The mask conundrum

 

In these relatively early days of the normalization of Covid, the issue of masks seems to be settling out. Looking about my library I work at, most people don't wear masks now, though a tiny minority still do. I take no great Internet-appropriate view of this situation. This means that I am not particularly outraged about any aspect of it. Wearing a mask is mainly a personal risk mitigation issue at this point. Wearing one properly will decrease your chances of contracting (and spreading) airborne diseases. Wearing a ventilator would be even better protection. I don't wear either, but I understand that it's all a matter of how much risk one is willing to expose themselves to. 

Nevertheless, there is one kind of mask wearer I regularly see at the library that is mystifying to me. 

Or let me put it another way: Of all the kinds of mask wearers during the pandemic; the face shield wearers, the pristine N-95ers, the bandana folks, the "free handouts only" surgical maskers, etc., the very last kind of people I would have guessed to be still at it in the masking game are what I call the chin maskers.

Chin maskers are the people who walk around with ill-fitting masks either not covering their nose, or dangling from their face like they just emerged from an exhausting bit of surgery, or who have simply let the mask end up strapped below their mouth like a chin guard. These are the people who, when talking to you (the most important time to wear a mask), would lower their mask out of the way so as to be heard clearly. And to my total surprise, it turns out that these very people, the people who use masks ineffectively, of all people, are the ones who continue to sport masks. 

At the height of mandatory pandemic masking, I thought these chin maskers were garden variety political lunatics, passive aggressively expressing their contempt for any law that would dare try to... stop... a... plague. 

But since they have not abandoned masks, long past when they freely could, clearly I was wrong.

It turns out they believe in masks more passionately than almost any of the rest of us.

However, it turns out, their belief is more religious than scientific.

The spread of library diseases

The probabilities suggest that I caught my Covid at the library. Which would make it the 837th thing I caught while working at the library over these many decades. This one may not be the worst of all those diseases, but it is up there- weeks later and I am still prone to coughing, and I don't feel entirely well yet.

But here I am, at the library. I don't test positive for Covid anymore. And I don't believe I am contagious in any way. But I have burnt through a lot of sick time. So I am at work. Nevertheless, if I heard my cough, while I was looking for a nice interesting fiction book to take home, I would exercise some caution in plunging down the aisle where I'm shelving, and I certainly can't imagine standing near me while I'm hacking away.

But I guess I'm weird like that. Because even though I was painfully self conscious when I coughed while shelving, there were loads of people who were perfectly happy to crowd in around me in order to get a book, or even to just look for a book, or perhaps they were there to smell the menthol in my cough drop. In short, they were not shy of my disease at all!

And yet I can't help but notice, they were well and I was sick.

Perhaps I know less about germ theory than I thought.

Testing positive

 

Oh, I feel okay.

Runny nose, but not much. Occasional cough, a bit tired, but nearly well. 

But my Covid test is...

Positive.

Or negative?

Whatever the bad one is where a person has Covid, lots and lots of Covid.

And it's not just like a regular positive test. I mean my first positive test was more than a week ago, and the essential "T" line was present but faint at that time. We looked up that result and the Internet said that even a faint T line means Covid because one has to have to have a lot of Covid in one's system for there to be any line at all! 

But it also said that yes, the darker the line is the more Covid there is, for good or ill.

Mostly ill.

Well my "T" line on my test today is currently super dark. 

I mean thick as a wrist, and black as the night.

My Covid test stick is drowning in Covid. It is the black hole of Covid. It is all of China's Covid represented in a single place.

I am currently the epicenter of all Covid on Planet Earth!

So my question is:

When do I return to work?

