money over life

"WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!"
That is copied from a trump tweet about the 15 day social distancing that ends the first week of April.
It is in response to human deaths versus a Bear Stock Market.
If this was an O'Henry story, the president would go with the money, then lose the person he loved most to this virus. Unfortunately, it's no short story, and his malignant narcissism guarantees that the only one he could lose in that category, is himself. I'm not sure how O'Henry could spin that to make it poignant.

But enough about crazy people.

I'm quite sure, there are plenty of people out there that agree with him. They feel themselves above the hoi polloi. They consider this might be a great way to cleanse the planet of some of those 7.8 billion people crammed across the surface.
I'm thinking they don't understand the nature of disease--especially contagious disease.
The virus doesn't care if you are rich or important, powerful or beautiful. It doesn't care if you wear designer suits or work out three times a day and only drink imported glacial water out of lead crystal disposable bottles.
The virus, this virus, causes respiratory symptoms, and is spread by coughing and sneezing. It lives on surfaces anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days, depending on the surface, the temperature and humidity.
If you touch that surface before it has been adequately disinfected with appropriate chemicals, you are exposed to the virus. If you wash your hands after that, but before touching you face or any other surfaces or clothing or eyes or food, your exposure will not lead to infection. But if you, say, touch the back of a chair that someone coughed on 15 minutes before you got there, then straighten your tie, or scratch your leg through your pants or comb back your hair with that hand, or god forbid, go somewhere and eat a meal without thoroughly washing that hand (or after washing those hands, straighten that tie-again, or scratch you leg-again or tidy your hair-again, you are going to eat that virus.
Stomach acid is pretty effective, but on the way down there is the respiratory tract.
Obviously, getting coughed on or sneezed on is a more direct source but talk to those healthcare workers in the 1980's that caught HIV from the environment--oh yeah, you can't.

https://www.livescience.com/3686-gross-science-cough-sneeze.html

Now, let us look at our exposure.

I'm basically a hermit on a good day.
I saw no one yesterday.
I saw my granddaughter and daughter the day before.
I saw my granddaughter the day before that.
I went to the grocery store the day before that.  I consciously avoided getting within 5 foot of anyone except the grocery check-out clerk.

My daughter has a male friend she sees frequently.  And she and my granddaughter went to see a friend of hers for a couple of hours.  My granddaughter babysat 2 kids the day before that.  My daughter was still going to working and seeing clients--multiple clients--until three days before that.

Have I been exposed to anyone that has been exposed?
I was in close proximaty to only 3 people.
But I touched a touch screen while paying and a grocery cart (wipes were empty) and have no idea who might have touched the containers of the food I purchased, even in the 3 hours to 3 days before I grabbed them off the shelf.
I touched the bags, hanging on the racks and turned by the clerk's hand as the clerk fills them.
The clerks were too busy to spray or wipe the conveyor belt between customers.

Then, there is the secondary contact with everyone the three people I've been near.  Seven to 21 days of secondary contact that might have sneezed or coughed near them or on a surface they touched.

I woke up coughing and sneezing yesterday and declared--"NO VISITORS" for 14 days.  My son, concerned, asked if I needed him to bring me anything.  I reassured him I am well stocked for at least a week.  My daughter asked if I was over-reacting.  My granddaughter was sad because I have Sims4 on my computer and its boring at home.

I have seen plenty of wealthy people already testing positive.
Around here, if you aren't about ready for ICU and a VENT, ER's are sending you home untested.  Lack of Tests, lack of Masks, lack of gloves--we are not ready.  Unlike Ebola, instead of spending months preparing for that first case so we could catch it before it was in the general population, we spent three months acting like china was over-reacting.  We had already dismantled the team that handled Ebola--and they did a great job--but it was an OBAMA team.  The Republic of the Congo should have been so lucky as to have our team.

But-----now it is messing with the economy.  Social distancing limits use of gasoline, shopping, impulse buying, planned elective surgeries. The stock markets are erratic in a big way.

Can losing 10 million people in the USA really be that bad?

