Posts Tagged ‘coronavirus’
Pandemic Loneliness
It is hard to predict what the situation will be 10-days from today but based on comparison with geographic locations where the coronavirus outbreak is that far ahead of here, it seems that people who don’t feel sick now may have symptoms by then. That really does make it feel strange to carry on with life as usual.
Sure, the odds go down if you only expose yourself to a handful of people every day, but what good does that limitation do if one of those people have the virus and don’t know it? So, the safest bet is to stay home entirely. All by myself.
It feels a little apocalyptic.
I’m going to build a bridge.
While Cyndie is hunkered down with her parents in Florida, I’m alone to pick eggs and walk the dog. Between tending to animals, I’m going to try solo construction and use leftover deck lumber to make a bridge over the eroding drainage swale. It will take some ingenuity to manipulate 16-foot boards into the chop saw all on my own, but I think I can figure something out.
The muddy effort we put in to re-establish the concerted flow of the drainage swale across our land appears to have paid off.
That provided motivation to get on with this bridge project sooner than later. Actually, I have a little extra time before the primary need arrives. During the growing season, I cut the grass along the strip just beyond the pasture fence to maintain a walking path, and the erosion blocked my ability to drive the lawn tractor beyond that point. The bridge is a solution to that barrier.
I won’t need to mow for a few weeks yet. Look at how little in the way of green growth there is to be found in our current landscape.
That will change real soon.
A lot like the looming intensity of a certain virus outbreak underway.
I wonder what our landscape will look like in 10-days.
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Increasing Production
It’s March 18 and I’m still symptom-free. I’m measuring each day that I’m not sick as a victory over the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you to everyone who is heeding the call for social distancing. One graph I saw at worldometers.info last night indicated the daily number of cases identified in the US has been doubling every few days. Since that data only includes the number of people actually tested, I imagine the total number of cases increasing every day is probably much larger.
I have not quarantined myself yet, but I’m limiting my activity to commuting to work and then coming straight home. I will need to stop for gas twice a week, but I always pay at the pump so there is no need to go inside.
There are only ten people at work, so if we can all avoid exposure from others, the risks at the day-job should remain low.
It’s too bad the virus doesn’t provide obviously visible indications in a person when they get it. That would make it so much easier to avoid people who are spreading it.
While staff at the day-job are giving their all to keep up with the over-filled production schedule (there’s no indication our customers are slowing down at this point), the hens at home are just approaching their highest production rate.
Yesterday was the highest-grossing day of the new season. From our amazing eight hens, we got 7 eggs for the first time this year. I found the last egg out in the sand covering the floor of the coop, not in the nest boxes that all the others have been using.
It seems to me that the color of the eggs from the three different breeds is becoming more homogeneous. We used to get some that were very dark brown and some that were very light. Yesterday’s seven looked surprisingly similar.
The light ones are a little darker and the dark ones are lighter than usual.
Luckily, they are all filled with a brilliantly deep-colored yoke that makes for amazing breakfast dishes and wonderful baked goods.
With the head cook and principle baker living in Florida for a while, I will be stockpiling eggs for a later date.
If things get desperate during the pandemic quarantine, maybe I could trade some for toilet paper.
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Say Something
Have you received a lot of unexpected emails from businesses recently? There is a common format you may begin to recognize. A communication professional, Karen G. Anderson, offers tips for organizations that want to email their primary audience with assurances in the face of the ongoing pandemic.
- Say Something
- Talk About Customers (Not the Organization)
- Send Links
- Make Sure People Can Contact You
- Message Should Come From Individual
This morning I received this very message from a business I made one online purchase from years ago for a replacement bowl to match a long-discontinued tableware pattern. It struck me for it’s classic adherence to the recommended guidelines for prudent good practice in times of a national emergency.
It was the 5th or 6th such message to show up in my inbox in the last few days. Being a natural contrarian, my mind quickly jumps to concern about all the entities that haven’t contacted me yet. Why haven’t I heard from them? Are they not all on the same side when it comes to taking all the precautions to keep everyone safe?
Well, let me just assure you, my dear readers, I am fully aware of the risks and ramifications that have materialized from the worldwide spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 and I am taking specific steps to control the spread. Before I started writing this post, I sanitized my keyboard and made certain to maintain plenty of space between myself and Cyndie, Delilah, and Pequenita.
