The good and bad and different

Benefits to COVID-19--

I was starting to put a little bit of weight on in the tummy region, but the stress of living in this alternate universe is that I have really lost my appetite. I still eat, but clearly not as much, because that bit of extra weight is fading away, and I am glad to see it go! With no effort, no hunger...just an excess of subconscious worrying, which I can't seem to help doing, having apparently inherited my mother's worry gene.

I can go to campus at any time of day and get the parking spot of my choice. If I want to park in the underground parking, I can. And pretty much have my pick of spots, too. If I want to park outside, as I did today, and have a lovely walk in almost-warm weather, I can do that.

I can work in uninterrupted peace, with both my office doors closed.

However...

Uninterrupted work gets pretty boring! Librarians (at least this one) live for the interesting questions that come up all the time. Fortunately, I get some pretty interesting email questions once every day or so. Someone please help me think of a really interesting research topic to immerse myself in!! This alternate universe provides the perfect opportunity (and time) for lots of in-depth research! But about WHAT? I need ideas! (Music, Dance, or Theatre related...)

They locked a bunch of the bathrooms in the library so the cleaners don't have to clean them, and can instead spend their time disinfecting surfaces like doorknobs. So the bathroom really close to my office is locked. So I have to walk to a different one. Which is not convenient given that they are telling us to wash our hands a lot.

Did I say uninterrupted peace? Since there are so few students in the library, they thought it would be a good time to tear down a wall. So today, in my office with the doors shut, it was actually not very peaceful. Goodbye, wall.

For your viewing pleasure, some shots from the library:

Over Christmas, they moved all the media to our area. The Media Centre is no more. We actually started working on this in November.  Remember what our Music and Dance area used to look like? This is not the best picture, because of all the people gathered around a display case. But, we had a lot of room in front of the stacks of media for display cases. (This picture was actually taken in September 2017.) But you can see how the space was, sort of. If you notice the man with his hand on his hip--just through there you can see that there is a row of public access computers behind him and before the stacks of media.

Then, in November, we moved out the display cases, and marked the floor where the new media shelves from the Media Centre would be. If you flip from the previous picture to this next one, you can see where the display cases once were, but now are gone.

This is not a great picture, but it shows what it looks like now, with the media shelves in place and full of media. (I actually took this picture to show Patrick that all the books being bound by BYU are the SAME COLOR--but you can see the media shelves behind the cart, so it works.)

We moved the rows of computers that you also can't see in the previous pictures, and the photocopier and things like that outside of the glass wall.

Then, on March 26, they tore down the glass wall that encased the media. Now people can just browse for media whenever they want to. I don't know if that is good or bad, but it is different. You can look right out into the area that used to be the MDML. Take a good look at that wall out there (where the clock is) while you can, because it will soon be history.

 A view towards the stairwell-ish. Notice the floor, which shows where the glass wall once was. Now dearly departed.

Then today, they tore down the drywall wall. First, they made a lovely plastic tunnel for them to work in, and to keep the dust from flying hither, thither and yon. I have just come out of the stairwell, and there is the plastic tunnel surrounded that wall you saw in the picture above, where the clock was. If I had been able to see the clock, it would have said 12:31 in the afternoon.

 This is a peak inside the curtain. You can see that the skeleton of the wall is still in place. This picture was taken at 2:10 pm.

 2:47 pm, and the wall is all but gone. Only the pillars (which are what support the building) and the electrical conduits that used to lead into the wall are still in place. Look at all that insulation! Why? It was not an outside wall. Huh.

 And clean up is all that is left going on at 3:17 pm. I imagine there will be more of the same tomorrow. It is not the same crew who will have to deal with the wiring, and I don't know when that will happen.

Changes made last Friday, March 27--

We are keeping our library open because University Administration realizes that not all of our students have internet access in their homes. These students really need a place where they can go in order to finish their classes online. (This is a big hole in the whole K-12 school at home online thing: we do indeed live in a place where there are the haves and the have nots.) I am really glad that our University Administration are realists.

So, in order to social distance better, they have removed and stacked and roped off chairs all over the place.

