Covid-19 Bunker Notebook
03/04/20 09:00
I bit the bullet and put my face mask on when I went food shopping this morning. It wasn't too bad but my glasses kept fogging up so I'll need to find a work-around for that. This should come as no surprise but I was not the only one in the market wearing a mask.
Some people struggled with pulling their scarves up around their face far enough to make a difference and I saw quite a few people wearing hooded coats with their hoods up. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish. That probably had more to do with hair stylists not being an essential business than anything else.
I felt like a privileged and protected shopper maybe even more than the others who had less effective masks and face coverings. When I passed by someone with a comparable mask or face covering I wanted to compliment them but thought better of it when they averted their eyes or just ignored me altogether as we passed by each other like ships in the night.
You didn't want to say anything because you knew if they were wearing a face mask that they were probably well aware of the dangers involved in the simple and uncomplicated act of exhaling. It didn't matter that the mask might filter out some of the exhaled droplets containing the coronavirus. If even one of the wayward droplets escaped and found a receptive mucous membrane within 10 to 20 feet then all bets were off.
Social niceties will have to wait until this pandemic dies out. Social distancing is in and social niceties are out. By then the masks will be a distant memory and we'll all go back to the mindless act of food shopping without so much as a passing interest in the garb worn by our fellow shoppers.
I wondered too whether or not if those people not wearing masks wished they had worn masks. I wondered if they felt more susceptible and consequently more panicked during the short time they spent in the store. It seemed to me that there wasn't one person in the store with or without a mask that didn't want to get in and out of that store as quickly as possible.
Mrs G mentioned last night that she left her unit in her independent living facility just long enough to go check her mail in the mailroom. In the course of her travels she encountered another resident. Mrs G didn't mention anything about pleasantries being exchanged but she did say that the woman gave her a wide berth as she passed her in the hallway. Wide enough you might say to allow her to pass without violating the social distancing rules we all live by these days.
Mrs G didn't use the word "leper" but she didn't have to. The whole experience left her feeling diseased and distressed and at a time when she might have otherwise expected a little more camraderie from a fellow traveler in her building. These are my words, not hers. The folks in that joint must be scared out of their bloody wits hearing what they hear and watching what they watch on the news coming out of the main street media these days.
Imagine being elderly and not having your wits about you to begin with and then adding this whole pandemic thing on top of your usual irrational concerns. It would be a bridge too far. It might even account for behaviors of people the likes of whom Mrs G ran into on her way to the mailroom. Mrs G thankfully does have her wits about her and I think maybe laughed it off at the end of the day.
That said, it sounds like it might have been the first time the whole social distancing thing became "real" for her. Her chickens have come home to roost as they say. I think my chickens came home to roost when I put on that mask yesterday before going into the store to do my food shopping.
The whole proximity thing is impossible to work out in the already narrow aisles of the supermarket so you hold your breath, quicken your pace, push your cart more deliberately, and beat a path past your fellow shopper as quickly as you can when you see them coming or when you find yourself aside someone poring over the same items you are interested in. They are without a doubt hoping that you move on and you're hoping much the same for them.
Speaking of paying close or rapt attention to the main street media, I'm tuned in to just about everything I can tune into these days. I like to be informed. Facts don't scare me. Not having the facts is more frightening. I take comfort in numbers especially when they break in the right direction for my state or county. For example, we have but 7 deaths so far here in New Hampshire as a result of this viral scourge. The state is not even close to full capacity when it comes to beds utilized by coronavirus patients or ICU beds engaged by same.
So far, so good. Projections are that my State will have some 300 deaths by the time it's all over and that seems reasonable by any standards especially when looking at other viral epidemics like the annual flu. I can live with that. I watch the daily press briefings by President Trump and his team and try to glean any messages nuanced or otherwise that might give me hope or, in a worst case scenario, pause. Will I need to buckle up or buckle down in the days ahead?
