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| Jared: the serenely empty suit |
I woke up at 2 am today with a strange feeling in the back of my throat. It was a weird, dry quality that usually presages the dawn of a cold. So, I sucked on two previously effective Zinc lozenges while I worked some crosswords. About an hour later I felt sleepy (yah!) and want back to bed and slept until 8:30. However, I awoke this time feeling decidedly off. I called my trainer to cancel our Friday session, and then started my delayed coffee dosing, water drinking, pill taking, and first food of the day. An hour later I felt normal. I recall that I awoke on my back, which likely led to severe dehydration and other ills. I am not generally a hypochondriac except for the occasional deep bone pain I (mostly humorously) diagnose as either "left leg cancer" or "right leg cancer". But as level headed as I am (insert silly emoji here) I leapt to the worst case conclusion: I am Covid-19 Mary.
Maybe, who knows at this point. If we had drive-in testing available I would drive-in so upon the results I would know if I need to enter an extended self-quarantine. But of course in the mighty US of A, such basic control measures are weeks or months away nearly everywhere.
While the Fucking Moron is not at all responsible for the fact of this virus, he is ground zero for the current state of our slow, under prepared, and even deliberately stupid amplification of what was to come. When the FM was unaccountably anointed the Republican front runner, I saw his possible election as an extinction level event. At the time I was thinking of our political machine and the damage it could to achieve. Of course, I was unable to imagine the breadth, depth, and cravenness of the coming damage. Nor could I have imagined that in three years a toxic president, gutless senate, and two new supreme court judges (one stolen) would have Eviscerated democracy, national cohesion, national governmental efficacy, and amplified my rage at anyone who did not vote for Hillary (irrespective of their distaste for and/or delusional alternate solution) in order to preclude this future.
Here is what I am doing today* which is sadly all I really have to offer: I am sending additional financial support to local agencies doing the impossible work of supporting our tattered safety net that needs to catch those now barely making in addition to those who have been barely (or not) making it during the just ended economic heyday.
* Including maintaining a 6 foot social distance and touching nothing outside my home.