respublica

A new mosquito warning

This should not surprise anyone, 2020 has seen pretty much everything. Now comes a warning about killer mosquitoes carrying the Eastern equine encephalitis, EEE, virus. This has been found in 22 Oregon horses and Michigan last year had 25 percent of all human cases.

Michigan officials are urging people to cancel or postpone any outdoor event that takes place at or after dusk.

As if we haven't been urged to be outside to protect ourselves more from the CoronaVirus, now get inside to avoid these darn mosquitoes. At least we haven't had any sighting of the killer mosquitoes around here. I have, though, been bitten a lot by southern Illinois mosquitoes while working in the yard during afternoons lately. Which makes me a bit paranoid and who needs more paranoia right now.

Keep your voice down

Here comes one more piece of advice on how we can help control the coronavirus. We all know about the importance of wearing masks, at least we should. It is now pretty much known that the virus is spread by moisture droplets from our noses and mouths. Masks help control the amount of these. But now the experts are asking us to tone down our voice levels while wearing masks because loud talking expends more force which means droplets can get through the masks.

According to those who study this, every route of viral transmission would go down if we talked less, or talked less loudly, in public spaces. And, folks who love to sing, especially in church, this applies to singing as well. I guess now we look forward to putting a stop to hymn singing once again. Many churches allowed members to sing if they wore masks. Don't sing, don't talk loudly, don't laugh heartily. Who ever would have thought?

It's always something new,  just when we adjust to something, the rules change.

The first and worst thing I read this morning

I'm telling you right now, it gets very tiresome to have one health expert or other, surprising us with news about normal daily behavior being bad for us. Unhealthy for us.

This morning I read an article titled:  If you do this first thing when you wake up, it could be a disaster for your health.             

And what is this first thing causing health disaster? Making your bed when you get up in the morning!

"your bed is full of Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus AKA dust mites. While you sleep they are feeding on your dead skin cells, breeding and defecating (coronavirus doesn’t sound as scary right now, does it?) "Then what happens is when you are making your bed you are literally providing the dust mites with a protected area. You just nicely tucked in the dust mites! How kind of you!"

"Many people suffer from dust mite allergies which can cause the usual array of symptoms: runny nose, itchy eyes, sore throats, but also difficulty breathing, chest tightness, and wheezing."

Ok, I get it. they want you to just leave the bed the way it is when you get up so that the bedding can air out all those scary, nasty things. I read this just after I made my bed when I first got up. I do not want to make any extra trips up and down the stairs, nor do I like the looks of an unmade bed. Not only the messy looks of the bed bother me, but getting into a messy, unmade bed that evening is not comfortable.

So Nuts to this new health story. As for me and my house, we shall make the bed.

Now it's all hygiene theatre

This just blows my mind and it should make you sit back in your chair and wonder just what else we've been told will come to be totally wrong. Seriously, this article in The Atlantic pretty much disheartened me. The Atlantic has been around forever, it's not some crazy gossip sheet periodical which makes this new news from science more than I can take in today.

Scientists have now come to agree that the Covid-19 virus is "spread among people through large droplets expelled in sneezes and coughs, or through smaller aerosolized droplets, as from conversations, during which saliva spray can linger in the air."

It is not spread by touching things and all that obsessive cleaning we've been doing has been a huge waste of time. We should still, however, be sensible about washing our hands etc etc.

This is a fascinating article and I can't do it justice by pulling out a quote here and there, read it yourself and see what you think. Frankly, I'm going to keep up the cleaning, the wiping down. But I am going to wonder if it's just all Hygiene Theater.

The conclusion reached by this author is: "Masks, social distancing, and moving activities outdoors. That’s it. That’s how we protect ourselves. That’s how we beat this thing."

And one more thing about all this from KSDK in St. Louis. It's a "how to" on making sure your mask is correctly cleaned. If, as The Atlantic claims, masks are pretty much number one in virus safety, then we better make sure ours are clean.

It's all still very exhausting.

If one mask is ok, two or three are better

It never ends, this changing of advice about how best to protect ourselves from the coronavirus. We've all just about become adjusted to wearing a mask in public and now the experts are claiming that we should be wearing two or even three masks.

And if that isn't enough, 75 hand sanitizers have been re-called due to Methanol.

I can't even.

