Yesterday was such a frustrating day for me. Three encounters with people that are not aware. Not paying attention to something that is going on in this world that is, at this point in time one of the most important things happening in our time.
Covid. It’s everywhere. It’s on the 24 hour news cycle, that or the economy, or unemployment, which are covid adjacent story, since the reason that the economy and unemployment are in the state they are in due to covid. I’m not sure about everyone else, I mean I can’t speak for every person on the entire planet, but in my experience, every single conversation has at least a little bit of covid talk in there, it either dominates the entire conversation or it pops up in there somewhere.
Everyone has an opinion on how this should be handled and who is doing a good job at it.
So, running into three separate people who are just not paying attention to the biggest thing in our time is just plain frustrating.
Person Number One
P#1 was encountered while walking the dogs. His dog and my Tiny Dog were checking each other out, sniffing and doing a tiny bit of play at the end of their long leashes while he and I spoke loudly across the dogs and the distance. P#1 made the statement of ‘Why can’t they let us go back to work, it’s only the elderly and those that already have conditions, illness that have to worry about this, they’re the only ones that can get this, or at least die from it”. I was dismayed. I’d spoken to this man and his wife multiple times since they moved into our complex about a year and a bit ago.
“No, healthy people are getting this.” I told him. “It’s a horrible, invasive disease that not only affects the respiratory system, it also affects the the lungs and and weakens the person. I know someone who had a friend die from this.”
She wasn’t elderly, she had no underlying condition. At the time of infection she was a healthy 30 something year old, with a wedding to plan, children to have, a career to be promoted at and one day, grandchildren to bounce upon her knee. A life to live.
She tested positive for Covid, was admitted to the hospital and after being on a respirator she got better. She tested negative for covid and was sent home. A few days later she was admitted back into the hospital, her heart was failing. The covid virus had damaged her lungs and her heart and within a week she was gone. Taken too soon by this damn pandemic. P#1 was surprised. I told him that I could go on with more and more people, the point is, it’s not only the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions that are in danger of this disease.
Person Number Two
P#2 was on the internet, over social media. He was calling for the children to return to school. P#2 was extremely mad at our Premier and the ‘crappy‘ job that he was doing because he wasn’t opening business, parks and schools up again. P#2 was upset that at least the schools could be open again, since children are in no way in danger from covid.
So, me being stupid, I engaged the idiocy on social media and explained that children can in fact get this, and that they seem to have a symptom that is rare in adults but more pronounced in children.
Lesions on their feet and hands, it can look like frostbite but be hot to the touch and from what I’ve read, very painful. I explained this to P#2 and his response was one that probably supposed to inflame me, get me to engage in some kind of discourse that feeds into whatever it is that trolls on the internet get out of causing these sorts of disputes.
P#2 claimed that this is no worse than having a cold, the regular flue or other nasties and that you don’t shut down the schools for that.
I told him that children to get Covid and that they have a symptom that is rare in adults, painful lesions on their feet and hands. They can look like the effects of frost bite, but they are hot to the touch.

These aren’t the worst pictures of the lesions from covid on feet. There are worse ones out there, if you care to look for them.
There is more misinformation that he began spouting, stuff he gleaned off of the internet from doctors who are not specialists, who are not from the field of contagious diseases, who are out there spreading their little bit of snake oil to the masses to make them feel safer and that that can reopen the world.
He claimed that no more people die from Covid than die from the flu each year. So all these deaths that just keep rattling up in number, those are either inflated or the flu numbers are being kept hidden from us, each year they keep the flu numbers hidden from us, decades of states, lied about and hidden away because I have never, not once heard of any number of deaths related to the flu that are anywhere near as close to what is happening right now, in the world.
Person Number Three
P#3 is someone that called me last night and her ignorance at how covid affects the body, how it’s spread is just remarkable. I know that this person likes to give the image of her being educated and well informed. This person is glued to the TV, watching all the briefings from the Prime Minister, the Premier, the health ministers and anybody else that talks about covid in front of the cameras of the media. She also reads her daily newspaper.
Sadly, somehow she is ignorant of how covid works. I had to sit there on the phone explained over and over again how covid actually works.
No, it’s not the flu, it’s more virulent. If you go to work with the flu the person in the next cubicle and all your co-workers don’t come down with it. Not always. And yet this virus spreads like flies are attracted to shit. It attacks the respiratory system. The flu doesn’t make you have to be admitted to the hospital and put on a respirator.
