4/22/2020
I have been so busy. As things continue my list of chores and responsibilities gets longer. I have the chicks to take care of, the plants, getting the land clear and a garden dug, videos to record and edit, research, social media, and I am finding it hard to get to this journal. But my gratest source of stress comes from the people with crazy ideas about this pandemic and all the mistakes being made.
There is a suspected case now in the psych hospital my husband works at. I have no idea why the ER released the patient there before the test results came back. They are a residential ward and are not set up for this. They have no N95 masks and no isolation rooms. All that is separating this patient from the rest is a door with a 2 inch gap on the bottom! If that person has covid-19 it's going to spread to everyone else. There is no decon except hand washing and a flimsy gown they throw out. They had to walk the suspected case right through the main hall to get them to the room! If my husband gets this, so do I. With my health problems I am not likely to have an easy time of it and could very well die. I was lucky when I got sick back in March. My husband tested negative so it was a regular virus but it STILL knocked my O2 down to 92% Covid-19 will do much worse. Right now I'm not scared but I am pissed off!
The thing that sent me over the edge last night was having someone tell me that the pandemic is staged just to get Trump in trouble. What the hell do these people think? If that was true then why would the virus have started in China and why would the rest of the world just tolerate this as their people get sick and die? These people really think they are smart but it's Dunning Kruger at it's finest.
Many just flat out call it a hoax! They say it's nothing but the common cold. Again, they aren't thinking this through. When I point out the scientific evidence they say the "scientists" are in on it. As if there were some central science agency that controlled every one of them all over the world! Then of course you would have to get every doctor, nurse, and first responder to lie as well. How would they even be able to do it? Why would Italy and Spain lie to hurt our president? It's not like US presidents are long term leaders anyway. At most they have 8 years and can be voted out after 4. So what would be the point? As an immunocompromised person with a husband working in healthcare it makes me sick! (no pun intended!)
Then you have the ones just making crap up! They try to claim that the virus is a lot less lethal because more people had it then we know about. While there may be some validity to it we have no actual idea. The virus is too new and we don't even know if you get immunity after the first time. On the contrary we have reports from multiple countries that not only can you get it again but it's more lethal the second time. All these people are so scared that they NEED to think it's a hoax. If they could just accept the situation and deal with it we wouldn't be having these issues. It's a combo of fear and selfishness driving this pandemic and I have no way to combat that.
Minority communities are getting hit the hardest. Of course they are! They have more people crammed in less space, less money, tend to work essential jobs, and have crap healthcare. You will notice that most of these protesters are middle class and up, white people. Apparently as long as THEY don't have to see it, they don't care about it. But this is a virus and viruses spread. It may hit the poor and homeless first but if nothing is handled right it will eventually hit them too. It's like people live in a warped sense of reality and time. I actually have people saying that since it hasn't overrun healthcare yet that it never can or will! As if the virus has been here a long time! We have over 40k dead in 6 weeks! What the hell are they talking about?
Even the states "doing well" show a 2.5-4% mortality rate. Texas for example has a rate of 2.5%. That is 25 times more lethal than the flu! It just hasn't spread that far yet so people get a false sense of security. How do I get them to prepare and prevent the spread if I can't get them to acknowledge the risk? How hard is it to just stay home unless absolutely nessacary, wear a mask if you go out, stay 6 feet apart in public and wash your damned hands! It seem like a VERY small price to pay in exchange for the lives of other people. How can they look at ANY number of dead and brush it off? If one of their loved ones died from something preventable they would demand retribution, but since it hasn't happened to them yet, screw everyone else!
I didn't see this coming. When I started everything in late January I was able to predict many things but the way people are reacting now, I never saw coming. Even as more US citizens die, supplies become scarce and the global price of oil crashes, they are more worried about an election! I was worried about people freaking out but I can now see that they will keep their selfish ways until they drop dead! Even if we could wave a magic wand and get rid of the virus in the US we would still be in serious trouble. The supply chain is broken around the globe and we WILL feel the sting.
