#also living through a global fucking pandemic as a high risk person with no health insurance is fucking terrifying

[learn-and-accept]

Guess who finally has health insurance again!!!!

[militant-holy-knight]

We have been paying dearly for China's lies.

"This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic," said Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before the US intelligence community concluded, in a classified report to the White House, that China has concealed the origin and extent of the catastrophic global coronavirus outbreak.

The Chinese Communist Party's "failure has unleashed a global contagion killing thousands", wrote Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, president of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, on April 1. "As we survey the damage done to lives around the world, we must ask who is responsible?"

"... there is one government that has primary responsibility for what it has done and what it has failed to do, and that is the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] regime in Beijing. Let me be clear — it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China... Lies and propaganda have put millions of lives around the world in danger... In recent years, we have seen an intense crackdown on freedom of expression in China. Lawyers, bloggers, dissidents and civil society activists have been rounded up and have disappeared."

One more person has just disappeared: Ai Fen, a Chinese physician who was head of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, had worked with the late Dr. Li Wenliang. Ai, who claimed that her bosses silenced her early warnings about coronavirus, appears to have vanished. Her whereabouts, according to 60 Minutes Australia, are unknown. The journalists who saw what happened inside Wuhan have also disappeared. Caixin Global reported that the laboratories which sequenced the coronavirus in December were ordered by Chinese officials to hand over or destroy the samples and not release their findings. "If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand, I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could", Ai Fen said in an interview in March. Those were her last recorded words.

There is no record at all, however, about how this pandemic began. Wet market? A cave full of bats? Pangolins? Or a bio-weapons laboratory? No foreign doctors, journalists, analysts or international observers are present in Wuhan. Why, if the virus came out of a wet market or a cave, did China suppress inquiries to such an extent? Why, in December, did Beijing order Chinese scientists to destroy proof about the virus? Why did Chinese officials claim that US soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan? Why should it be scandalous that a US President calls a virus that began in China a "Chinese virus"?

Who announced on January 11 that Wuhan's wet market was the origin of this epidemic? The Chinese regime. It was later discovered that the first known case of coronavirus traced back to November 17, 2019.

The same Chinese regime later claimed that this coronavirus "may not have originated in China". What respected scientist or institution can now trust anything that comes out of China?

Many leading scientists have dismissed the claim that the Covid-19 virus was an engineered pathogen. This conclusion was seemingly based on the fact that Wuhan has two major virus research labs: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is apparently less than a mile from the market, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, handling the world's most deadly pathogens, located just seven miles from the market. The story was immediately and emphatically trashed as a "conspiracy theory".

Those scientists claim that the virus likely originated among wildlife before spreading to humans, possibly through a food market in Wuhan. They say that, through genetic sequencing, they have identified the culprit for Covid-19 as a bat coronavirus. End of story? Science, thankfully, begins by asking questions and then seeking answers.

Bats were not, it seems, sold at Wuhan's wet market. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the market. The Lancet's paper, written by Chinese researchers from several institutions, detailed that 13 of the 41 first cases had no link to the market. "That's a big number, 13, with no link," commented Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University. So how did the epidemic start?

"Now it seems clear that [the] seafood market is not the only origin of the virus, but to be honest we still do not know where the virus came from now", notes Bin Cao, pulmonary specialist at Capital Medical University, and the corresponding author of the Lancet article.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that China's Communist Party is withholding information about the coronavirus.

If we do not know, it is necessary be open to all possibilities.

"Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention" wrote David Ignatius of the Washington Post.

"Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?".

"Collecting viruses" presumably does not exclude the possibility of a "leaked virus". Worse, if China is not able to protect its laboratories, it needs to be held accountable and made to pay for the devastating global damage.

"Experts know the new coronavirus is not a bioweapon. They disagree on whether it could have leaked from a research lab", stated The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology, and a major biosecurity expert, agreed with the Nature Medicine authors' argument that the coronavirus was not manipulated by humans. But Ebright does think it possible that the Covid-19 started as an accidental leak from a laboratory, such as one of the two in Wuhan, which are known to have been studying bat viruses:

"Virus collection or animal infection with a virus having the transmission characteristics of the outbreak virus would pose substantial risk of infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker, the public."

Ebright has also claimed that bat coronaviruses are studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, "which provides only minimal protection" compared with the top BSL-4.

"We don't know what happened, but there are a lot of reasons to believe that this indeed was a release of some sort", China expert Gordon Chang said to Die Weltwoche.

"No one has been able to study it. How can you say it's not a release from a lab if you can't go to the lab? Indeed, we have seen Beijing do its best to prevent virologists and epidemiologists from actually going to Wuhan. The World Health Organization team went to Wuhan for like half a day with only part of the team."

That is another major problem. The potential major investigator of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic's origin, the World Health Organization (WHO), is now accused of being "China's coronavirus' accomplice". As late as January 14, the WHO quoted Chinese health officials claiming there had been no human transmissions of the coronavirus within the country yet.

China poses a biosecurity risks for the entire planet. One year before the first coronavirus case was identified in Wuhan, US Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese biologist with three vials labeled "Antibodies" in his luggage. According to an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News:

"Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials."