When I can tell I'm not that sick anymore

 

I have been sick with Covid for a full week now. That's a lot of sitting around eating what I can bear to, drinking endless quarts of water, and watching TV shows. As for the TV shows at first there were some old movies we'd seen a million times before. Then there was the new season of Emily in Paris, which I understand is a personal taste, but I quite like it. That went by quick.  From there it has been all homey British Competition Shows. One involved Interior design and was interesting. The next concerned, well, not flower arranging, it was more like large scale plant sculpture. Teams of two had to make things like giant insects or fairytale scenes out of plants and flowers and stuff. I really liked that one and was sad there was only one season of it. Do you know how long it takes for sick people to watch one season of a British Competition show? 

Part of a day.

I have full days to take care of here!!!!

Which brings me to my point today.

How can I tell that I'm not all that ill from Covid anymore?

I listlessly lay about all day eating sorbetto and watching TV...

and I like it!

Covid, day number: eleventy-aught-whatever

 

Hello.

Your Covid reporter is up and at 'em before dawn to give you all the latest and greatest on, um, how to put it?

Covid's march through my body!

Now it does sound like I am up very early with all this "before dawn" stuff, but we should remember that it is somewhere right around the Winter Solstice in the northlands here. So as I look out my window into pitch blackness it is nevertheless almost seven in the morning and I'm starting to think the sun might be broken!

So the scene is set.

I mean not that we needed a scene for me to offer a few words about Covid symptoms, but what's done is done.

I have read about, speculated upon, worried over, and heard the story of many people's Covid symptoms over the past few years.

There are some that I am thrilled not to have, and hope I don't develop, and it does seem like I probably won't? I don't have any breathing or oxygen sorts of problems it seems. Brain fog isn't an issue. I'm not really exhausted in any way that some people talk about.

Some symptoms feel almost inevitable to me, like I was sure to get them and have; the kind of incessant cough (I'm so sorry to my wife!) that, in sickness, I have been prone to in the past, fever, runny nose, and I'm pretty sure my taste and smell are gone.

I am jealous of the many people I have known who contracted Covid and felt sick for a day or two and then were over it. Or the ones who were like "It was mild. It was like a cold." This is my fourth day (though I don't know how to count the flu/cold I had two weeks ago that never totally went away before blossoming back into... this. On this fourth day I do feel a little better, but my fever and misery oscillates enough I can't quite be sure yet. But I definitely, blessedly, now cough less.

I am less jealous, but still possibly jealous, of the many people I have heard about who seem to get Covid and are exhausted and just sleep, a lot! I am pretty sure if I could sleep more than four or five hours on some night it would help my condition considerably. I sleep for an hour or two. Drink some water, cough, lie in bed for an hour or two not sleeping, and repeat until the sleeping part stops working altogether.

At which point I get out of bed and tell you all about it.

May you fare better. Or have fared better. 

Or, miracle of miracles, never get it.

No rest

 

It is not in the nature of Clerkmanifesto to take a "day off". And so even with my hacking cough and my 101 degree temperature and a general sense of mild covid misery, here I am, just as I always am, driven by a mystical pact who's source is now fogged in time.

And I'm not just writing to fulfill some quota. I have important things to say. I have a shout out to the World. I have the keys, all the keys, and I have chosen this tiny golden one today.

Now if I could just find the lock among all this kleenex.

The circle of life

 

There is a strange momentousness to this day, a closing of two circles.

One circle involves how after three years of writing about, thinking about, fending off, and occasionally obsessing over Covid, I finally have it. I first wrote about it here just barely under three years ago, before, apparently, the CDC had even declared it an International Health Concern. Looking at that post, which you can see at this link:

http://www.clerkmanifesto.com/2020/01/your-guide-to-coronavirus.html

I find it an odd mix of rambling and extremely prescient insight. The capturing of the quality and feel of my current symptoms is positively uncanny. 

Let's just say I am coughing a lot.

The other circle involves Lionel Messi and the World Cup. 