Of course, that is in addition to the usual deaths by other causes.

Who are you ok with losing?

Social Distancing--how hard is that

I have a Prius and a tank of gas lasted me a month before Covid-19.  I'm not sure I'll need to gas up again before July these days.
I've gone through my calender and removed an annual eye exam--the first in three years.  I was looking forward to a new pair of glasses as I'm pretty hard on them.  I have postponed a crown for a crumbling filling also.
I'm not window shopping for cabinets for the kitchen or slowly walking down rows of 4" potted plants.
I'll be buying three 11x17 inch photo frames this month--online.
I went to a grocery store at 11 am on friday, a store that is never very busy, and is usually dead at that time on a weekday, and all the checkout aisles were open and backed up.  I literally needed wine, and while the ritual of a cork and breathing etc, pleases me like a pot of loose tea, I grabbed two boxes of cabernet.  I also picked up club soda, a roll of paper towels, and some flour.  All Items I had actually ran out of.
There were couples with two carts full in the line.  Obviously, they were not working on Friday.  And, I have heard about a lot of people losing jobs.
I also know that healthcare workers are not only on overtime, but if they had left patient care areas, they were being pulled back in.

My state, today, has 51 active cases, 1 person has recovered, and 1 person has died.  The person that died was younger than me and lived in my county.

My neighbor, in her 80s, still drives out for every meal, has people arrive to visit at least daily and sometimes multiple times a day.
The family on the other side has made no obvious changes to there routines.
Across the street, a small house with 4 vehicles that come and go constantly with frequent visitors.  Also no changes in social behavior.

I have a daughter and granddaughter that both walk over at will.  And before the firings started and the government committed to social distancing, I drove across town to deliver Green Shamrock Cookies.

If what I am seeing is a sign of how to well people are following directions, we are nowhere near the end of the spread of this disease.

It has been a confusing time.  China reached epidemic levels in December.  Obviously, the disease did not start the same day or week or even month that it was recognized as a potential pandemic.  Travel between China and other countries continued until the end of January.
Social Distancing wasn't suggested until March 16th.

Mixed messages are being delivered daily. It's a pandemic.  It's just a bad cold.  It's being played up by the democrats to divide us--to make trump look bad.  Its just a hoax--fake news.

So, I don't go window shopping---I have no insurance until I hit 65 and qualify for Medicare--another year to go.  But I don't cuss my children out for putting me at risk because seeing absolutely no one except through the window is too weird.

I stay busy.

My grandchildren's spring break, which just ended while being the most boring break of their short lives, now has at least 2 more weeks to go of staying at home.  Both mothers are now doing a work-from-home on computer type job.  My son is selling furniture.  That industry hasn't quite figured out what to do, but they are laying off a few people a day, making everyone anxious.  Reality is, there is no emergency room makeover.  The company is scared.

There is good news.
China reported no new cases yesterday.  Most of those diagnosed with the virus in china are now recovered. And china sent masks and tests to the USA.

We need to keep a fully staffed and funded Pandemic Team at the CDC--no more ending the things that ensure we are prepared.

The next time a president wants to cut the fat, start with his own vacation, golf and security costs.

COVID-19 and the world's gone mad.

First, let me start by saying that I'm an introvert: a retired, barely ever leaves the house despite being healthy, introvert that prefers pets and painting and tearing into a house destroying project over shopping, partying, or even family time.

Right after the Social Security check arrives, I go get some groceries every month.  This month, signs apologizing for no hand sanitizer (I  never buy that, I have a sink and soap and water--after 40 years as an RN, I realize that it's sometimes convenient but not a necessity) and almost no toilet paper, low on facial tissue also.

Peoples carts were overflowing.

I live in a state that rarely gets snow; you can count on a huge grocery store emptying after every prediction of snow.

The store and shoppers looked like that.