Why is China trafficking in dangerous viruses in the first place?

According to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations:

"A safety breach at a Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab is believed to have caused four suspected SARS cases, including one death, in Beijing in 2004. A similar accident caused 65 lab workers of Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute to be infected with brucellosis in December 2019. In January 2020, a renowned Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local markets".

In February, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, from Guangzhou's South China University of Technology, wrote in a research paper:

"In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level [sic] may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories".

Xiao later told the Wall Street Journal that he had withdrawn the paper because it "was not supported by direct proofs".

Chinese laboratory mistakes have happened before. By 2010, researchers published as fact: "The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and in Russia shortly thereafter". The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare a vaccine in response to the U.S. swine flu pandemic alert.

In 1999 the most senior defector in the US from the Soviet biological warfare program, Ken Alibek, revealed that Soviet officials concluded that China had suffered a serious accident at one of its secret biological plants, causing two major epidemics of fever that had swept China in the late 1980s. "Our analysts", Alibek stated in his book, Biohazard, "concluded that they were caused by an accident in a lab where Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases".

In 2004, the World Health Organization disclosed that the latest outbreak of "severe acute respiratory syndrome" (SARS) in China involved two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab. The WHO denounced Chinese breaches of safety procedures, and director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Li Liming, resigned. Science magazine also stated that "for the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of SARS seems to have originated from a failure in laboratory containment".

Moreover, three years ago, when China opened the laboratory in Wuhan, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety specialist, told Nature that he worried about the safety of the building because "structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important." Free speech and open information: exactly what Chinese regime fought against in December and January.

A Chinese video about a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, which was released a few weeks before the outbreak in Wuhan, shows Chinese researchers handling bats that contained viruses. In the video (produced by China Science Communication, run by the China Association for Science and Technology), Tian says:

"I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people... I am not a soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line".

Tian is also reported as having said:

"I can feel the fear: the fear of infections and the fear of getting lost. Because of the fear, I take every step extremely cautiously. The more scared I feel, the more care I take in executing every detail. Because the process of you finding the viruses is also when you can be exposed to them the easiest. I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life".

For a month, the Chinese Communist Party, instead of fighting the contagion, did everything possible to censor all information about the Covid-19 outbreak. After President Xi Jinping declared "a people's war" on the epidemic on January 20, Chinese security services pursued 5,111 cases of "fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information". The Chinese Human Rights Defenders documented several types of punishment, including detention, disappearance, fines, interrogations, forced confessions and "educational reprimand".

After that, China lied about the real number of deaths. There are photographs of long lines of stacked urns greeting family members of the dead at funeral homes in Wuhan. Outside one funeral home, trucks shipped in 2,500 urns. According to Chinese official figures, 2,548 people in Wuhan have died of the Covid-19. According to an analysis by Radio Free Asia, seven funeral homes in Wuhan were each handing out 500 funeral urns containing remains for 12 days, from March 23 to the traditional tomb-sweeping festival of April 5, a time that would indicate up to 42,000 urns, or ten times higher than the official figure.

In February, it was reported that Wuhan crematoriums were working around the clock to cope with the massive influx of infected bodies. Wuhan's officials are apparently pushing relatives of the victims to bury the dead "quickly and quietly".

"Natural virus" does not exclude its fallout from a laboratory where pathogens are collected and studied. The Nature Medicine authors "leave us where we were before: with a basis to rule out [a coronavirus from] a lab construct, but no basis to rule out a lab accident", Professor Ebright commented.

"Debate may rage over which center it is, but at this point it seems undeniable that a center has been directly involved with research on viruses, although not necessarily on the creation of a virus" wrote Father Renzo Milanese, a longtime Catholic missionary in Hong Kong.

"In other words, the virus passed from a research center in Wuhan early on. More importantly there is also no question that the authorities were aware of the dangerousness of the virus, that they did not inform anyone and that they tried to keep the facts hidden".

US Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a resolution calling for an international investigation into China's handling of the spread of the virus. According to Hawley:

"The Chinese Communist Party was aware of the reality of the virus as early as December but ordered laboratories to destroy samples and forced doctors to keep silent. It is time for an international investigation into the role their cover-up played in the spread of this devastating pandemic".

Admitting a fault, as the Japanese did after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, might be one way for a country to be accepted again by the international community. Censoring, denying and covering up, as China is doing, will not.

"China claims that the deadly virus did not escape from its biolab," said a China specialist with the Population Research Institute, Steven W. Mosher. "Fine. Prove it by releasing the research records of the Wuhan lab".

[ditttiii]

(´･_･`) Would it be bad of me to say that I'm honestly unsure about what to feel about masks? If you would rather not read and/or share, even to respond to, my ramblings about it, I completely understand, and I'll mark them at the start, so you can easily recognize which ones are mine and delete them if you so wish. I just wanted to share my thoughts/get your input? 1/5

Bad to say that you’re “unsure” or “skeptical”? No, or well at least I don’t think so. Early in the pandemic, we were told not to wear masks, mainly so as to not divert the limited supplies away from the healthcare workers. But another reason given was that masks are insufficient to protect the wearer from many respiratory pathogens, which yes, sure, true. Masks are no concrete protection and they are “insufficient” but masks were never made to be the final defense either? Social-distancing isn’t perfect, neither is testing or contact tracing, but sometimes a lot of imperfect, small preventive measures, can become a shield. If vaccine is our sword against the virus, the preventive measures, in some ways, are our shield. 