I need to be a little careful about crowing too much about how few cases we have and how much capacity we may or may not have even though the numbers are readily available. I've posted comments about rats jumping the proverbial ship as it relates to people with means moving up and out from viral hotspots like NYC. They are flocking to towns, cities, and localities with very few cases of the coronavirus hoping that they can escape being swept up in the horrors that befall those left behind.
My backyard is just such a getaway place so here's hoping we don't get an influx of infected travelers. Our neighboring state of Maine has closed down hotels, motels, and even AirBnB's in some places, to keep those very folks I'm concerned about out of their communities and perhaps more importantly away from their hospital waiting rooms and out of their ICU beds.
Communities that once welcomed out-of-staters with open arms are now telling them to stay away. I'm a little glib when I refer to these leftist strong armed tactics as more befitting of a Venezuelan republic than a democracy but I think a little muscle is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to keeping the proverbial rats from sinking the ship that we belovingly refer to as our own.
I tune into to Governor Cuomo's daily briefing for the State of New York that comes on the television around 11 every day. NYC is the epicenter of this nightmare we find ourselves in and they attribute their being the epicenter to the number of international travelers that move in and out of that city every day not to mention the density of their citizenry.
It is a little misleading to think that what they're experiencing in NYC is what the rest of the country can expect when the virus takes hold but there are also lessons to be learned if you live in a similarly urban city with similar densities, etc.
The bigger question for me is why the networks cover Cuomo at all. Is it their desire for ratings because they think people find Cuomo's constant drivel captivating? Does he implore them to provide the coverage so his whining for ventilators, gowns, masks, etc., message can be carried nationwide guaranteeing perhaps more bang for the buck? Maybe Cuomo thinks that he can shame President Trump into providing more of this and more of that from the national stockpiles than Trump might otherwise provide.
And then there are those, and I am one of them, who think that Cuomo is trying to raise his national profile because he thinks that his Democrat party will turn to him when making their nomination this summer for their candidate for the presidency. Cuomo will be their knight in shining armor who saves the day when Biden collapses coming down the final stretch over the course of the summer leading to election day in November.
If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times. Joe Biden can't remember what he had for breakfast. I wish the democrats would stop pretending that he is a viable candidate for the presidency. He just isn't. They don't have a candidate that can beat Trump and Cuomo is not going save their sorry asses when all is said and done. Trump has a war to win against the virus and an economy to jump start but when it's all over there isn't a person alive who can even come close to beating him.
I'm getting a little long winded here but I have a couple more things to say before calling it a wrap. We got take-out from Buffalo Wild Wings in Portsmouth last evening. Nancy and I took a drive a little after 5 with no particular destination in mind and ended up at BWW after considering other take-out places where we or Evan might find something suitable for dinner.
Evan chose not to join us for the ride but we suspected that he might weigh in one way or another when we offered to pick something up and that is precisely what happened. And, as is his custom, he called us in the car when we were on the way home with his usual question, "where are you guys"?
Nancy's taco's turned out to be a bit too spicy, Evan's boneless chicken wings were definitely too spicy for him, and my bacon cheeseburger was just right. I had too many french fries with my burger, Evan had too few, and Nancy couldn't get enough. From a nutritional standpoint, my meal eat at least was a handful of fat globules short of a coronary. I take little comfort in eating that sort of thing under normal circumstances but comforting it was in these trying times.
Evan seemed to enjoy his meal but I thought he had an odd reaction to the food he was eating. He typically likes spicier food so when he drank glassful after glassful of water to quench what must have been the spiciness of his boneless chicken wings I just thought it unusual. His brow was spotting up with perspiration by the time dinner was largely over and I made some offhanded Covid-19 joke and may have asked him if he minded if we took his temperature. Or, did I ask Nancy if she knew where we kept the thermometer?
As I sit here now wanting to wrap this up, I have to ask myself the question "did we hear him get up to use the bathroom last night?" He hasn't been up since I got up around 5am and that's a bit odd. You would think with all the water he drank that he might be up, well, frequently. Was he having an allergic reaction to something he was eating last evening and we didn't realize it? What other telltale indications did we miss or did he have that went unannounced? Do I knock on his door now? Let's just say that I will feel relieved when I hear him getting up and going about his usual morning routine. Until then, not so much.
