Someone has to say it : Covid-19 is no big deal.
Odds are that you will never get it. If you do get, there’s an 80 percent chance that you will experience only mild symptoms or possibly no symptoms at all. If you are in the 20 percent that get more severe symptoms, odds are overwhelmingly in favour of you having a rough time of it but pulling through. And all the people that have died from it were people who were already very sick.
Are you currently very sick? no? Then you have nothing to worry about. Relax.
And yes, this means that the whole world has gone nuts over this thing for no damned reason. 99 percent of the stuff being done by governments and organizations all over the world it completely unnecessary and being done not because of the effect it will have on the virus but because people are falling all over themselves to be seen to be “doing something” about the pandemic, no matter how stupid that something is.
So why all the fuss? My theory is that people simply need something to panic about now and then. A lot of background stress builds up about intangible things like terrible presidents and global warming and once it reaches a critical level, like lightning it discharges by the shortest available path.
When this happens, it creates what sociologists call a “moral panic”. It’s a period when, arguably, everyone goes just a little bit crazy and sincerely and fervently believes things that will be seen as justifiably completely absurd when the panic passes.
This time, it’s (Secret Agent) Covid-19. Other times it was the Satanic Panic of the Eighties or the falderol about “Rainbow Parties” in the Nineties (clearly the product of someone’s sick, sick imagination) or “Vodka tamponing” in the 2000s.
Now just to make things crystal clear : I am not saying the virus is a hoax, or that it’s nothing, or that anyone is lying or being deliberately misleading on the subject.
This goes beyond that. It’s more like a riot, where no one person decides to burn the cop car and yet there it is, on fire. And later, once people have come to their senses, they are at a loss to explain their own actions.
The only things that makes this moral panic different than others is that a) there is a solid kernel of actual science at the center of it all and b) with the ubiquity of the internet, there has never been a time when the resistance to the rapid spread of a moral panic has been lower.
Otherwise, it’s just the same old thing. When the time is right, when the dark fears in people’s minds have built up enough unexpressed energy, when the walls of public reality can no longer hold back the black tides of panic and hysteria, something will emerge to form the tiny nucleus of a vastly disproportion response.
And afterwards, people will move on to the next thing and for a while will forget about all that fuss they were making about something that seemed really important at the time, and once it has lain dormant for a while, people will look back and say “Wow, what were we thinking? Did we really believe all that?”.
And the answer is yes, you did.
But don’t feel bad. You weren’t really yourself at the time.
You were caught in a moral panic.
More after the break.
So today has been…. fun.
Went to the doctor. Showed him the thing on the back of my neck. He said it was a boil. Never had one of those before.
But I was glad it wasn’t another carbuncle, because the last one damn near killed me.
He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic called Cephalex. Sounds like it would give me psychic powers in a Cronenberg flick.
I will be taking it four times a day till it runs out. So, with meals. Not that it needs to be taken with food. It doesn’t.
That’s just the easiest and most effective way for me to remember to take it four times a a day, more or less evenly spaced out.
I also brought up the latest development, which is that my cold (or whatever it is) came back. I woke up this morning and realized I was having some trouble breathing and my chest felt tight and sort of stiff and I had muscle aches and a headache.
The headache was a sinus headache, but the rest was new.
The doc checked my temperature – dead normal. Well, the high end of normal. actually, come to think of it. 36.6 degrees.
The cutoff for fever is 36.7 degrees. So I almost had a fever. And I have felt too hot all day. But that could be the result of a system wide inflammatory response.
The doc also listening to my lungs – no signs of pneumonia. Good. But he sent me for a chest X-Ray to be absolutely sure.
A chest X-ray is pretty much the gold standard for detecting things like pneumonia.
So we went to Brooke Radiology (also known as Brooke Medical Imaging, which I think sounds way cooler). And I was anticipating a long and alienating experience, just like all the other times I had been there.
But nope. Took a number, it got called around five minutes later. X-ray dude comes ot get me. Dude knew exactly what he was doing.
It was like, “Face this way. Hold your breath. Click. Now face this way. Hold your breath. Click. Okay, we’re done! “
And at no point did I feel pressured or rushed. So the guy’s professional demeanor was on point as well.
At this point, it’s “no news is good news”, I assume. If the X-ray shows a problem, I imagine my doctor’s office will call me.
But if it’s okay, I imagine they…. won’t.
Hmmm. That ended suddenly.
So that’s the health update. I still feel quite sick but I am hopeful.
Oh, one last thing : the doctor wants me to um…. ,manually encourage the boil on my neck to drain.
Not to squeeze it like a zit, but still… he says I will recover way faster if I get that gunk the fuck out of there.
And I can do that. Not looking forward to it, but I can do it.
Gotta psych myself up for it first though.
If anyone needs me, I will be tough-talking to myself in the mirror.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.