You said if everyone uses them in the right manner they’re great, but the sad fact is a lot of us don’t. Even after the constant, repetitive requests by medical professionals and governments all over the world, do all of us actually wear masks as we should? I don’t know about you, but everyday I see at least 10 people not wearing a mask (I scarcely, if ever step outside) and what about the amount of people who wear it wrong? 

As for the later part of this ask, and this is just my opinion, people who say shit like that will always face a higher risk of infection, regardless of if they wear a mask or not. It has been explicitly, repeatedly told that masks alone will NOT protect someone. They are no holy grail. Masks coupled with social distancing and basic awareness of the pandemic and it’s guidelines, however, will keep the casualties to a minimum until a working vaccine is released. A shield is no elixir,  and anyone who doesn’t understand that simple fact is a moron. As an adult, one should know better. 

If someone finds a mask unbearably uncomfortable and needs to keep adjusting it, then they should carry a sanitizer with them and use it prior to and after touching their mask. Being selfish and self serving during a pandemic? I...that’s just fucking stupid? Masks aren’t iron armors. Doctors, Nurses, Mine workers, factory workers--millions of people have been using them regularly for hours on end for years. They weren’t born with a mask strapped to their face. No, they learned to get used to it, pushed themselves through the initial discomfort. If they could do it then, we can do it now. It’s not everyday that we face a global pandemic with millions (and counting) of casualties.

People are careless, a piece of fabric tied to a face cannot make someone careless. Social distancing is possible even with a mask on, and maybe where you are, the population isn’t too high, but even then, why gamble with health? lives? 

Multiple studies have shown that face coverings can contain droplets expelled from the wearer, which are responsible for the majority of transmission of the virus. This 'source control' approach reflects a shift in thinking from a 'medical' perspective (will it protect the wearer?) to a 'public health' perspective (will it help reduce community transmission and risk for everyone?).

I think yeah the lack of law/official recommendation might be why a lot of people where you live don’t wear masks. Personally, I don’t think social distancing without a mask on is a smart thing to do. It is estimated that 40% of persons with COVID-19 are asymptomatic but potentially able to transmit the virus to others. In the absence widespread screening tests, we have no way of identifying many people who are silently transmitting the virus in their community. 

Suppose you are social distancing in your work place. You are infected, asymptomatic and thus most probably your infection is undetected. Now, your boss asks you to get a copy of some document. Fine, cool, you move to use the common printer, sneeze or cough into your hand, touch the buttons and bam. The virus is now on the keys. Done, copies in your hand, you move out the door. You are social distancing, great, but now anyone who touches those same keys and touches their mouth (even unconsciously) is at a risk of being infected. What if that person is a 40 year old woman with lung/heart issues? What if her immune system isn’t strong enough to combat the virus and she falls sick? 

We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have an effective working medicine. 

What. If. She. Dies? 

Whatever media outlet says that is wrong. Medical professionals have been telling us time and time again, that masks can only protect us to a certain extent, and that without other measures in place, we will face a higher risk of infection. The best approach is to be careful, respectful, and mindful of not just our health, but also those of others around us. Disease modeling suggests masks worn by significant portions of the population, coupled with other measures, could result in substantial reductions in case numbers and deaths. 

Be smart. Be thoughtful. Wear a mask, if not for yourself, then for those around you. A 20 yr might not die from corona, but a 40 yr old lung patient most probably will. 

Here are some links that convinced me to wear a mask.

|| ◈ || ◈ || ◈ || 

Stay Safe and Take care of yourself & those around you ♡

[coronashmorona]

COVID-19 Isolation:

Day 0

For a day & a half, my husband (hereinafter “Hubs”) & I pondered (read: lowkey argued about) the boundaries & limitations we should be imposing on our selves & our kids given the increased prevalence of coronavirus in our area. Was avoiding everyone all weekend really necessary? Can we eat takeout food? Should our kids go to school on Monday? What about after-school activities? What about the fantasy baseball draft we were supposed to host next weekend? Or the slew of small children’s birthday parties scheduled for the coming weeks?

Hubs was already planning on working from home, which he does often the last few years after his firm moved to a “hoteling” style office. My work is very flexible part-time & gets done whenever I can fit it in around everyone else’s schedules, i.e. can also take place from home if needed. 

Then, today, we got word that all local schools will be closed for 2 weeks. So at least that’s settled. 

Now, we’re confronting the challenge of how to go about our daily lives under these strange new circumstances. Namely:

The need for some kind of scheduled routine. We have a first-grader & a preschooler. They are absolutely wonderful, but go entirely bonkers if we’re home without any structure. They’re also in completely different places as far as personality, temperament, & educational needs. 

