Although I am FAR from being an expert on communicable diseases, I have a life-long habit of approaching them from a *scientific* point of view. I go CRAZY when people say they have “the flu”. The flu? Do you have an actual strain of influenza or did you spend the night with your toilet or is it just a bad cold? If you have not been tested for “the flu”, you have no clue whether you have “the flu” or not. If you spent the night with your toilet, it’s almost certainly *not* “the flu”.

And do NOT get me started on that old wives tale about getting sick from going outside in the cold with wet hair. What the heck? I do that every cold day of my life. I have had my wet hair freeze many times although nowadays I usually cover it up with a balaclava. But that’s for comfort, not because I think frozen hair is gonna make me sick. Because cold weather and frozen hair do not cause communicable illnesses. VIRUSES do!

Every time one of these “new” viruses emerges, I want to know some things. What is the incubation period? How is it transmitted? When are people contagious? Are they contagious before they experience symptoms? I am FAR from having expertise on this stuff but it seems to me that one of the things that makes viruses survive is that they are capable of transmitting themselves via a seemingly healthy person. “Oh hi! How are you? [hug] [kiss]” And make no mistake, even for a person who needs a LOT of personal space, I do this ALL THE TIME.

I also touch my face umpteen bazillion times an hour. Do you?

No thanks to the ridiculously incompetent Orange Baboon and Mother, I think I am FINALLY starting to see dribs and drabs of potentially accurate information about COVID-19 filtering through them thar tubes. I’m not necessarily seeing anything comprehensive and I’m not sure all of it has been thoroughly vetted yet but it sounds like the virus isn’t transmitted through the air unless someone coughs or sneezes directly into your face and their virus-infected “droplets” land in your nose or mouth or eyes. More likely you touch something with COVID-19 “droplets” on it and then, you know, rub your eyes or pick your nose or something.

Whatever ends up being true, I spent most of today thinking about washing my hands and touching my face. I don’t usually think too much about these things. I get colds once in a while but my immune system kicks *ss and I quite cavalierly pull public bathroom doors open by the handle with my bare hand and don’t think about it again.

Today… I made myself think about what I was doing with my hands [almost] every single second. Was my nose itchy? I have a box of Kleenex in my cube and every time my nose was itchy, I scratched it through a Kleenex. I did keep the used Kleenex on my desk for hours. I wonder if coronavirus prevention protocol requires a new Kleenex every time you touch your nose or not. And this is all knowing that the only two places I went today were my house, which is highly unlikely to be infected with COVID-19 and Cubelandia, which, at this time, imma gonna guess is not infected.

While the newest coronavirus is concerning, I am more freaked out about the lack of accurate information our government seems to be willing to provide. Or even understand. You don’t have to be an actual accredited scientist to understand how viruses work. We don’t need a scientist for president but we do need someone intelligent enough to understand a Virus Primer. Not to mention being willing to read one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.