And our circulation desk, which is the only desk left open, now does everything through Zoom. Like, the workers are there, but they are in the back, and they answer questions via Zoom, and if they have to check something out for a patron, the patron says what they need, and then they move to the next place to wait while a person does a thing, and then they pick the thing up in a third location, so that the people are never actually talking to teach other. (In this picture, you can see Zone 1 and Zone 2 but not Zone 3 which is further to the right.)

Firsts and Favorites

This little Facebook quiz captured my attention. Maybe some things worth expounding on:

▪️First Job- Weeding sugar beets for my dad. I don't remember what the pay was--we got paid per acre. I started this quite young--still in elementary school. I had a love/hate relationship with this job. I loved to get paid. I hated being out there on some interminable row, with the promise of a drink of water at the end of it, and getting bitten by black flies. They were cruel to me, and I was cruel back: I would catch them and pull off their wings and let them die an agonizing death. That is terrible! Sometimes, I would step on them to put them out of their misery. But my misery was ongoing, because their bites hurt.
▪️Current job- Academic Librarian. I love my job mostly. It is interesting, and I love that my assignment is music, dance and theatre. Trying to work now, in the midst of COVID-19, is a tad painful. Everything is so weird.
▪️Dream Job- I always wanted to grow up to be a stay-at-home mom. A little too late to live that dream, but I still think that is the very best job there is. It is so stressful to be a working mother. Like, you have to worry about the children and the house and earning a living. How fortunate my mother was to be a stay-at-home mom. I am glad that Nancy has been able to do that so far. Children grow up so fast; it is hard to have that going on while you are also very stressed about work.
▪️Favorite food – Probably cheesecake with fresh fruit and whipped cream on top. When I have to select a dessert, that seems to be my choice.
▪️Favorite dog - Well, I seem to have gotten the anti-dog gene, so I don't have a favorite dog. Some of them seem nice enough, if well trained, but I don't really ever want one, thanks just the same.
▪️Favorite footwear - Bare feet, followed by flip flops if necessary to avoid stepping on prickles or stones or hot pavement.
▪️Favorite Candy - White Toblerone, for sure.
▪️Favorite ice cream - Ice cream is so cold, and I do not love cold. But a berry cheesecake ice cream if I must have ice cream.
▪️Your Vehicle color – My current vehicle and the one before that have both been silver. Silver is okay. But I really want some really interesting color of vehicle, like pink or yellow or blue. Car colors have gotten really boring. Of all our cars, when it comes to color, our yellow one was my favorite.
▪️Favorite Holiday - I am oddly a really big fan of Remembrance Day. I just think that the really hard times (WW I and II) that they help us remember are super important. I really miss Remembrance Day the way it is remembered in Canada. Not the same here.
▪️Night owl or day owl- I am not an owl birdie. Now that we are living in this alternate reality, I find myself tired all the time, and I don't think it is the virus, though fatigue is a symptom. Just the way the world is right now is very tiring. I can escape it when I sleep--however, do remember that I am a person who has always been predisposed to having nightmares. So--it is kind of a draw. I am reminded of a passage from Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning"--he was sleeping beside someone in the barracks who was having a nightmare, and was about to wake him up and say, "It's alright--you are just having a nightmare," when he looked around him and realized where they were, in the concentration camp, and thought he would just let the man sleep. Who knows if his nightmare was worse or better than reality?
▪️Favorite day of the week- Well, I normally really like Sunday. But now Sunday is sort of just part of Saturday. It is still a nice day. I just miss going to church and singing hymns, and going to Primary and singing Primary songs.
▪️Tattoos - I do not like tattoos. Like, would you want to have the same clothes on all the time? Or the same jewelry? Well, I don't like jewelry either. But still. They are so permanent. They change color, usually for the worse, over time. When people gain or lose weight, their tattoos get distorted. If you have a big old tattoo on your shoulder, then under a white dress, it just looks like a big old dirty spot. So there you go. I just don't like them at all.
▪️Can you drive a stick shift - Ahahahahaha!! Totally can't do that. My dad tried to teach me. My cousin Harold tried to teach me. Colleen and Arlene tried to teach me. My husband tried to teach me. We all gave up.
▪️Favorite color - I really like pastels. A true pink--not the kind of peachy or plummy pinks that you can find now, but a true pink. And sky blue, like the Laurentian pencil crayon sky blue.
▪️Do you like vegetables- I love vegetables! They are the best. Although, word to the wise--if you cut up a purple carrot and put it in your chicken soup, the broth, the chicken and the potatoes will all be tinted an interesting shade of light purple. Now I know.
▪️Favorite season - Spring is nice. Summer is nice if it isn't too hot, or at least if it cools down at night. Autumn is nice. I just am not a fan of winter. I know that we need it, but I am always glad to see the end of it.

