Thursday I have first on line appointment with my doctor, right from the comfort of my own home. It should work as you can not see anything when looking at my numb hands and feet anyway.
@ Golden Key, Thank you. My on line appointment went very well. I really think the doctor was paying more attention to what I was saying then he usually does when I am in the office. We decided together not to use a cannon to kill a fly and will take a non drug approach to deal with my numb body parts.
What an idiot... What was idiot's response when you castigated him?
He put it on.
But a few days later, I was returning from an errand and I saw him at the outer door buzzing someone on the intercom. That person didn't answer, so he left. But when he saw me, he asked me if I would let him in the building, as he had two appointments with tenants.
Again, he was not wearing his mask.
I told him no, that I would not let him in (I wouldn't anyway, if the tenant he was buzzing didn't answer) because he was again not wearing his mask.
Are you absolutely certain she didn't pick it up from a contaminated surface--or from a family member? IMHO it's not a good idea to start judging people for their infections. They may have been careless, or they may not. But adding to their stress during sickness is just not good.
Are you absolutely certain she didn't pick it up from a contaminated surface--or from a family member?
The common cold is transmitted in the same main ways as Covid-19: by touching contaminated surfaces, and then your face etc., or by breathing airborne aerosols.
You can control the first of these with scrupulous handwashing. You control the second by controlling other people - putting masks on them, making them stay home and isolate if they're sick etc.
But these control methods aren't perfect. Everyone washing their hands and wearing masks won't reduce the instance of common cold, or Covid-19, transmission to zero.
So you're right to be concerned for your friend, but she might be unlucky rather than careless.
Even here in my city, where there has not been a known case for well over 3 months, despite heavy symptomatic and asymptomatic testing, anyone coughing is glared at, I know having been both the one glaring and the cougher ( I was choking on a scone).
After that man I glared at left the bus I realised that my reaction was over the top and based on fear, and that the odds were extremely unlikely. While I still tense up if someone nearby coughs or sneezes nearby, I no longer glare at them, most people are doing the best they can, and the least I can do is try not to add to their burdens.
Yesterday I bought a bottle of my usual winter cough medicine. I may not need to use it, but it contains a cough supressant. I told the phamarcist I was buying it to avoid panic on the bus, and he knew exactly what I was talking about. I also bought some more masks - again mainly for wearing on the bus, and at the supermarket as they are the main places I go where physical distancing can be a challenge, and also as a courtesy to the driver and the supermarket workers, whose job puts them in a vulnerable position.
In Auckland, which is now at Alert level 3, four people in a family who were tested were found to have the virus. These people did everything right - went for testing and self isolated and provided information to tracers about their activities. Some sectors of the community are vilifying them and the Pacific community (of which they are part), which is totally unfair, but any excuse goes for racism to rear its ugly head. They live in a poorer, more overcrowded part of the city and the father/husband works in a cool store, which may be the source of the infection.
A reaction to coughing is totally understandable and is the main reason why I am now choosing Not to go into our nearby town-centre shops. Or even for a bit of window shopping along the streets: I can scare people.
Plus my bronchial whatnots react v badly to the current cleaning regimes in shops and offices, as I found when (finally) sorting online banking In A Real Bank.
I had to go to my local hospital for a CT scan last week. I reckon I was safer there than anywhere 'outside'! Place was spotless, everyone, but everyone masked, and the nurse who had to show me there was a computer system for registering your presence (I missed that! Duh!) was wearing a visor. And hand sanitiser, of course. The scanner operator did have to help me get my leg up on the couch thing, but he had gloves on too, so I don't think there was much risk of infection there!
Are you absolutely certain she didn't pick it up from a contaminated surface--or from a family member? IMHO it's not a good idea to start judging people for their infections. They may have been careless, or they may not. But adding to their stress during sickness is just not good.
You have a good point about being kind. But better to help her see her mistakes, I was very gentle - next time it may be more than a head cold. Here we are not allowed to visit family members outside our household - not even in the garden. Proper hand hygiene will prevent you catching it off surfaces.
This link takes you to a BBC report. Traces of the coronavirus were reportedly found on packaging in China recently, on consignments of frozen shrimp and frozen chicken wings from South America.
This has again raised questions about whether coronavirus can be transmitted via food packaging.
I’m very careful about hand hygiene, not touching my face and wiping down all packages and shopping which comes into the house with alcohol wipes or soapy water, it’s become a routine here - even the milk bottles get a wash in soapy water.
