Just How Effective are Masks and 6 ft. Spacing?
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Tag Archives: coronavirus
Campused
I actually wrote two poems to the prompts today. This was one I wrote in a notebook while waiting in the dentist’s office. I decided it was sort of a downer in a time of too many downers, so I wrote another, but it called out from the notebook sitting on my desk beside my computer, so here it is with all its warts.
Campused
It’s a kind of surviving, this new life we share.
We rarely leave home and we don’t cut our hair.
We mainly commune with our kids and our spouses
and cover our faces when we must leave our houses.
We maintain a distance of six feet away.
We deterge our hands countless times every day.
A soupcon of hand sanitizer’s our goal
when touching a surface not in our control.
Not a world of our choice and not one by design,
so we sulk and we protest. We pout and we whine.
Yet we are not blameless, for it’s the result
of the short-sighted goals of the consumer cult.
Parents respond when kids get out of hand.
So, too, Mother Nature must take a stand.
She’s decided to send each of us to our room
lest we mess up her world, thus sealing its doom.
If we won’t behave, she must take a firm hand.
We’ve not followed her rules, so we have been banned.
Prompts today are surviving, design, soupcon, deterge and kind. And also, for dVerse Poets
Lonely Artist Covid Art Challenge: Jean Mulleneaux (Artist # 3)
Jeannie did a great job of using all of the different objects presented to artists to use in the challenge. The mysterious rings that none of us knew the purpose for, bottle caps, wine corks, joker card, cardboard carton and buttons. If making this playful wall art collage didn’t cheer her up in her isolation, I don’t know what would. Hopefully, she’ll add some notes about her process in the comments.
(Click on photos below to enlarge)
To see the original challenge as well as links to the work of other artists who have sent in their photos of how they met the challenge, go HERE. If you want to join in, you need not start with the objects we started with. Choose your own media. Want to bake a Lonely Artist Covid cake? Great. Write a poem? Paint a painting? Do a mural? Make an intriguing mask? Snap a photo? Do a video? Sing a song? Do a dance? All are welcome. Just link your contribution via a link to this blog or to the link to the original challenge above.
Chapala Diary, Page 1 (My Contribution to The Lonely Artist Covid Art Challenge.)
Friday, Aug. 7, 2020
At the beginning of the Coronavirus Sequestering period, I issued a challenge for people to create an art piece that chronicled their experiences during this time. Go HERE to see that challenge.The idea was that we all started out with the same materials, then added what we wished to to come up with an art piece that chronicled these first stages of our isolation. Four friends accepted the challenge, but I’ve only received photos of their work from two. I’m going to be blogging their photos over the next two days, and if anyone else has photos to submit, please do so now. Below are the photos of my completed project. See if you can find the pieces in it that are some of the materials given to each artist.
(Please click on the first photo to enlarge it and read the story of my Covid Vacation. Clicking on the next arrow enlarges the next photo and gives more of the story.)
Today is the first day of big bright yellow butterfly season. I sat in my studio and tried to get shots of them darting around the tabachine bush, but they were too fast for my camera lens. Here’s one that didn’t get away, but a distant shot.
Morrie and Diego pulled their usual plaintive sit-in at the door of the studio. This time, I gave them each a dog biscuit, but didn’t let them in.
Another dog biscuit? No. Sorry, fellas.
I mended my Covid-19 art piece for the third time.
This is a depiction of Diego stealing one of the three and a half dozen freshly-baked cookies he managed to steal off the kitchen counter when I was distracted by the plumber. Over his head buzzes a bee–one of the colony of thousands that it took us weeks to remove and relocate from the lot next door so we could clear it. More to be heard about these bees and Diego a bit later.
The whole Covid scare and the resultant social isolation that lead to my creation of this memorial box just happened to coincide with rainbird season–that month-long infestation of cicacas that announces the coming of the rainy season. During this time, the air is filled with their loud choruses of clackings and whirrings.
The rest of the box is a collage of alone-time activities–music,
the constant news reports of possible cures, both real and bogus. As usual, Kukla jumping up on the newest addition to the box.