First-grader (hereinafter “6yo”) is kind of a high-strung, type-A, preintellectual. She needs a full briefing about what’s happening every hour of every day. If plans change, she has a million questions about what the alteration entails. (If she’s conscious, she has a million questions, period.) She enjoys so many great activities - artistic pursuits, imaginative play, dancing, & really anything else that involves running around like a banshee - but constantly asks for TV time and/or a snack anyway. Historically, it’s been nearly impossible to set her up with an activity & walk away for more than 10 minutes; she’s just the sort of kid who needs/expects an adult caregiver to provide companionship, guidance, & answers at all times. I’m hoping that having an agenda mapped out for each day will remind her of school & she’ll be more amenable to doing things independently for a relatively short, set amount of time. I can also meet her halfway & do my work at the dining room table while she embarks on a quiet activity. Finally, it sounds like the school district is hatching a contingency plan for remote student learning, complete with daily homework posted online, which is comforting to say the least. 

Preschooler (”4yo”) is a rambunctious ball of energy, but tends to be pretty easygoing overall. If left to his own devices, he’ll wander over to his trains or his blocks or even a book & play on his own. The problem, of course, is that when left to his own devices for too long, he’s probably up to no good. His favorite pastime of late has been playing in Hubs’s office, using some old printers & other computer accessories to “build Robot Marty” (a.k.a. the robot that roams the aisles at Stop & Shop). This activity will be mostly off-limits while Hubs works from home - a deprivation that I’m sure will be ill-received & spawn all sorts of disruptive discovery missions, i.e. let’s see what happens when we stick the end of Mama’s headphones into the electrical outlet. Oyyy. My hope is that if I break out some toys he hasn’t used in a while, & a few shiny new (read: held in abeyance since his birthday) ones, he’ll amuse him accordingly while 6yo & I do our thing. 

Getting fed. I am really, really nervous about consuming commercially prepared food right now. The chances of contracting COVID-19 from it are small, but it doesn’t seem worth the risk. As it is, I’m a bit of a DIY food purist, frequently eschewing restaurant food for my own creations. I have a whole separate blog detailing my experiences with Whole30, in which I take my appreciation for clean-eating to the max in order to improve my health. Tl;dr I cook a lot of fresh veggies & lean meats & try to minimize the amount of processed foods in my diet. Doing this is hard enough under ~ordinary stressful circumstances, let alone a global pandemic. I’ve already slid into some unhealthy reflexive stress-eating that needs to be curtailed ASAP. 

The biggest point with this, I feel, is establishing a meal+snack schedule. Else, the kids will constantly be asking for things to eat, interrupting any hope of sticking to a playtime/learning/physical activity schedule. On certain days spent mostly at home, I feel like all I do is stand in the kitchen cutting fruit, & we will not survive the next few weeks if that’s how it’s gonna be. Granted, this is sometimes exacerbated by my own penchant to use a free minute here or there to chop & roast some Brussels sprouts or eggplant. But there has to be a point at which “oh look, Mom’s in the kitchen” doesn’t automatically translate to “let’s give her something else to do”.

A possible strategy to alleviate this involves cutting a bunch of fruit in advance, portioning it out, & storing it on a fridge shelf the kids can reach, so they can get it themselves. I don’t want to deprive them of food; we just feel that they shouldn’t be eating a constant stream of processed garbage. This is a particular risk for 6yo, who has the metabolism & appetite of a hummingbird & openly fixates on the constant quest for treats.

Dealing with life’s other extenuating circumstances. As others with young children can likely attest, our life is constantly in several different states of flux, limbo, and/or disarray. Some other things we’ve been dealing with lately and/or will be dealing with shortly:

Hubs’s dad is having a hip replacement tomorrow. Several people tried to talk him out of it, but he’s been having terrible sciatic pain for a long time & as long as the surgeon/hospital will have him he feels he needs to go ahead with it. Who will take care of him afterward, & whether/when we can visit, remain uncertain. LATE-BREAKING UPDATE: surgery cancelled. A relief insofar as one variable eliminated.

Last week I definitely herniated/tore something in my abdominal area while pulling the kids in a wagon, & need to see a doctor for that. I’m not thrilled with the idea of being in a highly-trafficked public place, but I also don’t want to put off getting myself looked at & aggravate the injury in the meantime. As it is, I’m trying not to lift heavy things (e.g., our 4-year-old) or spend too much time on my feet, but that in itself is a struggle. Right now my appointment is scheduled for a time at which Hubs has a very important (virtual) work meeting, so I need to reschedule it and/or find someone else who can watch the kids. I’m praying for the former outcome because it begs the question “Who should we be letting in the house?!”

We’re in the early stages of renovating our kitchen. This means that we’ve met with a few designers/contractors about possible layouts & options, inching towards finalizing a plan & selecting one of them to carry it out. It sounds like Hubs wants to move ahead with this process as before, but suffice to say my mental bandwidth is now sufficiently occupied with other shit. 

I’m always in the middle of 187 different things, & it feels like they’re all now on hold: purging the house of outgrown clothes & toys, organizing the basement, learning German, catching up on continuing legal education credits,

Processing the fear + existential woe. None of us have ever lived through anything like this. It is fucked up. I try to take comfort in the fact that the isolation protocols are empowering: by staying away from others who might be carrying the disease, we’re taking control of an uncertain situation. 

