Month: March 2020

work in progress

I’m thinking of writing a hard-driving workin’ man kinda country song that starts with the line:
I was born /with Uranus/ in retrograde.
I’ve broken /hard rocks /with my head
I’m an accident that moves around
you better pray I skip your town
Cause people … around me … end up dead.
at this point I should prob’ly mention that Uranus spends forty percent of every year in retrograde and the term only exists because of its motion relative to earth rather than to the sun so it’s all horseshit
as you were!
I feel really shitty right now. Very likely it’s my allergies – everyone is complaining about them in the PNW, but lawks. It makes you question every quiver of your body, which is not good for mental health.

Plague Year diary March 18

Mike, safely home with my earnest thankfulness, will not be returning to Denver before the end of this year. My relief is great. He is now in the second day of his quarantine; he transferred a simply whacking amount of cash into my account from which I will draw money for his groceries and, er, other consumables, which I will then purchase and leave outside his door.

What a life.

’emergencies’ are being declared from Malaysia to Slovenia to Australia.

Gen Xers are fighting with their parents to stay the fuck home, and they’re being ignored, as the Boomer parents drive all over hells half acre and do whatever they want because the coronavirus is a big hoax, you know.

Not being able to understand the implications of exponential math is kind of a drag, eh wot?

The kids are both still working; they don’t deal with the public.

Alex’s school is now closed; the daycare, apparently, is still open. I am still without symptoms and thus prepared to step into the childcare breach.

what I’ve learned so far and what I’m betting

re COVID-19 @ home recovery.

For your own sanity, try to recover at home if you can. If your oxygenation consistently goes under 88 and your pulse is consistently high (over 100 and staying there) and you feel chest tightness or you’re gasping, you probably need oxygen and you may need to be intubated. Intubation keeps people alive but it’s not free of risks or various kinds of cross contamination. The good thing about it is that by the time you need it you’re in no fucking shape to argue about it, so stay salty.

I’d advise you to read trip reports of people your age who’ve survived it. Read up on advice not to use ibuprofen or corticosteroids. Perform deep chest coughs – instructions earlier this week on this blog. Rest prone as much as you can (From the wikipedia article on ARDS, which along with organ failure is what’s killing people). Drink zero alcohol. Don’t drink too much water <– this is counterintuitive but is supported by science see that same article)  Don’t move except for hygiene and to turn in bed. Symptomatically relieve cough. Thump your back to bring up sputum and get rid of it, don’t swallow it.
Even a mild case will knock you on your ass for two weeks & people who’ve recovered say there’s often a marked rise in how well you feel at around the 7 day mark, during which you will overdo it, and then collapse back down with worse breathing than previously. You need to relax & release your inner sloth and do everything you can to help yourself breathe and not move. Even if you’re feeling better, don’t, you can cough yourself into a situation where your fragile lungs scar worse. So don’t move except the moving you have to do to prevent bedsores and clots and to pee.
TAKE YOUR SWEET ASS TIME RECOVERING. The recovering will need sanatoriums that help people get as much of their lung health back as possible. Post viral conditions will be real and will be spread across all age groups. If you get sick, rest and recuperate a LONG while; don’t make plans to do anything until at least two weeks after the last day you run a temperature and longer if you’re still testing positive.

smallish newish

I will insert one tiny bit of good medical news in the middle of this chaotic roil of *holy shit*. My routine mammography came back negative. mOm will be nodding but not smiling.

walked with Paul in the park. He is a complete slob about covering his mouth in the park, and he has a fairly consistent post nasal hack and I fucking pounded him one verbally, for which I’d like to publicly apologize, so I can’t even repeat what I said publicly to demonstrate how clever I am since that eviscerates the apology, but he started coughing into a hanky consistently after that so either it was an inspired piece of nagging

or he found a way to deflect my ire

either way or any other way I’m good

His foot after he tripped on the stairs longabout a week ago is still sore and tingly so he’s walking quite a bit slower, which I hate, because walking suits me better when I’m going as fast as my body in that moment can make time (depending on equipment, weather, health, wind, urgency and all the rest of that stuff all other shit being equal in other words) so I’m doggggin’ it and hating it. I want to go as fast as possible.