Books read - March 2020

I know there are still some days left in the month, but I am reading several books at the same time and will not finish any of them by the end of the month, I promise!

So, I can tell you about the seven books that I have finished this month. Five of them are non-fiction, with only two fiction books completed this month.

1. "The Marvelous Magic of Miss Mabel" was one of the two books I took to Virginia and Georgia with me--was that not even a month ago? In some ways it feels like years!! (Each week feels like two, with more worries every day!) I feel like I am having to reach far back in the recesses of my mind to retrieve memories of this book! This book of marvelous fiction, by Natasha Lowe, is a tweener novel about a little baby who is left in a flower pot and raised by a sweet widow who always wanted children but never had any. However, Mabel is no ordinary child. I think it is her levitating that first gives it away. The family moves so that Mabel can attend a special witch school--where lots of interesting things happen, and Mabel finally saves the day. I wish I could remember how she saves the day--apart from wearing trousers to ride her broom, and insisting on riding the broom like a horse instead of side saddle, both of which are important innovations--but I suppose you can read it and find out?

2. "The fabulous frauds" by Lawrence Jeppson is a nonfiction book about art frauds committed over centuries. I have been slowly working on this book for months, ever since he (the author) died, which was in October. I read his obituary because one of his 25 grandchildren is my friend Emily (the one who came close to dying herself earlier in 2019.) When I read Jeppson's obituary, I was fascinated--he was an author of both fiction and non-fiction--so I looked on WorldCat and then saw that BYU owned one of his books--this one--and checked it out and starting reading it. It was very easy to read slowly because each chapter is about a different fabulous fraud. My takeaway from this book: there are so many talented artists who cannot make any money painting because they do not have a "name"--so when they get paid to paint forgeries, people LOVE their work! This is sad. Why do we over-value that "Renoir" that we didn't know about more than the same painting with another name signed to it? Clearly, the over-pricing of art drives the fraud business! It is a puzzlement. On another level, this book was really interesting to me because one of Patrick's papers for his master's degree was about detecting fraud, so I already had done some reading on the topic.

3. Then I finished reading Melanie McCabe's super interesting memoir/detective story "His other life: Searching for my father, his first wife, and Tennessee Williams." Someone posted about this somewhere, and I read an online excerpt of the book and was hooked. As usual, I turned to WorldCat to see where the book was available, and was surprised to see that only 75 libraries own it, even though it is highly rated and won at least one prize. Well, it deserves a read! So, Melanie did not know for a long time that her father had been married--for 15 years--to the female love of Tennessee Williams' life! Melanie's parents married (each other) later in life, and were thrilled to become the parents of two daughters, Melanie and Terrie. When her dad died, Melanie was  thrust into discovering who her dad had been before she came along--hence the mystery story, because he had not carried his past forward into his second family much, or at all. Williams even names one of his characters Terrence McCabe, and revealed in his writings that he knew when McCabe died--so he was very much aware of the family Melanie was growing up in, while she was completely unaware of her own connection to Tennessee Williams. Fascinating read! Still unanswered questions!

4. Ahh! Jaclyn Moriarty. I really like her books. Really, any of the Moriarty sisters. They just write well. Jaclyn writes for the YA market, and I have read a bunch of her other books. The three books in "The Colors of Madeleine" were excellent. And I also really enjoyed "The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone," which I read the most recently, until I picked up the book I read this month: "The Whispering Wars." It is a compelling read, and I was somewhat into it before I realized that Bronte Mettlestone was a character in this book (a visitor from the future) and had to go and look on my spreadsheets to help myself remember THAT book. (I did remember!) Besides telling a great fantasy story, Moriarty subtly examines class, and how class divides. The heroes of this story, however, conquer the class divide! (I think if we end up being compelled to stay home, which is looking very likely at this point, I would like to get a few more Moriarty titles to have on hand. I just really like the way she spins a story. (Obviously, this was my second fiction read of the month.)

