Sobbing...

This blog post is overdue. It should have been published more than two weeks ago. At that time, I was visiting my youngest son and his family who live 2,350 miles away from me. From there, I was to fly to help celebrate my mother's 90th birthday, 735 miles closer to my own home. I had driven five hours to an airline hub to fly to my first destination, and flew back to that hub a week ago. I then drove the five hours back home. I cannot begin to describe the tumult that developed while I was away from my own home and has continued to develop since. I'm sure my story of upheaval pales compared to the vast majority of people.

The tumultuous upheaval??? Of course, it's the coronavirus (COVID 19) pandemic. As a Public Health Nurse, I'm familiar with the epidemiology and response to outbreaks of illness. Ten or so years ago, I was involved in the mass vaccination to prevent swine flu. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov) the H1N1 swine flu outbreak was also considered a pandemic, and infected 60.8 million people in the United States from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010. Of those infected, 12,469 people died -- a mortality rate of 0.02%. The New York Times (nytimes.com) updates rapidly changing information tracking the coronavirus pandemic several times a day. During the single week -- just SEVEN DAYS -- since I returned home on March 13th, the incidence of COVID 19 infection in the United States has risen by more than 14,000 patients and the number of deaths from the disease has increased from 58 to 237. At present, the mortality rate from this virus is nearly 10 times greater than the rate of people who died from swine flu.

The COVID 19 virus has affected more than 260,000 people around the world, causing in excess of 11,000 deaths. Almost all of the cases have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, raising the concern that an even greater viral spread will follow as seasons change. All over the world, including in the United States, the pandemic has turned life upside down and inside out.

Sadly, everyone recognizes the outcomes of widespread sickness and death, along with related economic turmoil when people are unable to work. Utterly incomprehensible is why anyone would disregard the recommendations of Public Health experts to avoid crowds and air travel, to use hand sanitizer frequently, even to "shelter in place." Disgustingly, far too many people have sought to benefit from this dire situation. There are dozens of accounts of price gouging, such as buying up hordes of hand sanitizer, bleach, and other disinfectant materials and selling them for 10+ times the regular price. There are reports of lawyers and politicians -- even senators! -- who sold off millions of dollars worth of stocks immediately after being briefed on the pandemic (insider trading?). And... there is a very prominent person who knowingly withheld information from the American public about impending disaster so his own reelection campaign would not be jeopardized.

I can't stop SOBBING over the disastrous state of affairs affecting all of us! I wish the imbecile who thinks he is leading the march to victory over COVID 19 would just shut up. Wikipedia states that "the term imbecile was once used by psychiatrists to denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal." Apropos...