For the first time since I was having trouble walking (liver trouble) we couldn’t make the 2.5 km circuit around Deer Lake; we truncated the walk. It was obvious by the time we got up to the part of the park I call ‘the nettle stand’ that he was flagging, and not in pain exactly but experiencing discomfort. I really wanted to do the whole thing but I would have been an entire asshole.

The mood in the park was terrible. Nobody was saying hello back to Paul. Usually most people don’t but they make face or nod and people just weren’t.

I like walking with Jeff, as far as I’m concerned 87% of the time he’s going the perfect speed. Right now Paul’s walking like a ninety year old Chinese guy, a sort of inspiredly quick shuffle that doesn’t stress too many muscles or your balance that much. And he wears crocs. He insists they’re the most comfortable shoes he owns and fit his feet tightly enough to be safe but I have my frickin’ doubts, me dears.

The kids are probably going to keep working through a lot of this. The marble gets put into empty houses, mostly, and there’s not much public contact, although everybody’s from Italy, oh joy, and Keith’s place of employment means he only sees his coworkers. And then they both come home to a snot factory named Alex.

Isn’t it deeliteful?

I made some really nice pasta last night; it will be even better now. It was macaroni with Newmans Own Tomato Basil and I cut up black olives and the left over bacon from yesterday morning into it and it was nom. I shall wait an hour or so and consume some more. For now, tea.

I got three cans of evaporated milk; it’s better for coffee; milk powder, of which I already had some, is better for tea. My favourite brand of coffee was on sale when all this started.

Latest fanfic is doing well, a PWP Destiel ficlet. Seriously thinking of reposting the great long casefic I did, it’s like 180k words long, but not finished… it’s a poser.

today’s journey

Today’s journey starts with waking a little after 2 am (after seven hours of sleep, I’ll need nine before the day ends) and thinking to myself that I don’t know whether I’m going to get Alex today. I want to stay outside with him all day if the weather is good, but I’m probably just getting him at Katie’s place before and after school. So that’s okay. Some outdoors.

I think if anybody runs the math, keeping the daycares open and letting young parents stay home with their kids may help slow this monster’s roll somewhat. It’s still going to be dreadful, and way worse in Canada that we’re emotionally ready for.

There’s a new bird flu being detected in India and the Philippines, apparently originating in the Philippines. I don’t know too much else about it but hopefully they’ll shut down passenger traffic except for people with required skills to fight all this shit. Watching other countries handle this shit in real time is terrible and Trudeau is being reassuring which sucks ass, he should be encouraging people to do what epidemiologists and recent experience teach us will slow the spread to manageable before we squash it as a species, as we inevitably must.

Of course it will be politicized. The Chinese will start manufacturing and distributing effective vaccines first, I’d bet money on it if it wasn’t against the Quran.

a distant mirror and a current issue

So…. Coronavirus ey?

In A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman’s forever wonderful book, there’s much description on how society changes.

For whatever reason, Coronavirus is disproportionately killing elderly people and while it sickens pretty much everyone, kids are getting much lighter versions of it. If a lot of elderly people die, there will be a wealth transfer that’s the greatest in a generation – right into the middle of what will probably be an 18 month long global recession, and assuming that we don’t have a global or large regional war to deal with at the same time which would be accurate historically except for large swathes of Indigenous territories excepting Central America which got wealthy enough (always a Bad Fucking Sign) to support standing armies.