5. You already know that I like the non-fiction of Caitlin Doughty, who has moved me firmly from the burial to the cremation camp with her crematorium tales. This time I read, "From here to eternity: traveling the world to find the good death." I really enjoyed traveling all around the world with her to see death customs in so many places! The people who dig up their family members and hang out with them in Indonesia! Or keep them around for seven years, still getting them dressed every day! The Forensic Research Stations at Western Carolina University (where I would not mind going to end up as compost)! The lack of vultures in India to consume Zoroastrian carion! (A drug called Diclofenac was used to treat cattle. If these cattle died, and vultures ate their carcasses, the vultures would get kidney failure and die. 95% of the vultures in India - gone. None to consume the dead bodies. And yet--that IS how the Zoroastrians deal with their dead. Huge problem.) Another very interesting read. In her epilogue, Doughty asks that all death professionals and family members re-examine how we do death in our little corner of the world.

6. I think I put a hold on Jennifer Wright's "Get Well Soon" long before I went on my trip and came home to find an alternative reality about to pop up. What a great book to read during a pandemic.  I should tell you the subtitle of this piece of nonfiction: "History's worst plagues and the heroes who fought them." Jennifer Wright points out early on in this book, published in 2017, that what often ends civilizations isn't wars or sexual deviancy, or anything else you might think of. The culpit is usually something microscopic. Working her way from the Antonine Plague through the Bubonic Plague, Dancing Plague (this was really a thing), to Smallpox, Syphilis, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Leprosy, Typhoid, the so-called Spanish flu (which probably started in either Kansas or New York City, so by rights it should definitely NOT be called the Spanish flu), and on to Encephalitis Lethargica, Lobotomies (not truly a plague, but a plague upon society that they became so routine and awful) and finally Polio--what a book to be reading RIGHT NOW, in the middle of COVID-19. The best quote ever to shout at the Anti-Vax crown was given in 1911 by Sir William Osler. (Which--did you know that before vaccinations for Smallpox, they did something called variolation. Someone would scrape the scabs and pus from a smallpox victim and then would choose a vein on a recipient, and poke the scabs and pus of the smallpox into the healthy person. There was about an 85% success rate with variolation, which is TERRIBLE. But smallpox was horrendous and left the people who recovered quite broken and ugly, so some people would chance it. Edward Jenner's mother had him variolated when he was young, so you can imagine that OF COURSE using cow pox to create a safe vaccine that didn't kill 15% of its recipients seemed like a really good thing to figure out!) So, back to William Osler: there was a huge anti-vaccination push in his day, too, but here is what he said (in part--I don't want to have to type it all; he said a lot!) "I would like to issue a Mount-Carmel-like challenge to any ten unvaccinated priests of Baal. I will go into the next severe epidemic with ten selected, vaccinated persons and ten selected unvaccinated persons--I should prefer to choose the latter--three Members of Parliament, three anti-vaccination doctors (if they can be found), and four anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise--neither to jeer nor jibe when they catch the disease, but to look after them as brothers, and for the four or five who are certain to die, I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration." (page 85-86) The polio chapter is wonderful! Both a Democratic president (FDR) and a Republican president (Eisenhower) handled that SO WELL. Hurray for the end of polio!!! Now, in today's world, we can only hope that soon we can say Hurray for the end of COVID-19!!

7. I just finished my last nonfiction book today, "Dancing through history: In search of the stories that define Canada" by Lori Henry. I had to borrow this through Interlibrary Loan (all the ILL services are shut down right now. So...the book will sit on my desk at work for a long time, I guess) because I was hoping it would have something in it about the dance we do in Alberta called the Butterfly dance, which is derived from a Ukrainian dance called the Verkhovyna. It didn't have that, although it did have a chapter on Ukrainian dance. The book started in the NWT (well--what used to be called the NWT--Nunavut now) with native dancing and drumming, then swung over to the east coast and worked its way west, ending in British Columbia, again with the native people from various tribes including the Haida. Dancing for competition and also for fun and to keep cultures alive was still very much a part of Canada in 2012, when this book was written. I hope it still is. Dance has kind of been dying the death in the US, except for as performance.