But there’s still so. much. uncertainty. Right now, the kids are scheduled to go back to school March 30th. Then their spring break will start on April 8th, to coincide with the start of Passover (as well as Holy Week & Easter). Last year, we hosted a seder for 18 people. Can we do that this time? I have tickets to one concert (locally) in late April, & to another (abroad) in early June - will either one actually be happening?!

These are, decidedly, #firstworldproblems. But I think I join the rest of humanity in being utterly pissed off & daunted by the whole ordeal. Until another few weeks pass, all we can do is wait. And wash our hands a lot. 🧼 💦 🙏🏼

[philjacobsen-blog]

Antarctica. How I learned to stop worrying and love the isolation.

I put on my gloves and face mask like I had done every day for the past six months. I wanted to protect myself, be safe and I wanted to be healthy. No, I wasn’t a prepper preparing for the end of the world and/or the coronavirus, I lived in Antarctica.

From 2002 to 2018, I spent over six years of my life working and living in Antarctica. Math might tell you that looks like “16 years,” but Antarctica works on a different schedule.

Scientists and contract laborers (like myself) have been limited to work a maximum of 14 months straight in Antarctica. Because, after 14 months of isolation, it has been said, “You might lose your mind.” Therefore, four weeks, six weeks, or eight weeks of coronavirus quarantine is like a walk on the frozen ocean.

Everyone loves Top 10 lists, but first, here is the background of life in Antarctica.

There are two different seasons in Antarctica: summer and Winter. For the laymen, that’s when it’s light 24 hours a day (summer) and then when it’s dark 24 hours a night (Winter). It’s not by accident that “Winter” is capitalized and “summer” is in lowercase. This is because you need to respect Winter.

I have spent four Winters in Antarctica. While there have been changes to the Winter schedule, when I Wintered in Antarctica at McMurdo Station, the largest of the three American bases on the 7th Continent, a plane with all of our friends, hopes, dreams and escape plans left in February. The next time we would see the lights of a plane in the sky would be in August.

In other words, shit got real when that last plane left. We had to trust we had enough food, talent and toilet paper to last us until the end of August. This is because, as the saying goes, “If we don’t have it, then you don’t need it. And, you don’t need it, because we don’t have it.”

If you run out of chicken, then you eat pork. When you run out of pork, you eat lamb, when you run out of lamb, you eat hamsters--hamsters are, what we called, microwavable breaded (or deep fried) ham and cheese Hot Pockets™®.

In other words, the grocery stores are open; quit panicking. When you’re outside, hoping your squirrel trap has been bountiful today, this is the time to panic. However, today, it’s not minus 45 degrees outside. Walmart will be restocked soon, put on your mask and gloves and purchase only what you need. Then go home.

And, if Walmart is out of toilet paper, hook a garden hose to your faucet and clean your ass, and be happy your water supply doesn’t give you frostbite.

It’s going to be fine.

In Antarctica, we were living like it was Gilligan’s Island, “No phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury.” The only difference was we had phones, lights and motorcars, but when we went outside it was minus 45 –degrees—not a luxury. Stay inside on your couch and be happy that when you do go outside to take out the trash, walk the dog or mow your lawn, you’re not getting third degree frostbite and having your toes cut off.

This little piggy went to the market. This little piggy watches Netflix. This little piggy stays home.

Speaking of movies and TV shows, my good God, we would have loved to have had Netflix, bootlegged versions of Game of Thrones, YouTube or Facebook in Antarctica. Instead, the entirety of McMurdo’s bandwidth is mostly for Science.

Rarely could I “LOL” with my friends on Facebook or “YOLO” with spring breakers at the beach. Nope, Science is the priority in Antarctica.

Science, I tell you. A bunch of people, who we called “Beakers,” is the entire reason McMurdo Station exists. These Scientist are in Antarctica to prove or disprove Global Warming and/or can penguins fly and/or are penguins cute. Generally, they proved it, but why listen to scientists?

Scientists went to school and studied stuff, but have they ever studied the “economy” or “Facebook?” Can you imagine an entire community who listens to scientists? Oh wait, you can? Possibly because we’re in a global pandemic? Yeah, listen to scientists?

During my Winters in Antarctica, I could go days and only see the one person who I worked with, and guess what? I hated him.

In the community, we called him “Skin Suit.” This was his nickname because, even though he passed his battery of psychological examinations, which are required in order to Winter-Over in Antarctica, he said to Suzy—a la “Silence of the Lambs.”

“I wish I could wear your skin, so I could touch you all day.”

So, there I was, working at the bottom of the world, with Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gume as my coworker for six months, in total darkness, and do you want to know how I got along with him (aside from the one time I threw hot coffee in his face)? I complimented his outfits. I tried to look for the positive in the people who surround me.

My first job in Antarctica, I was a dishwasher. I left my home, friends and a girlfriend to seek this adventure. I’m still happy with two out of three of those decisions.

The first year I spent in Antarctica there was a “Dishwasher Emergency” at the South Pole (850 miles from the sea level solitude of McMurdo). Just like we need grocery store employees, drive through food and universal health care, the South Pole needed a dishwasher—and they chose me.

