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...so-so. Nothing as of yet. My daughter exhibited symptoms of COVID at work and was dismissed for the time being, told to go to the hospital where they would administer her test and then for her go home until further notice. Since her job is a little lower on the triage tree, the test was not prioritized, so we wait a couple extra days above others.
To date: daughter has had alternating fever/chills, feeling punky, but not as bad as with regular flu. She has times when she's functional, too. That's the good news, since we all got flu shots last fall...ALL of us, children included. It narrows the field down considerably but not fully, and we still await The Word. I've been feeling on-and-off myself but so far, nothing that knocks me on my tail. Again, good news.
As I myself live in a home-community (we all rent bedrooms), we have enough supplies and wipes/solutions/sanitizer graciously provided by the landlord. We have a phone-text conference chain open and I informed everyone right away; I also began practicing major hygiene protocol immediately. I keep to my room when I'm not with my family, my dishes/laundry/showering get done at my kids' when babysitting. Bathroom use checklist:
* sanitize hands before entering restroom
* bring two Clorox wipes and sanitizer
* one wipe flushes, wipes down lid & seat
* other wipe cleans bowl rim completely
* sanitize hands well before touching light switches or doorknob
* straight back to my room.
I told the roomies this and they're happy with it. So far, so good, as nobody else is sick...and hopefully, it stays that way.
I'm not entirely worried; although this is a very-rapidly-spreading virus, it is not dangerous or lethal to that end or in-and-of-itself. I have completely shut off newsmedia and rely only on Worldometer and the CDC website. To-date, only one under-18 patient has died worldwide (California, yesterday), no word on if the child had an underlying condition. This is not common, as regular flus tend to hit the very young hard, too. We know that over 80-85% of people known to have gotten COVID are not in any danger, are only showing/enduring traditional symptoms of flu and do not require hospitalization, so that is on almost everyone's side. The concern is, of course, for the elderly above 65 and/or those with underlying health problems (cardiac, respiratory, diabetes are the Big Three), with the highest fatality rate around the 85-year bracket. Compared to traditional flus we endure annually in the US, this virus' curve is close to theirs but not equal.
I wish it was the same for Italy & Spain...they're not faring as well. Although the raw numbers are comparable to ours, Spain has only 14% equivalent of the US' population and Italy has 18%, so their percentages of concentration are much higher. Iran, formerly a hotbed, appears to be stabilizing some, recoveries there are up.
In the end, with all we endure, I wonder what our collective societal reaction to this is going to be like: we've endured newsmedia hysteria, we've endured people sharing wrong (even fraudulent) info on social media (Facebook, mostly), we've seen a mix of good & bad attitudes from our neighbors and others in our communities. I got a feeling there's going to be a degree of collective social sheepishness once it's said and done for how we reacted on the whole...although it never hurts to take away a better sense of hygiene from this, which I sure have.
One concern is how this may further polarize our society in the end. Hopefully, it doesn't, there was enough mutual distrust before this all started. People may say we've 'lost our innocence', but I see it as something more; we lose our naïveté above all. We evolve. Hopefully, for the better.
We can only hope, right? More often than not, hope is all one needs...and sometimes it's all one's got. Never kill hope.
To date: daughter has had alternating fever/chills, feeling punky, but not as bad as with regular flu. She has times when she's functional, too. That's the good news, since we all got flu shots last fall...ALL of us, children included. It narrows the field down considerably but not fully, and we still await The Word. I've been feeling on-and-off myself but so far, nothing that knocks me on my tail. Again, good news.
As I myself live in a home-community (we all rent bedrooms), we have enough supplies and wipes/solutions/sanitizer graciously provided by the landlord. We have a phone-text conference chain open and I informed everyone right away; I also began practicing major hygiene protocol immediately. I keep to my room when I'm not with my family, my dishes/laundry/showering get done at my kids' when babysitting. Bathroom use checklist:
* sanitize hands before entering restroom
* bring two Clorox wipes and sanitizer
* one wipe flushes, wipes down lid & seat
* other wipe cleans bowl rim completely
* sanitize hands well before touching light switches or doorknob
* straight back to my room.
I told the roomies this and they're happy with it. So far, so good, as nobody else is sick...and hopefully, it stays that way.
I'm not entirely worried; although this is a very-rapidly-spreading virus, it is not dangerous or lethal to that end or in-and-of-itself. I have completely shut off newsmedia and rely only on Worldometer and the CDC website. To-date, only one under-18 patient has died worldwide (California, yesterday), no word on if the child had an underlying condition. This is not common, as regular flus tend to hit the very young hard, too. We know that over 80-85% of people known to have gotten COVID are not in any danger, are only showing/enduring traditional symptoms of flu and do not require hospitalization, so that is on almost everyone's side. The concern is, of course, for the elderly above 65 and/or those with underlying health problems (cardiac, respiratory, diabetes are the Big Three), with the highest fatality rate around the 85-year bracket. Compared to traditional flus we endure annually in the US, this virus' curve is close to theirs but not equal.
I wish it was the same for Italy & Spain...they're not faring as well. Although the raw numbers are comparable to ours, Spain has only 14% equivalent of the US' population and Italy has 18%, so their percentages of concentration are much higher. Iran, formerly a hotbed, appears to be stabilizing some, recoveries there are up.
In the end, with all we endure, I wonder what our collective societal reaction to this is going to be like: we've endured newsmedia hysteria, we've endured people sharing wrong (even fraudulent) info on social media (Facebook, mostly), we've seen a mix of good & bad attitudes from our neighbors and others in our communities. I got a feeling there's going to be a degree of collective social sheepishness once it's said and done for how we reacted on the whole...although it never hurts to take away a better sense of hygiene from this, which I sure have.
One concern is how this may further polarize our society in the end. Hopefully, it doesn't, there was enough mutual distrust before this all started. People may say we've 'lost our innocence', but I see it as something more; we lose our naïveté above all. We evolve. Hopefully, for the better.
We can only hope, right? More often than not, hope is all one needs...and sometimes it's all one's got. Never kill hope.
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