Under the Weather

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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I woke up today with the flu (but not the Kung Flu, because you know, I haven’t even ordered Chinese take out in the last six months, because low carb. Um…. wonder if the Chinese restaurants are feeling the bite) having done a you turn and run me over again.
So, I’m going to do some writing and maybe some intensive napping, because I’m really low on sleep and have been.

It would help, truly, if my immune system did anything besides attacking ME. If anyone knows how to communicate this to it, tell me.  At this point I’d probably be better off without one, as insane as that sounds.

I do wonder how the coronavirus will play out not as an illness, but as an economic impactor.

One of the things to consider is that most illnesses that originate in the third world, and even those that create considerable panic/high death rates (which if China is reporting even semi-accurately* this one isn’t REALLY doing) tend to fizz out when they reach developed countries, because even the basics of washing yourself/your hands and disposing of bodily waste with some consideration to not causing illness seems to make a lot of difference.  While on that, let’s remember that the population explosion of the west in the eighteenth century was mostly predicated on improvements in hygiene.  A sub-though on this is whether the “progressives” (they name themselves by opposites) bringing medieval hygiene to our sidewalks are trying to eliminate the West’s immune advantage.

Anyway, as an illness this would seem to be a non-event being LESS lethal than normal flu, at least in the West. *In China we have to go with the caveat that they lie or massage the truth ALL THE TIME since their concept of reality is not the same as ours. So, who knows. It could be very bad there, but how much will that affect our economy?

Which brings us to: Does the Wahun virus give the left the edge they need to propagandize us into a recession, which in turn will place a commie in power?

Other things running through my sleep deprived brain include “Does G-d give us extra challenges when we’re main characters?  And does being main characters mean our payoff will be better, or has He become a dystopian literary writer, and does it mean we just die more meaningfully?”

That last thought is probably insane, and I probably should go to bed with two aspirin.

Anyway, see you tomorrow. Just wanted you to know I’m really not dead. I have just off and on wished I were, in the last 12 hours.

 

104 thoughts on “Under the Weather”

    1. Hope you feel better, soon! The Daughter Unit and I came down with something in September which knocked both of us out of the game for about five days, each. It came on so suddenly, too. Came home from a book event in the Hill Country, feeling fine, if a little drained – sat down at the computer to catch up on stuff … and within half an hour was crawling into bed.
      Kind of hope this gives us some immunity/resistance against what other flu-bugs are lurking around…

        1. But they say that “The Lord Loves A Cheerful Giver”? 😈

          Never mind me, I have a touch of Gallows’ Humor. 😉

        2. Son is sick, again, with a virus that finally “caught” him at work. Because no one will use PTO to stay home sick … You see Oregon, in their infinite wisdom, decided people do not take off when they are sick because companies do not give people any time for sick leave with pay. So, companies are required to give a fraction of an hour to accumulate per hour worked. Covers everyone, including part time. Businesses, for the most part, and essentially extended the double middle finger to the state.

          What a lot of them have done is what the manufacturing firm my son works at, did. Took away all holidays, vacation, and fixed sick leave. Replaced it with earn x% of hour for every hour worked as personal time off (PTO) to be used anyway desired. Any accumulated hours over 80 hours (two weeks) for anyone with less than 5 years worked, is lost (or you can “burn” it, by asking to be paid, or take hours off). You can use PTO for holidays the firm is not open, for vacation days, even if you don’t go anywhere, and, you know, when you are sick. Now, I ask you. How many actually use the now accumulated PTO for sick leave? Not very many. My son has. He was pretty sick, and was going to have to burn some PTO to stay under the use-it-or-loose-it, anyway. Otherwise, he is perfectly willing to spread the wealth around, again. Somehow we, his parents, have managed to avoid the viruses son brings home from work.

            1. You remind me to be grateful for certain ways in which my employer is exceptional.

              My husband’s too, really. In his case, very informal leave procedures, although the official position of “You can work from home instead of sharing the germs” seems markedly underutilized.

              1. “My husband’s too, really. In his case, very informal leave procedures, although the official position of “You can work from home instead of sharing the germs” seems markedly underutilized.”

