Post-Pandemic Thoughts

 I realize that in my five year lapse from this blog I have never addressed the world-wide pandemic, which started around February/March of 2020. 

Katie and a handful of the nurses in MICU all got very sick in December of 2019. There was no testing done at that time to determine what flu-like illness they had. Katie, in retrospect, thinks they got coronavirus, as there were many foreign residents at the medical school in and out of MICU at the time. In February there were rumors of an illness spreading from China to the west coast of the US. Around mid-March the entire country, and eventually many places in the world, were on lock-down to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus respiratory infection. The efficacy of masks was debated over and over and the Trump people disdained them and downplayed them. We didn't go out much - just for groceries. Grocery store shelves were cleaned out - with the supply of toilet paper being particularly hard hit.

The lock down continued through the spring and into the summer. Kids in the fall had school via computers. Businesses, especially restaurants, failed. Many many people were sick in the hospital and died in the first wave. A second wave hit in 2020 along with a different strain, producing even more death in the US and world-wide. We moved to our condo in September of 2020 and the moving guys all wore masks and we were very careful to wear them when they were present. Christmas of 2020 saw us exchanging gifts via a box handoff in our driveway and Facetime on our iPads. It was pretty depressing to say the least. 

In 2021 mask wearing continued. However, a vaccine and testing for the virus had been emerging. I believe we got our first vaccine in 2021. We had to schedule it online. Bob's friend Gary gave us a link and we were able to get one with caregivers, although we were berated by one of the people that we should not have had access. The vaccines were given at the Lucas Co. Recreation Center. I got kind of dizzy with the first shot, but never had any reactions to subsequent vaccinations. 

By 2022 things were starting to open up again, although people were wary. Over the course of 2022-2024, more vaccine boosters were available and the deaths dropped off, although the disease seemed to spike in the summer, unlike influenza, which seemed to occur mostly in the winter months. 

We got our first case in late August of 2023. Bob and I felt really lousy and Bob had a cough that lasted into November. I ended up with a sinus infection and went to the Urgent Care at our nearby Kroger. The CNP there was very good. She took a full history and ended up giving me antibiotics for my sinus infection, which helped in a day or so, and I recovered fully. 

The next time we got it was about ten days before Christmas of 2024. We felt crappy, but were caught up on all of our boosters and recovered uneventfully, although Bob had a cough that lasted into the new year.

Coronavirus is here to stay. It is constantly mutating and still causing hospitalizations and deaths, albeit in much lower numbers than before the vaccine came out. Health care workers, particularly doctors and nurses, were pushed to their limits during 2020 and 2021, and many nurses left the profession permanently. Hospitals ran out of ICU beds and respirators. President Biden had to play catch-up with the federal response to the pandemic and did much better than Trump did. There will be a lot of historical papers written about the pandemic someday.

The bird flu is now rearing its ugly head in 2025 and it is scaring epidemiologists a lot. So far there has been limited transmission to humans, mostly through close contact with birds (poultry being predominant). Many chickens have been slaughtered to stop the spread. Not sure where this will all end up. Stay tuned.