From Anne R. Allen’s Blog:
You might have thought because you’re staying at home that you’d have more free time to start/finish a book or take an on-line yoga class. But in reality, because we’re all spending so much time at home, much of that time is consumed by eating which means food prep and cooking (which means there’s a kitchen to clean and dishes to be washed), bathrooms to be cleaned and tidied plus, of course, more toilet paper to be purchased (if we can even scrounge up a few rolls somewhere), laundry duty, garbage and trash removal, dusting, vacuuming and, of course, sanitizing.
As one day melts seamlessly into the next, and we can’t tell Sunday from Tuesday, weekdays from weekends.
Our moods whiplash between “This sucks” and “It could be worse.”
We’re bored, anxious, and tired. We’re having trouble sleeping and concentrating. Much less writing.
“A lot of us are mentally exhausted, because the energy it takes to mentally manage everything that’s happening is very draining,” says Vaile Wright, director of clinical research and quality for the American Psychological Association. “The habits we’ve worked to develop over time to keep us healthy and productive can fall by the wayside.”
. . . .
As Anne wrote in an earlier post, she’s heard from a lot of writers about the difficulty they’re experiencing writing in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
She had a meltdown involving a TV remote.
I had one triggered by laundry. I don’t know if there’s actually more laundry, or if it just feels that way, but it seems that no sooner have I finished folding and putting clean laundry away, magically new dirty laundry appears in its place to replace the old dirty laundry. Not good for my mental health—or my disposition.
Needless to say, feeling overwhelmed by an Everest of laundry or frustrated by a cranky TV remote even as we are bombarded by relentless reports of death and disease, does not contribute to creativity.
Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen’s Blog
As usual, the normals are whining about any restrictions on their ‘freedom.’
Well, chronic illness and disability don’t give you much freedom, so you learn to go with what you have instead of what you’d like to have back.
The writing is going incredibly well – once I learned to skim the Washington Post and the New York Times quickly, morning and evening, for anything NEW.
Then I block the internet for 3-5 hours, and get to work. Finally, even the distractions from here, the new retirement community, have died down, as people respect that I’m working hard on a novel, and don’t need to be entertained with quarantine bingo. Food arrives at the ridiculous hour of 4:30 for dinner – and will be reheated when we’re actually hungry.
This isn’t my choice for how to spend these years, but I’m not going to waste the opportunity.
It’s not that hard – even I can do it.
Sounds like pragmatism at work, A.
Sincere wishes for continued good progress with your writing.
I spent quite a bit of time getting to where I could do this, PG. I had to find a way to stay connected and feel I was getting the latest information, especially about ‘their’ plans to deal with us older folk, but spending all my energy on that wasn’t helping anyone.
Hope you and the PG clan are safe.
The normals are indeed complaining about restrictions they see as unnecessary and counterproductive. Most interesting are the results of recent testing which show very high numbers of people with anti-bodies who never knew they were sick. Cuomo announced some very high figures today. NYC = 25%. Other high density areas had numbers in the teens.
SARS and Corona are now tied at appx 56,000 deaths. Anyone recall the SARS shutdown?
The flipside of the false negstives, is the much higher false positives.
Seen this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests.html
Sure. It’s sorting out with good and bad tests. But it looks like the number of zombie cases is becoming an important factor, one that has to be considered in dealing with the thing in the future. All these stats should provide the specific test used.
I saw a graph yesterday from a large NYC health/hospital/care outfit. It was a histogram showing deaths by age decade. Over 80 was by far the dominant group. The others could be considered minor in comparison. That was corroborated by an almost identical one for all of New York.
I’d love to see numbers on how many 80+ have the anti bodies. Show deaths and anti bodies for each decade. It’s beginning to look like we will be able to provide sufficient information for each person to determine his own risk factors by age age and existing conditions.
A one-sized solution is prudent when we lack information. As we learn, we can see there are multiple sizes appropriate for different people.
And suppose we get a good anti body test. Can we then add the number of people with the ABs to the total number of cases? Let the game begin.
One problem I have with reporting (among many) is they are reporting *cumulative* totals of infected instead of the total number of *active* hospital cases. Not everybody gets exposed; not everybody exposed gets sick; not everybody with symptoms ends up hospitalized; and not everybody hospitalized ends up in the ICU. By now a significant fraction of infected have recovered.
The whole point of “flatenning” the curve is to constrain active cases to manegeable numbers. That is the relevant number.
High numbers of people have not been tested, our administration’s biggest failure, and the result of trying to seep under the rug a disease that is killing citizens.
We don’t know–and WHO cannot state yet–whether having anti-bodies is protective, and whether people are then immune to a further exposure, or how long that putative immunity might last. And without the extensive testing that has been promised, and is NOT happening, scientists won’t even have the data to make that determination.
I’m not willing to bet my life on it. Because that is what older citizens are betting: the rest of our lives, the ones we were going to live out peacefully, with Medicare and family, fading gradually after a prime lifetime of working. That’s what we were urged to save for, to plan for, and it can easily turn out to be another lie.
It was happening – unfortunately, not for all – before the virus hit.
But people would live their lives very differently if they knew that on reaching a certain age or state of disability, they’d be cast out by society.
I’m not willing to bet my life on it. Because that is what older citizens are betting: the rest of our lives, the ones we were going to live out peacefully, with Medicare and family, fading gradually after a prime lifetime of working.
Sure. As information accumulates, we can all evaluate our own risk. When betting our lives, risk and odds are very important. It looks like we all will make our own decisions.
But a quick look around shows lots of older people have indeed placed their bets on living. They are everywhere. They don’t need no stinkin’ bunkers.
God Bless individual choice, for it makes life so much better.
And anti bodies? While the headlines say "AB Protection Unproven," we could also write a headline saying, "Reinfection of People With Anti Bodies Unproven."
But we do have quite a bit of knowledge that supports the probability that ABs provide protection.
And WHO can't make a definitive statement? Of course not. The Chinese haven't written one for them.
And who was doing the sweeping under the rug? WHO?