                My last job too. Owner then always had sick leave was “don’t come to work sick. If you feel like it, remote in & work.” Bit difficult to take support calls from home unless you were willing to give out your personal phone # (uh, not a chance). But a lot of coding, or some coding could get done. My rule was no work if running a fever or on anything that made me woozy … which is everything, so … We were past the local germ factory stage by then (Daycare/Grade School). High school age isn’t as much of a risk. My problems were … dang back, which could sideline me for a solid week or more (just knock me out until it broke loose), until we discovered saint chiropractor.

                Once the new law went into effect, essentially what the bosses said was, be sure to track the time you take off sick, even if you work at home. Do not know how the new owners handle it now.

                1. Current job is all remote so we don’t even have a real “office” anymore, and our virtual PBX system routes calls to cell or wherever without needing to give out the number. But in my last job working in cubeland I could set up my cube phone to forward to my cell pretty easily and even remotely set it so, again with no clue given to those forwarded where they were getting forwarded. I think I even could set it up with an announce and a “accept call yes/no” in case that idiot salesdroid was calling yet again.

                  1. I think the new system the office got toward the end of 2015 did the same. I didn’t bother to learn as I had something like 23 days of vacation/holidays to use of after I gave notice mid December 2015, the last 4 days were half days (ish – definitely less than 8 hours, but didn’t get out in 4 hours either) … hey I gave 6 weeks notice … Was only required to give 2 weeks. Didn’t need references. My password for the system was “20160131Done!”, if that isn’t a clue. Good place to work. Just a, uh, personnel safety issue (one), all they had to do was let me work from home, all the time. FWIW, technically they got 24 & 12 month notices, before things went bad, boss just didn’t listen. When things got bad with the one person, who honestly I was ignoring & wasn’t directly affecting me, until when, it was whoa, wait a minute, not good, very not good. Discussed problem with other half whose immediate response was “Quit. Now.” I still gave the boss an out. Nope. Fine. Retirement trigger pulled.

  2. Take Care!

    As for That Chinese Flu, I’m trying to ignore the talk about it.

    The usual parties may want us to panic. 😦

    1. The CDC press briefing yesterday was excellent in terms of “This we know, this works, this is what we are doing, this is proven.” Basically, wash you hands, don’t go to places with the Kung Flu, wash your hands, and don’t believe everything you read on the ‘net. The corona virus is hardest on people who are already having medical problems of some kind. Just like influenza is, just like SARS is, just like . . . And wash your hands.

      1. By wash your hands, ER protocol and nitrile gloves is known to work. Don’t touch your face. Clean your frikken phone (average person can touch their phone several hundred to several *thousand* times a day).

        Mask is overkill unless you are in sick people’s faces a lot. ER staff is, most likely you aren’t. But if you feel the need, knock yourself out. N95 is more than needful, most cases. It’ll catch the sneeze droplets (which is where the viri live) easy enough.

        Until this meets and exceeds average flu lethality/R0 levels, ignore the little chikadees running around with their hair afire. Until we see hard data in the “no sh*t, it’s quarantine time* levels, save your worries.

        1. Several studies from both within the Middle Kingdom and from completely outside, albeit all using official reported data, have come in with R-nought just under 4, with the consensus overlap in the 3.8 range, but given its China, and given there’s no other information coming out at all anymore, those statistics should all be considered provisional.

          The incubation period is looking to come in averaging around a week, with a pretty wide 95% confidence interval, so two weeks isolation seems like it’s good.

          And lethality is one of those things that varies a lot with other aspects of the population – consider that the 60 and 70 and 80 year olds in Wuhan are basically survivors of Mao, both the stress of the cultural revolution and the stress of all those famines he engineered, so they may not be a comparable pop to those in their 60s and 70s and 80s in the US.

          So wash your hands (thoroughly; sing “Happy Birthday To You” all the way through twice while actively washing your hands with soap, making sure you get both the fronts and the backs of your hands, and don’t miss the tops of your thumbs), avoid places where people are sick, don’t touch your face or rub your eyes, and also, wash your hands.

