Day 689 of the Pandemic

Here we are just 41 days shy of the two year mark. Someone posted on Facebook the other day we should all get on with our lives it has been two years. Well, I am afraid this is life and for the most part people are getting on with what they can. I personally am still dealing with the death of my father. The thought that he won't return is still a mixed bag of feelings. I have been told that by not seeing him sick or not seeing him after his death is a difficult thing to absorb. I know he isn't living in the wilds of Alaska but some days it would just be easier to believe that he is. I look to the sky and I see the moon and I still think somewhere out there we are still seeing the same moon and stars so he is and always will be with me.

A few weeks ago I heard a new word and now I guess it is the talk. Endemic, a constant presence or usual prevalence of a disease in a population within a certain geographic location. A pandemic such as Covid-19 spreads world wide quickly. Each new variant means a change in the way the vaccine works against the virus so there will need to be booster shots and each variant will continue to be an epidemic disease spreading across the world and not contained to a particular geographic area. 

Each variant named for letters of the Greek alphabet instead of where they were first found it is a nice way of not saying this is the Chinese disease or the India variant. Since where it starts doesn't matter. Each new variant will make its way to where ever you are. We have had many variants of the virus over the last couple years. After the initial Covid-19 outbreak it wasn't until September of 2020 when they discovered the Alpha variant in the United Kingdom then by the end of 2020 we had the Delta variant found first in India spreading especially through the summer of 2021 across the United States. And we are now into the Omnicron variant that was first discovered in South Africa and has now as well spread world wide. Where the Delta variant (most likely what my father had) caused more hospitalizations but didn't spread as quickly as the Omnicron variant which at this time seems to make most infected less sick than the Delta and some have shown to have symptoms like not being able to taste or smell and having trouble breathing but when they have their noses swabbed as normal testing procedure they may test negative. This variant seems to be more in a person's throat than in their sinuses but at this time testing remains the same. The information on the variants I found between the webpages of the World Health Organization and Yale Medicines website. 

As this virus seems to do through out the fall we had a steady decline in cases so of course people feeling pretty safe ventured out for Thanksgiving and in Pinellas County there were no new cases that week. Starting November 30 over 300 new cases and it just went up from there through December. At my work it wasn't til Christmas Eve one of my friends didn't come into work and she had all the symptoms but tested negative but 3 or 4 other people in the same room as me at work tested positive. I sit towards the back of the room and only have one person that sits near me and some days there is no one within a few rows of desks to me. By the end of December the county was showing over 900 new cases and by mid January the average new cases were over 2,000 in Pinellas County. Now the beginning of February and the numbers show a total of 192 thousand cases in Pinellas County with 2,900 deaths. In the U.S. over 5.5 million cases and almost 66,000 deaths. A comparison in the 2017-2018 Flu season the worst in the last 10 years saw over 700,000 hospitalizations and over 50,000 deaths. 

A person who goes looking for statistics and facts on Covid can go crazy looking at numbers and charts. It isn't as though you can go to one source and know it is for sure what you need to know since the information changes quickly and is based off the data they have received to date. That is about as accurate a statement as any I read and also just about as vague. 

At work after the holidays we would have liked to have been sent back home to protect those of us that haven't and were not sick but instead I felt like I was 10 and my neighbors mom just called my mom and said hey Joey has chicken pox has your kids had them yet. Bring them over for a sleep over then they will have all had it. Well doesn't seem to work so well with Covid. I know a few people at work have had it multiple times. Some are vaccinated or so they say. Some were out for 2 weeks and others if they stopped showing symptoms were asked to come back to work sooner. So do you believe the government or the company you work for. Does anyone actually have my best interest in their decisions they make. 

I haven't really spoke about booster shots but before the holidays the power's that be were recommending for those 65 and older to get a booster shot. Now the CDC recommends to anyone over 18 should get the booster shot at least 5 months after the initial vaccination. I have heard if you have the Pfizer vaccine to get the Moderna booster shot to have better coverage. Johnson & Johnson that was the one shot company the CDC now recommends that you get the Pfizer or Moderna booster as well. 

