The Covid-19 Panic Rocks My World!

THE FUN NEVER ENDS AS LONG AS COVID-19 IS ON THE MOVE!

OK, OK, I know people are dying and I know many, many more are losing their jobs over this idiotic virus, but some of the stories crossing my transom DO MY HEART GOOD.

>>  Oregon police asking citizens to stop calling 911 because they ran out of toilet paper!

>> Riot breaks out in a Costco store when the bottled water sells out!

>>  ER staff forced to wear bandannas over their faces, like bandidos in an old cowboy movie, because they are clean out of surgical masks!

>> Acetaminophen is almost sold out at Amazon -- the few remaining bottles are going for 40 to 50 smackers apiece -- in the wake of the news that other NSAID fever reducers like aspirin and ibuprophen can aggravate COVID-19 symptoms!

>> Garbage men, meter readers, and the people who stock the shelves at the dollar store are working with rubber gloves and dousing themselves with hand sanitizer every time they touch anything!

>> Police follow a semi truck after they spot the driver making a moving violation, only to learn that it's a stolen vehicle loaded with 18,000 pounds of toilet paper!

>> A man is caught on film breaking into a church to steal -- not the silver or the artwork -- but the Purell!

Best of all, while all this is going on, most citizens are IGNORING the most important safety rule of all when it comes to this virus:

STAY AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE.

>> When the colleges shut down to prevent spreading the virus, health inspectors quickly realized that the result was EVEN LONGER LINES outside the local bars, nightclubs and restaurants. 

>> The post office still has its daily long line of elderly people standing not even 2 feet away from each other, breathing each other's air and chatting companionably while they wait to get to the counter!

>> Families are making the most of their work furloughs by...going to stay with relatives!

>> Spring Break is undefeated, with thousands upon thousands of students converging on places like Lake Havasu and Miami for boogie-woogie on the beach!

>> And let me reiterate that they are freaking RIOTING over toilet paper right now, danger of infection or no...Tell me, does this look like proper "social distancing" to you?

 

 

A Faint Whiff Of Discord

I heard this morning about a woman in China who caught the Covid-19 virus from a man who was deliberately spreading it, and got him charged with attempted murder.  I looked for an article about it, but all I could find was the older one about a man in Japan who got diagnosed and responded to the news by going out to drink in some bars.  I figure the story about the Chinese woman is just an Internet legend.  Think about it for a sec.  At this point, who would even need to deliberately go out and spread the virus in that country?  Is there any farther it can still spread inside Chinese borders at this point?

I guess every country is auditioning prospects for the role, not of Typhoid Mary, but Corona Christopher.  But I'm more curious about the people spreading these rumors.  It's possible that gossips think they are helping by warning others of the danger.  But let's be real for a second.  How do you spot a coronavirus sociopath on the prowl?  You can't, really.   HE HAS NO SYMPTOMS.  And there probably is no such person.  Wait, this just in:

 

This is a photo of the 45th POTUS declaring a national emergency today, Friday the 13th of March, 2020.  When asked by paparazzi whether he is concerned about picking up Covid-19 from other world leaders who are keeling over with it everywhere you look, he said he has no symptoms and is not planning to take any precautions.  What a role model!  IS THIS CORONA CHRISTOPHER I SEE BEFORE ME?

Li Wenliang, the real hero of the coronavirus story, was the first one to connect the dots about this virus and start informing people.  The government responded by telling him to shut the hell up.   Li then proceeded to die of the virus himself. That feels so unfair, but if anyone was still in doubt about the danger of the illness, well, there's your proof.  He was a medical man well aware of  how to make use of universal safeguards against infection.  He was quite young at 34 and apparently healthy up until he caught the bug -- a lot like the millions of Americans who are now refusing to take precautions because they are "not in the high-risk group."  Please spare a thought for his wife, who is pregnant with their 2nd child and suddenly facing life without him.  Poor woman!  Rest In Vindication, Dr. Li:

There are many, many other heroes in this story.  Take the fast thinkers who set up drive-through Coronavirus testing in South Korea, allowing them to test more people PER DAY than the USA has IN TOTAL since the start of the epidemic. 