        2. I think the biggest reason that wearing a mask wards off colds and flu is that it keeps you from touching your face.

          2. Some years back I saw a list of ProTips from models about reducing the effects of colds, of which I recall the suggestion of applying Neosporin (or similar balm) to nostrils as a way to reduce inflammation and redness, which also speeds recovery. Seems sensible and probably doesn’t smell horrid.
            –

  3. China’s virus could be very bad news—for them. When you have a population bottleneck such as the “one child” policy, a virus can wipe out entire family lines quite quickly and with minimal deaths, and I’m sure they’ve already started to worry about that.

        1. This.

          If the average Chinese citizen starts to discuss whether the CCP has lost the Mandate of Heaven…

          1. That’s what has been scaring me.

            …. although, if this wipes out mostly the older and sicker, wouldn’t that mean it could have been designed to lighten their economic load?

            Not that I think it would work very well, but that is kinda Commie China logic….

            1. On the one hand, if it had been something planned I would think the Party would have had a better story lined up that “Nothing to see here! Everything is fine!!” Most of what I’ve seen reported smells more like surprised reaction than anything preplanned.

              On the other hand, that new thousand-bed “hospital” being “built in 10 days” is something I would not ever expect to see in the west, so that is odd. But that may just be “Send in the PLA Corps of Engineers!” The images and building timelapse does not show the building workers in military uniform, but that’s not dispositive.

              On the gripping hand, China has been in such a building spasm for the past decade-plus that given their economic downturn lately they probably have lots of building capacity they can redeploy.

              1. The hospital is a lie. I can’t find it. Might be Belmont club. But there is no new hospital. The pictures are of an apartment building miles away. it’s just China being China and pretending to be super efficient. The only people who believe that are liberals.

  4. Well, Sarah, as we keep saying at MGC, “when in doubt, drop a mountain on your character and see what happens.” Or an illness, or family stress, or some other crisis. Which shows that we might be closer to the Great Editor than is comfortable, in some ways. Although He seems to be more creative (He’s also had more practice, and an unlimited production budget.) 😉 Plus He doesn’t have junior editors saying, “Oh come on, readers will never believe that.”

    Rest up, and I hope you start feeling better.

  5. Re. health scares and socialism. To be honest, I wonder if (or how many) of the Democrat Party front runners are going to suffer medical problems that take them out of the running. Although, the way Bernie’s fans are going, they might take him out of contention by their behavior and his unwillingness to deny his agreement with it. (I know, Soviets are going to Soviet.)

    1. Depends. Is Hillary going to jump into the ring again? If so, they’d better watch out that they’re not Epsteined.

      2. Hillary jumping in? Too late for that. She blew her wad in 2008 & 2016.
        Now, it’s every bit as likely as Algore jumping in at the last minute.
        And while theoretically she could be called in as a last second replacement at the convention, that also won’t happen. The money people who actually run the Democratic party aren’t going to go for it- again, twice burned. Hillary is an obvious loser with no widespread appeal- even Crazy Joe has more charisma.

        The biggest and most obvious sign that she won’t is the fact that she isn’t. Remember, she doesn’t play if the deck isn’t already stacked and the field cleared of potential rivals.

        1. >> “Remember, she doesn’t play if the deck isn’t already stacked and the field cleared of potential rivals.”

          Don’t worry, I’m sure the front-runners will start tragically commiting suicide any day now.

          1. I get the odd feeling that Hillary will be next on the list. Probably via unfortunate chardonnay accident.

            1. This Tragedy just in from the Napa Valley in California. Several thousand gallons of Chardonnay were ruined when a failed ex presidential was found in the steel vat used to age the box wine. Her spouse was heard to remark that she jumped in and was drinking gleefully shouting “Mine All Mine!!!” for the first 20 minutes until her arms tired from trying to tread wine. He did wait another 30 minutes, as she’d been known to take that large a drink of chardonay. Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein said they’d wish they’d known they would have joined in.