Some people struggled with pulling their scarves up around their face far enough to make a difference and I saw quite a few people wearing hooded coats with their hoods up. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish. That probably had more to do with hair stylists not being an essential business than anything else.
I felt like a privileged and protected shopper maybe even more than the others who had less effective masks and face coverings. When I passed by someone with a comparable mask or face covering I wanted to compliment them but thought better of it when they averted their eyes or just ignored me altogether as we passed by each other like ships in the night.
You didn't want to say anything because you knew if they were wearing a face mask that they were probably well aware of the dangers involved in the simple and uncomplicated act of exhaling. It didn't matter that the mask might filter out some of the exhaled droplets containing the coronavirus. If even one of the wayward droplets escaped and found a receptive mucous membrane within 10 to 20 feet then all bets were off.
Social niceties will have to wait until this pandemic dies out. Social distancing is in and social niceties are out. By then the masks will be a distant memory and we'll all go back to the mindless act of food shopping without so much as a passing interest in the garb worn by our fellow shoppers.
I wondered too whether or not if those people not wearing masks wished they had worn masks. I wondered if they felt more susceptible and consequently more panicked during the short time they spent in the store. It seemed to me that there wasn't one person in the store with or without a mask that didn't want to get in and out of that store as quickly as possible.
Mrs G mentioned last night that she left her unit in her independent living facility just long enough to go check her mail in the mailroom. In the course of her travels she encountered another resident. Mrs G didn't mention anything about pleasantries being exchanged but she did say that the woman gave her a wide berth as she passed her in the hallway. Wide enough you might say to allow her to pass without violating the social distancing rules we all live by these days.
Mrs G didn't use the word "leper" but she didn't have to. The whole experience left her feeling diseased and distressed and at a time when she might have otherwise expected a little more camraderie from a fellow traveler in her building. These are my words, not hers. The folks in that joint must be scared out of their bloody wits hearing what they hear and watching what they watch on the news coming out of the main street media these days.
Imagine being elderly and not having your wits about you to begin with and then adding this whole pandemic thing on top of your usual irrational concerns. It would be a bridge too far. It might even account for behaviors of people the likes of whom Mrs G ran into on her way to the mailroom. Mrs G thankfully does have her wits about her and I think maybe laughed it off at the end of the day.
That said, it sounds like it might have been the first time the whole social distancing thing became "real" for her. Her chickens have come home to roost as they say. I think my chickens came home to roost when I put on that mask yesterday before going into the store to do my food shopping.
The whole proximity thing is impossible to work out in the already narrow aisles of the supermarket so you hold your breath, quicken your pace, push your cart more deliberately, and beat a path past your fellow shopper as quickly as you can when you see them coming or when you find yourself aside someone poring over the same items you are interested in. They are without a doubt hoping that you move on and you're hoping much the same for them.
Speaking of paying close or rapt attention to the main street media, I'm tuned in to just about everything I can tune into these days. I like to be informed. Facts don't scare me. Not having the facts is more frightening. I take comfort in numbers especially when they break in the right direction for my state or county. For example, we have but 7 deaths so far here in New Hampshire as a result of this viral scourge. The state is not even close to full capacity when it comes to beds utilized by coronavirus patients or ICU beds engaged by same.
So far, so good. Projections are that my State will have some 300 deaths by the time it's all over and that seems reasonable by any standards especially when looking at other viral epidemics like the annual flu. I can live with that. I watch the daily press briefings by President Trump and his team and try to glean any messages nuanced or otherwise that might give me hope or, in a worst case scenario, pause. Will I need to buckle up or buckle down in the days ahead?
I need to be a little careful about crowing too much about how few cases we have and how much capacity we may or may not have even though the numbers are readily available. I've posted comments about rats jumping the proverbial ship as it relates to people with means moving up and out from viral hotspots like NYC. They are flocking to towns, cities, and localities with very few cases of the coronavirus hoping that they can escape being swept up in the horrors that befall those left behind.
