Surviving the Pan(ic)demic

I worked on the non-fiction book this week. I didn't get as much done as I wanted. Like last week, this week was a lot of running around getting final supplies and such. Toilet paper and alcohol are almost unobtainable here near Cleveland, GA and Cornelia, GA. Nevertheless, I was able to get some toilet paper. I think I have enough to make it through the worst of what's to come. The explosion of cases isn't supposed to really hit until into April. I never saw any alcohol anywhere. I tried ordering it online, but my order was cancelled. I'm still waiting for the refund.

The pandemic brings disturbing news. DOJ appeals to Congress for new emergency powers amid pandemic. "In addition, the DOJ has asked for the ability to ask chief judges to permanently detain an individual without trial during emergencies." I beg your pardon, but there's no emergency so big we have to suspend the Constitution. The Patriot Act has already gone too far.

During the pandemic, there's a plague of locusts, too.

Some companies, including Facebook, have been hoarding supplies. The day Trump announced that the government was going after companies who are doing this, Facebook announced they were "donating" over 700,000 N95 masks to relief workers. Facebook donates 720,000 masks.

Coronavirus at the Local Level

On a personal level, things haven't changed too much where I live. The county I live in has one case. The county next door has one case. Let's pray it doesn't double. ;) Some restaurants only do drive-in now. Nearly all churches are closed. Stores are closing early.

When the news first hit American news outlets, toilet paper started disappearing. I had enough, so I started buying food instead. Then toilet paper vanished. Uh, oh. I managed to get enough food to last the recommended 12 weeks of quarantine. Finding toilet paper has been a massive struggle, but I finally found it.

Of course, this is Common Core math. 32 does not equal 64 in any mathematically system.

Now that some toilet paper shipments are trickling in, a lot of food shelves are empty. I'm glad I went for the food first. I'm not sure I have every single thing I need. I definitely don't have enough alcohol. But I have enough basics to survive.

If you live in the area, the Dollar General in Clarkesville had a toilet paper shipment arrive Wednesday that's supposed to be on the shelves this weekend. My impression is that Dollar Generals around Cleveland and Cornelia will have it stocked Saturday morning.

The news still isn't reporting enough real facts about the pandemic. In Italy no one over 60 gets a ventilator. In Spain no one over 65 gets one. Data from warm countries indicates summer doesn't stop coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. If that's true, yikes. I saw an anecdotal story that not every institution in the U.S. is reporting all its cases. Just like China, very disturbing. We may never get the real numbers. That was a problem in the 1918 pandemic as well. At some point hospitals start reporting disease fatalites as something else like viral pneumonia or heart failure.

On the other hand, the pandemic seems over-hyped at this time. I'm still waiting for the April explosion to know for sure, but a lot of U.S. counties have zero or only a few cases. Governments are scrambling for emergency powers there doesn't seem to be a reason to need. No one is rioting. I'm worried about democracy in the U.S. The Patriot Act was a major erosion. Now the DOJ is seeking even more unconstitutional powers. Does democracy die in a panic?

Have a great weekend.

Non-Fiction Book, etc.

I worked on the non-fiction book this week. I didn't get a whole lot done, but any progress is good progress. Some chapters are very readable. Some are denser and harder to get through. I noticed that when I was writing it. It's even more noticeable now. Either I'm going to have to go back and simplify the prose, or I'm going to have to add summaries to the end of the chapters. Simplifying is much harder, but it would increase sales. If I ever want to be able to write full time, it has to pay enough for me to do that.

I spent a lot of time running around prepping for Coronavirus aka Covid-19 aka SARS-CoV-2. One day I picked up nine 28-count packs of water. It took multiple trips. Then I had to unload them at home. That's tiring. Running around from store to store is tiring, too. My goal is to have three months worth of supplies. I'm set on almost everything except toilet paper, paper towels and two or three minor items.

It's amazing how people are buying toilet paper. Are they doing the math to calculate how much they'll actually need? How long are they preparing for? I've been using the Walmart app to see when things get delivered. Toilet paper and alcohol were listed yesterday, but they weren't on the shelves. The day before, both were out of stock. Either the app wasn't updating in real time, or the store is holding those items in the back for non-public use. Who is it for? Police? Clinics? Fire departments/EMTs? Employees?

Italy is rushing 10,000 student doctors into practice. That sounds so scary.

I can't help but wonder how many small businesses are going to go bankrupt.

The government is talking about giving everyone who makes less than $75k/yr a $1,200 check. I can't wait. Prepping is costing a fortune.

I haven't been watching the local news, only national. I taped the local news last night and watched it when I got home. There was an interview of someone with Coronavirus. It was scary. Today there was a different interview on Fox News with the same scary content. What a coincidence? When I was talking about connecting dots last week, this is what I mean. Two coordinated segments airing within 24 hours of each other. My take is that the media has been instructed to run interviews in order to keep people at home when they're starting to feel cabin fever. I think it will be effective.

80% of people will have mild or no symptoms. When you factor that in, the death rates are far lower than the officially tested people they're using for those numbers.

I've noticed that nearly all the Coronavirus coverage is not about the virus or what to expect(realistically expect). It's about what people/governments are doing to prepare for or treat it. It's about the economy. It's about foreign countries. I'm not seeing much in the way of real info. The one time somebody was about to give a prognostication of what we can expect, the network cut to a commercial, and it never aired.

