Best to live in a state with ocean and mountains- and deserts!
Med school lad shared this with me a few minutes ago. It was sent to him from a fellow med school student - no idea where that person got it from except it was supposed to be a doctor (hearsay). It could be making the rounds on FB for all I know.
We enjoyed the chuckle. Thought some on here might too. (Laughter is the best medicine.)
“A lot of people have been asking me what it’s like being on the COVID wards in the hospital, so I figured I’d share what a typical day looks like for me:
6am - Wake up. Roll off of my pile of money that Big Pharma gave me. Softly weep as it doesn’t put a dent in my medical school loans
6:30am - Make breakfast, using only foods from the diet that give me everlasting life by avoiding all fats, sugars, carbs, and proteins. For details buy my book and check out my shop.
7am - Get to work, load up my syringes with coronavirus before rounds.
8am - See my patients for the day. Administer the medications that the government tells me to. Covertly rub essential oils on the ones I want to get better.
9:30am - Call Bill Gates to check how 5G tower construction is going, hoping for more coronavirus soon. He tells me they’re delayed due to repairs on the towers used to spread the Black Plague. Curse the fact that this is the most efficient way to spread infectious diseases.
10am - One patient tells me he knows “the truth” about coronavirus. I give him a Tdap booster. He becomes autistic in front of my eyes. He’ll never conspire against me again.
11am - Tend to the secret hospital garden of St. John’s wort and ginkgo leaves that we save for rich patients and donors.
12:30pm - Pick up my briefcase of money from payroll, my gift from Pfizer for the incomprehensible profits we make off of the free influenza vaccine given every year.
1pm - Conference call with Dr. Fauci and the lab in Wuhan responsible for manufacturing viruses. Tell them my idea about how an apocalypse-style zombie virus would be a cool one to try for the next batch.
2pm - A patient starts asking me about getting rid of toxins. I ask her if she has a liver and kidneys. She tells me she knows “the truth” about Big Anatomy and that the only way to detoxify herself is to eat nothing but lemon wedges and mayonnaise for weeks. I give her a Tdap booster.
2:45pm - Help the FBI, CIA, and CDC silence the masses. Lament the fact that I can only infringe on one or two of their rights. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
4pm - One of my rich patients begins to crash. Laugh as I realize I’ve mismatched her spirit animal and zodiac moon sign. I switch out the Purple Amethyst above her bed for a Tiger’s Eye geode. She stabilizes. I throw some ginkgo leaves on her for good measure
6pm - Go onto YouTube and see coronavirus conspiracy videos everywhere. Curse my all powerful government for how inept they are at keeping people from spreading “the truth”
6:10pm - Go onto Amazon and see that a book about “the truth” is the #1 seller this week. Question the power of my all powerful government. Make a reminder to myself to get more Tdap boosters from the Surgeon General next time we talk.
7pm - Time to go home. Before I leave, sacrifice a goat to Dr. Fauci and say three Hippocratic Oaths.
9pm - Take a contented sigh as I snuggle under the covers made of the tinfoil hats of my enemies, realizing that my 4 years of medical school and 3 years of residency training have been put to good use today.
FWIW, I’ve been doing my part to raise the average alcohol consumption since SIP.
I’ve mentioned to H that we could be getting a fraud alert notice from our CC. It would be along the lines of ‘we’ve noticed your month end total seems to be off by at least one zero to the left of the decimal point, someone stole your identity and isn’t up to snuff in spending department’
H and DS left today to head to our cabin and effect some repairs inflicted by a fallen tree. I realize after just a few hours of being home alone, I could never do this if I was single, living by myself and locked in an apartment somewhere. My mental health would suffer - and not just a little bit.
My friend (who’s probably had this bad boy back in March after two weeks in Paris) is coming over for a take out dinner. She’s doing pickup. She will come up the front stairs, go right to our deck. We will sit out there together - 6+ feet apart. If she needs to use the restroom there is one next to the garage. We both need human contact.
Hullo! @marilyn I am still stuck in northern Illinois! 
That’s why we love Maine, but don’t tell anyone. Ocean, lakes, mountains, trees. ?
True, it would be worse to be in a place without either. But personally, I’m a bit mountained out… The ocean beckons.
You can’t take smoking out of the equation. See #2635. Infant mortality is higher among premature and low birth weight babies. The US has a high rate of premature births, explaining infant mortality. Premature births can be related to mother’s tobacco/alcohol/drug use, poor nutrition, and pre-existing poor health due to obesity and lack of exercise.
My birthday was last week and a friend, who is an essential worker in a grocery store, left gifts on my doorstep. On Monday, it was a can of Lysol spray. On Wednesday, it was a big hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes. I wonder if she’ll leave me toilet paper next!