Time passing slowly for some, more quickly for me when I kept busy. The pages weighted down by the pastry are some miniature mock-ups of my next children’s book, finished during this period except for the final adjustments to the illustraions.
A bit of imbibing,
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.
My photography session over, we’ve all moved from the studio to the gazebo. I’m in the hammock and Diego is rolling around and growling on the grass. I’ve never been able to figure out what prompts this. Is it pure kidlike glee or a bee sting? If it is bee stings, he’s a slow learner because he’s been rolling in the grass and growling for years and yet he still tries to catch bees in his mouth every time they venture near, which is the second reason for the bees depicted in the Covid-19 memorial Retablo. Now it just needs a wooden frame and it is complete.
Tomorrow, a depiction of another piece from my Covid Challenge–that of my friend Candace’s piece. If anyone else accepted the challenge and has photos to send me, hurry hurry. Go HERE to see Candace’s answer to the challenge and HERE to see Jean Mulleneaux’s contribution.
Who Are America’s Frontline Doctors?
Open link below to read article:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/07/30/americas-frontline-doctors/
So You Think You Have it Bad????
Report by Alyssa Michele on Covid
This is a picture of my husband. He is an infectious disease physician in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has not had a single day off since June 28th (including working on my birthday) and is seeing up to 22 patients per day. He was presented with the opportunity to see COVID patients virtually in order to reduce his direct exposure risk since there are only a handful of ID physicians in the county. However, he said that he would never expect the nursing staff to take a risk that he wouldn’t do himself, and he didn’t want the nurses to feel that their lives were expendable. When the hospital told them that there was a PPE shortage, he purchased extra face coverings out of his own pocket for the entire team so they could feel more confident and protected in the room. He also said that when he sees COVID patients in-person, he is able to provide better clinical care for them, and it helps their morale to see his willingness to be present with them in the same room. My husband is truly baffled how COVID has been politicized and undermined by this administration, and how they are gambling with peoples’ lives to carelessly reopen without mandating masks. In his limited spare time, he writes postcards and does phone banking so that he can make a broader impact for the upcoming election.
**edited to add: I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the support and comments! He has no idea that I even posted this, as he is pretty private and doesn’t have a Facebook account. I am excited to relay this to him when he gets back from work today**
***edited again. Alex was surprised, humbled, and completely blown away by the lovely comments. He is reading through all of them now. I have posted this on my personal page for those who have asked to make it shareable. Thank you all for making his day with your statements of gratitude!***
The Advantages of Social Distancing
Click on photos to enlarge.
The Advantages of Social Distancing
My salad is mouthwatering, the ambience is fine.
The numbers in my dining room below what laws define.
I am amply distanced as I am all alone,
the friend that I am dining with connecting via phone.
The cake I baked four days ago obliterated in three,
insures my tonight’s dinner will be dessert-free.
How do I compensate for that when dining all alone?
I have my entertaining quirks for which I won’t atone.
My friend is in her very best—her Klein and De la Renta.
While I slurp up my soup, she slowly savors her polenta.
To not dress in my best as well I feel she would find rude,
so I will not reveal from the waist down, I’m dining nude!
Prompt words are mouthwatering, ambience, cake, obliterate and number.
Long-term Effects of Coronavirus
If you are thinking you don’t need to wear a mask, please read this essay. I do not know who wrote the below essay which I received from a friend on Facebook, but it makes such good points that I’ve decided to pass it on. If anyone knows its source, please let me know.
“Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don’t think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you’re older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don’t just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it’s been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.
Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in their body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed out they’re going to have an outbreak. You don’t just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it’s been around for years, and been studied medically for years.
HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It took many years of R&D before viable treatments were available to help people live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for other health conditions. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.
Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)
People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.
Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.
This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, and who resist even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as “getting it over with,” when literally no one knows who will be the lucky “mild symptoms” case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.
How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don’t yet know.
What we DO know is that the virus is rapidly spread, and there are recommended baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces
Let’s work together to help each other. The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are. Not only does it allow health care providers to maintain levels of service, it also reduces unnecessary suffering, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus to understand the breadth of its impacts.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 