Over the years of my intense focus on his feats I have written as few blog posts about him as I could manage to restrain myself, but there are still a fair number. I first saw him in the World Cup eight and a half years ago. He utterly captured my attention as possibly the most magically skilled athlete at his sport, at any sport, that I had ever seen. He lost the World Cup Final that year and I had some harsh words for the Argentina team. I have since learned volumes more about soccer and have watched hundreds and hundreds of games, most of which featured Messi. Nevertheless I did have the gist of the whole thing back then. And everything that was missing from that Argentina team eight years ago was thankfully, joyously there this time as they won the World Cup.

 They did not win by a team spirit that refused to too much elevate Messi, like last time. They instead won through a team spirit that was formed through a love of Messi.

It was very satisfying. 

Maybe even a tiny bit more satisfying than this Covid is dismal.

Report from library

 

I got a covid booster yesterday, number four. My arm is tired. I'm tired. I'm soooo tired! But I came to work anyway. I was too tired to call in.

The automated check in machine was down, broken, when I got here to the library. I was way too tired for that. But I was also too tired to go home. I figured I'd wait it out and see what happened. Eventually the machine people fixed the machine and now everything is back to normal here. There is a loud squeak from the ceiling belts on the machine. One of my co-workers asked me: "So they didn't fix the squeak?"

"No." I replied. "They have a special squeak crew for that."

I don't know. Maybe they do. Specialization is an invention either to develop mastery among people or, more likely, to allow people not to do anything. For instance, I am currently on the specialty assignment of processing requests. There are a hundred things to do here, but there are no requests. I even have a partner to not work on the requests that aren't here. She's looking at her phone.

But we're ready for the requests if they come!

Well, my partner is.

I'm very tired. Too tired.

So far today everything looks bad, but it's all sort of taking care of itself. I'm just trying to not get in the way.

I might even be developing a specialty.

Talking olympics

 

As I have been putting together my massive Winter Olympic Betting Pool I have started to burn with...

AN OLYMPIC FEVER!

At least I hope that's what it is. It would be really sad if it were actually Covid.

Right now, for instance, I am thinking a lot about Swiss Skier Marco Odermatt.

Like, is he really as good as everyone says he is?

"Do people say he's really good?" You ask.

Well, no, no one around here has heard of him. And no one has actually ever mentioned him to me in my life.

BUT HE COULD WIN THREE GOLD MEDALS IN ALPINE SKIING!

So, there's that.

You know, this isn't my first trip around the block with Olympic Fever. Check out this cartoon I made 26 years ago.

Wow, that kind of freaks me out: 26 years ago! Nevertheless I'd probably need change just a couple of tiny things for it to be as relevant as ever.

Tested for covid, the review

I was tested for Covid-19 this morning.

But look who I'm telling about being tested for Covid! You've been tested for Covid like a thousand times already.

But for me it was a first.

My wife and I went to a random parking lot basement. The sort of place where all proper apocalyptic events take place, amid a vast acreage of dark concrete. People in Hazmat suits directed us along through islands of light and into brief areas of medical activity. 

It was actually quite quick and pleasant. 

Ultimately they swirled a long Q-tip around in the very back of both of my nostrils. It didn't feel good, but it wasn't horrible. Let us say a step less painful than a vigorous teeth cleaning (which I had just last week!), and a good deal shorter.

I'd give the whole experience a nine out of ten.

Though I may revise that if I test positive.

  

Pandemic over

 

Because the pandemic is over I am going out for a drink tonight with a friend. But it was hard to find any place open because of the pandemic.

"Wait, isn't the pandemic over?" I asked.

I was in the middle of the library where I work. It was open. It was full of people. We weren't wearing masks. It was like a dream. But it wasn't a dream. I was in a real place asking of anyone "Isn't the pandemic over?"

"Kinda." Someone walking by answered.

Finally, after a lot of searching I found some kind of Cider cocktails/Crepes/Cheese Board place in an obscure industrial part of town that is loosely rumored to be open tonight.

"How about this one?" I asked my friend.

"Sure." He said.