To be doubly cautious, you might consider wiping the surfaces of your devices before you read my posts.
There is a discussion conference in my online community where members write their life stories. Yesterday, I posted this:
I was alive during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. At first, it was a news story about an illness that was spreading in China. At that initial phase, the impact on my life was zero. At work, we wisecracked about the possibility of our supply chain experiencing some future delays.
After the spread of the illness reached other countries of the world and increased at alarming rates in some of them, the reality set in that eventually we would be impacted more directly.
When the financial industry started to fall at a record pace, the idea set in that we were at risk of suffering from not just our health but from economic pressure, too.
Then, billion-dollar professional sports leagues canceled their seasons and shit got real. Just as quick, concerts and plays were canceled, schools closed and life fell apart before anyone I knew had been positively identified as having the virus.
By the middle of March that year, I was in a waiting game for the moment when I might feel the first sensation of having a fever. Each morning when I woke up, one of the first thoughts I had was to assess how I felt.
Since the belief at the time was that the incubation period was between 5-days and some undefined larger span of time, I never knew if I might have it and be contagious, or not, let alone whether those around me were.
Cyndie’s brother wasn’t able to take advantage of the tickets his brother finally scored for them to go to a major golf tournament for his 60th birthday celebration. Our friends had to cancel their long-awaited family trip to one of the Disney resorts in the last year before their daughters grew out of their prime childhood fascination with the idea.
At that point in March, it wasn’t the fear of illness that burdened our minds, it was the disruption of life as we knew it and the complete uncertainty over how much worse it could possibly get and whether or not there was any hope of it all being just a temporary disruption.
I remember the time as feeling like a moment of historic milestone, but without any ability to measure it adequately against some comparable reference.
I didn’t think about it while originally writing those words, but just now it gave me the impression I might have been composing that now in case I wouldn’t have a chance to do it later. That was not my intention. I just thought it would be interesting to mess with the time frame and write about the present moment as it might be perceived in a distant future.
Maybe that came from my recent writing about what my parents’ lives were like 75 years ago.
I’m not just social distancing myself, apparently, I’m time-distancing, too.
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Relative Something 
Weak Claim
with 2 comments
Just my opinion…
Claiming innocence when overtly behaving in a spiteful, mean-spirited manner that is so blatantly transparent to the entire world of intelligent people is sad enough for any individual, but downright criminal and deplorable for a head of state.
Who would do such a thing in today’s world? Can you think of any world leader who would boldly and unabashedly stoop to such boorish behavior?
“… [the virus] comes from China.“
He’s just stating the fact. Over and over again.
It’s a fact. Whaaat? What’s wrong with that?
If you don’t see what’s wrong and are able to allow yourself to ride on that greasy train and cling to that embarrassingly weak claim of innocence, then you are fooling yourself. You are not fooling the rest of the world.
Such behavior adds importance to my yearning to send love to everyone in the world. I don’t want to limit my love to only those receiving or sympathetically witnessing this kind of abuse, but also those who find justification in supporting said abuse. I love the people, if not the behaviors and beliefs.
There you go. You have a perfect justification for the heavy use of the term in official press briefings and written government communications.
Except you don’t. It’s called “diplomacy,” wherein you respectfully respond to international and domestic public feedback by changing your behavior. To forge ahead and even double-down on the usage is a total callous disregard for the responsibilities and aura of importance for the highest office in the country.
When the world is no longer in the midst of the financial calamity extraordinaire that is reverberating from the embarrassingly delayed, under-prepared governmental response to this scientifically-predicted pandemic situation, feel free to embrace that descriptor with all your mean-spirited resolve.
Maybe by that time, people will no longer recognize the subversive message oozing out with each repeated usage. That tilt of the head. That subtle emphasis on the word, “China.”
“Chinese.“
In a hundred years, go ahead and call it the Chinese Flu.
While untold thousands are currently suffering and loved ones are dying all over the world, maybe have a little respect and use the identifier the rest of the leaders of the world see fit to use.
Your sanctimonious innocence over the factual correctness of the geographic origin is weak, at best.
<end rant>
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Written by johnwhays
March 20, 2020 at 6:00 am
Posted in Chronicle
Tagged with boorish behavior, coronavirus, COVID-19, editorial comment, fact manipulation, leadership, opinion, rant, spin, un-presidential, unbecoming behavior, virus names