So--that has been my March 2020 reading. Some really great books! And I probably will read more these last few days of the month, but I am reading about four books at once, so I won't finish any of them until April.

Adventures of Patrick

Patrick is lightening the mood on Facebook by recording his experiences with girls (either girls who liked him, or girls he liked) and this first one is too funny not to keep somewhere. I fear it will disappear into the past like my own funny memories of Patrick (who was, frankly, the most naturally hilarious child I raised) so I am going to record his memories on this blog, for the sake of those who may want to know these stories in the future:

Ok I need to start at the beginning because elementary school was requested and if I’m going to go that far back, then I have to start at the beginning.

The very first memory I have of a girl liking me (not necessarily my crush) was in Preschool in PoCo. We got to bring packed lunches from home and had to sit in a big group on the floor in class. I to my usual refined palette had mostly likely a plain cheese sandwich with mayonnaise. I switch to mustard later on, but to begin with it was probably the most exciting sandwich. I believe this lunch would have included half a poppy seed muffin because those are my favorite.

Food aside.

I wanted to sit next to some of my friends, so I walked over to them and sat down, when all of a sudden this girl sat down next to me! I did not want to sit next to her so I got up and sat near some other kids... lo and behold this girl moved and sat next to me again!

Seriously, I can’t take a hint... still can’t. So I moved again because I am stubborn! This time though the teacher said “Patrick stop moving around, sit down and eat your lunch” so me, being obedient (seriously I can’t break any rules. I can talk smack but I can’t break any rules) sat down and ate lunch next to that girl...

So there you all go. My first complete fail for flirting.

Next up is elementary school, and I think I have 3 crushes from that? Maybe 2...

The voice of reason

Here are two pieces of information that I feel are worth reading. The first one is about COVID-19 and how it spreads:

From a wonderfully respected colleague Dr. Julie Silver — please take the time to read the whole thing, it is an important summary about COVID19, flattening the curve and what will happen if we don’t take strict precautions now:

From Julie —“It has been years since I have posted anything on this page. As a physician at Harvard Medical School, I have amazing access to the best information and resources for #Covid19. I know people are getting a lot of information, and not all of it is accurate. My friend Dr. Reem Ghalib summarized the situation in one of the best social media posts to date on this topic (copied/pasted below). Please read what she has to say and share with your loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Urge people to be calm and logical in their decision making. Err on the side of caution. Re the info below--note that "coronavirus" is used generically to mean the specific strain Covid 19. I will apologize in advance for not responding to comments as work is very hectic right now:
Dear Friends,

So much confusion, misinformation and denial is bouncing around on social media about the coronavirus that I thought I would try to explain, in plain language, why the experts see this as such an emergency.

You will see the claim online that this virus is a lot like the viruses that cause colds, and that if you get it, it will probably just seem like a bad cold and you are very unlikely to die. Depending on who you are, these statements are probably true. But they are incomplete, and the missing information is the key to understanding the problem.

This is a coronavirus that is new to the human population, jumping into people late last year from some kind of animal, probably at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. It is related to the viruses that cause colds, and acts a lot like them in many ways. It is very easy to transmit through the respiratory droplets that all of us give off. But nobody has ever been exposed to this before, which means nobody has any immunity to it.

The virus is now moving explosively through the human population. While most people will recover, about 20 percent of the people who catch it will wind up with a serious disease. They will get pneumonia that causes shortness of breath, and they may need hospitalization.

Some of those people will get so sick that they cannot be saved and will die of the pneumonia. The overall death rate for people who develop symptoms seems to be 2 or 3 percent. Once we have enough testing to find out how many people caught the virus but did not develop symptoms, that might come down to about 1 percent, optimistically.

This is a large number. It is at least 10 times higher than the mortality rate for the seasonal flu, for instance, which in some years kills 60,000 or 70,000 Americans. So just on that math, we could be looking at 600,000 or 700,000 dead in the United States. But it gets worse.

Older people with existing health problems are much more vulnerable, on average. The mortality rate of coronavirus among people over age 80 may be 15 or 20 percent. It appears to have 7 or 8 percent mortality for people aged 70 to 79. Here is the terrible part: If you are a healthy younger person, you can catch the virus and, without developing serious symptoms yourself, you can pass it along to older people. In other words, as the virus spreads, it is going to be very easy to go out and catch it, give it to your grandmother and kill her, even though you will not die yourself. You can catch it by touching a door knob or an elevator button.

