Corona Virus Diary #6

Corona Virus Diary # 6

It gets more difficult every week, to find enough corona related events to make mention of. My peers and I typically cite our exhaustion with the news. The media likewise has abated with news, at least so far as it is relevant. Those outlets are reliant on informing people that some celebrity's cousin has died as a result of the virus and to point out the recklessness of POTUS. The latter has become tedious long before this virus made news and then pandemic. We know that the Commander in Chief will lie, exaggerate and change his story routinely. This personal failure has not been news for many years and plugging it into stories of Covid 19 does not change that. Likewise the outraged and indignant presentation by all the talking head at Fox News is now just a trope. People who want misinformation and propaganda rather than informed information that is data driven will continue to use Fox as their source. People who eschew such nonsense will get news from genuine sources. The latter should have stopped slapping their foreheads every time some Hannity or Limbaugh says something absurd.

I have been watching more television during this lull in the action and have noticed the style of television advertisement. Apparently every company that can afford a commercial wants us to know that they are available for services because they are concerned with our health and they admire first responders and medical professionals.

Then they intend to sell us high fat foods, plenty of sugar and provide us with cures and relief from things that we did not know were ever an issue. The examples are legion but I'll just provide onethat I saw the other day.

On a daily basis there are several mentions in the news, of how the environment is faring during this pandemic. It is essentially good news and often presented asif ironic. Simply taking a few moments to reflect on events, it is obvious that with less traffic, many businesses shuttered at least temporarily and people home schooling, less impact on the environment is being made. It is not ironic and is temporary.

We know that it is short lived since we can look at the organized MAGA hat wearers including politicians, who are demanding a lifting of quarantines and suggested safety measures imposed by local governments that are taking their cues from scientific data rather than misrepresentations suggested from the White House and its favorite news sources.

Locally one of our representatives, Eileen Quiring (elected on the curious motto “a republican you can trust”) joined protesters in Olympia and tells the media “the natives are getting restless”. Her electors and the POTUS undoubtedly love this nonsense.

Once released (or releasing themselves) from the prescriptions of this virus, it seems certain that all measurable environmental improvements will return to as they were around March 10^th of this year. No one is going to learn a lesson from any of this.

I am running out of things to say so now I present some historic context.

I and everyone I have contact with are still healthy.

Corona Virus #5

Corona Virus Diary #5

Not much is new enough to mention here. I see that CIC supporters are pretending to protest the health and safety related quarantines. From what I read, these are more Trump Rallies than a legitimate posing of potential legal or social issues that may require changes. Everybody wants the economy to get back to full swing. Most of us do not want that at the expense of innumerable deaths and the costs of medical treatment.

At least on the surface, one could argue that the POTUS and his minions do not care much about the health of the society. Since it is the weakest (physically as well as economically) that are more apt to die from this that maybe stripping all quarantine will rid society of those less worthy. I have not yet read an argument against that notion. Where is Jonathon Swift when we need him?

One particular issue that is in high gear is that of wearing masks. Since the common surgical or industrial masks are a rare commodity we all have seen instructions of how to make our own mask. Here are my instructions for making a mask:

1.      Purchase a strip of velcro many years ago

2.      Try to remember why you bought it and why you have saved a 6 inch remnant of that original role

3.      Go to the towel drawer in the kitchen that includes a large handkerchief type of cloth (plaid preferred)

4.      Wonder how you came to possess this cloth-from whence did it find its way into the drawer

5.      Fold the cloth in half

6.      Fold it again in half but rather than have the two ends meet in the middle, leave about an inch between the two ends

7.      Cut the strip of Velcro roughly in half

8.      Lay one part of the Velcro at the end of one of the ends of the folded cloth

9.      Since you have no thread or a needle to sew the strip of Velcro onto get your stapler out and staple the strip to the end of the cloth with at least two staples

10.  Take the second strip of Velcro-the opposite knap of the first and adhere it to the first strip

11.  Stretch it over the one inch gap and across to the other end of the folded cloth

12.  Staple it to the cloth so that you end up with a connecting tie between the two ends of folded cloth

13.  Peel the two pieces of Velcro from each other and wrap the cloth across your face including your nose and re-adhere the two pieces of Velcro

14.  When you where it the first time, cloth fibers perhaps, induce you to a sneezing fit among other costumers at the local grocery store

When you are complete of this project, you will look as I did below  

I probably should have worn a hat

Corona virus #4

Corona virus #4

It’s been over a month since I last ate or drink any provisions from a food establishment. I wonder when the last time that happened. Probably before I was in high school. But that is not tragic.

What is tragic is how republicans and their minions are making this whole mess and the government’s response to it, a political game. The POTUS has tossed sops to all of us and boons to businesses-and he wants no restrictions or over sight. History does not suggest that tycoons find largesse during times like this. It does suggest that the degree of profiteering will go up.

Potus is intent on making board members and stockholders get their due quickly and among his dubious exhortations, is an optimism that is unwarranted. He also originally appointed Mike Pence to head up the government response and Pence becomes mute. The legitimate epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks after the commander in chief has bumbled and lied his way through another of his daily updates. When leadership is required this is what we get. In the Portland newspaper I saw today, an editorial by Steve Duin that makes this obvious.