But my son got h1n1 years ago, he was admitted to the hospital and put on a respirator. No. My son did get h1n1 years ago. He was admitted to the hospital. A mas with oxygen pumping into his face is not a respirator. And he has asthma, so yeah his oxygen stats got low.
She is saying that we’ll be open again in a matter of weeks, the premiere said so. No. The premiere said that once the numbers got under control, once they stopped climbing and the numbers of new cases were diminishing, they’ll slowly begin to open things up in a multiple stage process. That does not mean that we’ll be open again in 12 weeks, it means that once we meet the criteria for opening up again, we’ll maybe be open again in 12 weeks. Maybe. There are no guarantees.
But he said it, and he hasn’t lied yet in all of this. I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying that what you think he said, he did not in fact say that.
I told her to go look up info for herself. She refuses. She acts like if she even thinks about using any form of technology to access the internet she’ll get covid or go to hell, not that she believes in god, it’s just that she’s adamant that she doesn’t need to use the internet or technology. It’s not that she’s a Luddite, it’s that she blames a computer and the internet for the ending of her marriage so P#3 acts like the internet has it in for her, and cannot in fact be trusted.
So, yesterday feels like I spent most of yesterday dealing with people who will not see, will not hear and will not care. They want to keep their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge that the very thing that they want to happen, reopen everything up again, will in fact start us back at day one, locked down, people being unemployed, financial ruin and the thing that seems to be the worst to everyone in all of this, an inability to have their vanity served (hair and nail salons, estheticians and gyms), and the most horrible side effect of being in social distancing and self isolation, boredom.
They fail to realize that if we try to return to our normal lives too soon, all of this will have been for nothing because we’ll have to start over again, day one of lock down.
Lets stay home until the numbers are down. Lets stay home so that this doesn’t start all over again because I for one would like to have a Christmas and New Year where we can toast and say “Thank god 2020 is over and hopefully the time of covid is behind us”.
Let the Packing Games Begin
There is so much to do, I’ve been purging my home of the crap that we managed to bring to the new house with us when we moved in here as well as the stuff that we managed to collect over the past two years.
Honestly, how do we manage to accumulate so much crap? It’s like a mission to have more stupid stuff that I’ll never ever use, but dammit that fondue pot that I had to have, is sitting on a shelf because it was on sale and I’ve always liked the idea of sticking food into molten hot cheese.
So, I’ve been tossing stuff into the donation bin, giving to charity all the useless stuff that’s still in good shape but I don’t ever need, if I ever truly did in the first place, is something that is good and feels good when you toss that thing you wanted but never used into the bin. I’ve also been throwing away the stuff that’s not in such good shape, but for some reason my emotions wouldn’t allow me to get rid of it. I mean an entire box of faded school art projects the kids did when they were six years old, ranging up to graduation for the youngest son, is not something that I need to hold onto anymore. I know that I wanted to keep it because it was a way to hold onto the kids as young ones, and as they grew up and needed me less, or for Dev because of the amount of work it took to draw that picture or glue that glitter to a piece of card stock made me all weepy. But, really it was a way to hold onto their childhood just that much longer, but now I’m getting rid of it, because it’s faded and the glue is failing, and really it’s not so much art now as it is scraps of paper.
So this is how I’m spending my time right now. Tossing stuff into donation or trash bins. I haven’t even begun to stick stuff into cardboard boxes to be taped shut and be scrawled on in colour coded markers that signal which room will be their final destination.
I’ve never been good at packing. My ADD always gets the best of me, then there’s the other in my family that also suffer from the ADD and the distraction kills the three of us. The fourth member that packs is just a disorganized, lazy little jerk that doesn’t do stuff unless I walk him through it verbally first.
So, what always happens is a huge push on the day of the move to shove stuff into any box we can, it’s all last minute. I’ve told the family that this can’t happen this time. I’m done with that crap. We have until November 20 to get this seen to and dammit, they better not let me down. I’m pushing myself, and I just feel like I can’t be responsible for the other three grown adults. It’s time for them to step up to the plate and do this stuff themselves.
I’ll have to let you know how that goes, because at this point I’m not seeing a lot of independent packing happening, and it’s kind of freaking me the hell out!