And how about the countless doctors, nurses, and orderlies working their fingers to the bone treating patients?

 
And -- hardest of all to count -- what about the billions of people trying as hard as they can not to infect each other?

 

My hat is off to every one of you. 

Keep fighting the good fight.

Woolly Bears 1, Human Science 0

I have to say that this year at least, the woolly-bear caterpillars were ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.  They were very, very red this year and the winter was very, very mild. 

 

We're just a week or two off from spring. 

Taste The Hysteria

 

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE FUN THIS YEAR

THAN COVID-19??

The hysteria surrounding this new virus is like a tonic to me. 

>> Someone told me the other day that because she has asthma, when she catches it she doesn't have a chance.  When, not if.  She's a NURSE for fuck's sake.  Stop whining and wash your hands!

>> Someone else I know was hyperventilating about how Captain Trips is REALLY FINALLY HERE, OMG OMG.  Um, no.  Captain Trips, aka tube-neck, aka superflu, aka the Blue virus, killed every single infected person on earth -- 99.4% of the human population -- in the space of a month or so.    While this does have a superflu  feel to it in some ways, most people survive it handily.  Sorry, Charlie.

>  I admit I am intrigued by the way you can get COVID-19, recover, then catch it again.  That sure does sound like Captain Trips. 

>> The infectious-disease specialists are talking about "cytokine storms" shutting down the lungs of the COVID-19 patients who die.  That is what they always say about the Spanish Flu that killed 100 million people back at the end of the Great War, but my eager reading about that virus revealed that it's probably just speculation.  Nobody seems to have actually tracked it down, let alone cultured and studied that virus successfully.  But even if that's true, Spanish Flu preferentially killed healthy adults between 20 and 40.  COVID-19 is doing the usual viral song and dance of killing the chronically ill and elderly.

>> So maybe the people who ought to be panicking in the streets are Trump voters?

>> Someone else announced on a message board recently that the disease was deliberately engineered by the New World Order to KILL US ALL and it is the DEADLIEST DISEASE EVER FOUND.  Dude, are you serial?   Take this paper bag and breathe into it, will you?  Let me also point out that the fatality rate even in the patients made critically ill by the virus is under 50% -- and only 2.3% of ALL patients die.  It may be even lower than that when you count people who got it, but have symptoms too mild to mention to anybody.

>> Since I wrote the bullet point above, the World Health Organization adjusted the mortality figures to 3.4%.  That's still not Captain Trips by a long shot.  I have been unable to find an article that says 3.4% of who, exactly, but I assume they mean 3.4% of reported cases that were definitely COVID-19.

>> Any hysteric worth his salt would be sure to point out about here that  a mortality rate of 3.4% is THREE AND A HALF TIMES AS DEADLY AS SEASONAL FLU.  Yes.  But when is the last time anyone got panicky about flu season, which is happening right now and this year is FAR worse than average, with multiple strains keeping people sick in bed for up to 4 weeks and schools shutting down because all the staff and students are sick?  I don't see anyone rioting in the streets about it.

>>  About the New World Order thing: If COVID-19 is engineered to kill us all and everyone's dead, what is there left to take over? 

In honor of this crisis I renewed my search for the full-length version of a 1980 movie about a killer pandemic called Virus.  I have only been able to find the cut-down, 103-minute version in the past and wanted to see the 2-hours-and-36-minutes-long version for the first time.  This time I stumbled across the fact that the long version has a different title:  Resurrection Day. No wonder I've been stalled all this time.  It became the first movie on a phone download queue I created and I even went the extra mile and ordered one of those gadgets that makes your smartphone look as big as a TV screen so I can watch it in style.  Man, life is good sometimes.

I have heard that the air quality in China is so bad that it is now possible to buy a bottle of imported clean air so you can take a whiff of something other than smog.  My whiffing bottle has the clean, refreshing taste of PANDEMIC HYSTERIA.