How I Caught The Coronavirus

Yes, right, a ‘click bait’ title. And yes, I wouldn’t mind if a lot of people read this post. See, the more readers, the better chance I have of doing some good: What if I get one person to behave rationally and prepare for the catastrophe (of whatever sort) that’s coming? Wouldn’t that be great!!!

I’ve been offline for a day or so and had to do some traveling to finish my stocking up of supplies, doing one more laundry load, plus topping off my water tank (including jugs for 10 gallons extra); I now only need to make a quick post office and pharmacy run (they are in the same building here) and I’ll be secure for at least three months, should the ‘virus’ (if it is a virus) bloom stateside, which seems inevitable, if any of what they are telling us is true.

‘How I Might Have Caught The Coronavirus’ is the proper title of this post and if I did catch it, it was probably yesterday in Yuma, Arizona, which is a pretty big city, with a pretty big and busy airport.

Addendum: I just heart that the Chinese posted some new figures, the one of interest being the number of ‘confirmed cases’ from yesterday (the day I might have caught it): Around 15,000 is what I hear. A one day jump of 15,000. Dunno if it’s true, dunno if anything is true, but it might be true, or some version thereof.

Oh, and the military is preparing for a pandemic. 

And the media is downplaying the danger. 

See, I’m out here in the desert and rarely go where there are a lot of people. Or any people. Yesterday, though, I did some Walmart shopping in Yuma and I might have caught the virus there (assuming there is a virus, etc., but I will not keep repeating caveats).  But I needed a bunch of dog food, and they were having a sale.

I saw a person at Walmart, a middle aged woman, wearing a surgical mask as she shopped; I made a mental note that she was the first…

I watched as the woman picked up some shampoo, read the label, and put it back. (I made a mental note that she wasn’t buying food; she was cart-less and looking at grooming products.) The thought occurred to me that if someone with the virus performed the same behavior within, say, the last week, her mask might have been useless; she wasn’t wearing gloves.

Let’s assume the worst, just for grins: Let’s say the rumor that the dormancy (you have it but no symptoms) period is 24 days, rather than 14, is true. Let’s say. And let’s say symptoms don’t usually occur until those approximately 24 days have passed.

Oh, and let’s say the R-0 number is 4, as has been theorized.

See where I’m going?

Yesterday at Walmart (just to start) I paid more than the usual attention in watching human behavior. I watched as people touched stuff and moved on. And yes, I watched as people kept touching their faces. I noticed how often I touch stuff and move on, and how often I touch my own face.

See, in the worst case, it’s just a matter of numbers, and where you’ve been, what you’ve touched.

If that dormancy period is the case, we could already be in the midst of a deadly pandemic here in the USA, and not even know it. We could already be in the third or fourth ‘generation’ of ‘passing,’ which would put the number of cases that will be confirmed in the thousands, right now, even if only one person was the ‘case zero’ for our country. Think about the numbers. One becomes 4 which becomes 16. That’s two ‘generations’ (there’s a word for this but I forgot what it is, and ‘generations’ sounds appropriate). If 16 give it to 16, we get 256. So the fourth generation would be just past 4,000, in cases that will soon be confirmed.

That’s if only one person started us off to the races. We already know the number of U.S. cases was way more than that. We need only figure the number of folks they passed it on to before they were put in isolation.

Fear porn? So I can get fucking clicks?  If you think I’m that useless, why are you reading these words? I’m trying to persuade you to do the smart thing.

In the last post, some idiot commented that he wasn’t going stock up on essentials because he saw a movie. Wow, I was thinking, maybe I should see that one. I mean, imagine a story that is so powerful… so mind-bending… that it persuades you to sacrifice your family’s well-being. Maybe their lives. 

So I did. I fucking rented The Trigger Effect. It was about human behavior when the infrastructure fails. The guy who wrote the comment was apparently incapable of imagining this scenario, so the movie filled him in.

Load of crap movie, story-wise, holes everywhere in the story-logic, but, aside from that, if someone able to operate a computer and find this blog and peck out a coherent message in Comments is capable of being so easily steered into ignorant, self-destructive behavior…

…based on a bad movie?…

Allan

The next post will likely feature a guest writer, my road bud Logan McCullough, who has some interesting stuff to tell you.