Backing away from that rathole, this is a time to bring notaries to bedsides in hospitals all over the planet. Elderly people are about to experience a mass mortality event, just when we have need of all the good husbandry tacked into their clever brains as amassed across a lifetime. More avariciously speaking, as soon as the dust and mold and unknown fibres clear from one disaster, many mini disasters, like tornadoes in the wake of a hurricane, will be spawned as lawsuits arise over inheritances. Guess which class of human being will be disproportionately affected by COVID-19? JUDGES. So at a time when there will be a lot of disputes, there will be fewer adjudicators. You know what happens when there are a lot of unadjudicated property disputes dumped into a traumatized population? You’re not stupid, you can guess, but I see private drinking as a hobby becoming super popular in the next ten years. Breweries and distilleries for the win.

 

Grocery and holy shit

Grocery shopping done. Toilet paper continues to be available in serried rows in New Westminster; frozen vegetable section looks like bears been at it.

have you ever SEEN such wanton nonchalance!!!? imagine not going buck wild over asswipe

Image

Okay, let’s explain the chart

 

In KOR they test, test, test, in Italy they only test the symptomatic

so in IT they weren’t quarantining the 1/4 of 20-29 year old people who have it but are asymptomatic. See that big tall spike? it’s the same illness, there’s not enough mutation yet not to be…. so four percent of all of the people in Italy aged 20-19 get coronovirus with symptoms bad enough to warrant testing, but a quarter of them are positive…. fuck sticks!!! we should be telling Millennials not to participate in mixed age events……..

Staying home, minding business

Right now it’s my allergies that are driving me crazy. They normally give me a headache and sore sinuses and a headache is one of the first symptoms of you know what, so I’m on edge even though my dry itchy eyes are because of tree sex.

Jeff has provided me with some lotion; the handwashing has given me eczema on the backs of my hands.

252 cases in Canada, 156,400 confirmed globally as of the CSSE map at 5 am PST, which map I’ve been watching since it was around 18000, from my room at the Conflikt 13 hotel. Worrying. Knowing that this was coming.

Not knowing that the Chinese knew what the fuck they were doing, and were dealing with it with science, politics and the eagerness of the Chinese populace to do what the hell they were told. With some exceptions.

I may go out and get food today. Jeff doesn’t mind my baked goods, but I don’t make candy bars and Cheetos.

Reconciliation is impossible at this rate

once again they’re talking about one of the biggest resources and lifelines in all of Coast Salish country and not af word about Indigenous land management https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/metro-vancouver-flooding-fraser-valley-1.5497058

I mean … if I was the benevolent dictator of Vancouver I’d kill every single building permit in the flood plain DEAD and I’d offer incentives to relocate businesses into areas that are safer not just for floods but quakes too… but it ain’t my call.

Just want to mention that the glaciers we depend on for the Fraser will be gone in 50 years at this rate so spending billions now is horseshit of colossal size and may all be moot after whatever political shifts we get from the pandemic anyway.

plague year

One of the romancelandia writers I follow is Isobel Carr and she has provided us with a Paper Doll to keep us busy.

People on twitter are begging for cute pictures of pets.

Me, I’m just staying still and trying not to worry.

150k people have been infected that we know of for sure, half of those recovered.

It’s a virus so we may get post viral health problems, it hasn’t been around long enough for us to know.

Laura Smith, a great Canadian singer songwriter is dead in Halifax of cancer. She was beautiful like few people I’ve met in person. She grew eight inches in one year when she was a teenager (spent the summer in bed). She performed a version of All of Me at a house party with a jazz duo while high on cocaine (I found that out later…) that was the best version of it I ever heard. We went to see her at the Yellow Door in Montréal.

She will be missed. I just emailed Paul to tell him as he likely doesn’t know.

China’s going to finish by running the world because Russia and the US and the UK and France will whiff the pandemic. Probably already has plans to secure the nukes. They’ll get enormous populations of white people to get on board by exterminating Muslims. It will take 15 years. They’ll allow hundreds of millions of people to migrate into the Muslim-occupied countries and then they’ll start work on exterminating Black Africans and move Chinese there instead.

apparently you’re supposed to keep a paper diary in a plague year

who knew

 

mOm knew, it’s a family archive fact.