So, I contact someone I used to work with.  The state has had four positive tests for COVID-19.  No fatalities.
The Coronavirus group is known for the SARS outbreak and the MERS outbreak.
The current COVID-19 outbreak has killed more than 6 thousand worldwide, and 41 in the United states.  It first came to attention in China in December of 2019.  We in the USA didn't start testing for it until March of 2020.  A fourth of a year has passed.  I'm not going to comment on what is going on in the middle east, in China, or in Italy or Spain.  But here in the USA, where we dismantled the pandemic team put together for Ebola because the current president doesn't like the previous president and dismantles everything he did, we spent our 4 months of prep. time (was it prep time?  Just because we didn't test anyone or diagnose anyone, doesn't mean it wasn't here.) denying science(as usual), screaming about the virus being either a hoax or fake news or a democrat created biological warfare release (gotta love conspiracy theoriests) or hoax.  We refused the WHO tests, and waited for tests that needed to be created---by the inlaws family of the president.  Then we argued about how much to charge and since we didn't have that many, who could get tested.

Reality check time.

Between 1900 and 1904, one city in the USA--San Francisco, lost 113 people to the Bubonic plague.  (yes, the black death, the scourge of medieval Europe.)  One city, when every city was much smaller than it is today.
Between 1910 and 1912, China lost over 40,000 people to the same black plague disease.
In 1918, 50 to 100 million people died of the Spanish flu, (influenza A H1N1); that was about one twentieth to one fifth of the world population. That means, if you knew 5 people, one of them died. or 5-20 out of 100 people.  It wasn't absolutely fair, sometimes whole families died, sometimes whole towns missed it.
Between 1957 and 1958, 2 million people worldwide died of asian flu (influenza A H2N2).
Between 1968 and 1969, the Hong Kong flu killed about a million worldwide (influenza A H3N2)
Between 1920 and now, HIV/AIDS has killed over 32 million people world wide. That is an average of 320 thousand a year, (and yes, it has existed that long, but was mostly in Africa until the 1970's and the virus not identified until the 1980s)
In 2009, an H1N1 flu pandemic killed between 151 thousand and 575 thousand people world wide. (if you don't test anyone and have no hospitals, and no public health department, does it make a sound?)
In the last 10 years, Cholera has killed almost 10 thousand people on the little island of Hispaniola. In that same same time, measles has killed over 4500 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo--out of a population of 80 million.
In 2012, 862 people dieds of MERS--a corona Virus.
Between 2013 and 2016, more than 11 thousand people died of Ebola.
In 2015, over 2,000 people in India died of the Indian Swine Flu (another influenza A H1N1)
From 2018 to now, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 2,000 have died of Ebola and 5,000 of the Measles.
From 2019 to now, the COVID-19 virus has killed over 6,000 people worldwide--in about 4 months, over 40 of those in USA. (The US population is over 300 million)
Death by war worldwide in 2016 was over 100 thousand.
Suicide deaths the same year in the USA was over 45,000.
In 2017, there were over 39 thousand gun deaths, over 60 thousand drug overdose deaths, and over 45 thousand motor vehicle deaths in the USA.

We ignored the Corona Virus pandemic for 4 months and have lost >40 people.
We could have prevented that.   We laughed about it being no worse than the flu (note how often the Influenza A virus has created a deadly pandemic)
I think the panic is as much about a feeling that our government is not stable as it is about a virus.

I have no explanation for why all those highly preventable suicides, MVA's, and gun deaths are not causing any concern.

I guess that is not going to be fixed with hand sanitizer and toilet paper and a staycation.

Now, turn on the sink, wash your hands with a good load of soap until you have sung the entire happy birthday song at a regular speed, rinse off, grab a paper towel to turn off the water, and dry off your hand with a different paper towel. At home use a nice clean guest towel. And stop touching everybody and every thing.

Be Well and Be Calm.

addendum:  a week later, 49 people with the virus in this state and 1 death.  The groceru stores are now crowded all day long, toilet paper and hand sanitizer is gone; so are eggs.  Whole families came in to do the shopping.  Walmart, a block from the store I went to, is packed.  I am going to have to try the grocery pick up.  The store I went to at 1100 am on a friday is usually empty.