Before COVID we bought a house and started an extensive remodel. Along the way we found a ton of other problems, so it’s taking quite a while. We are not living in the new house, as it is uninhabitable.
Today we made a round trip to Houston (4 hours each way) to select counter tops because our builder gets really good prices from them. We had an uneventful drive down, and made good time because the traffic was light. We stopped for lunch in Houston before going to the slab warehouse. It appears many restaurants are open, though not all. We went into a chain soft taco restaurant. There were not many people inside. Employees were in masks, and about 50% of customers were wearing masks when they entered. We ordered our food at the counter and sat outside on the patio. No other customers were outside. A masked employee brought us our food. We used hand sanitizer before digging in to our very tasty lunch. It seemed pretty safe all in all. DH said the bathroom was completely “touchless.”
At the two slab warehouses we went to, most (not all were in masks). DH questioned the workers and learned that their business has not suffered in the least. In fact, one said builders were sending in clients like crazy because they were afraid the warehouses might get shut down.
It was very easy to social distance in such large warehouses.
We were astounded at the difference between Houston and Dallas. Houston traffic was MUCH worse than Dallas. It’s been like a ghost town for the most part in Dallas, though as things begin opening up, I expect that to change. But in Houston, shopping centers were PACKED with cars. Traffic was so busy, you could almost forget there is such a thing as COVID. I saw some restaurant parking lots so full, you’d think it was a holiday. The home improvement stores were swamped. We always thought of Dallas and Houston as being very similar, but from this perspective, they are radically different, at least as of today.
We were very glad to get this chore done and get home. I’m now going to be an unhealthy American and pour a glass of Chardonnay. 
@Nrdsb4 Did you stop at Buc ee’s? If so, I’m jealous.
On the topic of not believing what you read, and specifically about Nashville being a hotspot last week. The mayor and the head of the coronavirus task force here said the statistics were completely wrong and misleading. “The report obtained by NBC News said the Nashville area saw a 129% surge in new cases last week. But that figure included a massive outbreak in the Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility, more than 50 miles northeast of Nashville. It also included a surge in neighboring Rutherford County.”
Thank you!
So I was just talking with a client on mine who lives and works in Plano (TX) and she told me she is getting married next weekend (2nd marriage). The ceremony and reception is outdoors at her house with 50 guests (friends & family), no social distancing of course. She also said she has 3 in-person client meetings next week and will only will wear a mask if they ask her to.
Blows me away how some states and fellow citizens are handling this crisis. This would not fly in LA county where I live…
Whenever a sentence starts that way…well, you know the rest.
Americans have been lied to by the mass media so blatantly that many of us don’t believe what we hear in the news as a matter of faith or trust. So there is doubt from some about the rationale for lockdowns, distancing, and masks. And even the people who have read the studies and followed events closely can come to different conclusions about the right path forward without being guilty of “magical thinking.” Which accusation, by the way, is ever and always insulting.
And most Americans follow all of this much less than the posters on this thread, they are busy trying to keep themselves and their families safe, housed, and fed. They don’t have time to research which antibody test has the lowest false positive rate, they are trying to figure out what to eat and when they can get back to work.
It’s a big country, we won’t all take the same path through this. If your county has no active cases it’s probably time to open up, even if some renegade from 3 counties over comes over to eat at your diner.
Just read about one of the local establishments that’s had a lease for over 20 years closing down. It’s the first of many that will impact our local economy.
We are lucky to have steady incomes.
That first sentence needs to be repeated until it sinks into a lot of media and social scientist minds.
Medical care and public health are two related but separate topics. This pandemic pointed that out in many ways.
On the Covid topic, Target now has masks for sale near the entrance - a 10-pack for $19.99.
Lots of people were already altering their activity before the government orders, because they were afraid of the virus. Examples include major employers telling employees to “work at home if you can” and the eat-in business at restaurants crashing before there were government orders.
JC Penneys going into bankruptcy.
So if the US has lower smoking rates but higher infant mortality, that works against your argument that US health care costs are higher for worse results because Americans’ more unhealthy behaviors cause that.
True. You can actually see that in the IHME charts. Mobility took a dive before SAH orders, before non-essential business were shuttered, and even before social gatherings were limited.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/massachusetts
@socaldad2002 , the diversity of regional experiences plays a determinative role in how people respond. LA county hasn’t been hit terribly, but the covid death rate there is 5x that of Harris county, TX (Houston), for example.
In my county we have lost 6 people under 85, and a dozen over 85, with a population of 600k. I am not attending outdoor gatherings yet, but I can understand why those under 85 might look at the 1 in 100k odds and decide to attend a small outdoor wedding.