My backyard is just such a getaway place so here's hoping we don't get an influx of infected travelers. Our neighboring state of Maine has closed down hotels, motels, and even AirBnB's in some places, to keep those very folks I'm concerned about out of their communities and perhaps more importantly away from their hospital waiting rooms and out of their ICU beds.
Communities that once welcomed out-of-staters with open arms are now telling them to stay away. I'm a little glib when I refer to these leftist strong armed tactics as more befitting of a Venezuelan republic than a democracy but I think a little muscle is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to keeping the proverbial rats from sinking the ship that we belovingly refer to as our own.
I tune into to Governor Cuomo's daily briefing for the State of New York that comes on the television around 11 every day. NYC is the epicenter of this nightmare we find ourselves in and they attribute their being the epicenter to the number of international travelers that move in and out of that city every day not to mention the density of their citizenry.
It is a little misleading to think that what they're experiencing in NYC is what the rest of the country can expect when the virus takes hold but there are also lessons to be learned if you live in a similarly urban city with similar densities, etc.
The bigger question for me is why the networks cover Cuomo at all. Is it their desire for ratings because they think people find Cuomo's constant drivel captivating? Does he implore them to provide the coverage so his whining for ventilators, gowns, masks, etc., message can be carried nationwide guaranteeing perhaps more bang for the buck? Maybe Cuomo thinks that he can shame President Trump into providing more of this and more of that from the national stockpiles than Trump might otherwise provide.
And then there are those, and I am one of them, who think that Cuomo is trying to raise his national profile because he thinks that his Democrat party will turn to him when making their nomination this summer for their candidate for the presidency. Cuomo will be their knight in shining armor who saves the day when Biden collapses coming down the final stretch over the course of the summer leading to election day in November.
If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times. Joe Biden can't remember what he had for breakfast. I wish the democrats would stop pretending that he is a viable candidate for the presidency. He just isn't. They don't have a candidate that can beat Trump and Cuomo is not going save their sorry asses when all is said and done. Trump has a war to win against the virus and an economy to jump start but when it's all over there isn't a person alive who can even come close to beating him.
I'm getting a little long winded here but I have a couple more things to say before calling it a wrap. We got take-out from Buffalo Wild Wings in Portsmouth last evening. Nancy and I took a drive a little after 5 with no particular destination in mind and ended up at BWW after considering other take-out places where we or Evan might find something suitable for dinner.
Evan chose not to join us for the ride but we suspected that he might weigh in one way or another when we offered to pick something up and that is precisely what happened. And, as is his custom, he called us in the car when we were on the way home with his usual question, "where are you guys"?
Nancy's taco's turned out to be a bit too spicy, Evan's boneless chicken wings were definitely too spicy for him, and my bacon cheeseburger was just right. I had too many french fries with my burger, Evan had too few, and Nancy couldn't get enough. From a nutritional standpoint, my meal eat at least was a handful of fat globules short of a coronary. I take little comfort in eating that sort of thing under normal circumstances but comforting it was in these trying times.
Evan seemed to enjoy his meal but I thought he had an odd reaction to the food he was eating. He typically likes spicier food so when he drank glassful after glassful of water to quench what must have been the spiciness of his boneless chicken wings I just thought it unusual. His brow was spotting up with perspiration by the time dinner was largely over and I made some offhanded Covid-19 joke and may have asked him if he minded if we took his temperature. Or, did I ask Nancy if she knew where we kept the thermometer?
As I sit here now wanting to wrap this up, I have to ask myself the question "did we hear him get up to use the bathroom last night?" He hasn't been up since I got up around 5am and that's a bit odd. You would think with all the water he drank that he might be up, well, frequently. Was he having an allergic reaction to something he was eating last evening and we didn't realize it? What other telltale indications did we miss or did he have that went unannounced? Do I knock on his door now? Let's just say that I will feel relieved when I hear him getting up and going about his usual morning routine. Until then, not so much.