The South Pole is located at 9,301 feet above sea level. That’s not very high. When I live my life in my hometown of Salt Lake City, I live at 4,327 feet above sea level. I have climbed high mountains in Utah, like Mt. Timpanogos that is 11,752 feet and Mt. Nebo that is 11,928 ft. I’m not healthy, but I’m also not fat.

When I was asked to work at the “high altitude” of 9,301 feet of the South Pole, I said, “Okay. I’ve done that.”

However, what I didn’t know, was that because the South Pole is at “The South Fucking Pole” it’s not just about the altitude. The South Pole has a variance of altitude because of the Earth’s centrifugal force which makes the South Pole seem much higher than the actual 9,301 feet. At times it can feel, because of lack of oxygen, as though you are over 12 or 13 thousand feet.

Before going to the South Pole, the doctors and scientists said I should take “prophylactic acetazolamide” to combat the feelings of high altitude sickness. However, my friend Donald said, “You’ll be ‘okay.’” He said that since he was from Colorado and I was from Utah, that I would be fine, because I was “use to the high altitude.”

I was at the South Pole for eight days. I quit taking prophylactic acetazolamide on day four, because I was feeling great. I listened to Donald.

On day eight, I nearly died. This wasn’t Utah. Because I’d lived at sea level for four months at McMurdo Station, and Donald didn’t know shit, my pulse oximeter (the amount of oxygen which should be in my blood and close to 100) was 52. I was failing breathing.

Pulmonary edema cut the oxygen supply to my brain making me think 3 + 7 = Cat. The South Pole doctor said, “Phil, you are two to four hours from death.”

All flights to the South Pole were canceled on this day, due to weather, but, due to “2 to 4 hours of death,” a C130 National Guard Airplane risked their lives and flew from McMurdo Station to rescue me at the South Pole. If not for universal Antarctica Health Care, I could be dead.

On this day, I learned I needed to listen to the scientists, and not to Donald.

This story ended up being too long. I’m sorry. I’ve lived through isolation, listened to friends, instead of the medical community, and somehow I’m still alive. How did Antarctica prepare me for the isolation of the coronavirus?

1: Do something today better than you did yesterday. Did you go to bed sooner? Wake up earlier? Brush your cat?

2: Exercise. In Antarctica my exercise routine was called, “Brushing the Dust Off of David.” There is no reason to take a hammer and chisel to David. All you need to do is to take a wet cloth and brush off the dust. Do 10 sit ups, pushups, or jog in place. Be happy with who you are, and barely maintain. If you set higher expectations, you might fail. Simply, brush the dust off of your personal David.

3: Do something better today than you did yesterday. There were many times in Antarctica I got more drunk on Friday than I did on Thursday. I’m not advocating alcoholism, but lower your expectations. Don’t look for perfection when a glass of wine might do.

4: Did you make your bed after you woke up? Some days you will go to bed and your biggest accomplishment will be, “I made that bed today.” Congratulations.

5: Groundhog Day. Every day may seem like yesterday, but, how did you make it different? In Antarctica, after six months of Winter the trash shelves are lined with “Learn ‘This Language’ in 30 Days” DVDs. Nobody accomplishes a lot during the isolation of Winter. But, if we do little, then that is a lot.

6: Communication. Does your phone work? In Antarctica, no one can call us, so we have to call out. Instead of waiting for ‘that phone call.’ Make it.

7: Don’t go outside. It’s too cold. In the Covid-19 case, it’s too dangerous. My dad goes to dialysis three times a week; please don’t kill him. Don’t go outside.

8: Appreciate your pets. In Antarctica we are not allowed to have pets. I started the “Antarctica Cat Club.” All we did was share photos of our cats from home that we wished to be with. Now, we get to live a cat’s life. Nap. Eat. Shit. Nap. Clean. Nap. Eat. Repeat.

Love your pets you lucky sons of bitches.

9: Art. Be creative. Rather you’re by yourself or preferably, with only yourself. Do something artistic. For instance, today, I chose to write this Manifesto. In Antarctica a group of us recreated the (drunk) history of the race to South Pole by Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott (https://vimeo.com/35084075). What will you or your isolated group create?

10: Know that it ends. A plane will come and take you away or scientists will tell you it’s safe to go outside. And then, it’s over. You take off your mask and gloves. You shop at a grocery store, you go to a movie, you hug your parents or, you love being able to hold those who you love.

Stay warm. Stay isolated. And, stay indoors.

[kuntrabida]

2. the axon snaps and thoughts can’t travel (a rant abt COVID-19, senior year spring, and college in the fall)

12 may 2020

the gap year. the fall sem. the jump cut. the FUTURE. much on my mind right now folks lmao (prob folk in singular since like one (1) person’s gonna read this ashvcxjkv)

okay so let’s break this DOWN ig. yea LET’S unpack my inner psyche and my mental baggage at this point because i’m sure that i can’t be the only one feeling this way and even if i am, i’d like to get it off my chest and not rant to the same five people who’ve heard me talk about the same sad subject throughout the entire duration of quarantine asdjfkvcxufdsw

let’s start with senior year haHA :) still haven’t gotten over that xoxo even tho i’ve tricked myself into thinking that i have! gonna refer to it as ye olde Jump Cut because that’s exactly what all this feels like... like mother nature just threw the video file of my high school experience into a fuckinn Premiere timeline or smth and slammed her fist on the W key (an esoteric reference, i know, i know, my bad, but iykyk). 

