Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Or so I would like to say.

Reality is different. This week a lab at my work place had to be closed for deep cleaning due to an employee reporting in sick with the virus. A few employees I know are quarantined, because they are sick with the virus.

I'm fortunate to say that my immediate family has been so far sickness free. However, I cannot say the same thing about my extended family, some of which passed away recently due to this sickness. In one particular case, the grandfather actually survived the virus, but his son did not, and left behind a wife and a 2-year old. As far as I know, no prior respiratory medical issues. The body will not be released until next year, because the morgue can't keep up. He is likely in a freezer.

A marine colonel friend of mine got it, and his older son did too. Interestingly his wife and younger son (both which have asthma) did not get it, arguably because the steroid medication they take make them less susceptible to the virus. But, if they do get it, nobody expects an easy outcome. Fortunately, my friend and his son recovered. I have similar recent stories from my children's school. I could go on about friends of mine whose immediate family barely made it, or did not. And such are the facts.

Isolation policies are ineffective, largely because people (including policy makers) go around them and make them ineffective. Many folks lack discipline. I wear a mask at work every day. I don't like it, I also don't think it's 100% effective, but I understand it and I know it helps.

From your responses, it seems you or someone close to you have yet to experience SARS-2. Good for you. But don't bullshit me. To some of us this is serious.

 

WFH is unproductive and unsustainable.

Folks have to keep their distance and do what they can to avoid spreading the virus. But I believe some isolation policies will need revision.

 

It depends. WFH requires new and different techniques, and technology that enables it. I had pretty much been working remotely anyway before the Wuhan pneumonia hit. The people I talk to and work with are spread around the world: Paris, London, Montreal, Texas, New York, Vancouver, Bangalore, Adelaide. We were already using Teams / SP with multiple meetings lined up for any particular day of the week. WFH really didn't make a difference. In fact, it increased productivity. I was less tired from waking up at 5am and driving 2.5 hours to and back each day. I actually had to learn how to stop working by closing the laptop lid at 5:30pm.

WFH won't work well for the subpar employee though - the guys who just show up to collect a check.

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING VIGILANT

As many of you know, this is a critical time for me. I'm getting the house ready sale and it's North Padre Island or bust before X-mas. I also have diminished lung capacity from Valley Fever I contracted two years ago.

A few days ago, the nice grandma with the shotgun in the house across the street from us asked my wife Julie if I could help move her husband Bob up from bed in the morning. Evidently, Bob was having a hard time getting up and moving about. He was one of the last to be struck by polio, so he was partially paralyzed already and may have just been having a tough day. Julie responded back that I was in the middle of a meeting, which was the true. When I found out, I felt super bad that I wasn't able to help. I told Julie that I would have gladly left my company meeting to help him out and to let me know next time a request like this happened. Some things such as helping a neighbor in need are more important than work.

Later that day in the evening, we noticed flashing red lights outside of our front window. We saw a fire truck, a paramedic truck, and an ambulance. I guess it was a slow day for first responders. After about half an hour, we saw the paramedics take Bob on a gurney to the ambulance. We all thought it was a stroke or something like that. Well, it turned out to be the Wuhan Pneumonia. WTF right? That was the last thing I was thinking. The next day, we also found out that the grandma and their daughter (living with them) also had the Wuhan pneumonia virus.

It suddenly dawned upon Julie and I how dangerous the situation is. Had I gone to help, there would have been a good chance that I had gotten infected, and then probably the rest of my family. Julie and I had spoken to grandma a few times earlier in the week, but we were always outdoors and at least six feet away, with us wearing our N95 masks (thanks @CEE TEE). My contact was more in passing, but Julie's was more direct, more often, and slightly longer. We called out primary care physicians, and after a phone call, they decided that we could be tested, but we had to wait a two days. I had to shake my head: wouldn't it have made sense for us to get tested right away? Well, I assume that the docs knew what they were doing and figured that it was unlikely that we got it from our video interviews.

So anyway, Bob is OK now. They discharged him from the hospital and he's back home with an ample supply of oxygen tanks. Grandma has a headache, but we saw her sit outside on her front yard today taking in the sun. The daughter is totally asymptomatic. We still can't figure out how Bob got it. Because of his polio, he mostly stays at home anyway. The only thing he did recently was go out to Costco to shop and look around. It's entirely possibly the daughter, who is out and about more, gave it to him. From what Julie says, her mask discipline is pretty bad.

If there's anything I've learned, it's that we still need to be vigilant. A cheap mask will ensure that you don't infect others, especially those at risk. The chances that they die are slim, but the chances that they are stuck with a crazy hospital bill are not so slim. If you are concerned for yourself as well, go for an N95 mask. A good N95 mask, properly worn, actually breaths easier and offers far superior protection (no gaps).

Don't be a dick. It's possible to be infected and spreading the Wuhan pneumonia virus to tons of people without you knowing it. If you don't like the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask, then stay at home.

 

Marv- glad there was no immediate death of the neighbors and exposure to your family didn't occur.
but it's called Covid-19. tongue in cheek or not, no need to be parroting the dumbshit fat old white cracker fuckwads in the Oval Office.

 

My understanding is that one has to wait 48 hours from the time of suspected exposure, to maximize the effectiveness of the test. Some coworkers where scheduling tests last week, and were told the same thing.

 

Yup.

 

My parents call it Wuhan pneumonia: Wǔhàn fèiyán (武漢肺炎). That old fat orange guy probably doesn't even know where Wuhan is located in relation to Bejing, Shanghai, or Nanjing.

China also called it Wǔhàn fèiyán in January. COVID-19 is whitewash nonsense from China Communist controlled WHO, which refuses to allow participation from Taiwan just because an independence minded president got elected. I refuse to call Wǔhàn fèiyán COVID-19. Let's make this clear, over a million people around the world have died, tens of millions sickened, and hundreds of millions of livelihoods ruined because China tried to hide how nasty this bug was, and even got WHO into the act of hiding how bad it was. The term Wuhan pneumonia has nothing to do with Trump.

It seems no one remembers how long it took for WHO to call it a pandemic, or how the WHO did not recommend closing of borders until it was way past too late. f**k these communist bastards and the UN institutions that they've bought off. While stupid fucks like Lady Gaga organize benefit concerts for the WHO. The reason Taiwan has done so well, despite being an open democracy is because the Taiwanese believe none of the WHO's bullshit and only assumed the worst from those communists.