Recent Covid-19 Observations

As we continue through the year with the Covid-19 irrational panic exacerbating problems I’ve observed some things regarding the “new normal.”

 

1.  Much of the country, the world really, has lost the ability to reason. We’ve seen this before with things like the kabuki theater performed as “airport security”, like not letting nail clippers or Medal of Honor through.

• Many places are currently requiring people to wear facemasks while out in public. Yet, no training has been given to the general public on how to effectively wear the masks. Plus, fabric facemasks are almost useless against a virus, and still fairly ineffective against bacteria. Medical masks aren’t much better.
• We’re told that we’re to wear the masks not for our protection, but to protect others. Yet, if they were effective they would protect us as well. Unless you’re wearing an N-95 or some other specialized mask there is no one way valve.
• If the masks are actually stopping the virus they need to be sterilized and/or disposed of as a biohazard. How many biohazard waste containers have you seen around town? Other than the ones I see at work, I’ve not seen a single one.

The New Normal

The complications of Covid-19 started hitting home last week in a couple of encounters.

My wife had a doctor visit in person at one of the local clinics. We were required to wear masks and they took our temps and oxygen saturation. That was reasonable. The nurse made me re-adjust my mask because it wasn’t fully covering my nose. It was covering my nostrils, but not the bridge of my nose. Considering that it left the bottom of my chin exposed to the point where I could open my mouth wide enough to get my bottom lip uncovered, and created large gaps on the sides that seemed pretty pointless.

But, it became ridiculous theater once we got inside the exam room. We were required to sit on opposite sides of the room for “social distancing”, even though we road in the same car together and sleep in the same bed inches apart. The nurse even moved my wife’s chair a few more inches away from the desk so that she’d be 6′ from her. That move created issues a couple of minutes later when she couldn’t get the blood pressure cuff (attached to the wall) over to where my wife was now sitting without moving the chair back.

 

This weekend I worked on fixing some leaks in my daughter’s pool. She has two of them actually. A 10′ one that she’s been using the last few years that I fixed one leak in the side earlier this summer but was still leaking slowly out of the bottom someplace which I had to take down in order to find and fix. And a smaller 8′ one that I put up while the 10′ one is being fixed. But I had to fix a hole in the air ring around the top of the 8′ one before she could use it. Anyway, we started looking on line to see about replacing these. We paid about $50-$60 a few years ago when we bought them, but now they want $300-$400 for them. And the 12 pack of filters I bought for the pump for $25 they now want over $140 for. My best guess is that most of this stuff was coming from China and is now hard to get because of trade relations going downhill. I guess I’ll just keep patching these for awhile.