Tag: Gloves

Pandemic “Logic”

Hammering my head against a brick wall has never, for some unfathomable reason, been my favorite activity. Yet I seem to have done a lot of it since March, 2020.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been engaged in a battle of wits, with, no, not an unarmed person, but one who continually brings a knife to a gun fight.

At the first whisper of the approaching pandemic, I voiced my concerns. My apprehension elicited a reaction amounting to a big shrug and a long lecture. After all, I was informed, the SARS epidemic of 2002 did not reach pandemic proportions; ditto, bird flu. MERS never even amounted to epidemic, let alone pandemic proportions. The most serious outbreaks of Ebola, although devastating to other countries, resulted in very few cases reaching the U.S.

Of course, my disputant quite ignored the fact that, during those years, from 2002 to 2016, the US was governed by administrations in which Presidents were actually literate and capable of reading their daily briefings, all the while maintaining cordial, informative relationships with the WHO and CDC. Unfortunately for America (and fortunately for the novel coronavirus), 2020 found us governed by an orangutan who couldn’t have located his own backside using both hands and a proctologist. (I apologize to orangutans, who are actually very intelligent creatures.)

My plaints fell on deaf ears. As both case counts and deaths began to accumulate, I was assured by the Font of All Wisdom that Covid-19 was no worse than any other annual influenza. “Really?” I dared question. “I don’t ever recall seeing plague pits and mass burials during previous winter flu epidemics.” But the photos I displayed of the distressing Hart Island burials were dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Then worldwide death tolls spiraled upward. Nationwide mask mandates and lockdowns were initiated (to which I reacted with a nod to necessity while hunkering down for the duration). Meanwhile, I was sent information regarding Sweden’s herd immunity experiment and copies of the so-called Great Barrington Declaration.

“Hmmm,” I responded, watching Sweden’s death toll pile up countless times higher than any of its neighboring Nordic countries, decimating its elderly population and leaving thousands suffering the lingering effects of long-haul symptoms. “Hmmm. Isn’t it odd that no world population anywhere managed, over all the centuries of recorded civilization, to achieve herd immunity to viral illnesses such as chickenpox or smallpox? Nope, the darned viruses just managed to keep on inflicting illness and injury and death until vaccines were invented.”

“And how,” I wondered idly, “does anyone, anywhere, propose to ‘shield’ medically-vulnerable populations—elderly and infants, immunocompromised, and those undergoing various medical treatments such as chemotherapy? How does one even begin to accomplish that, when the very people working with those at-risk populations are bopping about, unmasked and not socially-distanced, going to work or attending school, socializing and gathering at sports arenas and Trump rallies?”

I received no answer to these very Spockian-logical questions.

And, “Isn’t it amazing,” I recently noted, as the increasing spread of the more-contagious Delta variant became endlessly newsworthy, “that the authors and signatories of that Great Barrington Declaration never even considered that the damned virus might mutate?! That all those living bodies hosting and incubating the virus might be nothing more, after all, than petri dishes for an increasingly vital, transmuting monster, desperate to survive despite all the mitigations of lockdowns, masks, hand sanitizers, social distancing and vaccines?”

Ignoring these remarks, and responding only to my statement that I was still, and planned to continue, wearing my mask while in public, I was informed that masks only protect others from me; they provide no protection to the wearer. I sighed tiredly and referenced a web page produced by the renowned Mayo Clinic stating that masks and eye protection serve to protect the wearer from inhaling or encountering respiratory droplets released by others. I doubted the page would be read, but I felt a masochistic compulsion to send it, nonetheless. Partnered with that compulsion was an act of simple insanity on my part when I further confessed to still wearing disposable gloves in certain situations, such as while pumping gas or touching ATM or elevator buttons.

Now, it isn’t really possible to hear scathing laughter over the electronic pathways of e-mail, yet I swore I could catch it tumbling down the wires in response to my admission. There was NO possibility, I was informed from the lofty heights of Mt. Know-It-Allus, that one could contract Covid-19 from surface contact—no, not even if one hopped into the car picking one’s nose after pumping that gas! Once more, I exhaled gustily, rolled my eyes, and replied with simple truth: “Have you ever SEEN a report of exactly what bacteria and viruses contaminate those surfaces?! The only thing missing is bubonic plague!”

I may be wearing those disposable gloves until the end of time, let alone the demise of Covid-19.