 

So one of the folks I follow on twitter (@northernSprw ) says:

I highly recommend bookmarking both The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, peer-reviewed weekly med journals. Both have dropped their paywalls & have new research articles almost daily on covid-19 now: thelancet.com

nejm.org

I checked it out, there’s lots of info there.

A change can do ya good

A couple of things I learned/thought/will be doing/changed.

There isn’t enough pandemic-fighting PPE equipment in Vancouver. This means that docs are refusing to see people with fever and persistent cough, and failing a lockdown, we’re all going to be exposed to coronavirus. For this reason, I will be cancelling my doctors’ appointment later this month, whether or not I am showing symptoms…. do I really want to go in a week to doctor’s office across the street from RCH? I’m thinking they’ll be using the basement and upstairs of the SOAP Hall in Sapperton – where Beacon is – for overflow beds since it’s plague ward sized and right across the street from RCH and it’s accessible and there’s a kitchen and washrooms although there probably isn’t enough power, so it wouldn’t be good for people on ventilators.

I’ve started taking L-lysine. It’s a placebo. I’m okay with that. Even if it’s not and it actually helps I’ll never know because ain’t no science here.

Estrogen offers some protection against coronavirus apparently; I am still happy to pass on whatever hormones might be coming to me as a post menopausal cis woman to any trans woman who needs them (not literally, just not using them). Seriously. I don’t need it and someone else does.

Here are instructions for clearing your lungs, which I’m also copying here: (the online instructions have pictures accompanying, so it’s better)

COPD: Clearing Your Lungs

Introduction

COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is a long-term illness that makes it hard to breathe. When you have COPD, air does not flow easily into and out of your lungs. You may be short of breath, cough a lot, and have a lot of mucus in your lungs. Learning to clear your lungs may help you save energy and oxygen and may also help prevent lung infections.

There are three things you can do to clear your lungs:

  • Controlled coughing. This type of coughing comes from deep in your lungs. It loosens mucus and moves it though your airways.
  • Postural drainage. You lie down in different positions to help drain mucus from your lungs.
  • Chest percussion. You lightly tap your chest and back. The tapping loosens the mucus in your lungs.

How do you do controlled coughing, postural drainage, and chest percussion?

Controlled coughing

Coughing is how your body tries to get rid of mucus. But the kind of coughing you cannot control makes things worse. It causes your airways to close. It also traps the mucus in your lungs.

Controlled coughing comes from deep in your lungs. It loosens mucus and moves it though your airways. It is best to do it after you use your inhaler or other medicine. Follow these steps for controlled coughing:

  • Sit on the edge of a chair, and keep both feet on the floor.
  • Lean forward a little, and relax.
  • Breathe in slowly through your nose, and fold your arms over your belly.
  • As you exhale, lean forward. Push your arms against your belly.
  • Cough 2 or 3 times as you exhale with your mouth slightly open. Make the coughs short and sharp. Push on your belly with your arms as you cough. The first cough brings the mucus through the lung airways. The next coughs bring it up and out.
  • Inhale again, but do it slowly and gently through your nose. Do not take quick or deep breaths through your mouth. It can block the mucus coming out of the lungs. It also can cause uncontrolled coughing.
  • Rest, and repeat if you need to.

Postural drainage

Postural drainage means lying down in different positions to help drain mucus from your lungs.

Hold each position for 5 minutes. Do it about 30 minutes after you use your inhaler. Make sure you have an empty stomach. If you need to cough, sit up and do controlled coughing.

