Covid-19 PanICdemic: It’s (Been) Here. It’s The Aerosol That Kills! (March 9, 2020)
. . .
J “The aerosolized particles are killing us. Hand washing is fine. Social distancing is a start, but we need much more, much distance. The particles float around and live much longer than anyone realizes.”
K “They say that we need to stay six feet apart or two meters if you live in a rational country with the metric system. The idea that an area six feet and one inch away or two meters and two centimeters away is safe is unsafe, absurd and dishonest. Any room is an oversized petri dish of disease.”
J “The famous epidemiologist George Carlin’s observation ‘Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?’ should inform us.”
. . .
J “If you are a Republican, it is a hoax. It you are a Democrat, it is a pox.”
K “If you think it is a hoax, you are a Republican. If you think it is a pox, you are a Democrat.”
. . .
K “The country is incapacitatingly polarized. If the Democrats proclaimed that the sun rises in the East, the Republicans would insist that it rises in the West.”
J “However, I consulted with a congenital and unreconstructed Republican colleague who has not repudiated her medical training and is heroically sounding the alarm.”
K “Sounds like the old ‘Beans v. Bullets’ debate and division among preppers. Tell me your political party, I’ll tell you your position on all the big issues. I can tell if a person is going to buy an N95 or another 9 or a .45.”
J “Her sentiments are offset by two quite reasonable and informed persons in two different settings who dismiss the Virus as a hoax along with global climate change.”
. . .
J “The reams of toilet paper are irrational but not surprising. I understand the generation that wiped its way through Sears and Ward and Spiegel catalogs opting to file away piles of paper, but this generation has not seen that privation and should calibrate their real needs.”
K “Someone suggested that when tragedy strikes, bowel movements spike. Hoarding water in tiny unhealthy plastic bottles is as absurd as stockpiling during regular times. I saw stacks of inexpensive buckets and barrels on the shelves that could be filled instead. And then staged outside to collect rain water.”
J “Putting aside a little chow is prudent and prescient.”
. . .
J “The customers at my Costco were focused but edgy.”
K “Edgy and focused at mine. All it will take is a spark. Sambucol, then hand sanitizer, then thermometers, then hydrogen peroxide, then rice, then beans, then wipes have almost disappeared.”
J “The ‘Baltic Dry Index’ measures changes in the cost of transporting raw materials and the ‘Costco Dry Goods Index’ could measure an admixture of fear and preparation by the public.”
. . .
J “The third time is a charm. The real threat is that the virus is spread in a tiny aerosol form that allows it to sail through the body’s gauntlet of defense mechanisms, settle in the bottom of the lungs and drown someone from the inside.”
. . .
J “The word ‘triage’ will trend and be trendy. Consequential decisions must be made when an otherwise healthy but infected 18 year young requires a ventilator that is occupied by an 81 year old with multiple debilitating conditions. If I present in the middle of the catastrophe even if I know the physicians who make the call, I will be denied care.”
K “No question here.”
J “In the hospital, they identify you by your birthday not by your social security number, so there is no question about your age and thus your entitlement to attention.”
. . .
J “The real threat is lost in the discussions of hand washing and social distancing. The droplets drop to the ground. The tinier airborne aerosolized particles float in the air and contact far more people in a wider area for a longer period of time. The real threat is that the virus is spread by these tiny aerosol particles that sail through the body’s gauntlet of defense mechanisms, settle in the bottom of the lungs and drown someone from the inside.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at “Shop While They Drop – The $2.99 Sacrifice (May 7, 2007)”, “Beans and Bullets (April 6, 2009)” and “Globalization: Colonization Without The Costs; Corporations Supplant Countries. Oh, And Happy Bastille Day! (July 15, 2019)”.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Flatten the curve
Don’t test, don’t tell! It’s only the flu!
Keep calm and panic
“Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?” George Carlin
Flatten the curve. At least it sounds like someone is doing something.
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