THE JUMP CUT – senior year’s over and i know it’s a stupid fucking thing to be upset about during a LITERAL GLOBAL PANDEMIC where people are losing and risking their lives and entire livelihoods are being upended but i still... can’t help but feel upset and terrified and devastated about what i’ve always viewed as this buffer period in my life between high school and college to just VIBE and figure myself out a little bit more being cut short. especially when, for once, things were going so well.  

god, the last thing i wanna do is sound dramatic and utterly tone deaf because I RECOGNIZE my privilege and how incredibly fortunate i am to have a roof over my head and food in my fridge and a bed with a damn duvet cover to sleep in at night but i’m... so fucking sad. i’ve BEEN so fucking sad, and i think what’s even worse is the fact that i’ve been DENYING how fucking sad i’ve been feeling because i don’t think i’m... allowed to be sad in this situation? but at the same time i consciously understand that my feelings are valid and everything... it just feels like legitimately everything else in the world right now dwarfs all my concerns combined. but alas. here i am, making a blog post about my feelings to finally try and sort them out...

i just aghsdfhxhzjlk i wasn’t finished. that really is the best way to put it. i wasn’t finished with any of it. and i suppose a lot of that is my own fault for taking all the good times for granted (but also lowkey the fault of idek who... american society? for romanticizing and commodifying the culmination of high school oop)/

i feel like so many people focus on those big milestone events associated with senior year: prom, graduation, senior awards, etc. but to me personally, and to nearly every one of the friends i’ve talked to, it’s the little things that matter most — the absence of which we feel the deepest. i miss spilling coffee on myself in the cafeteria and burning frozen pastries in the toasters and complimenting people’s outfits in the hallways and staying in the building from dawn till dusk and eating takeout on the floor and hastily texting my friends at the end of the school day asking if they wanted to hang out or if they could give me a ride home and i MISS spontaneous sushi and starbucks excursions and quiet heart to hearts in coffee shops and last minute target runs and stressing out about music events and belting in the practice rooms and learning choreography in parking lots where confused drivers would momentarily glance over and just KEEP ON DRIVING and lying on the ground in one of the school’s hallways facing the sun when the light would hit JUST RIGHT through the glass and i could close my eyes and pretend i was at the beach or on an island or in a canyon somewhere or SOMETHING, anywhere, anywhere but there. and i feel this chasm in my throat whenever i think about it because looking back at those moments, i realize that there’s literally no place i’d rather be right now than inside my high school building on a normal ass day dealing with normal ass problems with exceptional, radiant, life-giving souls there to have my back and support me and hug me wow, GOD, hug me. wow how i miss hugs. and I miss my friends. shit. 

hell bro i even miss the days where everything would become a little too much for me and i’d have to find recluse in a digital media classroom and the scent of old lemon-laced coffee grounds as they brewed into dingy styrofoam cups and wandered through the halls with me during the period, into the music room where i literally grew UP and found my voice and discovered validity in my own identity and all that JAZZ and into the bathrooms where i’d spend such subtle, unsuspecting mornings with friends still practically sleepwalking and FUCK bro. frankly i’m just not ready to jump into a life where all the things i hold dear are “remember when”s. i can’t imagine this entire world that i’ve built for myself being a thing of the past, a thing that i’ll look back on as one of the best fucking times of my life even though i never realized it when it mattered, a thing i still want so so so much more of, that i am not and may not ever be ready to let go. i want it all back. but i know getting upset over it is a futile pursuit, because there’s nothing i can do, and that just fuels this feedback cycle of anger and hopelessness and denial and back again. 

i do think of that good ol’ winnie the pooh quote, though. “how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” but it doesn’t really make anything hurt any less. and i guess i’m just tired of hurting lol. 

THE FUTURE – dawg what the fuck is happening with colleges in the United States right now bro what is the protocol what do i DO¿

pretty damn self explanatory. my defense mechanism has ALWAYS been, “at least things will be better a couple months from now!!!!” and yeah, with university and the reality of getting to attend my dream college fast approaching i did believe that for a hot second but CORONA DAWG CORONA just plunges everything into the sea of uncertainty. i know i’m not the only one frustrated by this damn virus and i should be comforted by the unity we all have in our confusion but lmao i do not feel any better! no! one! has! any! answers! asdjfkvlcxvjl being a graduating high school and incoming college student right now is so FUCKING confusing and frightening and once again i want to acknowledge what an incredible privilege it is to even have the option of a higher education open to me but it’s such a multifaceted and unpredictable issue this year and thinking about the future — again my go-to defense mechanism and at the very least a worthy consideration since i’ll be putting down hella dollars for it — has been the cause of so much stress... 