"And we don't mind climbing over the heaps of dead bodies to get there?" I asked.

What's done is done, we concluded.

Game show host

 

My library has opened for public browsing of the collection. Whether this move is slightly premature because of Covid cases still rising in my State isn't the subject of today's missive. The subject of today's missive is just how ecstatic this makes the library patrons. There has been squealing, and weeping, and literal jumping for joy (well, it was a bit more like a couple little hops).

And because we have rolled out this new level of library opening in a very low key, unpublicized way, I am regularly the bearer of this good news. I am, apparently, the instrument of making people's day. 

They tell me so. 

"You have made my day. No, my year!" They say.

I think they want to hug me.

I feel like a game show host!

They walk into the library, picking up a couple of mundane books they're not even sure they want to read.

 Something looks different...

"Is..." They tremulously begin. "Is the library... open? Can I go pick out my own books... myself?"

"Yes! Yes indeed. The library is open for browsing." I say. "And you have also won a brand new Kenmore Brand Washer and Dryer Combo!!!!!! Johnny, tell them what they've won!"

" Well Feldenstein, it's a brand new Kenmore brand deluxe hydro-clean washer and dryer. With variable wash cycles and their patented low frequency super wash system, you will never have to worry about your colors bleeding again! Kenmore, the right way to say electric!"

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" they yell, sobbing excitedly, overwhelmed with emotion. Their family and friends come up to them and they all start hugging and jumping up and down in front of my desk.

Cut to commercial.

Hopefully they're all vaccinated.

The informational email vaccine analogy

 

 

 

At the library where I work sometimes things are done the wrong way. And sometimes when that happens someone, often a manager, will complain "But I sent an email about this!". 

Informational emails are great. They are important. I fully endorse their use.

But they are not 100 percent immediately effective. Rather they are like vaccines. Indeed, they are exactly like vaccines.

Like a vaccine any informational email will have an effectiveness rate depending on the subject and quality of the email. This will depend upon a combination of the clarity and sensibility of the issue of the email, how well written the email is, and how many people actually read their email. This can make one of these emails anywhere from 20% to 95% effective.

Like a vaccine most informational emails are safe. But they may have minor side effects like irritation or soreness around the site of the email (like, "I can't believe I'm getting another stupid email about this issue. I already know this!"). Sometimes there are also short term illnesses as the body builds up its resistance (like, "Ugh, we have to walk these all the way over there now! I'll just pile them up here for a bit first.").

In the end the ideal goal of any informational email is herd immunity, the state wherein the information of the email has been fully absorbed by the workplace. The path to this can be seen in the following scenario:

 "Hey. That doesn't go there."

"It doesn't?"

"There was an email."

"Oh. Was it that one I didn't read?"

"Yes."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leopards ate our faces

 

 

 

 

 

 I had my cap on, and my mask. I took the elevator down. The doors opened up and a woman was standing there with her dog. Bundled up for the cool morning she had her hat and scarf wrapped 'round. The bottom half of her face was covered too by her mask. We may have mumbled muffled greetings, but what I thought was: 

Oh my god! We're all in Burkas now!

Little more than a year ago we all thought Burkas should be illegal and that the people who still wore them should be thrown in Burka camps!

We didn't think that?

I'm pretty sure there were tons of Republicans thinking that! And just about now when they look around I bet they're burning white hot with shame!

They aren't?

Well could someone tell them that they should be?

The day America broke

 

 

My name is Feldenstein Calypso. I work at the front desk of a library during a global pandemic. In my country this pandemic has bubbled hideously, as like in a great, seething black cauldron. Green and menacing the viscous pandemic gurgles and simmers, rolling down the sides of the pot, smoking noxiously so that it is hard to even see in the room.

What smoke?

What fumes?

I don't see any smoke and fumes.

We are offering limited services at my library, but the pandemic, running down the sides of the cauldron, is causing the fire underneath to burn wildly out of control. This causes the pot to bubble more and more so that it looks to explode in the wild heat. 