Hammering my head against a brick wall has never, for some unfathomable reason, been my favorite activity, and yet I seem to have done a lot of it since March, 2020. No matter. I’m vaccinated, masked, gloved, hand-washed and sanitized, socially distanced and surface-disinfected, and have so far been Covid-free. And if apprehension, information, caution, and just plain common sense can keep me that way, then that’s the plan.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might also like “To Wash or Not to Wash: No Question”, last published July 8, 2020, or “Handshake, Schmandshake”, from April 18, 2020.

When Life Was Simple (Sigh.)

I long for the days when running an errand merely meant picking up my car keys and putting on my shoes.

I am ironing coffee filters for my masks.

Early on in the pandemic, when masks were not easily available, I read recommendations for creating them from doubled tee shirt cloth with a filter pocket filled by a flattened coffee filter.  Testing had shown such three-layer homemade masks to be efficient at stopping virus particles.  And so I made masks, a dozen or more, hand-sewing them for my friends and family, and ironed coffee filters to insert in the pocket.

Later, cloth masks having become readily available, I purchased a half-dozen expensive but comfortable coverings of thick, double-layered soft cloth.  But then (of course), recommendations changed. Double-layers weren’t enough in the face of virus variants; no, a triple-layer mask was necessary.  Buy new ones, the Pandemic Gurus recommended.

New masks not being planned in my budget,  I began double-masking and returned to inserting a coffee filter between the two masks.

And so now I stand at the ironing board, ironing coffee filters for my masks, while watching my DVDs of “Downton Abbey”.  I’m watching the episode in which Matthew’s fiancé dies of Spanish Flu.  The irony (bad pun intended) of this is not lost on me.

I long for the days when running an errand merely meant picking up my car keys and putting on my shoes, perhaps a coat or jacket or even a hat or gloves.  Now my errands, those such as I absolutely must run, are an Olympic marathon in preparation and clean-up.

Before even leaving my house, I set a bowl of water in the microwave, ready to be heated for scalding my masks when I return.  The countertop where any shopping sacks will be deposited is protected with wax paper.  I place disinfectant soap, a nail brush, and a spray bottle of strong isopropyl alcohol next to the sink.  I rub the lenses of my glasses (some small protection for my eyes against airborne viral particles; I have not worn my contacts in months) with shaving cream to keep them from fogging up.

In my car, small paper sacks sit opened and waiting on the seat.  One will contain discarded mask filters and disposable gloves; the other, my used cloth masks.  I prepare a mask for each stop I must make, placing the filters between them, and lay out pairs of disposable vinyl gloves on the passenger seat.  Whether the gas pump or shopping cart or door handles or ATM buttons, I’ve touched nothing for months without wearing gloves.  Questioned by one stranger as to why I wore them — “The virus particles are in the air,” she instructed me officiously — I could only answer logically,  “Well, they’re going to land somewhere, you know!”  I check to be sure that I have both hand sanitizer and another spray bottle of disinfectant in the car.

Masked and gloved, I race through my errands (pumping gas, taking a package to the post office, or picking up groceries, almost the only excursions I’ve allowed myself in 11 months) trying always to avoid the cretins in the aisles wearing their masks as “nose-wipers or chin diapers”; changing my contaminated PPE between each stop.  Returning to my car, I strip off masks and gloves carefully, dropping them into the paper sacks,  before disinfecting everything I have touched and sanitizing my hands.

Returning home, I toss the paper sack containing used disposables into the garbage bin and carry the sack with masks into the house. I scrub my hands thoroughly, and once more disinfect everything I’ve touched—door handles, car handles, alarm buttons, purse, wallet.  I carry in my purchases, placing them carefully on the waxed paper.  I scald my masks in boiling water and agitate them with disinfectant soap, then rinse, spray them with alcohol and hang them to dry.  I wash my hands again and put my purchases away, then pull up the wax paper and disinfect the countertop.  I wash my hands a third time.

This, this is now my new reality, and that of millions of other people, as we try to avoid the virus; waiting ever hopefully that our number will come up and we will be scheduled for the vaccine; frightened always that all our efforts to be safe will fail, and we, in the most vulnerable of groups due to age and chronic illness, will contract and die of Covid-19.

I remember when life was simple.  I remember complaining about the restaurant a friend preferred; about believing that, living alone, I knew what loneliness was. Now I would gladly go to any restaurant, just to be out once again.  Now I know more of loneliness than I have ever endured in a very solitary life.

The world will turn, I know; this will end.  Someday, Covid-19 will be merely a sad footnote in the history books, to be wondered at by generations that have never known pandemic.

It can’t happen soon enough. 

You might enjoy looking at these thoughts through another lens, by reading, “In the Moment”, which can be found archived from April 12, 2018.