Without actually saying those words
Not that this is a surprise, or new, but still.
Month: December 2021
Should I laugh or cry?
Over the last 20 months people have been arguing about what is being done right or wrong in the pandemic response.
Over and over people have been labeled “conspiracy theorists” and “spreading misinformation” for stating something that went against the mainstream beliefs on the subject, been banned from social media, had family deride them, and in some cases had family disown them and friends disappear.
Only to have that same statement, months or a year later, be proved to have merit, or even be true, by the media and politicians.
And here we go again.
As recently as 6 months ago people were banned from social media for stating that cloth masks were not useful in stopping the C19 virus.
And yet, just this week, on CNN! Dr Leana Wen, one of CNN’s top talking heads about medical issues and the pandemic, stated that “cloth masks are little more than facial decoration“!
I’m waiting for Dr Wen to get canceled.
Oh wait, she’s one of the GOOD guys, so its ok when she says it.
Seriously though, if you’re counting on a mask to help protect you from the virus you need to be wearing a N95 mask. And you need to wear it properly, making sure there’s no gaps. If its fogging up your glasses when you breath its not fitted correctly.
Compression socks
A couple months ago the Physical Therapist I was seeing for foot/ankle problems informed me I needed to started wearing knee high compression socks at work, apparently part of the problems I was having was fluid buildup. She said that if budgetary constraints were an issue you can get cheap bulk packs on Amazon.
So I started with a cheap bulk pack. 6 pairs for $15. And, well, they helped with the fluid buildup, but were otherwise horrid to wear.
Poking around further, found a pack of 3 pairs for $20, and a another set where each pair was $15. Ordered a set of each. The pack of 3 was slightly more comfortable. The single pair more so.
I ordered a couple more pairs of the singles to tide me over, and went on a research binge on compression socks. There are compression socks out there that are $50/pair! Or MORE! Pass! But all reviews agreed, the more you were willing to spend on them the more likely they were to be comfortable.
Discovered that Bombas has compression socks. They’re not cheap, $25-$30 a pair, and they’re funky patterned.
Here’s the other thing, I normally wear plain white socks. I’m very OCD about making sure my socks match, not just in color, but in style, because if they don’t match they feel weird like I’m wearing miss-matched shoes, and it drives me nuts during the day. All my socks are white, except for a set that have colored toes, but at least the colored toes means I don’t get them mixed with my other white socks.
But if I’m going to be wearing compression socks they were going to be VERY visible when I’m wearing shorts at work. And I don’t really want to wear white knee highs with shorts at work where I inevitably get really dirty. And black would just make me hotter.
So I said hell with it and ordered a set of funky patterned Bombas socks.
Guys, they’re SO MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE than the cheaper socks. I actually feel like I’m wearing socks, not nylons (sometimes called knee high pantyhose if you prefer that term), which is what the cheap ones feel like, and which I hate.
Lesson learned. I ordered a bunch more on Black Friday weekend. The cheap ones will be donated to somewhere.
Weird bonus, matching the funky socks back up after laundry doesn’t bother me, maybe because they’re so easy to tell apart? Donno, but I’ll take it!
The more overweight you are the worse Covid is
I mean, we’ve known this practically since day 1. Overweight to obese people have been significantly more likely to get seriously sick and/or die from Covid-19 right from the start, even if they were otherwise healthy.
But instead of encouraging people to exercise and get more fit the .GOV scared people into hiding at home, shut down parks, beaches, play areas. Arrested people exercising alone or in household groups. Shut down gyms.
Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/health/covid-fat-obesity.html
Here’s a link to the actual study.
Instead of taking advantage of this to encourage people to get healthy the .GOV did their damndest to convince people to get sicker instead. Instead of making people healthier the .GOV scared them into huddling into small indoor spaces, spaces that might have well been designed to SPREAD respiratory disease. Forced them to avoid one of the very things that would make it less likely for them to get sick. And obesity has spiked hard during this whole mess. In both children and adults. Along with mental health problems. And its not getting better. Not to mention the damage done to immune systems by being terrified of sniffles.
People are STILL scared of being around other people. Terrified of being too close to other people while getting exercise that they NEED to stay healthy. So they’re choosing NOT to exercise, which in turn is making them more likely to get seriously sick from Covid. I see it every day on social media “I tried to go to the gym today but when I got to the gym there were more than X number of people there so I couldn’t stay away from people so I went home”.
The UK is looking at an expected 700,000+ extra cases of cancer JUST FROM MISSED APPOINTMENTS over the last two years. Because we terrified people into not going to the doctor, shut down “non-emergency” treatments, shut down urgent cares.
Everyones freaking out because people aren’t getting the Covid vaccine, and meanwhile children are missing out on their childhood shots because they weren’t able to get into the doctors offices for any one of those many reasons. Are we TRYING to get additional cases of measles? Cause it sure looks like it.
Deaths from TB are continuing to spike due to lack of treatment in the 2020 shutdown. Malaria.
And the .GOV is STILL freaking out at every rise in cases, regardless of actual hospitalization increase numbers. And at the same time is taking steps to REDUCE hospital bed availability across the country. Millions and millions sent to every state for “Covid relief” and how much of it went towards increasing hospital bed availability and nurse/doctor availability?
But on no, we have to shut down “elective” procedures, we have to spread out the number of patients seen in a day, we have to……resulting in people not being able to get treatment for cancers, heart problems, joint repairs….anything that is “scheduled ahead of time” rather than “has to be done right now to save a life” is considered elective. And yet here we are again, killing more people cause god forbid we chance exposing them to a respiratory virus they’re going to get ANYWAY at some point in their life.