The sad truth is that most of our farm labor workers are migrants who are paid pennies on the dollar for their work. The US now has the highest infection rate in the world. Why would those workers show up over the Summer and Fall when they would have to risk their lives to do it and people hate them? Domestic food workers are quitting left and right as animals can be infected and meat packing plants become vectors. Why is it so strange to people to think that there will be food shortages? There already are! Just grow and raise what you can to support the system! How hard is that? Not everyone has the space to do it so those of us that can REALLY need to help.
Obviously I still have hope. If I didn't I wouldn't be working my ass off. We still have time to do this right. The second wave will come in the late summer/Fall. The majority of people who died during the Spanish Flu did so in the second wave over a period of just 3 months. MILLIONS died! We still have a chance to keep that from happening with this pandemic. But we need the majority of people cooperating. Even as NYC numbers start to go down, numbers in other places go up. WHY is it like this?! Why do people look at a place getting overrun and decide they don't care? Why are they so short sighted? We have watched this virus coming for months and it moves as projected. The only thing keeping those numbers down is our actions! I actually see people claiming that because the numbers in NYC didn't hit projections then the projections were wrong. NOPE! The projections are about what happens if you do nothing. NYC shut down and slowed the infection rate. THAT is what projections are for! They tell you how bad it can get if you do nothing and then you work like hell to prevent it! It's as if they can't grasp cause and effect. IF this continues then the virus WILL reach projected numbers. We don't want that! We want to have as few numbers as possible!
I had no idea that people were THIS spoiled. They actually think they are being oppressed by the preventative measures. They hold up signs that say "End Martial Law" As if THIS is what martial law looks like! If this was martial law, then how did you manage to leave the house and show up to the local court house carrying an AR15?! Oh, did I forget to mention that part? We have people showing up at court houses and capital buildings carrying AR15s! Let me tell you, if you were really being "silenced" and we were under martial law, you would have been shot in the dammed head for that stunt! But there are no soldiers on your street keeping you inside at gun point! And I for one would like to keep it that way! Sooner or later, if this continues and the virus gets completely out of control we will GET soldiers holding us inside at gun point!
If myself and all the people working to stop this pandemic do our jobs right, you can go on thinking that we over reacted. I can live with that. What I can't live with is the alternative! If we don't handle this right, EVERYTHING will fall apart. I am not here as some doomsday idiot. I don't just shout nonsense into the void. I have a very specific purpose. To get people the information and instrucions they need to prevent the death of themselves and their loved ones. That's it. I am not here to debate or have a discussion or create drama. I'm here to help find solutions to problems that people may face and help them prepare for the worst. My advice would be almost identical for ANY emergency situation.
1. Have 6 weeks supplies on hand
2. Have a good medical kit
3. Lower the risk of ALL preventable disease by washing you hands and following the advice of health experts
4. Protect your community and yourself from damaged supply chains by producing more food locally.
5. Stay informed and LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS!
In this particular emergency situation I add, Stay home if at all possible, wear a mask in public and stay 6 feet away from other people. That's it. That's what I want. If we could get every person in this country to do this we could come out of this thing in better shape than we went in! We have an amazing opportunity to identify weaknesses in our system and fix them. We can SEE the effect of our ways on nature now and we can see that our actions have a real effect. We could use this to make better policies and choices to stop climate change and loss of wildlife. We can work on turning our country into a more independent one. We can bring jobs back and ensure a better way of life for everyone. But at this point I will take what I can get. If we can just do the basics and prevent total chaos I will be happy.
All these people just have no idea of the WORK that goes into making their selfish little lives function! They think everything just works itself out! It doesn't. People work around the clock to predict and fix every tiny little thing so they can go to work, come home and not die in between! The natural state is chaos. We impose order. It doesn't just happen on it's own. Right now that order is in jeopardy. We all need to help if we want to keep it. I still believe we can, so I will get back to work. Stay safe people.
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