I’m stocking up on hobbies to keep busy over the winter. Including a subscription to Ancestry.com, buying jigsaws before they sell out again and digging my sewing machine out of the loft!
You're probably wise to prepare well - with infections increasing all over Europe, I rather fear we're likely to have to have another general lockdown, despite what Johnson says...
I have 100s of books to read or re-read - maybe I'll start (again!) on War And Peace...
Yes, I'm afraid the complex Russian nomenclature/anonymization (which I admit I don't recall from the edition I have) defeated me after the first few pages - though I did manage to get through Anna Karenina, and have done the same with other Russian novels...
Somewhere on the Ark I have (or had) a very cheaply-produced hardback edition of W & P in Russian...
I remember telling one of my brothers that I had got bogged down in War and Peace for the same reason. He told me a friend of his had re-named the characters with names in English and triumphantly finished it. Personally I'm waiting for the Classic Comics* version.
*Well, I was - just Googled them to find they stopped production of them in 1969.
Thanks Barnabas. That looks like it could be worth following up when my brain switches on again. At the moment I am serial reading Georgette Heyer because my concentration lasts for nano seconds.
My pleasure Doone. I think it's important to have light reading as a lifeline when reality is a bit overwhelming. Even better, I found 3 or four that I don't remember ever reading.
As Oscar Wilde is reputed to have said, "The good end well and the bad end badly, that is what fiction is all about."
Compensations of age - you can re-read books you read once and have subsequently forgotten. Works best with light and formulaic works. I motored through Heyer in my teens and AIR heroines are a) small, blond, plump and girlish b) tall, grey-eyed and brunette or auburn. Heroes come in young, fair, boyish and impetuous, or dark, older and cynical (but romantic nevertheless).
My mother had "Woman's Journal" when I was a teen, and they regularly serialised Heyer, so I read a lot of her. I am currently reading something that may owe something to her, along with others, that I read reviews of in the Guardian's review section. I suspect them of being YA. They probably owe something to "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" which I spotted without reading it in the extensive blurbs. The books of Zen Cho, set in a Regency with a Sorceror Royal and difficulties with the realms of Fairy, as well as all the Heyer-like Society are quite fun, light reading, and do deal with issues such as sexism and racism. There are only two at the moment, so are taking up less than a week at the rate I read. I would not follow the reviews in comparing them with Austen and Wodehouse.
I've just finished reading the later Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea. Issues of skin colour and women doing magic are dealt with there as well.
My mother would get Woman's Own Or Woman's Realm - but sporadically. So I would read an instalment of the current serial, and then never find out what happened. To this day I don't know the fate of the beautiful young gypsy ravished - but subsequently married (on his deathbed) by the squire. And why is the loyal young blacksmith burning her bloodstained boots?
Firenze, I bet if you put those details on a social site someone would fill in the blanks for you.
When I was a child in the 60s I used to subscribe to a British comic called Princess, (my brother got The Eagle ). I remember that they serialised Joan Aitken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase and I stopped getting the comic before the series ended. Fortunately I discovered the whole series later and thoroughly enjoyed them. Dido Twite was a character after my own heart.
I never got girls' comics. It was Wizard and Adventure on Monday, The Eagle on Tuesday, and then a bit of a desert unless we could get a Beezer or Dandy.
I probably owe my proficiency in speed reading to the first two, where the stories were typically a half page b/w line drawing and several pages of close type.
My guilty reading pleasure is Jilly Cooper. The other day, one of the contestants on Tenable was asked to name her ten "Rutshire" novels, and I'm ashamed to admit that I could name them all.
Bad air quality here in Phoenix today, with all the dust storms we've been having and all the wildfires spewing smoke. My respiratory system doesn't like it.
When I was a child in the 60s I used to subscribe to a British comic called Princess, (my brother got The Eagle ). I remember that they serialised Joan Aitken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase and I stopped getting the comic before the series ended. Fortunately I discovered the whole series later and thoroughly enjoyed them. Dido Twite was a character after my own heart.
Miss S was weaned off 'Mallory Towers' and the like by 'The Cuckoo Tree' - we have the entire series on a shelf in the dining room waiting for the next generation. I stayed awake till 3 am finishing 'Is' and wrote to Joan Aiken to thank her for all the pleasure her work had given us - she replied very graciously (saying letters like mine were rarer than I might have thought!)
As a child I started with "The Cuckoo Tree" and thoroughly enjoyed it without realising it was one of a series. Once I read the others, of course, it all made even more sense.
