Yes…the covid bug keeps marching along here. Actually, the little fella seems to be slowly marching toward the door.
Maybe we shouldn’t even say “slowly,” come to think of it. Truth to tell, I’m pretty amazed at how fast this thing seems to be clearing up. Not that I’m ready to rise from my deathbed yet…
Today the thermometer (such as it is) is registering in the normal range. Just took a reading: 98 degrees.
Since I’m quite the cold fish (you’re surprised?), that’s smack in the middle of normal for me: 97.6± to 98.2± . And strangely, I also seem to be feeling better.
“Seem” because that proposition strikes me as mighty bizarre. I was splendidly sick just the other day — felt like a heavy case of the flu coming on. But instead of “coming on,” it seems to have just struck a glancing blow.
Still have a resonant cough…but it’s better than it was yesterday, and has never reached the inglorious heights of the kind of cough I normally get with the flu.
Hmmm… If this is not atypical, it would explain the rapid spread of the disease. People think they’re getting over it, so naturally get up and go about their business: off to the office, the gas station, the grocery store, the school room…. We’re probably moving back into the current of daily life too soon. If you feel better but the virus is quietly lurking, no doubt you would spread it around by getting back to daily business before the infection is fully cleared up.
It’s difficult if not impossible to NOT spread your germs or pick up other folks’ germs, if you live in American society. Virtually anything you need to acquire for your daily living needs — food, meds, pet gear, gasoline, propane, you-name-it — is to be had from retail stores. And a fair number of those things can’t be selected by an Instacart runner.
That’s especially true if you eat real food — fresh vegetables, meats, and fruits. Instacart runners are like most people. And most people tend to eat mostly processed foods. They don’t have the faintest idea how to select fresh produce. So they bring you limp, brown, under-ripe, over-ripe junk. You need to be there in the store to pick out those kinds of goodies. Same is true, to a lesser extent, of meat. Want a steak? They grab the first cling-wrapped cut they spot in the butcher cabinet.
Sooo…that means that if you favor whole foods, Instacart (alas!) is not for you.
No grocery shopping today…but nevertheless I found myself running unhappily from pillar to post. I lost my mercury thermometer — the one that registers an accurate reading, every time you use it. Searches in every place I might possibly have put it “away” failed. And those digital thermometers…what a joke!
I have two of them (because I’ve found they tend to be inaccurate). They’ve been all over the map every time I’ve used them. One will say 98; the other will say 98.7. One will say 97.7; the other will say 98 or even 99. So…I think they’re pretty much useless. They might tell you — or not — if your fever was through the roof. But the range is so wide they’re not very useful or credible.
So I ventured forth to buy a new mercury thermometer. A-n-n-n-d…guess what? NO ONE sells them. I went to SIX stores, from pharmacies to supermarkets, and could not find a one of them! Look up “mercury thermometer” at Amazon, and you get “mercury-free” thermometers. Gee, thanks, Amazon, for reading my mind! /eyeroll/
Evidently, then, this another amenity Big Brother has taken out of our sticky little hands.
At any rate, if indeed the present cold/cough is covid (how do I doubt it? let me count the ways!), IF that is so, then evidently the course of three anti-covid vaccinations was genius.
***
What a world we live in! Covid is the least of it. Today’s news is festooned with reports of shooting incidents. Locally: at a so-called “alternative” high school for less-than-perfectly-accomplished high-school kids. Dayum!
Well. If I were a kid, I would be less than pleased if my parents or the authorities shunted me off to an “alternative” school for problem children. I personally hated school, starting in the 2nd grade. The idiot teacher who took over our class that year remains a searing memory, and after that…what? One outstandingly excellent teacher. The next: a mean witch who taught us little to nothing. Next: really quite a nice lady and a good teacher, but by that time the little monsters in the class had crawled out of their shells, noticed me, and begun to make it their business to make me miserable. They were good at it, too! Fourth-grade teacher: not qualified to teach earthworms — truly, one of the stupidest human beings I have ever met. Fifth- and sixth-grade: HOLY mackerel what a witch!
If that’s comparable to what you find in stateside public schools, no one with a measurable IQ should be required to attend. 😀
Fortunately, it’s not. My mother finally figured out what was going on, along about the time I hit the sixth grade. At that point she demanded to take me home. Dunno if she threatened to divorce my father over it or whether the threat was implicit…but whatEVER. He did let us go back to the States, where my mother managed to get me into an excellent public school in San Francisco.
You know…we had gang-bangers in those schools — at least, we did in high school. We had kids in grade school who were as crazy and as alienated as I was (not many, but still…I never took my father’s Ruger to school and shot up the place) (maybe only because I never thought of it…). I wonder what conditions have changed so radically as to lead young Americans to plan and execute mass shootings?
Something HAS changed, apparently something fundamental.
If it’s not mass media — TV and music and movies in particular, and social media — then what is it?