Covid Chronicles. News disappears down the memory hole.

20220116

Swimming against the tide, I went to a medical laboratory this morning to get a strep test. The women of the family were against it. They can't believe that I have strep, they can't believe that I would take another course of antibiotics only two months after the failed effort with azithromycin.

Having prevailed in that resolution, I was subjected to more good advice/popular superstition to the effect that I should show up for laboratory analysis with an empty stomach. No argument there – this is my third day on a regimen of an 11:00 AM – 7:00 p.m. window for eating. When I got home, however, I went online to confirm what I suspected. It is important to show up for blood and urine tests without having eaten or drunk, as it would affect blood sugar and other such measures. The strep test is a totally different deal – a swab down your throat.  It would not matter.

I think the fresh air did me good. I was out for a couple of hours and felt better by the time I got back. More than that, I was able to go to the market. This is just my bias, but I like the cheese and bread from the market stalls better than the plastic wrapped stuff you get from the supermarket.

There is a chance that I will recover from this bug in the three days it takes to get the test results. However, my experience is that it seems to last forever. If it is strep, I will have to deal with it. I mentioned to the doctor I saw in early December that I often got it and used doxycycline to get rid of it. She chastised me for taking antibiotics on my own but didn't seem curious enough to give me a strep test. I was happy in any case to get the chest x-ray to be sure that there was nothing serious. She was happy to try to gin up some more profitable business by getting me worried about my heart, circulation and all such. A problem you can fix with three dollars' worth of pharmaceuticals is not up to much interest to the medical establishment.

If the test comes back positive I have another uphill fight to get the children tested. The Mayo Clinic, CDC and other online experts say that strep is quite common among schoolchildren. They are the primary vector for giving it to adults. They add that if you don't treat it it can lead to rheumatic fever, which is a serious problem for kids. The not so serious but aggravating problem is that they may be continuing to give it back to me. At any rate, if Zoriana wants to continue to sleep with me she had better not be giving me bugs.

The story of the century seems to have no follow through. Scott Davison, chief executive of OneAmerica insurance, stated in a conference on December 30 that mortality among working Americans between 19 and 65 – the people he insures – was up 40% year-over-year. That is a truly phenomenal number.  Didn't say what it was, but did say it was not Covid.  Hmmmm.

The people who manage the narrative should have been all over themselves denying it. They are not. Not another peep on the subject in the 2½  weeks since. As indicated in the call, this will have huge implications for the insurance industry. Quarterly reports this month should show massive increases in loss reserves. Financial analysts should be falling all over themselves. And yet – nothing I see. A link to a hardcopy transcript simply vanishes into thin air – not even a 404. Curious times we live in.

Eddie's music lessons are suspended for the time being – too many teachers and kids with Covid. It has to be omicron given that nobody seems to be terribly concerned. There were no masks to be seen on the bus this morning, and the clinic seem to be pretty relaxed about them when they took my strep test.

Grandfather Sasha is running a temperature of 39 – 102° Fahrenheit. Grandmother Nadia, who visits him daily in the hospital, where he is awaiting an operation either on his stomach or his kidneys, I forget which, is feeling lousy herself and is finally taking some medicine. Perhaps a little too late as far as curbing her infectiousness. Zoriana has the same cough and fever symptoms as Anna's daughter Sofia. The good news is that Oksana and I are feeling stronger.

Here's a picture of Zoriana playing dominoes last night. The most significant thing I can say is that she keeps begging to play. Last night, tired and a little bit under the weather, she wasn't in top form. I'm confident that as we stay with this she will learn the basics of addition and subtraction. At least at a kindergarten level.

It concerns me to read accounts of the suppression of free speech everywhere. Here is an account of an octogenarian retired Canadian doctor being dragged away in handcuffs by six Mounties for having dared to talk about stillbirths in a Vancouver hospital.

This is only one of many, in Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries. At the same time I am reading Eddie's textbook about the oppression of the Ukrainians by the Poles in the 16th and 17th centuries. The peasants were chained to the land, treated as runaway slaves if they tried to do anything about it. Those who did escape to the lawless frontiers of southern Ukraine became the tough Cossacks, who play in Ukrainian history like cowboys in American history. Only 34% of the descendants of those brave Cossacks have gotten coerced into getting jabbed, and even untreated, Covid itself isn't as deadly as it was. Maybe they will come out better than their neighbors this time around.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men and women are getting stronger and the children are still struggling to keep their noses above average.

Graham