So naturally the library patrons come in and ask:

Do you think you'll be opening up more soon?

The boiling pandemic brew performs a mild eruption, flinging a hot green mass against the side of the face of this inquiring patron. They casually wipe it off and look to me for my answer.

"We were headed in that direction." I reply. "But now that everyone is going to die we'll be holding off for a bit."

"A shame." They say. "But I guess you do what you have to." 

Then they add "Thanks for being here."

The politeness is nice.

One of my co-workers had multiple dangerous pre-existing conditions in her home so right at the start of the Pandemic she opted out of work. For eight months she has stayed home and didn't work in order to be safe to herself and to those around her. 

Then this weekend she called in. "I'm thinking of coming back." She said.

"As the Pandemic is finally coming to its most dangerous, wild, deadly, and contagious stage, but just a couple short months before the vast hope of the vaccines can kick in,  that is when you're thinking of coming back?" She is asked mildly.

"Yes." She replies.

Who is she?

Well, besides being my co-worker, and it being a real story, she is America herself.

In a mile long race, hobbling along awkwardly in last place, but at least four fifths of the way through, we stop and declare ourselves the winners.

Well, maybe not "winners", but I guess you do what you have to.

Coronavirus in the driver's seat

 

 

 

 

Did you know that more than 38,000 people die in car crashes in the U.S. every year? This is roughly the same number as the annual average deaths by Coronavirus over the last seven years. 

Yes, I know that Coronavirus only started this year, but look:

 

2014: Zero Deaths

2015: Zero Deaths

2016: Zero Deaths

2017: Zero Deaths

2018: Zero Deaths

2019: Zero Deaths

2020: 248,000 Deaths

Seven year average of deaths: 35,428 deaths per year.

 

Yes, 35,428 is not 38,000 but trust me, the math will work out perfectly on this before too long, and then it won't match because it will be too big going the other way.

"But, hey, what's the point of all this?" Someone out there is asking. "Are you suggesting that people die all the time in car crashes and we don't ask people to stop driving! So maybe we shouldn't be asking people to stop dying of Coronavirus!"

That wasn't my point, but fair enough: 

Anyone who wants to die of Coronavirus is free to do so.

But if they cause anyone else to get sick or die along with them they will be subjected to...

A fine!

Yes, our Coronavirus rules are very strict here in America.

I have been noticing that coronavirus safety is a lot like driving. The people who are going much faster than you all seem completely crazy and reckless. Whereas the people going much slower than you are all overcautious hazards of the road. 

I think this driving analogy is the perfect analogy for Coronavirus as long as we add the following details:

1. Everyone who is driving in this scenario has had three stiff drinks before getting in their car.

2. There is a major ice storm going on at the time of the scenario.

3. While there are some mildly suggested speed limits we don't have any Highway Patrol.

I don't mean to paint such a grim picture though. It's looking very good for unusually effective vaccines being on the way! Plus, it should be noted, since the dawn of humankind, less than one person a year has died on average from Covid-19. 

And, most importantly, at press time, we're all still alive.

 

 

Conspiracy

 

 

 

 

Shhhhhh.

 

There is a conspiracy afoot. I know about it only because I am taking part in it. 

It has to do with the election.

Do you want to know what the conspiracy is?

I will tell you.

But only if you will swear on all that is sacred to you first.

Swear that you have, or that you will vote.

Actually you have to swear that you have voted, or that you will vote for the desperately needed but frankly pretty crappy conservative candidate: Joe Biden. 

For obvious reasons.

You swore?

Excellent. Thank you.

I will tell you.