Scientists measure the spread of an epidemic by a number called R0, or “R naught.” That number is calculated this way: for every person who develops the illness, how many other people do they give it to before they are cured (or dead) and no longer infectious? The R0 for coronavirus, in the absence of a control strategy, appears to be a number close to 3 – maybe a bit higher or lower, but in that ballpark. This is an extremely frightening number for such a deadly disease.

Suppose you catch the virus. You will give it to 3 other people, and they will each give it to three others, and so forth. Here is how the math works, where you, the “index case,” are the first line:
1
3
9
27
81
243
729
2,187
6,561
19,683
59,046
177,147
531,441
1,594,323
4,782,969
14,348,907

So, in just 15 steps of transmission, the virus has gone from just one index case to 14.3 million other people. Those 15 steps might take only a few weeks. The index person may be young and healthy, but many of those 14 million people will be old and sick, and they will likely die because they got a virus that started in one person's throat.

The United States is not at this point yet, with millions infected, as best we can tell. We don’t really know, because our government has failed us. We are many, many weeks behind other countries in rolling out widespread testing, so we don’t really have a clue how far the thing has spread. We do know that cases are starting to pop up all over the place, with many of the people having no known exposure to travelers from China, so that means this virus has escaped into our communities.

We do not have approved treatments, yet. We do not have a vaccine. The only tool we really have now is to try to slow down the chain of transmission.

This can be done. In other words, R0 is not fixed – it can be lowered by control measures. If we can get the number below 1, the epidemic will die out. This is the point of the quarantines and the contact-tracing that you are hearing so much about in the news. But the virus is exploding so fast that we will not have the labor available to trace contacts for much longer, so we have to shift strategies. This has already begun, but we are not doing it fast enough.

It is now likely that the majority of Americans will get this virus. But slowing it down is still crucial. Why? Because the healthcare system has limited resources. We only have about a million hospital beds in America. We have well under a million ventilators. If millions of Americans get sick enough to need treatment, we will have a calamity on our hands. What will happen is a form of battlefield triage, where the doctors focus on trying to treat the young and allow the older people to die.

This is not theoretical. It is already happening in Italy, where people over 65 are being left alone on hospital gurneys to suffocate to death from pneumonia. They basically drown in their own sputum. There is simply not enough medical capacity to take care of them. The United States appears to be about two weeks behind Italy on the epidemic growth curve.

What do we need to do now? We need to cancel all large gatherings – all of them. You have probably seen that the N.B.A. has postponed the rest of its season. Other sporting events, concerts, plays and everything else involving large audiences in a small space – all of it needs to be canceled. Even if these events take place, do not go to them. No lectures, no plays, no movies, no cruises – nothing.

Stay at home as much as possible.Stay out of restaurants. I would cancel any travel that is not absolutely essential. Work from home if you possibly can. You may have to go buy groceries and medicine, of course, but make the trips quick and purposeful. Wash your hands assiduously after you have been in public places, for a full 20 seconds, soaping up thoroughly and being sure to get between the fingers. Sunlight and alcohol will kill the virus.

And please stop passing around statements on social media claiming that the situation is not serious or is being exaggerated. This is a national crisis, and conveying misinformation to your friends and family may put their lives in danger”

The second is about preparing for what to do if you get the virus:

Good advice from a nurse.. "if you should get the virus: I know we’re all tired of hearing/talking about it, but one thing I HAVEN’T really seen going around is advice for what happens if you DO get coronavirus (many of us will), we're only seeing advice for how to try to AVOID it.

Things you should *actually* buy ahead of time (Erm, not sure what the obsession with toilet paper is?): Kleenex, Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in 325 mg tablets, Ibuprofen (Advil) in 200 mg tablets, Mucinex, Robitussin or DayQuil/NyQuil, whatever your cough medicine of choice is.

If you don’t have a humidifier, that would also be a good thing to get. (You can also just turn the shower on hot and sit in the bathroom breathing in the steam). Also a good time to make a big batch of your favorite soup to freeze and have on hand.
If you have a history of asthma and you have a prescription inhaler, make sure the one you have isn’t expired and refill it/get a new one if it is.

