6 feet away

[mellicious]

I spent the day today working at a hospital I'd never even been to before - but it is part of the same hospital system Rob & I both work for, and it's the closest one to where we live, so that part is nice. I was supposed to be screening people for Covid symptoms, but actually I didn't do all that much, because there were a lot of people at the desk, and everybody kept chiming in before I got anything out. ("Have you had cough-fever-bodyaches-difficulty breathing?") But I'm presumably going back next week so at least I know the drill of working there somewhat now. Rob spent the day at a different place doing the same thing. The facility where we normally work is closed, being "nonessential" and potentially hazardous as far as being a disease vector, to boot, but all of the employees at the hospital system are considered essential and we just get reassigned to do different things, as long as we don't get sick. (My understanding is that if we actually get sick, we will get paid even if we don't get sick leave, which I don't since I'm part-time. I haven't heard that officially though.)

My boss would have liked to have kept me for spreadsheet-making purposes, actually - that's a really useful job skill in a lot of places! I told her if I have any hours left - which is probably unlikely, really - I'll come in and work one day next week. We have to keep track of how much money we are losing by being closed, for one thing - I think they need it for FEMA. I believe we went through that after Hurricane Ike, too, as I recall. Probably Harvey, too, although somebody else must've done the spreadsheets for that one. (We were stuck at home with flooded creeks between us and work for a solid week, some of you guys may recall.)

I do have a scratchy throat but that's just my usual allergy crap. Every time I have the tiniest symptom I over-analyze it, I imagine everybody is doing that. But anyway, we're hanging in there so far. Running low on toilet paper, but hopefully we'll find some before it actually runs out and we have to resort to Kleenex, heaven forbid! (I do have a lot of tissues of various brands due to said allergies, so I guess that's a pretty good backup in a pinch.)

Comments

[bunny42]

Kleenex beats the heck out of magazine pages. Back in the day, they used pages from the Sears Catalog! What I can't find is eggs. Chickens haven't been ordered to self-quarantine, so why no eggs? I guess it's hoarders. Maybe that'll level off in the next few days. I just don't feel like going out and about only to find the shelf still bare. It's not earth-shattering, just annoying.

Stay safe! We'll get through this. I anticipate a spike in the numbers, once tests become readily available, not because of new cases, but because probably lots of people are positive and don't even know it. Sure is weird to see the lack of rush hour traffic.

[bunny42]

Oh, an interesting thing happened. Several days ago, I stepped on a tiny sliver of glass, had to pull it out of my heel with tweezers. My last tetanus shot was in 2012, so I stopped at my doctor's office to see if I needed a booster. They wouldn't let me in! Not without having called for an appointment. So I got one for the next day. The office was empty, the usual rows of chairs were reduced to about four in each row, six feet apart. Eerie. The doctor said under any other circumstances he would have given me the shot, but was afraid it would give me symptoms similar to Covid, and I might get placed in quarantine for no reason! He said he was fairly certain I was still protected from my previous shot, and just to keep an eye on that heel. So far, so good. But, geez.

[mellicious]

I said that the way my grandparents and people their age used to go on and on about "back in the Depression..." (my parents were too young to do that, they were both born in 1938 so by the time they got old enough to remember anything, the Depression was over with) - we will all be the ones that go "back in the Pandemic..." in the future and annoying the ones who are too young to remember. But yeah, one of the stories I heard a lot was the one about the Sears catalog pages. I'm old enough to remember the Sears catalog, but I always thought that would make really terrible toilet paper.

[bunny42]

I'd like to know why, when 18,500 people in the US died from seasonal flu last year, why wasn't that a pandemic? People all over the world get flu every year. Is it different because COVID-19 is new?

[mellicious]

Yeah, because it's new, nobody has any immunity to it.