Plague Diary

One of the ideas floating around concerning Covid 19 is that the concentration of virus to which one is exposed, a little versus a lot, is related to how severe the resultant disease becomes. That is, if you contact a few viral particles you may become less ill than if you get a whole slug of them. Nobody is claiming this is the only factor, preexisting conditions - age, diabetes, COPD, high blood pressure, etc. -  clearly have some input as well. It’s an argument for wearing face masks in public spaces.

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We normally spend a lot of time at home, but go “in town” every couple of days at least. During the Covid 19 ‘lockdown’ we’ve cut back the trips to town by more than half, to maybe one every 4 days. Cabin fever begins to be an issue for me; it feels like life is “on hold” minus the terrible, tinny music-while-you-wait. I’m thankful for the Internet.

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The other DrC has been making cloth face masks, first for us, then for relatives who said they’d like them. She uses a sewing machine that was the first serious present I bought her after our wedding rings. It’s an old and heavy Sears portable model that still works great and looks like the day it was bought several decades ago; it’s totally analog too, not digital or electronic.

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Power Line's John Hinderaker posts analysis done for their site. It appears to indicate increasing the number of tests done will not help slow/stop the pandemic. It further suggests wearing masks does help.

Countries where mask-wearing is most prevalent seem to be seeing a quicker drop-off in new cases. This analysis seems to be supportive of the first item in this post, concerning the amount of viral matter one breathes in; less being better obviously.