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Personal Wuhan Coronavirus Update
I received this text from my best friend Friday morning:
Two nights ago I felt restless and slept fitfully. Yesterday afternoon I noticed a sore throat. Last night, when I went to bed, I was chilled, and woke up every hour or so in a cold sweat. At that time I also noticed the headache. This morning I am drifting in and out of sleep, I ache all over, and I have a slight cough. I’ve canceled today’s jobs, and am hoping to recover over the weekend.
It seems likely that he and his wife have the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Their grown son received a positive test result a day or two after Thanksgiving, and the family spent Thanksgiving together, unmasked, un-distanced. His wife and their son and daughter-in-law have been mildly ill since the holiday.
I responded as would be expected, with a mixture of sympathy and gallows humor. He’s in his mid-50s, the odds that he and his wife will recover are excellent, and I’m not really worried about them.
My friend, who is also my younger brother, shares with me a skepticism about the Wuhan coronavirus and America’s response to it. We both think that the lockdowns should end – should have ended months ago. We think this disease, as bad as it is, isn’t all that bad, and that Americans need to get back to work. Life isn’t and can’t be risk-free, and the risk of this virus isn’t that great for most of us.
But most of all, we share a belief that Americans should be free, even though being free isn’t as safe as being under house arrest. We’ve had most of a year to deal with this thing, to build care capacity and to secure the relatively small portion of the population for whom this represents a serious danger. Instead, we chose to panic and to cower, to destroy the economy, and to inflict untold collateral damage on America’s families. We have lived, for nine months, under the capricious mismanagement of fearful and incompetent governors and hand-wringing technocrats.
On January 1, a new year begins. I hope and expect Americans to refuse to live through 2021 as we have half-lived through 2020.
Published in General
Exactly. The MSM finally acknowledged this only when they wanted people to cancel Thanksgiving. It’s too contagious for routine testing/tracing to be anything other than a waste of time and resources.
My very uninformed opinion is the purpose of this rig is to be noticed more than to catch any fish ;>)
@ekosj
Not an exact answer to your question, but here is a list of 112 antigen tests that are in the pipeline or are available. You have to dig further to find out the current regulatory status of each.
In the paper in which this list was referred to in a footnote, it was said that 84 tests were in the pipeline.
This particular boat is designed for catching unusually fast fish.
Actually, I have a couple friends who fish in competitions all over the place. They say a fast boat is an advantage, because you spend more time fishing, and less time in transit, getting to where you want to fish. Their competitions are timed.
On the other hand, maybe they just like fast boats.
I could believe that. When I used to go fishing with my father in a boat with a small outboard motor, I probably enjoyed the transit time more than the time spent fishing. I enjoyed fishing, too, but not as much as he did. He could stay out for a long time after I was ready to go home. But as long as we could listen to the Minnesota Twins on the radio, it was good to be out. And the transit time was always good.
I know nothing about fishing, and care just a little bit less than that. But I live near Lake Champlain, which is a great big lake, and we have an annual bass fishing competition that draws people from all over the U.S. A friend’s son routinely places in the top few spots (and makes a surprising amount of money at it). He spends a week or two before the competition, motoring around the lake and finding the biggest fish, which he’ll then return to on the day of the competition.
Because he’s been competing for years here and is now well known, other boats follow him when he leaves one area and heads out to another spot he’s marked. In his case having a faster boat might have practical competitive advantages, given the size of our lake.
I haven’t been fishing since I was twelve. I remember catching a perch.
You live in Plattsburgh and you don’t fish? I thought there was a rule or something…
I’m a born rule breaker, Doc. A rebel without a reel, as it were.
You should be at my house on Saturday mornings when my husband watches fishing shows on TV. People talk about how watching golf is boring – try watching fishing. Eyes glazing over…….
Right. Father of a coworker just passed away (from?)/(with?) COVID. Sister in law is still having lung issues, five months after she had it. So we know it’s serious. I also know many people whose encounter with COVID was “runny nose, sore throat, that’s all.”
I don’t think destruction of the economy is worth it. Give us the information we need and let us take charge of our own welfare. It’s not just that we’re a more risk-averse society, it’s that we expect the government to ensure we don’t make risky choices and remove the risk in case we do.
This infantilizes Americans.
What about “The Deadliest Catch”? (Is that still on?)
I’m hearing of too many younger people (20’s, 30’s, 40’s) with blood clots due to COVID — one of Mr. C’s young co-worker’s brother died from a clot. Others are in ICU. Horrible.
The Chicoms are a force for evil in the world.
Everyone is already wearing a mask. They just don’t work.
Americans have exceeded universal masking benchmarks, but it has not slowed or stopped the spread of COVID-19.
My wife & daughters watch shows in which people do home improvement projects. I’ll walk in the living room, and they will be watching people on TV removing cabinets, or painting a wall, or whatever. Lordy.
I removed television from my life in 1982, and my children all grew up in a home without network or cable. We did have a VCR. While I occasionally stream movies and original-series Star Trek from Amazon, I haven’t seen broadcast television in decades.
Having said that, I hear things. There are shows about making/remaking cakes, dresses, homes, restaurants, and — apparently — straight men. There are shows in which people sell antiques, find sexual partners, eat bugs on desert islands, and swing from ropes while people throw things at them. There are competitions in which people sing and dance in weeks-long run-offs for glory.
If there were a program on competitive handgun shooting, like the old PPC stuff I did before I had kids, I might watch it.
Oh, but there is! Shooting USA on the Outdoor Channel. Some of the demos of shooting proficiency are pretty hokey since they’re populated with “show
menpeople” but they do show some competitions.Don’t know. It doesn’t really qualify as “boat on a lake” fishing.
Think of it as a very big lake.
shocking, America is infantile. simply shocking.
Hey be careful what you say about golf. Well, OK, I have to admit, as much as I love playing, watching a tournament on TV is almost guaranteed to put me to sleep, even in the middle of the afternoon.
I love tournament golf! For the naps.