Real Heroes Stay Home, Netflix, and Chill, And Follow These 5 Tips For Stopping The Virus

Because saving my life could save yours.

I’ve done a complete 180 on this coronavirus thing. I used to be all, “Oh it’s just like the flu. I’m not worried. I’m not changing my habits. It’s not going to affect me.”

Yeah, I have a touch of that hero complex, except when smarts are called for instead of bravado. I don’t like to admit I’m afraid of anything, or that I’m rattled by public panic.

I keep a cool head. I’m known for it. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, I broke into the name partner’s liquor stash to get some booze for a pregnant mother’s contractions. She was freaking out on the 28th floor, holding up the trek down to the street when the elevators shut down.

She was being a bit of a princess. Wouldn’t move until somebody found her a drink. Don’t ask. Okay, I wasn’t preggers during the quake. I should talk, anyway, back to my story.

I knew where the boss kept a bottle in his bottom drawer. I dashed back up the stairs and found a cup, poured his best scotch into it, fed it to the woman, and got us moving out of the building. People said I had cojones for hijacking the boss’s booze.

Go me.

When the news of the virus got serious, I hit autopilot and took my hero stance again. I did some math, my worst subject in school, and figured the numbers were on my side. This was a month ago.

Today, I’m locking my doors and washing my hands every hour on the hour, even though I haven’t been outside in three days and haven’t seen a human in all that time.

I’m not panicked. But let’s just say COVID-19 has my attention.

I’ve gradually been shedding my hero cape as people have been shedding the virus onto one another.

Each day I read the news of country after country taking drastic measures to control the outbreak and see my country, the USA, sit with its thumb up its ass while our numbers grow and deaths pile up.

I learned last week I’m in the high-risk group. It really sank in a few days ago when I started to consider what I should do about upcoming social events. I’m dealing with a mild case of shingles, so I’ve been isolating myself at home for the past ten days, which has protected me up until now. Unless I’m carrying it, and I don’t know yet. There’s a point to this being all about me.

Because our country has squashed testing, I have no way of knowing if I’m negative. So far, my only symptoms are discomfort from shingles, a tip my immune system is depressed, meaning, due to my age and some COPD, I’d be a target for the virus.

I tell you that because, whether your parents, grandparents, older bosses, neighbors, and friends have my set of ailments, you know someone with a case of the miseries. Diabetes, heart disease, asthma, or some such.

And you, you healthy, fit young buck and buck-ess, can thumb your nose at the scary news and go about your business and kick up your heels. What’s a mild case of the flu, or, very likely, you won’t even know you have it? Do the math and chances are you won’t even get it, amirite?

And then you come in from an outing and get up close and personal with your aging friend or loved one, and unknowingly shed the virus all over them.

The coronavirus then takes the A Train, if it lands on me, to my lungs, already compromised with some COPD and asthma.

Because I take medication twice a day, chances are I’ll live another ten or fifteen years, but because you’ve decided you know better than the health experts, you’ve just handed me a possible death warrant.

Thanks a lot. I had plans for another decade of writing and hanging out with my peeps. But you do you, carrier of the virus. Because, you know, you’re not scared of something so small you can’t see it.

Let’s look at Italy, although I wish we didn’t have to.

Such a magical country. The architecture, the coastlines, the food, the wine, the people. All shut down and living a nightmare. Doctors caring for patients in hallways of hospitals because they’re out of beds. Doctors choosing which patients they leave to die because they don’t have enough ventilators and equipment to keep everyone alive. People posting on Facebook with dead relatives in the background, pleading for a funeral home to dispose of their loved ones.

And we got up the faces of bakers who wouldn’t make wedding cakes?

And even when the Italian doctors do treat someone, there’s no guarantee they can succeed.

Yesterday, a doctor caring for coronavirus patients died of respiratory failure.

Italy doesn’t move you? How about Iran’s open pits where they dispose of the bodies that can be seen from space.

Italy is in crisis because they have too many people getting sick all at once, stressing their health care system beyond capacity.

But get this. Just two weeks ago, Italy had the exact same number of cases and fatalities that the US does today. The trajectory of our cases is exactly the same as Italy’s. That is where we are headed.

Actually, that is where we are; we just don’t know it because we’re not doing the testing. But that is why the NBA canceled its season, and the NHL is meeting to discuss its next move. And the Met in NYC just closed its doors.

