Virus Blog

9/11/20

911. About 3,000 people died in the 9/11/01 attacks. That scarred a nation. We saw 3,000 deaths in the last three days of this pandemic. From a death perspective the pandemic has been 60 times worse. Pretty soon our calendar will be filled with more sad days than happy days. I remember 911 well. I was in a period of great personal development where I was going to work out before work. I was in my car just a few blocks from my house and driving to the health club at about 6:45 am when I flipped on the radio and heard that "a second tower had been hit by a plane." I hadn't heard about the first plane and my brain struggled to piece together what that sentence meant. There were two planes that hit two towers on the same day? What were the odds? Oh, I see, this wasn't about odds, this was deliberate. By the time I got to the club I went to the section upstairs with four large TVs mounted to the ceiling that everyone could see while they worked out. You could tune your "walkman" to an FM station to hear the sound in your ears as you worked out. By the time I made it to the TVs the first tower at fallen and I began what would feel like a zombie workout. Eyes staring at the TV. Legs moving back and forth. My brain somewhere else. Then the second tower went. I watched it live. It was something I couldn't un-see. It left me numb. The difference with the virus is that it's not quite as visual. We read numbers in a report and somehow skip the horror of the loss of life through our ears and our eyes.

9/12/20

175. That's the air quality right now. The state is on fire. At least 30 fires. While the flames may be isolated to 30 locations, the smoke is a blanket that covers the state. In fact it seems that much of the smoke is coming from blazes in Oregon. I heard a stat that in California fire is consuming 1,000 new acres every 30 seconds.

The air quality is better. I wasn't so much an expert on air quality. Knew there were numbers but didn't pay much attention. The air hear blows in from the ocean. Probably not a better fresh air big city on the planet. Well 175 is bad. Hell 80 is bad. But 175 is lower than the 225 it was much of yesterday. That's right I now exactly what the air quality is and have an internet site that gives me excellent precision in my air quality estimates. There are six colors on the scale. 175 is red. 225 was purple. Amazingly it could have been worse (and was for Oregon yesterday). What I don't understand why the color worse than purple is maroon. What it's not is orange, nor yellow and green is a faint memory. If there has been one complaint about where we live, it feels like we have too much wind. Too much fresh air. I swear I will never complain about that again. Bring back the wind. I don't want to see my air. Orange and white are not colors for my sky. Ok, I'll admit that white fog works for me at times, but white smoke (and it's different) does not.

Flu Shot. Not quite the vaccine I wanted but we got a flu shot today in an effort to support modern medicine's strategy to fight the virus. Yes, we're told that preventing what we can is more important this year than ever. Hoping the next needle that goes into my arm is a vaccine.

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