THE FALL SEM – i! don’t! know! if! it’s! gonna! be! on!line! and i am not planning on staying in my house any longer for a goddamn variety of reasons soo i have no clue how to plan for this! no one does right now! 

our administration keeps affirming that we’re planning for a return to normalcy in the fall semester but a considerable amount of students and experts alike are saying that it’s essentially a cover so no one’ll panic and decline or defer their acceptances. SO MANY OTHER COLLEGES are revealing their contingency plans to have an online semester and ahaHA if i have to STAY in this HOUSE for ANOTHER 4 MONTHS that would FRICKIN SUCK DAWG lmaO i’ll leave it at that! so i’m: very much panicking! 

i know that things are so uncertain right now and there’s really no point in trying to predict what’s going to happen in the next couple of months because so many unknowns remain. i know that a lot of universities are gonna be in deep shit if they don’t open in the fall but at the same time, if it’s a damn public health risk it’s definitely better to keep as many people home as possible. but i have no CLUE what institutions are gonna end up doing and again, literally no one does either! i was listening to a podcast yesterday about university plans for the upcoming academic year and i got asdhvjckxv so stressed when they said that we could be one week away from the start of the school year and things could still be drastically different the next week... there’s just no way of knowing much of anything and god i hate that. it’s making me so goddamn anxious. 

i really doubt things are going to be back to normal in New York in the fall sooo...? i don’t know man again it comes down to asking people questions they don’t have the answers to and that’s just incredibly frustrating because i just want to know ONE THING for certain right now. ONE THING! idk i just wish that my college would be a little more transparent about their plans as they move along and figure things out but i know that’s not feasible. at the very least i hope things will be safe enough for them to make dorming on campus an option — freshmen have a pretty ample amount of singles available anyway. but if i have to spend the first semester of college onLINE in THIS HOUSE that’s... gonna suck. especially because i’m still probably going to be paying thousands of dollars for it which is, as my grandmother says, foul! 

THE GAP YEAR – to defer or not to defer? that is the question. 

so naturally in preparation for a potentially wonky ass academic year i’m considering deferring enrollment. but lmao... the deadline to do so is in uh *checks watch* three (3) literal days so. don’t know about that chief! 

like, i know i’m PROBABLY NOT gonna end up taking a gap year. but i guess it’s just the fact that i have so much more canvas space to daydream about it that makes it so appealing... there are so many more possibilities that i can think of that are more likely to be open to me. then again, nothing’s guaranteed. not even my own health in the fall. which is also pretty fuckin scary as hell.

y’all wanna know where i get my gap year daydream fuel? UNJADED JADE. bruh i’ve been binging her videos like MAD especially the ones where she interrails Europe during her gap year and UGH. it seems incredible. and that makes things even more confusing because i really don’t know what the right decision to make is right now. to defer or not to defer... 

again it’s all so heavily influenced by unknowns. of all the things that could happen, i’d much prefer to have a regular freshman year fall with the people in my class whom i’ve already been getting to know pretty well through groupchats and social media and the like. they’re a pretty dope bunch and i think college with them is gonna be a hoot and a goddamn half. but if i’ll end up just staying home and watching zoom lectures in my basement anyway... i’d much rather be taking a gap year. 

and i’ve been brainstorming what i’d do during this gap year (again, thanks Unjaded Jade for the god-tier content agh) and there’s just like... so many options. i could get a goddamn JOB and start saving up for tuition instead of paying tens of thousands for online school. hell with the money i make working full time i could probably save up enough to afford an apartment so at the very least i could move out of my house into a place where i feel more comfortable. and lmao I: s a l i v a t e at the thought of using that time to focus on my writing, too. the amount of writing i could get done in a year of empty calendar space... glorious. what an utterly glorious prospect. 

and of course, i’d love to fucking travel, volunteer (with a reputable and well-intentioned organization) in a foreign country, do a workstay abroad, take a train across america, but again, i don’t even know if any of that’s going to be feasible in the fall. it’s so FRUSTRATING because i’ll think of a possibility and then another one comes in and completely shuts the former down. 

and it’s not like i can ask anyone for advice right now because we’re ALL none the wiser. plus, i’ve realized that frankly, even if it’s unreasonable, i don’t want anyone to tell me that my plans for a gap year aren’t feasible. it’s such a petulant thing to say... but i don’t want anyone to add to my sense of there being a limited amount of options that i can take advantage of because everything’s already so goddamn stifling as is. i guess the prospect of a gap year excites me so much because it seems like a year where i don’t have to be defined by anyone or anything but myself. and that’s so fucking liberating. 

i just want the freedom to imagine right now because that’s when i feel happiest, but at the same time i’m afraid to get my hopes up for anything because i have this sinking feeling that the absolute worst case scenario is going to become reality. lmao. people in my state aren’t even fucking social distancing correctly so i’m damn sure that we’re in for a second and a third wave and that’s gonna suck but people are stupid as hell :)  

lol on that positive note, thanks for reading this... increasingly depressing and chaotic rant. don’t really think i’m doing this “blog” stuff right but if you got this far, i love you. leave a note if you so please, comment your thoughts, reblog if you’d like (still don’t really understand the difference between reblogging and reposting on this app but lmao feel free to click the boxy arrow thing), and stay safe and healthy and all that jazz <3