Saturday, March 21, 2020

It's Going To Get Us All

We're all going to die.

I'm not trying to be funny.  I ... we don't have anything to stop it.  And we can wash our hands all we want, and we can distance socially as much as we want.  But once it's in our bodies, it's going to fuck us up really good.  One-in-five of us will have to go the ER, and at some point, if we need a ventilator -- and it sounds like there's no chance all of us who needs a ventilator will get a ventilator -- it's a 50/50 shot we'll survive.

Three things have convinced me to be more pessimistic.  One is a series of tweets by some guy I don't know saying that he took all the right precautions except for having a beer with a friend at a bar for one hour ... and he was knocked on his ass (albeit at home) for a week.  He's just like me: He was vigilant, but just slipped once, and he got caught by this #TrumpVirus.

The second thing is a sad milestone: Minnesota announced its first death from COVID-19.  He was in his eighties, but he caught it from someone else.  I have people in my life that are that old.

The third thing comes from an article tweeted to me.  It's a first-person account of a frontline health worker in Louisiana who was horrified at how some young-ish COVID-19 patients are dying on his watch.  I didn't click on the link.  The description of the fluids coming out of some fortysomething's lungs convinced me I would go crazy if I read it.

It's over.  For me, for my family, for all of us.  We could be hermetically sealed in our homes, but if and when it gets us, it's got us.  We have no defense against this.  My God, there's nothing we can do. ...

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