I wish I'd thought to write to some of these lovely authors.
The North East Loon's name is very similar to someone who was a very minor children's author. Every time that we went to the library, when he was 5ish, he liked to look at the books with "his" name on (we had them at home, too). The librarian urged us to write to the minor author, whom she'd met, saying he would be charmed.
We never did.
And then minor children's author wrote his breakthrough adult novel ...
Good luck Miss Amanda. My hygienist was the last person I visited before lockdown and the first to visit afterwards. She is lovely, but I wish it could have been somewhere more exciting for first post-lockdown trip.
I have a cold, I'm sure it's a cold and not covid as I have no cough and I often get those with a cold anyway, and I could smell the garlic on my husband breath from where he went out for dinner with friends last night. Doesn't stop me feeling slightly fed-up though. It's obviously punishment for my galivanting to Italy at the weekend.
Take care of your cold, Sarasa. What do they say, starve a fever, stuff a cold? A good excuse to eat some of your favorite foods and not worry about it. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (Aren't I freewheeling with aphorisms today?)
Things went well at the dentist. He got rid of the drapes and stuffed settee in his waiting room. Bare windows and Naugahyde chairs now. The hygienist wore a white gown and white shoes -- the kind that nurses used to wear, and was masked and plastic-shielded. I thought the equipment generated less spray than before.
\
Unfortunately I'm going to need further work done. I have a bridge that has to be replaced with implants. I have to go back next week for a consultation.
I wound up canceling the dental cleaning I was supposed to have a few weeks ago. Still trying to reschedule, in case things seem safer in a couple months. But the clinic's dealing with some work-from-home glitches, so not rescheduled yet.
I talked this through with my GP doc., given my ongoing health problems, the precautions that the dental clinic is taking, etc. Doc really couldn't make a recommendation, which I understand.
One extra issue: the dental clinic sprays the air to disinfect it. (Had a long talk with my contact person there, and was specifically told that.) I'm sensitive to chemicals. Anything they use in the air is apt to make me a little sick, and have me coughing. They stagger appointments now, something like 2.5 hours between them. But it would still be in the air. Not good for me, and the dental folks would worry it was Covid.
The trouble with having a cold is that it means you've picked up the cold virus somewhere, and if you've picked up one virus you have been in a situation where you have risked picking up whatever other virus might be around.
Mr RoS brings a cold home every winter. I am dreading what else he might bring home this year.
Comments
Gosh that’s bad
( him not you)
@Graven Image - I’m glad it went so well!
He put it on.
But a few days later, I was returning from an errand and I saw him at the outer door buzzing someone on the intercom. That person didn't answer, so he left. But when he saw me, he asked me if I would let him in the building, as he had two appointments with tenants.
Again, he was not wearing his mask.
I told him no, that I would not let him in (I wouldn't anyway, if the tenant he was buzzing didn't answer) because he was again not wearing his mask.
He turned on his heel and walked away.
Dummkopf!
However did she catch it if she was being properly careful?
She’s had the Covid19 test and it’s negative. She quarantined anyway but ....
I did (gently) ask her about it and (very gently) reminded her that she needs to be more careful.
The common cold is transmitted in the same main ways as Covid-19: by touching contaminated surfaces, and then your face etc., or by breathing airborne aerosols.
You can control the first of these with scrupulous handwashing. You control the second by controlling other people - putting masks on them, making them stay home and isolate if they're sick etc.
But these control methods aren't perfect. Everyone washing their hands and wearing masks won't reduce the instance of common cold, or Covid-19, transmission to zero.
So you're right to be concerned for your friend, but she might be unlucky rather than careless.
After that man I glared at left the bus I realised that my reaction was over the top and based on fear, and that the odds were extremely unlikely. While I still tense up if someone nearby coughs or sneezes nearby, I no longer glare at them, most people are doing the best they can, and the least I can do is try not to add to their burdens.
Yesterday I bought a bottle of my usual winter cough medicine. I may not need to use it, but it contains a cough supressant. I told the phamarcist I was buying it to avoid panic on the bus, and he knew exactly what I was talking about. I also bought some more masks - again mainly for wearing on the bus, and at the supermarket as they are the main places I go where physical distancing can be a challenge, and also as a courtesy to the driver and the supermarket workers, whose job puts them in a vulnerable position.
In Auckland, which is now at Alert level 3, four people in a family who were tested were found to have the virus. These people did everything right - went for testing and self isolated and provided information to tracers about their activities. Some sectors of the community are vilifying them and the Pacific community (of which they are part), which is totally unfair, but any excuse goes for racism to rear its ugly head. They live in a poorer, more overcrowded part of the city and the father/husband works in a cool store, which may be the source of the infection.