          2. Her strategy may be to sew up the VP slot, and then she is just one tragic death away from Pres. Hillary.

    2. Insty has noted certain events that suggest the DNC is going to pull out the stops to block him again.

  6. So far, I’ve seen a drop in iron ore cargo shipping, and a corresponding drop in shipping rates for that particular type of carrier. Also, a drop in tourism dollars where the Chinese go, and of course the inevitable impact when flights are up and cancelled (whether by weather or by fiat and fear). Which puts it on par with an inconvenient typhoon, except no property damage.

    On the other hand, this whole trade war thing… where the Chinese have been actively having a trade war with us for at least 20 years, and we’ve just started fighting back in the last 3? Yeah, this means a lot of businesses have been moving production out of China already – this will only accelerate the trend, because if there’s one thing a business doesn’t like, it’s “You can’t make your product or move it to market for an unknown amount of time while the government quarantines the region.”

    If it had happened 6 years ago, we’d be in a world of hurt. Right now? Some economic pain, which the markets will promptly takes steps to avoid again. As for the democrats capitalizing on the economic pain? I trust them to do that as competently as they did the fake dossier and the impeachment. I mean, what’s Bloomberg going to do. “The country is feeling a minor recession; vote for me so I can make everywhere as bad as I’ve made NYC since I came to power, and worse!”

    1. The sometimes accurate ZeroHedge has been noting the dropoff in China’s raw material production for a while. Of course, they’ve predicted 10 of the last 2 recessions, so I gauge their conclusions accordingly.

        1. Yep. Some of the downchain industries are putting out feelers, based on what I’m seeing locally. That can mean opportunity in the short term, for folks who are in the right place.

        2. Zerohedge should be mined for pointers to other open source data resources. As a data source, there is wheat in there with the chaff.

          Or to put it another way, There’s a pony in there somewhere.

  7. You too? Lungs feeling not fully functional, sinuses packed with fibre glass batting and throat smoldering, awaiting a chance to cough just as you take a mouthful of beverage?

    On top of that my computer is showing signage of old adage, crashing at half-hour intervals. As if the erratic keyboard were insufficient trial ti my temperament.

    Before log I’m likely retreating to a warm bed with a cool book and comforting myself with resentment of the absence of decent Chinese carry-out in this town.
    –

    1. FWIW, I’ve bought a couple of remanufactured Dell computers through Amazon sellers. Dell has their own program for off-lease sales, but the two vendors who provided mine did a good job. They added RAM to 16G and upgraded disk drives, one 1TB, the other 2TB. About $450 for both computers. (Desktops, small form factor cases.)

      Haven’t looked at refurbished laptops, though they are available.

    3. Fairly regularly timed crashes to me would suggest heat as a possible problem. Try (after unpugging the computer and then removing rings to avoid shorts) pressing and socketed chips down int he motherboard. They can “walk” out through thermal cycles. I also take all the heat sinks off my computer every two or three years and clean off then replace the thermal paste.

      2. My suspicion is that the wireless board is bad. It has long had a tendency to fail to connect when I boot up, or to lose the connection to the router within the first hour of operation, requiring routine running of the trouble-shooter to reset the connection. When I have been present to observe the Blue Screen of Death Notice it has indicated the problem was a bad driver: “Driver IRQL ot Less Or Equal.”

        Duck, Duck Go led me to a repair instruction that called for disabling the Network Driver and rebooting, which seems to have prompted Win10 to repair the driver and run properly.

        If only all my problems (such as WP’s failure to email this particular comment to me) were so easily soluble.
        –

        1. If it starts acting up, maybe a $10 wifi dongle (they now look like the one you’d use for a wireless mouse) will bypass the problem?

  9. >> ““Does G-d give us extra challenges when we’re main characters?”

    My first reaction was “Maybe, but we can just level-grind if we have to.” I had to read the rest to realize you were talking about books instead of video games. So if it’s any comfort I’m apparently just as crazy as you are; my insanity just comes in a different flavor.

    Seriously, though, I hope you feel better soon.

    1. Hm, maybe that’s part of why the Odds don’t “fit”– we’re the guys who go and have funny builds but are over-leveled because we did all the side-quests that looked neat and didn’t read the Effective Leveling Guides.

      1. Well, if there is a God I’ll give him credit for one thing: the procedurally-generated sidequests are amazing. You never seem to run out of content with this game.

