Gosh when it got hot outside, boy did it ever get hot outside. I love Mississippi, but her humidity, especially in the form it was in over the weekend and this week, is just a bit much. It’s a shame the theory that the summer heat would kill the coronavirus didn’t pan out. If it had, the virus would be deader than a doornail after this week!
As a matter of fact, it is beginning to look like nothing is going to kill COVID-19. The numbers continue to rise everywhere and even though the residents of Scott County have done a pretty good job of leveling off the spread, we’re still not out of the woods. May never be.
I know everyone has differing opinions on this plague and whether or not it is or isn’t a hoax. For my money, I think it is real. I think it is deadly and I think we know so little about it that anything and everything we can do to stop the spread, we should do.
In my book that means wearing face coverings in public, social distancing, hand washing and sanitizer, sanitizer, and more sanitizer. My hands never were soft and smooth, but these days they are no where close to anything one might see in a television commercial for Neutrogena.
I actually think I have sanitized my right hand to the point that my thumbnail is going to curl up and drop right off, if my whole hand doesn’t.
Adding to the problem is the fact that social distancing can mean more piddling around in the yard and garden and I’m just not one that likes working with gloves on. That in turn means more dry, brittle, cracked skin. I’m afraid now that this is probably going to be a condition that sticks with all of us for a while to come.
I will admit that the heat index of 113-115 over the weekend made mask wearing almost unbearable. “Almost!” We went to a garden center to pick up a few more plants for that yard and garden and I swear I thought I was going to smother for a couple of minutes before returning to the comfort of the air conditioned vehicle and ripping that thing off my face.
I do have a problem with some of the folks we’ve run into in the grocery store or just about anywhere, actually, that are determined to not follow the suggested protocol. The ones that do not even attempt to distance themselves from other customers and wouldn’t cover their nose and mouth with a strip of fabric come hell or high water.
They also claim that government can’t dictate to them what they can and can’t do in the face covering arena. I respect their opinion and likewise wish they would respect mine, but mask shaming is childish and has no place in pandemic times or any other times, so don’t be a bully.
For me, I’d rather wear the mask and find out when this all settles down that it really didn’t do anything to help slow the spread of the disease than not wear it and find out while struggling to breath in the intensive care unit of a hospital that they really did a pretty good job.
My daughter is a good example of this theory. She wears a mask in her workplace. Last week she found out that a co-worker had tested positive for COVID-19. Some of the people in her office building have been kind of slow to warm up to the mask-wearing theory.
My mask-wearing daughter got her test results back on Monday morning and she was negative. Some of those who didn’t follow protocol, well, they didn’t fair quite as well. Hopefully they won’t get sick, but with this disease there is no way to tell who is going to be asymptomatic and who’s going to the ICU.
It’s just not a risk worth taking as far as I’m concerned. But, there again, we all have our opinions.