I think the way we react to others will remain changed for a very long time even after the virus disappears. I can sense it in my own personality.
Plus my bronchial whatnots react v badly to the current cleaning regimes in shops and offices, as I found when (finally) sorting online banking In A Real Bank.
Outside is Another Matter!
You have a good point about being kind. But better to help her see her mistakes, I was very gentle - next time it may be more than a head cold. Here we are not allowed to visit family members outside our household - not even in the garden. Proper hand hygiene will prevent you catching it off surfaces.
This link takes you to a BBC report. Traces of the coronavirus were reportedly found on packaging in China recently, on consignments of frozen shrimp and frozen chicken wings from South America.
This has again raised questions about whether coronavirus can be transmitted via food packaging.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53783890
It makes me worried for the winter. 🤔
I’m very careful about hand hygiene, not touching my face and wiping down all packages and shopping which comes into the house with alcohol wipes or soapy water, it’s become a routine here - even the milk bottles get a wash in soapy water.
I’m stocking up on hobbies to keep busy over the winter. Including a subscription to Ancestry.com, buying jigsaws before they sell out again and digging my sewing machine out of the loft!
I have 100s of books to read or re-read - maybe I'll start (again!) on War And Peace...
I tried reading that in grade school, and kept getting bogged down in the anonymization: "Count Z", "Grand-Duchess Q", etc. Too many of those, IIRC.
Somewhere on the Ark I have (or had) a very cheaply-produced hardback edition of W & P in Russian...
*Well, I was - just Googled them to find they stopped production of them in 1969.
As Oscar Wilde is reputed to have said, "The good end well and the bad end badly, that is what fiction is all about."
I've just finished reading the later Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea. Issues of skin colour and women doing magic are dealt with there as well.
When I was a child in the 60s I used to subscribe to a British comic called Princess, (my brother got The Eagle ). I remember that they serialised Joan Aitken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase and I stopped getting the comic before the series ended. Fortunately I discovered the whole series later and thoroughly enjoyed them. Dido Twite was a character after my own heart.
I probably owe my proficiency in speed reading to the first two, where the stories were typically a half page b/w line drawing and several pages of close type.
I don’t do pictures.
In chronological order ...
Miss S was weaned off 'Mallory Towers' and the like by 'The Cuckoo Tree' - we have the entire series on a shelf in the dining room waiting for the next generation. I stayed awake till 3 am finishing 'Is' and wrote to Joan Aiken to thank her for all the pleasure her work had given us - she replied very graciously (saying letters like mine were rarer than I might have thought!)
Mrs. S, who also loves Mortimer and Arabel
I wish I'd thought to write to some of these lovely authors.
We never did.
And then minor children's author wrote his breakthrough adult novel ...
I really wish we'd written.
Hope it goes well and safely...
I have a cold, I'm sure it's a cold and not covid as I have no cough and I often get those with a cold anyway, and I could smell the garlic on my husband breath from where he went out for dinner with friends last night. Doesn't stop me feeling slightly fed-up though. It's obviously punishment for my galivanting to Italy at the weekend.
Things went well at the dentist. He got rid of the drapes and stuffed settee in his waiting room. Bare windows and Naugahyde chairs now. The hygienist wore a white gown and white shoes -- the kind that nurses used to wear, and was masked and plastic-shielded. I thought the equipment generated less spray than before.
\
Unfortunately I'm going to need further work done. I have a bridge that has to be replaced with implants. I have to go back next week for a consultation.
I wound up canceling the dental cleaning I was supposed to have a few weeks ago. Still trying to reschedule, in case things seem safer in a couple months. But the clinic's dealing with some work-from-home glitches, so not rescheduled yet.
I talked this through with my GP doc., given my ongoing health problems, the precautions that the dental clinic is taking, etc. Doc really couldn't make a recommendation, which I understand.
One extra issue: the dental clinic sprays the air to disinfect it. (Had a long talk with my contact person there, and was specifically told that.) I'm sensitive to chemicals. Anything they use in the air is apt to make me a little sick, and have me coughing. They stagger appointments now, something like 2.5 hours between them. But it would still be in the air. Not good for me, and the dental folks would worry it was Covid.
Mr RoS brings a cold home every winter. I am dreading what else he might bring home this year.
So I have cut back on lots of planned appointments