We have one million hospital beds in this country of 330 million people. Most of those beds are occupied with patients ill with other diseases and injuries. Few are empty at any one time. If our rate of the virus grows as projected, and we have three million cases in a month? Twenty percent will need hospitalization. This is a rough estimate at one percent infection rate. The world-wide rate is six percent, so I’m being conservative.

Do the math.

Then get out your 3-D printer and manufacture some hospital beds and ventilators because adding 660,000 sick people to narrow margins of resources will crush our medical care system. That is what is happening in Italy.

Every responsible medical professional is telling us to isolate ourselves, to social distance. It is the only way to stop the spread of the virus.

I’m on my knees, begging you to follow that advice so that you don’t infect me.

So I know that sounds like a purely selfish request. But if I get the virus, given my health history, chances are I will get seriously ill. I will end up in one of those scarce hospital beds.

You don’t know me; you don’t care about me. But you do care about your parents, grandparents, friend, or neighbor. Suppose one of them has a heart attack, and there’s no bed for them because I’m using it trying to recover from the virus that you gave me because you wouldn’t stay out of crowds or home from work when you could?

Puts another spin on it, doesn’t it? Kind of like, we’re all in this together. We have to take care of each other. We have to think of each other, whether we know each other or not. So please, rethink social distancing.

Here’s another newsflash. A doc interviewed on CNN said he has seen a cluster of patients sent to the ICU in their 40s and 50s, far below the age to be in the high-risk group. If he’s scratching his head saying, WTF, there’s one thing we can be sure of. We still don’t understand this virus, except we’re all at risk.

I listened to the president’s speech last night. I was not moved.

I was glad to hear there might be some economic relief because my daughter works for a small business that might fold. But it sounds as though his plan will help his friends with big companies. The loophole for the UK on the travel ban only makes sense when you recall he has a golf course in Scotland. Otherwise, a travel ban? I’m picturing a cluster of viruses laughing at Trump.

We’re already here, dude, they’re saying. Try and catch us.

Where was a plan for surge production of beds, ventilators, masks? Toilet paper for Pete’s sake. Instead of a travel ban, what about a plan for cooperation with other countries to try and stop this thing? Instead we get a blowhard who dismisses science talking about how it wasn’t our fault. It’s a “foreign virus.”

It’s not a “foreign virus.” Viruses don’t have passports.

They are equal-opportunity infectors. Under a microscope, you can’t tell if your virus was spawned in a cafe in Italy, a hockey game in Las Vegas, or a meeting in London (still scratching my head on the UK exemption. They have the highest number of cases in Europe next to Italy).

While we’re wasting time blaming Europe for giving us the virus, COVID-19 is eating us alive in our own country.

Unless we take measures.

I read a lot about not panicking. That’s good advice.

We don’t make good decisions from a place of fear. So let’s calmly decide our next moves. This is what I’ve learned from the latest medical updates.

But don’t rely on my list alone. Check my facts. Do your own research.

1. Follow the advice of medical professionals, NOT politicians trying to cover their asses.

2. Wash your hands when you touch a public surface. 20 seconds at least.

3. No handshaking. Wave, it’s just as friendly. No kissing on the cheek or hugs when you greet people.

4. Social distance. Stay 6 feet away from the nearest human.

5. Don’t go out in public unless it’s a life and death matter.

As a species, we have survived other scary pandemics with fewer resources and our current ability to do fast research and communicate across borders. We will get through this as we got through the Black Plague and the 1918 Flu.

I read many stories urging us not to write fear-mongering stories. Let me say this about that. Please don’t post anything that isn’t a verifiable fact. But I know from 80 years worth of experience that most people will not move without a painful stimulus. I didn’t. I can see my friends and neighbors reluctant to say they will cancel social engagements. I was them, until I wasn’t. Until the ugly truths hit me upside the head.

I’m not fear-mongering here. I’m kicking you in your bohonkus in case you think this pandemic isn’t about you. If it all goes away next week, feel free to stuff this article down my throat. I’ll happily gag.

So if ever there was a time for kindness and cooperation, this is it. What’s so bad about Netflix and chill? Well, I know, some economic help with the childcare, absent paycheck, food delivery. I know, I know. There are no easy answers. But my point is, there won’t be until we stop the virus.

My last word: Save my life, please, and stay inside. It might end up saving yours.