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Got COVID?
Some of you have met my better half, JY. While I credit him with my conversion to conservatism, he didn’t work hard at it (even though he has an economic’s degree). When it comes to politics, he keeps a low profile; I’m the one who follows the day-to-day, the press conferences, the polls, and the commentators.
He has suffered a grueling commute for 30-plus years. We’ve joked that he’s the only person in LA who has fond memories of the LA riots as his time on the road was so reduced.
He feels similarly about COVID-19; he hasn’t missed a minute of work. In fact, the time saved on the road has been largely spent at work.
He runs a factory that has seen better days. But as the last domestic manufacturer of a type of construction equipment and with the presidency of DT, he and the owner have long felt that if they hung in there, it would be worth it. And that opportunity may have arrived.
He has not changed his life one bit due to COVID. We still see our circle of friends (one a front-line nurse) several times per week. We spend time with our family and grandchildren. We don’t dine out often, so the bars and restaurants being closed haven’t affected us much. He goes to work where no one wears a mask because they actually have to communicate with each other. He still shakes hands. He meets with vendors and visits their places of operation. He’s been nonchalant and indifferent, even though of all the people we know, we’re in the “danger zone” of 60-plus.
Bring up COVID with him and all you’ll hear about is his awesome 45-minute commute.
As I write this, he is undergoing a knee replacement surgery, long delayed thanks to COVID. Because of the operation, he had to get a COVID test and he got the results this am before the surgery.
That’s a negative, Ghost Rider.
The virus has never worried me. Glad I never lost a minute of sleep.
Published in General
Personally, I’m waiting for them to release Diet COVID to go with COVID Classic & New COVID.
So many people–my husband too–had to carry on as if there were no virus because they were “essential” that it pretty much completely contradicted whatever was causing the fear of human contact these past few months. And that’s a good thing.
Out of respect and gratitude for the people who have kept the country going through this pandemic, I think we should issue a simple list of dos and don’ts and be done with it now.
I spend most of my summer days outside in the yard, and I am afraid of disease-bearing ticks and mosquitoes. So I drench my clothes in DEET and carry on. :-)
(Speaking of which, has anyone tried DEET to kill this virus? :-) )
Good for him. I hope the knee surgery goes well. If he’s a regular commuter he may be into audiobooks, and I would be delighted to slip you a few freebies. I have 49 titles up on Audible right now, and review copies available for most of them. If he’s interested, have him search Audible for “Douglas R. Pratt” and if any of them look interesting, drop me a note here. I’ll send you the coupon codes.
Thanks @douglaspratt. He is a huge fan of audio books – downloaded a few last night since he won’t have my lovely company in the hospital for the next few days.
I’ll reach out when he’s recovering at home.
I feel duty bound to qualify what I wrote in comment 2:
I know that the good work of the medical community saved thousands of lives. I have only to look at what happened in places where people were packed together closely to know that the nation’s doctors’ advice to all of us last winter was sound. I will always be grateful that the leaders of our country took the actions they took, even though it brought them a lot of criticism.
I think it’s pretty much over for now, just as there is a flu season.
And I’m grateful to the people worked through it, enabling the rest of us to stay home and out of the virus’s way. :-)
It’s definitely worried me, but I have to say that I honestly do not know one single person who has or has had Covid-19. Not long ago we had an outdoor gathering around the pool (carefully observing social distancing) here in our condo complex consisting of 40 owners. I went around to each neighbor and asked if they knew anyone who had the virus, and every single one of them replied in the negative. I don’t wish to imply that the virus threat isn’t real or that the numbers are inflated as I would have no way of knowing.
I am curious as to how much of the economy was actually shuttered. I know it was a significant amount, but how much? There were certainly people put out of work and a slowdown in those parts of the economy that were deemed essential. How much of the empty shelves reflected hoarding as opposed to disruptions in various elements of supply chain that were incorporated into the missing products?
One of the reasons the “emergency” will persist without regard to medical data is retooling and production changes caused by responding to the emergency. There will be pressure to keep things in place while growing inventory has not yet been bought.
We have carried on as per normal as much as we could. We don’t eat out much either but I did miss my favorite Mexican restaurant. I’m not wearing a mask as much as I can. It has not been required at the last two Rx appointments I’ve been to, they are just not allowing visitors. I don’t know anyone either who has come down with the virus. I refuse to get used to the “new normal”. I going back to the old normal.
