such a drain on the health care system and the patience of our Millennial children and grandchildren, why not kill us off? Coronavirus is doing the world a favor! Bernie Sanders might win the Presidency after all! Unless he, too, dies of coronavirus!
Also, men have a much higher probability of dying from it than women do (and one might think that would give some clue as to its mechanism of action; there’s possibly something on the X chromosome that helps immunity.) And its comorbidity rates are highest with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, which is also interesting since as a respiratory virus, one might hypothesize that its highest comorbidity rate would be with chronic respiratory diseases.
Anyway.
Enough dithering for one morning.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 03:49 pm (UTC)I've been preparing, and need to by a fever thermometer today.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 04:54 pm (UTC)I think I'm starting to have allergies to early spring molds or something. Highly unpleasant!
no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 05:08 pm (UTC)I'm highly allergic to molds as well. In fact, I could probably have a profitable sideline renting myself out to building inspectors, since my lungs start filling up with fluid at the slightest mold infestation.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 05:13 pm (UTC)have a happy pandemic
Date: 2020-02-26 08:15 pm (UTC)And you're right, it's not like the plague at all. It's not even like the 1918 flu (except in having the same fatality rate) because people who tend to die from it are NOT in the 20-40 year age range. I forget what 20th cent. author it was who was left crying in his crib as a baby because both his parents had keeled over dead .... mmmmm which is something that won't happen* with COVID 19, so yay!
*much, statistically speaking
Re: have a happy pandemic
Date: 2020-02-27 01:26 pm (UTC)Which is irrelevant, of course, 'cause your daughters are not gonna get coronavirus! 😃
Re: have a happy pandemic
Date: 2020-02-27 02:08 pm (UTC)Oh I don't know. I think many, many people may have the coronavirus by now. I have a headache and a cough--I could have it! Or just a cold. *shrug* We only know about cases where people have been tested, but if people can have it and be asymptomatic--which seems to be the case--I'm pretty sure it's all over by now. It's just a matter of when/how many serious cases eventually appear.
I'm sending that stuff over to be a mom doing-a-thing, but I don't really think it makes much difference.
Re: have a happy pandemic
Date: 2020-02-27 02:17 pm (UTC)OMG! You have a headache and a cough? What if you've given me coronavirus by commenting in my journal? 😀
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases. Flu season is usually over by the end of March, so we have maybe two more weeks of coronavirus hysteria to look forward to. Make the most of it! 😀
Yeah, I knew you were Momming with the Airborne. Still, my inner consumer advocate couldn't help chiming in. 😀
no subject
Date: 2020-02-28 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-28 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-28 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-28 02:54 pm (UTC)Well. I don't think we're doomed.
At least.
We're not doomed from Covid-19.
We may be doomed by the fact that our entire economy is a very fragile infrastructure, and we've been lied to about that for a really long time. The Covid-19 hysteria is a kind of inverse bubble. But it's having a very real effect on supply chains.