The Curse of Interesting Times

Yep, still here. Still doing pretty well. My lovely wife and I are making progress around the house.

I did pop something in my knee, so that set things back a bit. That hurt like a son of a gun. Of course, having no medical insurance and looking to avoid hospitals in the time of the pandemic, I just slapped a brace on it. That seems to have helped a lot. It’s still got a ways to go, but it is getting better. One of the things that is helping is pedaling my bike. That works the knee without me having to put my full weight on it.

New Hampshire is doing better than most places as far as this disease goes. However, things are opening up and people are getting a bit too casual about it for my liking. Here’s the thing: if I’m over cautious there’s no harm done. If, however, things are worse than they seem I’m taking necessary precautions. While the risk of infection may be low the consequences for a fat over 60 guy with bad lungs could be dire.

It doesn’t help that my lovely wife just discovered her aunt most likely died from the coronavirus. She had all the symptoms and was even on a ventilator for a few days. She lived in a southern state that’s been accused of hiding the numbers, so that might be an issue.

Speaking of hiding the numbers -there’s a lot more of that going on. The latest example is the fact that information is no longer going to the CDC. While the CDC has its problems the information was public. That info will be harder for the average person to get now.

Getting good information in general is hard these days, but that’s nothing new. During the Great Depression, the word “depression” was never used in the papers. The information was all there, but it was buried deep in the financial section in the back of the paper and you had to crunch the numbers yourself.

With that in mind I did some research looking at how long big business plans on having to deal with fall out from the pandemic. They seem to be expecting issues for at least another year and a half. Prepare for the possibility.

A vaccine is supposed to the magic bullet that makes it all go away. In spite of all the hype, the vaccines in the pipelines all have issues. The safer ones appear to only offer partial protection. Other vaccines appear to have nasty side effects in a significant percentage of the test groups.

I am not against vaccines in principle. Personally, I won’t be in the first wave of those getting it. Not having health insurance is part of the problem. Even if the vaccine was free, if I had complications from the shot I’d be stuck picking up the tab myself.

At any rate, my lovely wife, our kids and grandkids are well. They are all getting by.

Interesting times.

-Sixbears