I recommend checking foreign news services. Someone I know pointed me toward Sky News. A source I've checked some is France 24 in French. They have an English version, but I don't know if it's the same. Yes, my French reading is paying off. Something I read was about the study that got the U.S. and Britain to start doing something. According to the study, Britain could lose 250,000 people and the U.S. 1.2 million. That's with efforts to mitigate the virus. Without mitigation the numbers are double. The study wasn't specifically about Coronavirus, but the information was applicable. Watching the U.S. news is becoming more and more a wall of meaningless sound. Foreign countries aren't afraid to tell the truth about the U.S. situation.

The weather was great yesterday and today. It was like early summer. Cooler temperatures are returning tomorrow.

Have a great weekend.

Novella Update and Other Things

I finished the novella this week. The next step is letting it rest for 30 days and then reading it again to catch any problems I might have missed. During the 30 days, the plan is to work on the non-fiction book and maybe a little on the next fictions(like B'vellah books 2 and 3 and the middle grade trilogy) as a break. It's possible I could experiment with trying to illustrate a cover.

 

Someone on social media posted a link to a story I mentioned the other day but on a different site with a later date. It's titled: Israeli-made oral vaccine for coronavirus on track, but testing will take months.

It's similar to the article I posted but has more details. My takeaway is that maybe some time this summer there will be a vaccine. The task now is to survive to see it.

I've been stocking up on supplies to get by for at least three months. I'll be avoiding unnecessary contact and trips. It's easy to miss small things like shampoo and light bulbs, but I'm trying to cover everything. I already have light bulbs, but I didn't have extra shampoo. It's looking good on certain things, but I need one, maybe two, more trips to the store.

Part of following Coronavirus is connecting the dots. I saw a news story that said, based on Chinese numbers, the fatality rate for people 70 to 80 is 10%. The fatality rate for 80 and older is 15%. In an unrelated story Florida has banned visits to nursing homes. There was no mention of the fatality rate in the Florida story. It shows that government officials are trying to control the message. They're making decisions based on private information. Watch what they do and not just what they say.

 

Something interesting I've seen more than once is the President and Vice President in the same place at the same time. For security reasons, that's something they're supposed to avoid. Food for thought. Congress or parts of Congress may be in quarantine away from the public. Something to keep an eye on.

Something I haven't seen in the news media is the indication that there are two strains of the virus, a weaker one and a deadlier one. If that's true, Italy and Iran both have the deadlier one. China has the weaker one. This is based on statistical analyses of the numbers and information coming out of every country that reports them. The problem is the numbers are not always reliable and are sometimes contradictory. Nevertheless, this is something to keep an eye on. There hasn't been a whisper about a second strain in the media.

 

A story the other day noted that one country, I forget which one, had taken to reporting Coronavirus cases as "viral pneumonia" instead. False reporting is the same thing that happened in the 1918 pandemic. Something else disturbing is that if the Coronavirus test isn't administered it doesn't count as an official case. That's part of why the numbers are dodgy.

The other day I linked to this channel. Up to then he hadn't been using profanity. The day I linked to it, he used profanity. I apologize for that. Before then he had been being professional. Since then, he's used profanity again. I take it as a sign of panic. It might indicate he feels he has nothing to lose now.

Have a great weekend.

Novella(And Coronavirus)

I'm still going through the rough draft of the novella to polish and fix things. As mentioned before, I spent extra time during the rough draft phase to make sure it had a certain level of polish already. It's paying off. I'm over halfway through. There may still be some things that have to be rewritten, but I'm feeling more confident about it than I was while writing it.

On the middle grade trilogy front, I was awakened early this week and lay in bed trying to get back to sleep. I started thinking about the middle grade series. It probably falls under urban fantasy. It'll be about a young lad around 13 or 14 who can travel back and forth between a fantasy world and the real world. I had the concept for the conflict right away, but I wasn't sure about how to get him to the other world. I didn't want to tap into an occult answer like spells or incantations. The struggle between good and evil is real. I didn't want it to turn into one of those light magic versus dark magic things when in the real world all magic is dark. Good evil versus bad evil doesn't work. While trying to get back to sleep, it hit me. He could use special doors. That way it's outside of him. It's not some magical power he or someone else has. He's just using a neutral tool. I still don't have all the series figured out, but that's a key piece.

As part of working on the novella, I decided to try to get an agent for the middle grade series. I'll probably have to increase the word count from the 30k I had planned. Maybe 40k or 50k. I'm not sure yet. I'm leaning toward 40k. That makes the trilogy 120k words, the same length as a long, adult-level fantasy novel. The rough draft would take about three months for the whole thing. I would likely start trying to sell book 1 after it was finished. We'll see what happens. I still have the non-fiction book to finish and the end of the B'vellah series. And the next Avatars of Awesomeness book.

Coronavirus

It's obvious we're in a pandemic. One of the places I've been getting information is this channel. It's had real info weeks before the mainstream media and official organizations like the WHO or the CDC. It also highlights deceptions government officials are perpetrating, such as saying that face masks won't help and can do more harm than good. The channel points out that studies prove the exact opposite. The real reason officials are saying that is because they're short on masks and don't want the public buying them all up. However, as a caution, I wouldn't buy all in on everything it says. Some of the information is amazing, but it's kind of slanted toward the negative.

For example, that channel has never brought up this article from the Jerusalem Post in which an Israeli company claims it'll have a vaccine in a matter of weeks. Regulatory approval will take 90 days after that. Normally, a vaccine would take 18 months to develop. They've already been working on something similar for 4 years. However, some vaccines turn out to do more harm than good when the patient gets reinfected. Their vaccine will have to go through clinical trials to make sure something like that doesn't happen.

Have a great weekend.