Even Sophie the dog wears a mask against Coronavirus.
– If giver doesn’t wear mask and receiver does – 70% chance of transmission
– If giver wears mask and receiver doesn’t – 5% chance of transmission
– If giver wears mask and receiver wears mask – 1.5% chance of transmission
That’s doggie good statistics to avoid the Coronavirus plague.
People can learn just like dogs. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So we just finished watching Season Six of Alone (and have now started Season Seven).
Highly trained professionals (military and otherwise) with ALL the skills, experience, and confidence setting out to survive in the arctic, alone.
Each one thinks they can make it and outlast the others.
And watching these folks, you think to yourself, wow, these people can fish, hunt, build shelters, survive off of the land, and know how to survive.
Yet, usually well before 100 days, (virtually) all the contestants are out:
No matter how well prepared they are, life happens!
– They get hugely sick, often from the gross food they are eating.
-They fall down and hurt or break something.
– They cut or stab themselves.
– They lose one or more of their essential survival tools.
– They inadvertently burn down their own shelters.
– Animals steal their food or attack them.
– They starve and their bodies start to break down critical fat stores in their heart or other vital organs.
– They start to lose their minds from the lack of nutrition and mind-numbing loneliness.
It seems like no matter how well trained and prepared they are, they can’t outrun, outwit, out-survive what life eventually throws at them.
Even the last person “standing” is still usually more dead than alive.
Anything other than self-control is ultimately an illusion.
Remember, life happens, and eventually everyone needs help from someone.
No man is an island even if you are living on one. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We have been told that the first case of Coronavirus/COVID-19 death in the U.S. was in February 2020.
First, we were told it was February 29 in Kirkland, Washington.
Then that is was earlier on February 6 and 17 in California.
But I and others who I have spoken to believe that the first cases of COVID-19 were with us many months earlier.
Both I and my wife developed extreme coughing around the September/October timeframe.
The coughing didn’t go away for months!
As is now being reported with COVID-19, it was like it reactivates again and again,
I went to the MinuteClinic and was prescribed antibiotics.
The cough lingered and got worse a second time.
I think I went another time to Minute Clinic or to Urgent Care and got a stronger antibiotic.
The cough lingered and got worse yet a third time.
As I become weaker and more sick (with fever at some point(s)), I found myself waking up and barely able to even get out of bed.
I forced myself back over to Urgent Care again.
I was given the flu test and it was not the flu.
And no one seemed to know what it was!
They told me that they were getting so many cases…I believe they said each location was seeing about 100 patients a day!
I was so weak I just laid on the doctors exam table half falling asleep and barely able to move to get up.
I was given yet an even stronger antibiotic and I believe some steroid medication.
After about 3-4 horrible months and almost near collapse, it finally started to get better.
I don’t remember ever getting anything like this!
I hadn’t traveled anywhere either.
Lots of people seem to have had a similar experience.
Was this COVID-19 or some precursor to it?
I/We may never know the truth.
But these symptoms and sickness was not normal.
And the high number of cases I was hearing about was beyond anything I can remember.
As we know everything about this COVID-19 is not normal as we can all attest to after weeks and months of global lockdown.
The reason that you are hearing all the confusing and contradictory communications and crisis from the “experts” and in the media is because the professionals are confused!
And we are left to wonder: when will we find out the truth about what this is, when it started, what the real dangers to us are now and into the future, and whether there will really ever be a cure for it? 😉
(Credit Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “Synagogue or Sickness?“
When I was a kid and my father would {strongly} encourage me to go to synagogue. My father was a man of deep faith and he used to say warningly to me: “It’s better to go to synagogue than to the hospital.” Obviously, he was implying that if I didn’t follow G-d’s word, then G-d forbid, he would punish me and instead of going to Shul, I would go to the hospital. Maybe not the best way to teach someone to want to go to prayer services, but I know he meant it out of complete love for me and ultimately for my best.
Yet ironically, now with coronavirus preventing us from practicing the many communal aspects of our faith, so many of us can only but wish that we could just go to synagogue to celebrate the holidays and Shabbat together once again. Unfortunately, for now at least, we don’t even have the option to go to synagogue—the choice has been taken from us. G-d willing, hopefully soon, we can once again go—with willingness and love—not only to pray at synagogue, but also to the holy Third Temple in Jerusalem itself.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Who would’ve thought that going to Harris Teeter would be a war zone.
