Covid Stuff

Reposting: Dr. Fauci's plain spoken advice:

“Chickenpox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.

Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.

HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.

Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.

So far the symptoms may include:

Fever

Fatigue

Coughing

Pneumonia

Chills/Trembling

Acute respiratory distress

Lung damage (potentially permanent)

Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)

Sore throat

Headaches

Difficulty breathing

Mental confusion

Diarrhea

Nausea or vomiting

Loss of appetite

Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)

Swollen eyes

Blood clots

Seizures

Liver damage

Kidney damage

Rash

COVID toes (weird, right?)

People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.

Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.

This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.

For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:

How dare you?

How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30-year-olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.

How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:

Frequent hand-washing

Physical distancing

Reduced social/public contact or interaction

Mask wearing

Covering your cough or sneeze

Avoiding touching your face

Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces

The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.

I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance.”

My Latest Addiction

OK. I'm not sure why or how I got into this. The only thing I can think of is my tendency to watch something new and different. I might have read a few articles in my weird and twisted news feed about Korean dramas. In any case, here I am. Hooked. To soap operas. In a language I don't know.

I've thought about it. I wanted to understand why I liked these so much. It must be tickling some part of my brain and what is it. They are sometimes contrived, sometimes goofy, some of the things I find unforgivable in most other shows. What in the world is going on with me?

I think I've figured it out. It's a mix of things. I'm going to open my noodle a bit here, so please be kind.

1) I think the audience for these shows are women. Now, these don't pass the Bechdel Test at all. But it isn't just the women's conversation that revolves around the opposite gender. The men's conversations and actions also are focused on women. So relationships are usually the focus. But with the audience being women, they are written differently. The women are intelligent. These aren't women that have no aspirations. They want to be successful. They want to be educated. They aren't written for easy disposal. So I want to see stories about intelligent women. I'm drawn to them. These provide the women's side of life as well as the men's.

2) These are romantic stories. I love those things. It wasn't until later in life when I fully embraced that part of me. I get emotional about love and loss. That doesn't mean I don't suck at it, I do. I still struggle and fall all over words, but it doesn't make me any less of a man or person because I acknowledge that part of me. And these men in these stories cry, sometimes profoundly so. If their love dies, it clearly affects them. I still don't know if that this isn't part of the female fantasy of these shows or if Korean culture actually accepts this or even just acknowledges it as a goal, but it is there. The picture above is from Gaurdian: The Lonely and Great God. It is a story of a man cursed to roam the earth until he finds his true love, and she actually is the one that has to kill him. Lots of emotion in a story like that. Lots of love, betrayal and loss. And they portray it.

3) Asain actors and actresses are attractive. That's my own deal. Nothing objective about it.

4) They do a good job of portraying frustrations with dating and relationships. You hold back things you shouldn't. You don't say things you should. This is the reaction I had with 500 Days of Summer when I first watched it. Finally, a well-written show about the frustrations and idiocy of dating and just all the things that can go wrong, and go right. 

5) A lot of these rotate around ghosts, the supernatural, or food or some combination. I think this is the culture filtering through, and I like seeing how other people see the world. I think they have a much healthier attitude towards food than we do.

6) These are long-form stories. They run about 16+ hours total. While that is long, it does let you get to really understand the characters. You start to care about them. You sometimes can't get that in a 2 hour movie and if the story goes several seasons like in America, you run out of things to say. While there is a lot of filler, they do tend to keep the story going, albeit with lots of side-quests.

If you want, I can give you what I have watched. there are lots and lots on Netflix, a few on Hulu and a good repository on viki.com. That last one requires an account but it is mostly free. You just have to deal with the ads. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm willing to pay more for them. Plus, with the library on Netflix, there's enough to keep me busy.