The Day to Day

There seemed to be so much hope for a reasonable transition to normalcy in my last post, but sadly that has not come to pass. Daily here in Illinois, as they ramp up the testing to more and more people, the number of infected people continues to increase, as you might expect. However, the deaths continue to trend higher as well, which is not necessarily an expected consequence of more testing. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet and following the trend line on deaths related to Covid 19 and the 14 day average continues to increase (now about 110 people per day). Daily I listen to two, three or four infectious disease doctors regarding what’s going on in: new treatments, old treatments being resurrected, idiotic things the potus says (the doctors really, really show great restraint when talking about him, it’s impressive), treatments for Covid, vaccine development, anti-body testing, and of course the current figures for those tested, those infected and those that have passed.

But I also read some stories online and one, which was a story from a few days ago on the news that just got onto the internet news feed revolves around potential positive impacts of vitamin-D, or more accurately, the NEGATIVE impacts of vitamin-D deficiency. Those two things are not the same thing. Patients with a vitamin D deficiency have seen notably worse outcomes, but it has not been tested, only observed, which means it could be a coincidence.

Remdesivir has also been observed to alleviate some symptoms of the most adversely impacted it appears, increasing recovery time by 3-4 days. So that’s promising, but still, best not to need it.

Vaccines have been in development and various stages of testing since January, while the potus still espoused that the virus was a democratic hoax. Good call orange man.

While I didn’t want this to be a political post, I can’t help but remind my future self of what Turtle man, Mitch the bitch McConnell said yesterday to reporters. He blamed Obama for the U.S.’s inaction to Covid 19. Somehow he felt that it was Obama who cut the infectious disease budget the last three years.

It was not.

That it was Obama who removed the infectious disease liaison in China early last year.

It was not.

That it was Obama who ignored the scientists and other countries under the belief that first the disease was a conspiracy and then that it would just disappear once warm weather arrived.

It was not.

That it was Obama who ignored Dr. Rick Bright and fired him for trying to warn us early on about Covid 19.

It was not.

That it was Obama who did not leave a 69 page National Security Council “playbook” on what to do in case of a pandemic.

He did leave one and it’s been ignored.

And just as bad as any of that, if Mitch or Trump thought our pandemic response was insufficient, they had three damn years to do something about it. Instead they were too busy repealing anything Obama touched and far too concerned about partisan politics. It’s much easier to edit than to create. Obama created. Trump just edits.

So now some states are opening up a bit and some are more aggressive. Already I’ve seen videos of bars in Texas and Wisconsin that are bustling, with no social distancing and no masks. You’d like to think, “Well, the rona will take them out.” But it doesn’t work that way. It may take out some of them, but more likely they will just be carriers and infect other people who may be following stricter guidelines but cross paths with one of these clowns. It’s really embarrassing how people can’t live a somewhat restrained existence for two months without freaking out. Their selfishness is overwhelming. But it also says something about our society and it’s not just about people wanting to get back to their normal. First, they have no knowledge of, or interest in, history. And that’s not even history back to 1918 that I’m talking about, though that pandemic should have served enough notice to all people to work towards solutions for the next one. Just go back to Swine Flu or SARS. Look what South Korea did and how they developed social tracing to isolate infected people and test possibly infected people more quickly. We do none of that. Sure, if you get someone terribly sick with ECOLI, they’ll trace it back to the Denny’s, but that’s about it.

Thinking on a lighter note, I’m hopeful that the football season will be played, with or without fans in the stands. I’m truly fine either way, though of course if fans are allowed, it means we have effective treatments and possibly a vaccine. Here’s hoping!!