March 18, 2020

Exhausted

Banality is below the fold;

Here's Coronachan and...Stewy. 



As long time readers know, I work in the shipping industry.

Well, I'm still working and quite hard. I have never seen so much toilet paper, bleach and bottled water in my life. The liquids just mentioned tend to be shipped 6-8 gallons to a box...which after a while becomes rather heavy when one has to lift 6-8000 boxes on a shift (and yes that is a pretty accurate count). 

My arms...they no wanna work.... 

More importantly...why am I still fat?

We're slammed, not just with survival supplies and home orders and HomeChef/Blue Apron type services but tons of stuff going to hospitals, military bases and such. Lots of businesses and govt. agencies are closed which is adding another layer of crazy.

One third of the personnel on my shift are out either caring for relatives or with "the flu" . We may be doing double shifts soon to cover for sick people.

Aside from a kidney stone(!),and exhaustion I seem to be doing fine but given this bug's insane gestation period, I wouldn't know if I had it, so I'm keeping away from the rest of the family. 

Given my job description I'm quite likely to get this Politburo Pestilence, but 1-3% morbidity (outside of Italy), while scary,  does not represent terrible odds all things considered. I'm worried, but not overly concerned about myself, however I do have friends with heart conditions, diabetes and other problems, and of course the folks are in their 80's. Fortunately my folks live deep in the woods down in NC and are fully stocked with hurricane supplies. 


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:34 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 274 words, total size 2 kb.

1 There's promising news of a treatment regime using a combination of cheap and readily available drugs (hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin) that together clear the virus from your system in a week.  Not a full double-blind randomised trial, but they ran the COVID-19 test before and after on both groups, and the group on both drugs were all virus-free by day 6.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Mar 19 07:41:00 2020 (PiXy!)

2 I've heard this too. I read somewhere that the Koreans were trying basically anything and this worked, so a group did a more controlled test in Italy and got promising results. I've also read that the Chinese have been using this for a while but didn't mention it. Sadly I lost the tab and I'm not gonna put something like that last bit in an actual post without a citation. 
One of the problems with these sorts of things is that in extremis, double blind studies become ethically questionable. (do you let the placebo group die when treatmentX seems to be working). Of course without that you don't know for sure and then if you rush it to market you're rolling the dice on how it will react with a wider variety of phenotypes. In the USA and Canada we've got the benefit of people from most everywhere on earth. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Mar 19 09:02:08 2020 (5iiQK)

3 Being fat while doing hard labor comes from suboptimal eating: at wrong intervals, eating potatos, and the like. Even not drinking enough can do it (your kidney stone story hints strongly that it may be a factor). Unfortunately, it's not easy to fix: performance food is more expensive, and you do need those calories. Eating at the right intervals is no easy task when not having a luxury of sitting in your office. I cannot presume to give advice over the Internet. But it's something that can be fixed if you find someone among your local friends who knows about food and metabolism and is not a new wave quack.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thu Mar 19 09:04:39 2020 (LZ7Bg)

4
 I cannot presume to give advice over the Internet

But....but it's the INTERNET. Shouting at people that they're wrong is what it's for.
Mostly

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Mar 19 09:36:39 2020 (5iiQK)

5 "if you rush it to market you're rolling the dice on how it will react with a wider variety of phenotypes"
The good thing about both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin is that both have been on the market for so long that the side effects are well understood on a global level.  In fact it's even been long enough that both are off patent and generics are made worldwide.  Azithromycin is one of the go-to antibiotics prescribed when you walk into a doctor's office with a bacterial based cold.  It's interesting that it has an effect on a virus as antibiotics usually don't. 

Doctors can legally prescribe them for COVID-19 today, the trials are mainly about confirming that hypothesis that they work, determining how effective they really are, and quashing any remaining malpractice liabilities and insurance reimbursement issues.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Fri Mar 20 20:22:35 2020 (BqCPe)

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