My final thought Pfizer's revenue is up 134% since December of 2020 and net income has increased from $594 million to $8.15 billion by September of 2021 and Moderna net income from -$272 million in December of 2020 to $3.3 billion by September of 2021. Just for comparison sake  Apple's net income in March of 2021 $23.6 billion and ended December of 2021 $34.6 billion. Not nearly the increase as the drug companies which it has been said are making profits of $65,000 per minute as I found in an article on reliefweb.int and another on Yahoo that stated they will make as much from the vaccine revenue in 2021 as the total company revenue for 2020.

All very interesting. And like a said earlier a statistical nightmare to try to keep up with. 

Stay safe out there and Dawn of the Pandemic the book is coming very soon.

Day 497 of the Pandemic

 On Day 488 I had to return to work. Pack your computer in your car but don't bring it in. There is a new one set up at your station. You just need to walk around and find where your new desk is. They didn't have everyone come back on the same day. There were 3 or 4 of us that came back that day. One was one of my friends that I talked to in the morning before work. The other had been back to work for a while at the office. Never really understood the reason for the people to be kept at work or the ones sent home. 

Day one back to work was like I never left from a job I had never been to before. Some things were just as they had always been and others were different. Mask wearing, health checks are part of the new process. The job still the same and after day 3 we find out that one of the girls that had come back has Covid. Well wonderful. Why are we back. What is the reason. Things seem to be getting worse in the world of Covid and yet here we are back sitting about 6 feet apart but in a room that has about 30 desks only about half are back after the second week. Well day 7 we learned of the second case in a room that only has about 15 people in it. A person that sits half way closer than the first. Why are we back. While home we would randomly get an email saying that someone that works in the building had tested positive and it said what day they were last at work. We have yet to be told the first person went home sick was tested positive for Covid now we have two and no word. No special cleaning nothing that made me feel like my health was the most important thing. 

After work last Thursday I got a call I didn't expect my father and his wife have been traveling in Alaska since June 22 and he and his wife have Covid. They have postponed their flight home and are quarantined in the hotel. Dad has a horrible cough but whenever he gets sick he gets a horrible cough. Worse since his bypass surgery about 5 or 6 years ago. This is a concern especially since he is so far from home and not the best patient. Friday we got a call that he was taken to the hospital and his oxygen level was very low and so they kept him. His wife couldn't stay with him, she went back to the hotel. A daily call from her is our update. Saturday we got the call that he was on a ventilator and in intensive care. I know people say it can happen to anyone at anytime. There is a chance for a loss. But my father is not the one to lose not while in Alaska not without a fight. Not my dad. As the information was shared between my brother and sisters. The tears were real and burned the memories of the past and thoughts of the future. But I told my sisters, If this is the case with dad he isn't worrying he is thinking about staying in Denali, fishing for flounder and seeing the pipeline. A trip he planned for two years. This couldn't be how this story ends.

Two of us that same evening decided we needed to figure out what hospital he was at and get the news from the source. One of my sisters made the call and we found out that we were misinformed about his dire situation and not that he was out of the woods but he had not been on a ventilator but he has been on oxygen the whole time and that he was sitting up and eating and drinking. He did also have pneumonia. He is hungry and as the nurse said he is struggling with the cannula in his nose. My sister said so he is fighting that. That sounds like dad. Which somehow dad fighting about anything made us feel better and made us smile. We are Basore's and for better or worse we have a double dose of stubborn in our DNA.  

One sister now in Alaska helping our dad's wife get situated knowing that dad may be another week in the hospital before he will be released but the nurses didn't realize that he wasn't a Alaskan that he was a Floridian and home wasn't around the block but a 10 hour flight away. The story will continue. 

As for the current state of affairs in Pinellas County back in June we were at a low down to less than 50 new cases per day, then this new variant. Now we are back up to over 1,300 new cases a day and that is where we were in January while people were still working from home. So the prospects for going to work is troubling. 