When you mix science with politics you get politics and nobody but the Executive Branch, the Senate and all of their minions will throw a screen up to blur their own duplicity in this. Hopefully if the POTUS lifts quarantine bans, governors and the common man will ignore that and stay sequestered until the disease is genuinely contained.

There is also the issue of miracle cures touted by many and accelerated by many in the media and on the World Wide Web that are either not tested or inefficiently done so. I see them everywhere these days and hear people extol their virtues with only the information provided by a media talking head. You cannot make people think for themselves. They would have to break the barriers presented by authority figures like Sean Hannity. Rudy Giuliani, himself just a self-promoting huckster also sings the praises saying of the charlatan doctor Zelinko, which he is “thinking of solutions, just like the president.”

In other news there is no other news from me. Everything in my personal life is a clone of the one that occurred a week ago. That is a good thing too because in my case no news is good news. I am reading considerably and was allured by Montaigne’s essay On Experience which is much about self-quarantine during the time of one of Europe’s plagues. Here is a reference to that from TheParis Review. Lastly for today is some further details about Montaigne and this essay.

Corona Virus Diary #3

Corona Virus #3

Since I have never watched any of those zombie apocalypse movies (or pick your most favored and feared metaphysical ogre) I cannot say much about their content. However there are plenty of trailers showing scenes like hordes of invaders and entrenched yet intrepid heroes ready to fight them. Those enemies now are out to steal your toilet paper. POTUS has ensured that we can hunker down and protect our loved ones as we can equally protect our possessions and thus gun shops are deemed essential. News of valiant attempts to protect ourselves are a new well spring of newsitems in a world where everything is virus related.  

There are naysayers too. Some who preach that this is overplayed, even a hoax. This is a well-played ruse I guess. There are millions who pretend to have gotten the illness and many who have succumbed to it all for the practical joke of a hoax.

The erstwhile “think tank” called the Hoover Institute hosts RichardEpstein among other propagandists who feel that this all a big hype. He only can convince his own choir and it is easy to do amongst those minions. You can do it too and here are a few ways to do that. You use scornful similes and metaphors and direct them to the “left” (which means all who do not agree with you or the Hoover Institute. You also use verbiage that suggests that those people are lying. You hint that the Chinese have set this virus purposefully in motion and that Italy and Spain are deceptive about their own tactics to tame this disease. You also ignore the fact that America is the world leader in the number of corona virus cases. I guess if this is a hoax those numbers mean nothing. When you don’t have the virus as a foe you can also bring up a true straw dog like socialism.

In other news it seems that every day there is a report about environmental changes that are the result of severely limited automobile driving and factory output. I have to imagine that many flights have been cancelled though I have not investigated. While most all of us are self-quarantining, the earth and atmosphere are breathing a little easier. The web site Space.com printed one such article about the increase in the ozone layer due to reduction of emissions. The science magazine Nautilus has an article about how nature acts when human involvement in it are reduced.  

Anyway the knowledge that this illness is at best a hoax and at worst simply overstated, be sure to attend (along with as many others as possible) your big fundamentalist church so that you can spiritually and more importantly, emotionally reinvigorate as well as to tithe that preacher. Since the NRA doesn’t care about you and POTUS doesn’t either, they only have eyes for each other, buy your new gun. I think that a well-placed silver bullet to the heart of Dracula will keep your family safe.

Some personal news about myself is that nothing has changed. I don’t get out much but we have also had about 10 days of horrid weather. This next week is supposed to be pretty nice so I’ll do more hiking than the last several days. At the same time many (but not all) local parks are closed. I’ll have to make do with what I can.

My friends Arja and Rande came to Portland to visit their daughter in early (pre shut down) and had March 31 as their return flight to New Hampshire. I was not sure that flight would continue but it did and they sent photos of their cabin as they flew home (successfully).

Grocery stores are still open and they have not run out of beer-that is good. They do not have the masks that we are all urged by scientists and medical researchers to wear. Paper products despite being limited to the numbers one can purchase, are still gone almost immediately. There are cars other than mine on the roads on those purchase days (for me that is Sunday and Wednesday) but not many.

Several days ago I woke up with a mild sore throat which for me has usually been the harbinger of a common cold but I jotted down the occurrence. I did not have that symptom the next day but did have a mild headache. This was a tad alarming since I cannot recall the last time I had a headache. It has been several years now since the last one. So I jotted that down. I also have had a bit of vertigo the other day but dizziness is something I have lived with. You may have noticed it yourself if you have been in my presence.

Anyway the headache which was mild enough to only notice if I actually thought about it disappeared after a few hours or maybe even less. I took note of my overall physical wellbeing for a few days but since with the exception of a little light-headedness I have symptoms of nothing.

Every spring I am a little happier and part of that because along with returning swallows is the opening of the baseball season. Should there be a 2020 baseball season it will be particularly joyful as it will mark the end of this year’s pandemic.