You basically just want to prepare as though you know you’re going to get a nasty respiratory bug like bronchitis or pneumonia. You just have the foresight to know it’s coming.

For symptom management, use the meds I mentioned. For a fever over 101, alternate Tylenol and Advil so you’re taking a dose of one or the other every 3 hours. Use both cough suppressants and expectorants (most cough meds have both). Drink a ton, hydrate hydrate. Rest lots.

If you're sick, you should not be leaving your house except to go to the doctor, and if you do, wear a mask (regular is fine, you don’t need an N95). You DO NOT NEED TO GO TO THE ER unless you are having trouble breathing or your fever is very high and unmanaged with meds.

**90% of healthy adult cases thus far have been managed at home with basic rest/hydration/over-the-counter meds. ** We don’t want to clog the ERs unless you’re actually in distress. The hospital beds will be used for people who apamctively need oxygen/breathing treatments/IV fluids.

If you have a pre-existing lung condition (COPD, emphysema, lung cancer) or are on immunosuppressants, now is a great time to talk to your PCP or specialist about what they would like you to do if you get sick. They might have plans to get you admitted and bypass the ER entirely.

One major relief to you parents is that kids do VERY well with coronavirus— they usually bounce back in a few days, no one under 18 has died, and almost no kids have required hospitalization (unless they have a lung disease like CF).
Just use pediatric dosing of the same meds."

On the eve of Friday the 13th

Well, this has been a week. Like, it felt like a week already on Tuesday, and here it is Thursday, so it feels like two weeks.

My friend Teresa has been having a rough time lately; hers has been very hard because her six year old son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. And now this whatever is happening. And today is her birthday. When I was texting with her, and we were lamenting all the challenges she has faced in the last month, since mid-February, she said, "...so of course the world ends on my birthday!"

That might be exaggerating, but still--life feels kind of heavy and draining lately. On Monday, I had a meeting with my boss's boss. I already "knew" that he would be asking me to serve as department chair in the near future, and I wasn't wrong. So that feels like a heavy weight. Even though I am not bearing that load yet. I hired a new student to do music engraving--she would be putting Suffragette songs with their suggested tunes so they would be more easily read for singing at Hymn Sing next week.

On Tuesday, I was asked to become the curator of the musical instrument collection, which feels like another load. (Because it is one.) I had to meet with the head of Special Collections to make some initial decisions, and start thinking about some heavy decisions yet to come.

On Wednesday, I was busy with my board of MPMLA (I am the chair) making decisions about what to do about our conference which is supposed to take place in Norman, OK in mid-May. I did not sleep much on Tuesday night because this was weighing on me, but I had a solution ready for Wednesday morning, and everyone agreed. So we are going to still sponsor a meeting, but online either through Zoom or, Josie's suggestion, powerpoint with audio that can be mounted online and accessed at any time.

On Thursday, first thing, I emailed that announcement to our membership. and to the parent organization. Then the dominoes just kept falling. No general conference. Senior missionaries going home. No church meetings. No classes at BYU tomorrow. (I had JUST printed out the things that I needed for class tomorrow, while thinking "At least we will have one more in person class tomorrow. If we just have this one more class, the rest of the material I can just email them and send them powerpoints. But this one needs to be in person."--and then came the announcement.)

Speaking of announcements, I was getting all the news from my student Adam, who was hearing all the news long before I did--except that I DID hear the news, thanks to Adam. And then, after a half hour lag or longer, I would get an email. Adam was sitting at his desk, stunned. "Myrna, I am sorry--I am not working very effectively today." My response: "Neither am I." My new student Abi came in to start working on the music that we won't be using next week since we have been asked to suspend all events and activities. She is still going to do the work, and maybe we will be able to use the music one day.

And there is no more gamelan. All the School of Music ensembles are over for the semester.

Was it only a month ago that I was soooooo happy? Patrick had sold his trunk!! He had found a great job in Hawaii!! Josie had been hired full time at the library!! I felt like all my kids were somewhat settled. I am still happy about those things, mind you. Just feeling a bit anxious. Like I am living in some weird movie. I am sure you know the feeling.