Here Goes Literally Nothing

Today we have to run a medical errand, and both my wife and I almost certainly have covid, so yesterday, I had her call to find out if we should cancel or wear masks or have ourselves encased in carbonite or what. They told us to wear masks, but first they asked if we had any, which says a lot about current attitudes.

There may be one under my car seat.

As I have written, we just got back from Switzerland and Italy, where we were around all sorts of sick people. We flew home sick because there was nothing we could do to protect anyone, and staying in Europe would have been a huge and pointless hardship. The air was full of bugs everywhere, isolation has gone out the window, and our contribution to the airborn virus supply simply was not meaningful.

Yesterday I looked at the current covid stats, and today I’m looking again. According to WHO, the number of known active cases in Europe is about 70 times the number in the Americas. Not the United States. The Americas.

In the past, the case numbers were almost certainly overreported in America because we paid hospitals huge money to claim people had covid, without testing them. Now, the numbers are probably underreported. But is there any reason to think the ratio is affected significantly? I don’t know of one, except that it makes no sense for Europeans to have 70 times our rate.

Even if the data is wrong, it’s probably right enough for a person to safely conclude that coronavirus is extremely common in Europe right now.

There are so many sick people over there, doing nothing at all to isolate themselves, that removing us from the scene would have had no effect whatsoever.

Out of curiosity, I Googled to see if our overlords still want Americans to get tested. Of course they do. Why? So we can get treatment to protect ourselves from severe covid and so we can buy what are now referred to as “quality” masks.

Forgive me for chuckling. They never give up.

There is no treatment. I mean, okay, there are some things that seem to help a fraction of the people who are on death’s door, but for you and me, the mildly ill, no, there is no treatment. Except ivermectin, which does seem to help, especially when taken at the first sign of symptoms. Your GP won’t give it to you, however. You have to go to Tractor Supply. He isn’t going to pump you full of secret drugs developed for Jeff Bezos and Joe Biden just because you have the sniffles. Those drugs probably don’t exist.

If you have severe symptoms, what do you need the test for? Go to the hospital. You already know you’re sick, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s covid. Just go. If you have a fever of 104° but it’s not covid, are you going to stay home and die?

As for the masks, well, they do not work, and people who are at risk of severe covid should not be out in public where you can cough on them.

Look, if I absolutely had to be around someone who was likely to die if infected, I would get super-duper masks and make the best possible use of them. Mainly, I would avoid the person as much as I could, because that’s the only thing that really works, but, yes, in a pinch, I would wear a mask. But this is not the situation I face. I don’t know anyone like that, and if there are strangers in my area who need protection, they should be at home, because even if I put my head in a hermetically-sealed jar, other people will still expose them.

Science now tells us that the best masks made, worn 100% correctly all the time, have some impact, so there are scenarios in which I might use them, but come on. I’m not wearing one to Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken.

So why are Europeans all full of coronavirus while we are not? How can that be? There is plenty of travel both ways. It’s just about impossible to get covid on a plane, but people land eventually and move around.

It seems to defy physics.

Maybe Europeans are getting tested and we are not.

Not much has happened to us. My wife got sick first. She had a mild fever and a sore throat, plus skeletal aches.

My voice got raspy. Then days later, I had a night of chills and skeletal aches. Not bad. My butt really hurt. I never had a sore throat or much of a fever. I had another night of greatly reduced chills. I developed chest congestion, and when I tried to sleep, my breathing sounded like someone sitting on an accordion. My nose ran slightly. On the second leg of our flight home, my left ear got stopped up and would not let go, and it took a couple of days to drain. My appetite was affected, and it’s still not great. Sweet things still don’t taste quite as sweet as they are. I have been going to sleep very early, but that could be jet lag.

That’s about it.

We were able to walk around Rome and keep up with the crowds.

I think I wasted a lot of money on shoes. My Keen hiking shoes developed a leak in Switzerland the night before we left, and I had to do something, so on the morning before we took our train to Italy, I went to an incredibly overpriced sports store in Wengen and bought new hiking shoes. I believe they charged me 229 Euros for Scarpa shoes that can’t hold a light to Keens.

They felt wonderful during our train trip to Rome, but the next day, during a food tour, my feet started to hurt. Very unpleasant. I’m not used to having foot pain, so I was not happy.

They also filled up with water when rain caught us near the Pantheon, but that could have been because I got caught in the rain while wearing shorts. The water may have run down my legs and into the shoes. They were supposed to be waterproof. I always wear waterproof shoes when I can.

The next day, I went out and bought yet more shoes. Again, Scarpa. All I could find. They were much better. Only 199 Euros.

In retrospect, I wonder whether then first new pair was really a problem. Maybe I was having skeletal pain, and it made my feet hurt. Maybe the shoes are okay.

I’m afraid to try them on now. I’m out about $500.

The lesson: always check your shoes before traveling abroad. I thought my Keens were relatively new, but when I checked, Amazon said I had ordered them over two years ago.

Also, don’t wear shorts on cold, rainy days unless you like water in your shoes.

My Keens can be had for right around $100, and you can bet I’ll be getting new ones. I have no idea what to do with my Euro shoes.

I hope we don’t kill anyone at the doctors’ office.