More news we don't want to hear

This courtesy of the New York Times Science section:

"Flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets -- which could be laden with coronavirus particles -- may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user."

This is why I don't want to travel anywhere by car and have to use rest stops or fast food bathrooms.

News to ruin your morning if you have kids

Leave it to local news outlets to keep the bad news coming. It's that kind of year. FOX2 in St. Louis tweeted this headline today: "Parents need to check kids for ‘super lice’, even with social distancing, doctors say."

Did I click the story link? I did not. But I'd guess there isn't much of a super lice problem at the moment.

It's math, it's opinion, it's fiction

Reading many news/opinion people who are trying to analyze the Coronvirus numbers and it's like being in algebra class all over again. I have no clue as to what the conclusions mean or how they got them. Each expert or news commentator has other experts or commentators saying something totally the opposite. Flatten the curve, manage the curve etc etc. They are spiking out there somewhere.

There are graphs and lists with states and numbers. None of which makes all that much sense, hence the difference in how each news item is reported.

It sounds like some want us to all stay locked down until there is a vaccine, while others talk about risk and rewards...whatever that means.

Truthfully none of them really know. It's going to be trial and error, try this, try that until a vaccine comes along. But lets be honest, most of us can't face the prospect of another "stay at home" ordeal. Someone with a neutral math mind has to look at things in context and come up with some better advice.

I have my 6 month's dentist check-today and frankly, I do not want to go. I'm paranoid enough about all this and all the conflicting information that I wonder how safe that office is with all kinds of other people having had their mouths opened and water particles all through the air.

Do we really need a story like this?

I just really hate, come to hate, stories like this since the virus hit. Every news outlet in the country is posting stories about the danger all around us. It's maddening and this story from the New York Times just about sent me over the top.  Read it if you have the stomach for it.

Flushing the Toilet May Fling Coronavirus Aerosols All Over

 

 

Listen to us they said

Update the next day. The Today Show brought on another spokesman for the WHO who said the first person who gave the information below, jumped the gun and did not figure in something called, Pre-asymptomatic. Those people with this Pre-thing, can spread the germs which we then touch. I still believe they're now just making stuff up.

 

I'm telling you right now, I have had enough of the experts and their media spokespeople. From the World Health Organization (WHO) we've been told from almost the beginning of the stay at home orders wearing masks and washing our hands and sanitizing everything we own after coming home from being around people. Sanitize and wipe down everything that comes into the house, wear gloves if you can. Take off any clothes you wore out to the store and put them in the wash. This was because we could well come across someone who was Asymptomatic with the Coronavirus. They may not have had symptoms but they are carrying the germ.

Also stock up on clorox wipes or if they aren't available, then alcohol wipes or Lysol wipes/spray. Use them on door knobs, car steering wheels, gear shifts, countertops, iphones, anything that may have been touched after being out. We've been wiping down our grocery packaging, UPS delivery boxes, wine bottles and etc for three months! All those chemicals in the wipes have almost made us sicker than the disease.

And now who should show up in the news today with another shocking piece of news? WHO that's who. Get this: "Preliminary evidence from the earliest outbreaks indicated that the virus could spread from person-to-person contact, even if the carrier didn’t have symptoms. But WHO officials now say that while asymptomatic spread can occur, it is not the main way it’s being transmitted."

Then there is also this today from the CDC, Center for Disease Control. This on how we've made cleaning mistakes during the virus shutdown.

"Americans are putting their health at risk while trying to protect it.

About a third of Americans surveyed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have used some kind of risky cleaning practice to stop the spread of Covid-19, the CDC said on Friday.

People have put bleach their food. Others have gargled or inhaled it. And some have washed their bodies with household cleaning and disinfectant products.

None of this cleaning behavior is recommended by the CDC. But this gap in understanding how to safely clean and handle cleaning products during the Covid-19 pandemic may explain why there’s been a sharp increase in the number of calls to poison centers during the pandemic.

Can any of us believe anything anymore? I mean, seriously? Who was it who kept harping on the importance of sanitizing everything with bleach if possible, alcohol based products if bleach is sold out? These same guys who kept scaring us to death about seeing germs in and on everything.  Today they're saying we over did it to our detriment. One third of us drank bleach or doused our food in it. One third, thanks to these health experts who put us onto those germ killing chemicals.

I'm done. I'm over it.