Good luck with hubby’s knee surgery. I’ve heard it’s painful but worth it.
I’ve wondered about the “shuttered” question as well. For the most part, everyone in my life has carried on as before.
Except for my son in law, who does lighting and staging. Pretty much everything he does involves a crowd. So he and thousands like him have been out of work. Concerts, fairs, shows, festivals, street fairs. And think of all the people who support that industry: everyone from T Shirt manufacturers to parking lots to small food vendors.
That said, son in law has a habit of landing on his feet. He just got hired to do a big show this Christmas. He and my daughter moved back to Cali three months ago as he was offered a big show (since cancelled). So he’ll be working in Texas for about six months where a similar show was not only not cancelled, it was expanded.
I’m a “front-line” nurse in an “at-risk” group (over 60). I’ve had contact with a least two positive patients. I’m not particularly concerned about it either.
I know at least two people personally who died from Covid, one of them in her 50s and in what I would have thought was good health. In addition, a very close friend’s father has been comatose and on a ventilator for the past 8 weeks. I believe he’s cleared the virus, but he’s still on the vent and still hasn’t regained consciousness. I know of people who died–friends of friends or community members I didn’t know personally. In addition, I have a couple of friends who had it, were nasty-sick, but didn’t require hospitalization. They quarantined at home for the 14 days and pretty much needed all of it to recover.
Apart from my personal contacts, I’ve been working on testing since there was a test available to do and, in my research capacity, have reviewed patient charts and seen the devastating progression of the disease in too many of them. This is not simple flu and it’s not to be disregarded. But, it’s also not plague, smallpox, or tuberculosis in devastation or transmissiblity.
So, do take care, wash your hands, take some precautions when it comes to close contact, and, mostly, don’t worry. Whether or not masks work, they do act as a reminder that there is a contagion abroad and that things are still not totally normal. One thing about these precautions: if we’re still being mindful come flu season, expect it to be a pretty light one. Flu virtually disappeared mid-March. Precipitously so, rather than trailing off over several weeks, as it usually does. I believe that was driven by people becoming conscious of infection control practices and that alone likely saved many lives. We have been looking at our data and can probably make some projections of how many lives, but just haven’t had time to spend running the statistics. If we’re ever able to stop and do so, I’ll let y’all know when we publish. Here’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. NB: the Coronavirus in the graph are the common cold types, not the novel SARS-CoV2.
Inhaling it? Or injecting it?
Hope all goes well with the surgery. Here’s a prayer for him. God be with him.
Then other great moment in LA commuting was a few years ago when the illegal aliens declared a one day strike to teach us how we could not get along without them. The traffic was so nice, I spent the next few years trying to get them to do another strike. I finally gave up and moved to Arizona.
Best wishes to JY for a speedy recovery. I hope to raise a glass with you guys again soon, once the breweries fully reopen.
Get well soon, JY!
I live in a state that has a low incidence of COVID-19 per population. So the same thing applies to me. I have not known anyone who got the virus.
I listen to Mike Francesca podcasts, a long time local sportscaster from New York, and he did say that he knew people that have died from COVID-19. His perception of this crisis is much different than mine, and I don’t blame him. Though I wonder if his being in his 60’s had something to do with it as well. Did the average 20 year old in New York also not know someone with the virus, especially if he’s a transplant with no family there?
As people try to get us to take this seriously, so seriously they got us to hide in our houses, that’s the marker that will cause us to give credit or blame to the epidemiologists and politicians that urged the lockdown. Did we know anyone who got it, and what proportion of the country as a whole did, and what proportion of the country outside the New York metropolitan area did?
Even among conservatives there has been disagreement about the lockdown, especially the length of the lockdown past 2-4 weeks. If you want to see much of the difference, compare National Review Online with Power Line.
It’s probably significant that National Review is based in New York, while Power Line is loosely based in Minnesota, California, and Virginia.
Looking forward to it!
My brother -in-law got COVID-19 from his job. Now, he and his family are in complete quarantine. There are cases rising again in Utah. Utah County has hot spots still.
May God help them all through it.