  10. Who knows- this may be the thing that triggers the inevitable collapse of China.
    They’re a bit like Moties in that way.

  11. And does being main characters mean our payoff will be better, or has He become a dystopian literary writer, and does it mean we just die more meaningfully?”

    Well, if I think He has become a dystopian literary author, it would be definite confirmation that that thought is insane. 😛

    Sadly, it isn’t a thought I find interesting enough to endorse. a) I’m pretty sure main characters are a product of human limits b) I’m also under the weather, badly educated in theology, and my thinking may be more screwed up than usual. I’m not sure the Revelation of John is compatible with God viewing any human society as truly dystopian. At least not when you neglect pre deluge, and consider the case of a society that has at least heard of Jesus. I mean, He knows He wins in the end.

    Actually, the thought is a little bit interesting. Because I’m trying to plot this awful mess with entirely too many characters, a bunch of mad entities that want to be worshiped, and I would like a careful reader to be able to work out that those entities lost in knowing and in power to the Lord.

    I probably need to admit that this is beyond my own ability, and make sure to pray over it regularly.

    Beyond that, I am definitely not well enough to do everything I would like to get done today, and it is about time for me to lie down again.

  12. ” . . . whether the “progressives” (they name themselves by opposites) bringing medieval hygiene to our sidewalks are trying to eliminate the West’s immune advantage.

    Check your cleanliness privilege . . .

    1. Heh. I used to be a plumber. Then got working in telecom. And so on. I’ve probably been dirtier than most any but a farmer (and been that, too). And still I say, I’d rather gut a deer in my Sunday clothes than walk down one of those streets…

        1. No intent to. Mike’s a good guy by all I’ve read and heard. He’s probably a lot better in the headspace to deal with, well, people, publicity, fame and the like. Y’all can keep that crap faaaaar away from me, thank you very much.

    2. Healthy peasants are strong peasants, and thus harder to keep down.
      But, since progressives tend to drink their own ink, and swallow their own lies, it’s their own sidewalks that are covered with what’s basically biowarefare materials.

      The idiots keep keeping their own smallpox covered blankets.

  14. I totally feel your pain this week. I am under the weather with a bloody chesty flu. I freak out every time I get a chest infection because I’ve had pneumonia twice. Ugh.
    I hope you feel better soon, make sure you drink lots of fluids.
    –
    Love Alexa,
    http://AlexaJade.co.uk

      1. (Waves hands sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly) You are getting sleepy; sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy. You can’t keep your eyes opeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

        1. Ugh. In a lot of places, you have to get a prescription for pneumonia vaccine if you are under the designated elderly age. Torqued me off no end. I’m willing to pay, and I could really use it because mine ran out about three years ago; but even brightly announcing that I alternate between bronchitis and pneumonia during most years didn’t get me any vaccine. You used to be able to just pay for it, like God intended.

          1. Don’t feel too bad for me. I’ve only had really bad pneumonia or bronchitis a couple of times; my white blood cells seem to be good at keeping things at “crud” level instead of “sicker than a dog” level. But it is super-annoying to have that hanging over your head, I agree, and I’d feel worse about it if I’d had worse cases more recently.

          2. I didn’t have to get a prescription; all I had to say was “Given my husband is a cardiac patient, should I…” and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am I walked out with a much sorer arm than I walked in with.

            The docs here don’t mess around with that.

        2. Don’t even ask. Because we changed doctors and records have been lost (Thank you Obama care! Our single practice doctor got integrated into a massive hospital practice, and most records never made it and NO ONE CAN TRACK THEM DOWN) our current doctor doesn’t believe I need it.
          I think it’s something genetic, as mom catches it every winter, and my sons at their ages have had it like two or three times.

          1. Hmmm. Walgreen’s here in Plano will administer them AFAIK for the asking; they advertise it on the store lighted marquee along with their Tide Pod sales. The website says they’ll administer pneumonia (pneumococcal) subject to state and local restrictions. I think I’ll stop in tomorrow and ask about prices etc. and let you know. Is there a Walgreen’s near your house?