Along with going back to work I have stopped my daily walking in the morning before work but that may have to change as well. I might have to just start getting up earlier.

Stay safe.

Day 452 of the Pandemic

 It has been 5 months since the last time I wrote here about the Pandemic. I have been writing daily as I walk  each morning before work about the sunrise or the phase of the moon and placement of the stars and the animals and very few people I come across. I have not avoided the Covid 15 which is the average weight that most people have gained during this time of lockdown. Mine is more like Covid 23. Which is why the walking each morning is so important. I have been trying to add at least a 15 minute walk in the evening. I can feel the weight and more than that I hate going to the doctor and getting on the scale to hear the number out loud. 

But my weight was not what I sat down to write about today. It is that early morning time which my brain seems to fire on all cylinders and since yesterday I have been thinking about the last month and on May 19 Governor DeSantis of Florida suspended all remaining health restrictions for the state of Florida. At that time Florida had the third most cases of Covid-19 at 2.2 million and fourth highest death toll at 35,000.  The CDC shows as of today a total of  over 33 million cases in the US and that the cases per day and death tolls are dropping. 64% of Americans have at least one dose of the vaccine. 

My confusion lies in the restrictions and regulations. When everyone was following the CDC guidelines it was easy because you knew you needed a mask to go inside just about anywhere. Now the state says if you are vaccinated you don't need to where a mask that it to show they have confidence in the vaccine but any privately owned business can still have their own mask restrictions. They can still require employees to wear a mask and/or require their customers to vaccinated or not. The Governor of Florida has said there will be no vaccine passport in Florida. But again your place of employment can ask if you have been vaccinated and make requirements separate based on weather you are or not. So everyone basically has to carry a mask because you don't know until you walk up to the door of a business if they are going to require you to wear one or not. For girls not so bad I have about 4 in my purse at anytime but for guys that is different. My brother last night was out and I said do you no longer need a mask as we were leaving and he said no but at 1:30am he was told by the Uber driver that came to pick him up that he did. Which in turn meant that I received a phone call for a ride home. My sister answered first so she took him. I don't care that my brother called I don't care if I have to pick him up. It is the fact that the rules are so vague and hit or miss that you don't know what is right or wrong.

There are still restrictions in some states so you should check before travelling. Brian and I are heading to a wedding in a few weeks in Pennsylvania so we will keep an eye on there.

The vaccines can't be advertised on TV because they aren't fully approved by the FDA. So instead of the adds we see on TV daily for all sorts of other medicines there are advertisements in general asking us to all do our part but no Covid vaccine companies can advertise directly because they are only approved for Emergency Use Authorization since December. It normally takes about a year for a drug to become fully FDA approved. So here is the double edge sword for the FDA do they approve a vaccine fully that they only have 6 months of statistical data on or do they wait? If they wait that isn't showing a profound confidence and those that are skeptical to begin with may hesitate more in getting their vaccination. Or does the FDA fully approve a vaccine that they aren't 100% confident with but knowing the data they have shows it to be safe to date. 

Notice I have not mentioned weather I have been vaccinated. I don't feel it is anyone's business. If my work asks I will tell the truth but none of your business would be my choice. My work has not yet figured out how to get everyone back to the office due to some issues with one of the buildings at work. So they are trying to make room in one building for everyone. I have only been by the office twice in over a year. As I have said many times I only miss some of the people. I don't miss the noise but I miss the camaraderie. Sometimes it is nice to have others to complain about the day with but I have adjusted to working from home and I enjoy the benefits of not having to wear shoes and being able to wash the dishes or do a load of laundry on break. But when necessary I will do what I have to do.   Which is I guess the moral of the story. We have to continue to do what we need to do. But as I will tell anyone it is also your right to choose not to go somewhere based on their restrictions.  I will continue to update when relevant. I am working on compiling all of the things I have written since the beginning and it will be called the Dawn of the Pandemic. Hopefully completed by later this year.