Saturday, March 21, 2020

My Personal Thoughts On The Global Pandemic Of Coronavirus: Written From Quarantine



It's been almost a year since I have posted on this website and the reason is because I hadn't had time due to a busy work schedule. Ironically enough, I work from home and now the world is facing a global pandemic where Americans have been asked to, "work from home." Not much has changed for me except that toilet paper and sanitary cleaning products are at an unnerving low supply at the store and even though I didn't go out too much before, now that I have been officially advised by the president to continue living the way I have (cooped up at home, afraid of crowds, traveling and people coughing and sneezing at the drug store), I feel strange. Like my fears have been officially validated and it's not irrational. The only thing I was planning to do before all this was go to the fabric store. When I think about how fun it would be to go to the fabric store and then suddenly remember I can't (most retail stores in America are currently closed), it does bring me down, just a bit. But, not too much, it's just fabric.

What really brings me down is an article I came across in my search to get to the root of this pandemic. This article posted on the National Center for Biotechnology Information and US National Library of Medicine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550436/ is from Aug. 19, 2006 and it is a collection of what scientists learned after the three SARS outbreaks in China that occurred in 2002 to 2004. Three outbreaks!? In three years? I remember hearing about SARS and bird flu back then. It sounded gross, but I didn't think it was super contagious. I even worked in an office one time where someone in our office had contracted H1N1 the swine flu. I was worried about that one too, but luckily no one else in the office caught it. Apparently, COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), or also known as, Coronavirus, the "Chinese" virus and Rona as some people on Twitter decided to nickname it, is three times more contagious than the flu and it is not a flu by the way. Symptoms are "flu-like" but it is not the flu. It's a wonderful brand new virus. I'm being sarcastic when I say wonderful, but it's nice and new so that human bodies don't know how to properly react to it yet. Which is why it can be very deadly. They say that people with preexisting health issues are the most at risk, but lets be real, any living creature is at risk with an unknown virus. We can only hope that seeing as a lot of infected people have clearly survived from it, that once you catch it, you do have a chance. However, everyone should be taking every precaution to completely eliminate all risks of becoming infected. You just never know what an unknown virus will do. And who is to say that this virus won't have long term health risks? I had mononucleosis once and congratulations to me (I'm being sarcastic again) the virus that causes mononucleosis stays in the body forever. I still don't think that sounds right, but I read it clearly in an article about epstein-barr. Who's to say this virus won't stay in the body forever and decide to come out later one day when your immune system is weak? I don't mean to scare anyone, it's just that the more you are aware of, the more you will be protected from such a threat.

Going back to the article from the NCBI, my favorite part is this sentence " If no action is taken to control wildlife markets, the SARS-CoV organism may develop into an epidemic strain." 

-____-

And there you have it ladies and gentleman, IT DID! Remember, this article was written in 2006. How sad to know this recent pandemic surely would have been prevented if a stricter action had been taken. 

I have a closing statement that I really do believe. It ties into pseudoscience so bare with me if you don't like thinking on a curve. I've always felt, just by pure observation, that the Earth itself is a living creature. Lava flows through it like blood, tree's roots grow into it like veins, rocks cover it like a hardened skin, water keeps everything circulating and just as our bodies have good and bad bacteria in them, so does the Earth. Just as humans need to keep up their personal hygiene to stay healthy, so does the Earth. We need our good bacteria and white blood cells to fight off infectious disease. I think that living creatures on Earth can be either a good bacteria or bad. We are living on and off the Earth, the Earth is our host. We can create poisons on the Earth and toxins in which the Earth must purge of and in doing so it is unforgiving. That is why it is so important that humans do their part to tend to the Earth. Help keep it clean and circulating. Stop poising it's air, water and soils. Stay sanitary and don't allow disease to grow upon it. The Earth will thank us for it and lives will be saved.  

2 comments:

  1. Great post Noël.
    I like your closing thought especially.
    Be well my friend.

    ReplyDelete