 

I have been working in the heart of the voting process for almost two months of early voting. All day long I answer questions about early voting, the voting rules and procedures, and the voting days to come. I'm not working in Elections and I'm not an election judge, but I work in a library where it's all taking place. This is not just early voting, but on Tuesday we will also be a regular voting location. So I am an observer. And it has been packed here. Right now lines wrap my building and spill, weaving out into the parking lot. So many people have early voted that it has even become hard to predict how busy election day will be. Will voting be light because so much early voting already happened, or will it be crazy like it's been all along?

All of which leads us to the conspiracy.

Voting has been a national disaster. We are in the midst of a Pandemic. Gathering mobs of people in static, indoor locations, where they mill together for long periods of time has spread the coronavirus. The enormous surge in numbers of Coronavirus cases and deaths here over the past month is certainly not entirely attributable to huge early voting gatherings, but they sure haven't helped.

Early voting, and the voting to come, are serious contagion vectors.

But we don't talk about it much because, as sensible people, we are so desperate for people to vote we have to look the other way.

What I am saying is:

There is poison in the cure.

 

Shhhhhh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to use the Internet

 

You are a busy person.

Or perhaps you're not a busy person, but you don't want to spend all your precious time in this World studying the endless conjectures, science, rumors, and details of this Covid-19 Pandemic.

But you don't want to be ignorant. You still want to know what's going on.

Don't worry!

No, no, you should probably worry about the pandemic. It's pretty serious. I mean, don't worry about not keeping up with all the endless Pandemic news.

I have done it for you!

I have spent a lot of time on the Internet. I have poured over the news feeds. I have monitored the wide ranging public chats of other casual observers, listened to the interviews with epidemiologists, consulted the scientific publishing, poured over the statistics, the hard evidence, the anecdotal evidence, and assorted leaks of information regarding vaccine trials. I have, all from the magical portal of my Internet computer, roamed the vast breadth of up to date knowledge, discussion, conjecture, fear, news, and politics regarding the Coronavirus Pandemic. And I am here, in one convenient location, in a clear and intelligible distillation of available information, to give you a full, up to the minute, advanced, informed summation of local and World statuses regarding this serious public health emergency.

You have, understandably exhausted, turned your attention to a variety of other things, but you would still like to be reliably informed. I am here, without fuss or embellishment, to simply do so. 

Here is my comprehensive, yet simple, concise, but thorough, informed, but digested, completely up to date report on the Covid-19 Pandemic:

It's not looking great.

I'll be back in six months for another update.

Election fever

 

 

 

 

 

Uh-oh.

I came into work and one of my co-workers asked "How's your election fever doing?"

So maybe I've been talking about this election a lot. Maybe too much? Didn't I just write about it here yesterday?

I replied "It's about 104 degrees. We're trying to burn out the infection."

My co-worker nodded sagely.

"If we can't burn it out it may end up killing us."

This, as my co-worker well understood, was a code for the infection of Donald Trump and the Republicans. It's easy to talk like this with my colleagues because everyone I work with here is some kind of Democrat.

Well, there is one person...

But the main thing I ever have say to them is "Jesus Christ, just put on your mask!" 

Pandemic kids

 

 

 

I don't know much about kids except for having been one a long time ago and the occasional ones I meet working at the library.

But I have found a small, fascinating thing regarding them in the short history of this pandemic. When required masks were first discussed, and as the idea of them slowly formed up, I remember regularly reading about how of course there was no way in hell kids were going to be able to handle masks, and that it would be obvious to anyone who dealt regularly with kids that we'd have to take into account their complete inability to deal with the strangeness and challenge of wearing a mask.

So I thought: Okay, I don't know kids. I guess this must be true.

But now we are pretty deep into our mask mandates, and I have found that every single kid over the age of three that I have seen at the library has been great at mask wearing. The toddlers I have seen aren't perfect at the mask wearing, but they're not terrible either.

You know who has been terrible at mask wearing?

Old people. 

Old people and Republicans. 

And lots and lots of old Republicans.

As usual in America we worried again about the wrong people.

 

 

It might be a feature, not a bug.