After a month and a half I’ve decided to change the opening title of my posts from Quarantine to Stay In Place, (SIP)
Why? It has always been Stay in Place and not Quarantine. There is a huge difference between the two types of actions. Quarantine refers to a strict protocol that keeps one totally separate from others. There are no sojourns allowed to go the the grocery store or for a walk outside. When one is quarantined he is in a prison like atmosphere. True, there are no bars preventing you from leaving, but there are definitely locks on the doors and many people watching to make certain you don’t enter society and spread your malady.
Stay in Place is a wimpy form of isolation designed to minimize the spread of a disease. A quarantine is a strictly adhered to isolation of a person to absolutely prevent the spread of a disease. I lived under quarantine, but was so sick as to not care that my freedom was totally violated. My rights were violated as they say ‘for the good of the general population.’
Today, as part of my SIP routine I went for a walk which took me an hour to complete. I had visitors to my house who wore masks and we sat six feet apart. We skipped the usual hugging and kissing that is normal for family members to practice. While under quarantine, I was allowed visitors once per week for two hours, and the visitors were only allowed to see me through two glass walls. My parents were checked at the entrance to verify who they were. I don’t remember any of the staff wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). They did wear the outfits of their nursing profession and doctors wore white lab coats. They did not use gloves, (I don’t think polymer gloves were invented yet) nor masks. I was not allowed to leave the quarantine until such a time that I was temperature free, and able to handle my self independently. In my case that meant I could feed myself without the aid of a feeding tube, and I could breathe without the need for a ventilator (iron lung).
I was transferred to another hospital for physical therapy and hot-pack treatments. I didn’t leave that facility until such a time as I could walk on my own with the aid of crutches, and I could hold my head up with the aid of a stiff neck collar invented for me by the prosthetics staff. Without the collar my head kind of flopped from one shoulder to the other, or worse from my chest to my back.
Looking back on it, those were the good old days. Compared to the COVID-19, I believe I will choose polio to the death of Covid.
In recent days I read about demonstrations going on all across the country protesting the loss of liberty imposed by Stay In Place. After getting more data from all over the world than anyone can handle we are now able to voice our complaints and threaten to storm the statehouse to overtake the governors about their strict policies causing us more harm than the disease. It is easy to think that way today but was it easy to think that way 46 days ago when the public health people warned us about truck loads of bodies having to be disposed in gross ways? I didn’t hear a peep from anybody about why we had to do what we did. The photos from Italy and Spain were enough to convince us that we’d better play it safe. I remember President Trump suggesting that maybe we could end our SIP by Easter. He was stormed by protestors that that timeline was way too early. The virus will kill too many people if we let that happen. People did not demonstrate, but they did object to the idea of removing the cautionary policies.
Now that we have actual experience to know what the virus does to us and how fast it does it we have changed colors. The idea of starving versus taking a chance getting the virus and maybe dying leans toward loosening the chains. Thus the political protesters come out of the woods to spread their rhetoric about how badly our president and governors have handled the situation. The tone has shifted to blame Trump for everything. The only thing I blame Trump for is caring about us too much. I’ll gladly continue to wear a mask and to stay at home out of the virus’ way for the next two years if that what it takes. And for damned sure I ‘ll never cast my ballot for a liberal pansy like Pelosi, Biden, Clinton, or any other career politician that doesn’t know his/her anus from a hole in the ground.
Filed under: Election, family, Government, health care | Tagged: Covid-19, Hindsight, Polio |
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