            1. Yes, but I need a prescription. Flu no problem, Pneumonia, no go.
              It’s probably a state thing.
              And right on cue, my lungs are involved today. probably doc tomorrow.

              1. It almost has to be a state thing, because when I contacted my usual Walgreens prescription filler, their pharmacy said that while Walgreens corporate recommended I talk to my doctor, they would administer it whether I had a prescription or not.

                Sounds like it’s time for a second opinion.

  16. You can get Vitamin A supplements. Once a day, with food. Helps with respiratory and immune function stuff as well as hair, vision, etc.

    I have just had two drippy colds in a row, each with bronchitis (or two colds and one bronchitis that stretched out, but it did feel different the second time), so I finally gave up eating Vitamin A in foods and started taking it. It has helped a lot.

    Also, if you do have a chest cold, I found that sitting up with a lil’ tiny heating pad on my chest was very helpful. I have a wimpy little heating pad that is designed not to get very hot or cover much area, which is bad if your back hurts; but it is great for this purpose! (I have decided that it is a modern hot water bottle.)

  17. If the coronavirus epidemic is still going on about a month from now, I could be looking at Interesting times. I’ve got a whole bunch of East Asian cultural stuff I usually order from Chinese wholesalers, and I’ll need to order them no later than mid-March if I’m going to have them in time for our first sales event in April (Indiana Comic Con). Right now we’re down on merchandise because I held off on ordering when we were looking at a five-month hiatus in sales events. That may turn out to be a mistake if supply lines are disrupted right before one of our biggest conventions.

    OTOH, if things get truly Interesting and we start having quarantines and travel restrictions, we may not be going to conventions because they’re getting canceled. In which case I’m going to need to keep my butt firmly in chair, pounding out more new fiction to bring out through my indie imprint. Because if people can’t go to in-person events, they’ll (hopefully) want to get their escapes through e-books they can download with a tap of an on-screen button.

    1. *grins* This is where I urge you to get butt in chair now and get a head start on the writing. That way, if crisis comes, you’re already well prepared and have a month’s work in hand!

  19. My gut feeling is that this virus will quickly fade. Even the Spanish Flu likely wouldn’t have been all that remarkable if it weren’t for so many people being massed together in military camps.

    In the meantime, though, the rumors will fly. A Mongolian friend of mine has been posting conspiracy theories about it on her Facebook feed. /rolleyes

    1. “Oh, coronavirus?”

      “I’m not worried about it. Influenza is a much greater threat.”

      “You didn’t get it. Coronavirus.”

      “Oh, ‘Bottle Flu’..”

      “Yes.”

      [See, I do not consider Corona worth drinking…. the clear bottle all but guarantees skunking.]

  20. Other things running through my sleep deprived brain include “Does G-d give us extra challenges when we’re main characters? And does being main characters mean our payoff will be better, or has He become a dystopian literary writer, and does it mean we just die more meaningfully?”

    If he were a dystopian literary writer we’d all be trans-lesbians and in wheelchairs this year.

    He’s a comedy writer. ~:D

    1. Isn’t straight male a form of trans-lesbian?

      I think there might be some faint soreness in my leg from waking up with a leg cramp a few days ago, I totes need the wheelchair.

    3. God is probably written an interlaced tale such as the chivalric romance writers wrote in medieval times, and I tried to pull off in Queen Shulamith’s Ball. Characters’ stories weave in and out of each other in a way that seriously downplays (without eliminating) the notion of “main characters.”

        1. Everyone’s the main character of their own story. And I don’t say that just to be trite or faux-witty. Truth is that we have no idea what’s important and what isn’t. We don’t know which of us will have an out-sized effect on what is to come, and which of us will be more flash than fire.

          Or as the old poem ends, “And all for the want of a horseshoe nail”.

          What we can effect is our own story. And we never know which of us will turn out like a poor widow from Moab and her Hebrew mother-in-law.

  23. I know it sounds strange, but I’m not worried about the coronavirus. The seasonal flu kills something like 300,000-500,000 people every year worldwide. Sure, the CDC should act. I’m just not convinced we’re facing imminent doom the way I’ve heard some claim.

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