Follow these steps for postural drainage:

  • Lie down on a bed or the floor. Use pillows to help you with different positions.
  • To drain the front of your lungs
    • Lie on your back. Make sure that your chest is lower than your hips. Put two pillows under your hips. Use a small pillow under your head. Keep your arms at your sides.
    • Then follow these instructions for breathing: With one hand on your belly and the other on your chest, breathe in. Push your belly out as far as possible. You should be able to feel the hand on your belly move out, while the hand on your chest should not move. When you breathe out, you should be able to feel the hand on your belly move in. This is called belly breathing or diaphragmatic (say “die-uh-fruhg-MAT-ik”) breathing. You will use it in the other drainage positions too.
  • To drain the sides of your lungs
    • Do this step as you lie on one side. Then turn over, and do it on the other side.
    • Place two or three pillows under your hips. Use a small pillow under your head. Make sure your chest is lower than your hips. Use belly breathing. After 5 or 10 minutes, switch sides.
  • To drain the back of your lungs
    • Lie on your stomach.
    • Place two or three pillows under your hips. Use a small pillow under your head.
    • Place your arms by your head.
    • Use belly breathing.

Chest percussion

Chest percussion means that you lightly tap your chest and back. The tapping loosens the mucus in your lungs.

Follow these steps to do chest percussion:

  • Cup your hand, and lightly tap your chest and back.
  • Ask your doctor where the best spots are to tap. Avoid your spine and breastbone.
  • It may be easier to have someone do the tapping for you.

I don’t believe a goddamn word about how long you can be shedding virus. You can test positive for coronavirus a month after you no longer have symptoms. Is it live virus? are you infectious? Do we really know? On that basis, we’re going to be living and dying with this mofo, especially once it starts mutating locally, for a looong time. By the time this is over, the Venetians who died after their kin brought plague from Caffa will be rising from their mass graves and saying DID I STUTTER WHEN I SAID QUARANTINE, WHICH MEANS FORTY FUCKING DAYS? Or no, everything’s fine, we’ll catch most of it in 14 days.

Don’t smoke, don’t vape, and especially don’t vape anything with glycerin in it.  Do not do anything at all that could reduce your lung capacity, you will need all of it.

Did you know that Trump specifically told the CDC not to test for COVID-19 because it would interfere with Republican chances for the elections? Now that you know, are you surprised?

…..but it would be fucking swell if we could keep the mortality down to a dull roar while we Canadians come up with a vaccine and the Senegalese come up with the world’s fastest and most accurate test and the Cubans set their antiviral manufacturing into HOLY FUCK PANDEMIC mode. The idea of a bunch of expressionless Senegalese doctors saying that it would be their preference if Europeans stopped visiting because they bring disease gladdens the little rancid piece of gristle standing in for my heart these days.

I changed my website, because in a time of plague a brand refresh is always on point. My twitter logo is now part of the site, so anyone who ends up here from twitter knows this is me.

cancellations

Saw Keith, Paul, Katie and Alex yesterday when I went to pick Alex up from the school. I walked to but Katie gave me a lift back from Planet Bachelor. Alex is doing well and we had a lovely walk. I didn’t bug him or try to talk to him. I let him be. I walked next to him, and at every intersection, his little cold hand slid into mine, and then he let go as soon as we crossed the street.

Keith enjoys living with Alex. He says some days are better than others.

I burst into tears when Paul said he’s staying on this side of the border until things settle down, which, candidly, who can say?

And it all happens again two Wednesdays from now, if we aren’t in lockdown. Seven new cases in BC yesterday.

Started reading the Newsflesh Trilogy yesterday. It’s entertaining as hell; but describing the zombie apocalypse like that and then saying ‘look how much infrastructure survived’ makes me hope that she will at least provide an explanation of how the power grid and cell towers survived well enough to make an instant news economy work, and where all that bleach gets manufactured, is not really explained well enough to keep me happy.

I have a sudden mental image of people driving up to crematoria with loved ones in garbage bags sealed with duct tape and leaving them outside with the phone number of whoever’s got the credit card number to get them cremated.

70 million years ago days were 23.5 hours long. Longer days were God’s answer to critters saying ‘THERE’S JUST NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY”.

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are in COVID-19 isolation in Australia. Lucky them.

Guess who has diplomatic relations with Cuba, which manufactures the most powerful antiviral in the world right now? Canada. Guess who doesn’t? Trumplandia.

Dinosaur the size of a hummingbird.