Today I am 60 years old. I remember very well being a young child and wondering if I could make it that long, and whaddya know, here I am. Coronavirus be damned!
I woke up to the wind, howling and shrieking around the corners of our tiny house, the eaves rumbling a little, the patio chairs scooting across the back porch. As soon as I sat down here with my coffee I heard the scattered, then heavy drops on the old tin roof. Good! Wash away all that glowing green pollen that’s been playing hell with our sinuses!
The media fixates on coronavirus – meanwhile, this has been one of the most pollinated years I remember. So far we’ve suffered the nut trees, now the oaks. Watch out, the worst ones – pine and privet – are still ahead. They say a mask won’t protect you from coronavirus but I’ll tell you – it will keep microscopic granules of living plant material from attaching themselves to your soft, moist internal tissues, digging in with tiny anchors, and causing you all kinds of respiratory distress. Yet another good reason to wash your hands, as well as your face and hair, before you go to bed.
But the talk of every town these days is coronavirus. My son called from Portland the other night to report hours long lines at the Winco, and NO TOILET PAPER. Shelves empty. Wow, as a neighbor of mine observed, we’ve hit bottom when you can’t find a roll of toilet paper on the shelves. What the hell is wrong with people?
The flu killed over 80,000 Americans in 2018. Did your kid’s school close? Did the airports shut down? Did the stores run out of vital supplies? Here’s an interesting story from MSNBC
“While the new coronavirus ravages much of China and world leaders rush to close their borders to protect citizens from the outbreak, the flu has quietly killed 10,000 in the U.S. so far this influenza season.”
The latest report I could find this morning says coronavirus has killed about 4,000, world wide. While I’m sorry for those victims and their families, I am also sorry for the 250,000 Americans reported to have died from medical errors last year.
Here’s what we need to learn from coronavirus:
- wash your hands regularly, and wash them well. Use warm water and gentle soap, and scrub between your fingers. Keep your fingernails short and scrub them good. It’s not just coronavirus, you know better. When a surgeon neglected to wash his hands well before he operated on my friend’s knee, my friend got an e-coli infection. That was explained very clearly in the letter he got from the hospital.
- keep your house neat and clean and well supplied. Keep the basic necessities, like pain/fever relievers, antiseptics like alcohol, and simple groceries on hand. Always have nonperishable food in your pantry. I recommend that miso soup powder that comes in packets. When my entire family had the flu years back, we were so weak it was about the only thing we were strong enough to prepare. We also try to keep at least a case of bottled water in the pantry. And, my family always laughed at me for hoarding toilet paper – well, nobody’s laughing now!
- find a good health care provider – I know, that’s not as easy as it sounds. But don’t wait until you get sick to figure out where you might go for help. Waiting until you are falling down sick and trying to go to Immediate Care, or worse, the ER, is not a good route.
Something I already knew before coronavirus is our healthcare system is in trouble. When my family finally signed up for California Covered, our insurance agent told us there were very few doctors in Chico who would accept our Silver 94 policy, and most of them are booked up with patients.
Another thing I already knew is there’s no real journalism in America anymore, just propaganda. What I see now is a united attempt by a huge segment of the media to create hysteria in the public and lay the whole blame on Trump. For what? Wake up people, you are being led by the nose. This article in the ER illustrates how ridiculous it’s gotten – the city of Chico leads the hysterical charge by cancelling public meetings. Chico Velo wades in by cancelling the Wildflower.
“As of Friday afternoon, there have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Butte County.”
What remains to be seen, is how city manager Mark Orme will twist this non-emergency into a campaign for his sales tax increase.
Chico Taxpayers Association 