But this guy in the respirator mask is showing us how bad things can start to get.
As an avid fan of the show The Walking Dead, I think we are entering TWD territory with the people walking around with their face’s half covered and some looking sick with fear and worry or perhaps even with symptoms–who knows!
What is amazing is how things can go from boom to bust, and not just for our economy, but for life and civilization itself at the turn of a dime.
Yesterday, I read how the CFO of Jefferies Group Investment Bank (NYC) died at age 56 from Coronavirus.
Even as the Navy’s hospital ships Mercy and Comfort enter the ports of Los Angeles and New York City to lend a hand and about 1,000 hospital beds each, it seems like more and more of these deadly cases are hitting the papers and social media every day.
Where does this sickness stop?
What happens if the virus mutates again and become even more virulent?
How do we ever feel even remotely secure again?
Can we keep taxing our already overwhelmed healthcare system with more and more sick patients?
How long can we keep printing Monopoly bailout money (incredibly, there is talk of yet another multi-trillion Coronavirus stimulus bill even after we just passed this $2.2 trillion one last week)?
Eventually, as we all know circumstances can indeed overwhelm the health and financial systems, and even our governments…thank G-d we aren’t there.
But what we are all beginning to see in the midst of crisis is that “there” isn’t really all that far away from “here.”
…That life hangs by a truly thin thread.
And because we can only do so much, this is where we really need to look up to the heavens and ask for G-d’s help and mercy. 😉
(Credit Photo: my wonderful son-in-law, Itzchak)
Fruits and Vegetables…
Bread….
Cereal…
Paper Towels and Toilet Paper…
(Credit Photos: Andy Blumenthal @Harris Teeter)
So I had to drive into downtown Washington D.C.
Along the way, I saw this colorful artistic rooster.
I appreciate this quick pick-me-up from this.
Yet, all around the streets were homeless people.
One was literally collapsed on a narrow island between the opposing lanes of traffic.
Some horrible-looking food, rags of clothes, and two bottles of liquor lay next to him and one of his arm hang almost into the moving traffic.
This was just one of many that I saw in abject poverty and desperation.
So I really feel conflicted looking at this colorful rooster.
What good is it when the people are homeless, sick, and starving? 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Thought this was a pretty good display with the Three Bears for holiday donations for Children’s National Hospital.
While it gets your attention (who sees three pink bears lite up on the street at night?), asking people with a small impersonal sign on the floor to remember to login and make the donation later isn’t very effective.
People act on the spot, especially when it’s an emotional appeal for charity for sick children that need help.
The children deserve for there to be a way for would be donors to actually give on the spot–where they can swipe or tap their credit card, write a check, or drop some money in for giving.
Later, later, later…and unfortunately, it may never happen for the Children.
Come on–it’s the new roaring 2020s–we can create some urgency and convenience and do better than this! 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel, called “Shabbat Menucha.”
Friday night–the start of the Shabbat–oh, thank G-d we made it (and TGIF). Usually such a wonderful time to catch up on some extra sleep from the whole week of work. But last night it’s different…the fire alarm suddenly comes alive and the voice over the loud speaker tells everyone to exit the building immediately. It is 1:00 AM in the morning.
Carrying a head cold, medicated, and sleepless, this is what happened to me. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So I saw another homeless person yesterday eating out of the garbage on the street.
They had flipped open the top, reached in, pulled out a half-drunk cup of something awful looking, and in one shot, gulped it down.
I was choking watching this–it was so upsetting that any human being has to live this way.
Like so many of these poor folks living off the streets, their belly was sick and widely distended.
And their pants were very worn, with holes, and wrapped ill-fittingly around their waist.
They dragged a small suitcase behind them.
When people say that things are bad in their life, perhaps we often don’t stop to think about how bad things can really get (bli ayin hara).
G-d should have mercy on his children and bless us not to know any loss, sorrow, pain, suffering, sickness or hunger. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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