Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

You can't trust case numbers anymore. To hear some talk, you can't trust deaths either because if you get hit by a bus and you have Covid, you go down as a Covid death (besides that, death rates are plunging as we get closer to the endemic phase).

Hospitalizations are the coin of the realm.

 

I just quit consuming garbage. I wish I could say I put a lot of thought into it but I didn't. Not much of a magic trick, is it.
And by garbage, I mean garbage - chocolate eclairs, yuge milkshakes, Five Guys burgers, Doritos by the bulk.
Oh, and lots of beers too. Not a one since the pre-pandemic 2019.

 

For all the gnashing of teeth over the vaccine approval for the under 5s, I'm surprised at the low uptake, even in areas that have a high overall vaccination rate.

 

still bad

 

Close enough.

 

still bad

 

I was talking to my little brother last night. He's a respiratory therapist in a Covid ward in a San Antonio hospital. The last time we spoke I had closed our conversation by telling him how proud I was of him, his dedication to his patients, the fact that he quietly risked his life by simply getting up and going to work every day. I said that he and his co-workers were all heroes in their own quiet way. He brought that conversation up and talked about how much it bothered him afterward. His position seems to fall somewhere between people in the armed services who are uncomfortable with "Thank you for your service" and winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor that I've read interviews with. Those guys very often say something like "Well, I really didn't do that much. Any of my buddies would have done the same. I was just trying to stay alive and keep my squad from getting killed. You should look at the story of MOH winner Jones, that guy's story is just amazing. He's a REAL hero." This from a guy who cleaned out three machine gun nests, running out of ammunition, clearing the last one with grenades and a pistol after he was wounded five times.

He and the doctors, nurses and techs he works with have been through a particular sort of hell. He works in a Covid ward with 24 beds, and 22 or 23 of those patients are on ventilators. He says that during the first two big waves in particular, but still continuing until today, in a general sense, if you rolled into his ward on a vent there was a 90% chance that you were going to die of Covid. He likens it to working in Radiation Oncology, fighting cancer with radiation. Those techs have a very high burn out rate because when a new patient starts therapy, they see them often, 3-5 times a week, perhaps more. They get to know the patients and their families as they fight cancer. They see people go into remission - and come back when the cancer does. The vast majority of their patients die no matter what they do.

I can't imagine the crushing stress of simply getting up and going to work every day, let alone hearing ignorant morons denying what was happening.

 

Balls. Second Covid test also came back positive. Looks like I'm stuck here until at least Friday -- and that's assuming my immune system has cleared out enough of the virus to pass a PCR test by then. Second straight trip to the US that's been unwillingly and expensively extended.

 

Well said. Fuck COVID and Trumpists.

 

still bad

 

ditto

 

Rest.