Jefferson City, Missouri: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 8888: Brown Paper Bags and a Jug o' Green Sanitizer

 

Brown paper bags with N95 masks inside. November 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 Over time, since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 (presumably), I've retired various of my cloth masks as they've shrunk in the dryer (whoops) or otherwise just seemed too tired to carry on. Or better said, put on. 

Awhile back, when they were plentifully-available at the Big Box pharmacies, I collected a supply of the government-subsidized N95 masks. But I didn't use these unless I had to because they:

1. Are kind of uncomfortable;
2. Are awkward to don and to take off;
3. Mess with my hair in the back of my head; and
4. Do not lend themselves to attachment to and hanging from a lanyard, which I prefer to use at times when I don't need the mask on, such as when I'm outdoors or going to a restaurant (I don't want to place my mask on a restaurant table and I don't want to scrunch it up into a pocket or purse - these kind of defeat the purpose of having a mask to begin with, given the dubious safety of surfaces it would touch)

When my hostess came down with COVID, the cloth masks weren't going to cut it. I pulled out my supply of N95 masks to wear inside the house. 

I had a limited supply, so I looked up how to reuse them, which is where the brown paper bags come in. 

The N95 bags are reusable, but the best practice is to:

• Drop the used mask into a brown paper bag;
• Close the bag; and
• Let the bag sit for a week. 

I like this North Dakota guide to healthcare staff because of its use of both "don" AND "doff." To don a mask feels fairly contemporary, but to doff one's mask is charmingly anachronistic, to wit: 

The mask can be placed on a clean paper towel or in a breathable container [e.g. a brown paper bag] when removed for breaks/eating.

Best storage for reuse during a shift would be a labeled breathable container to prevent contamination when redonning and doffing.

Continue to practice social distancing.

Hand hygiene should be done after doffing and before donning and again after donning.

I also bought a giant bottle of green sanitizer and a demi of disinfecting wipes. 

Giant green bottle of sanitizer. November 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

Medium bottle of sanitizer and a demi of disinfecting wipes. Credit: Mzuriana.

While none of these would protect me from zombies or vampires, they were my weapons of choice against my hostess' COVID. 

They seemed to have been successful. We're both in the clear now.

Mobile, Alabama: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 8888: A Mental Reset

 

Mural, Navi Mumbai, India. Source: Think Global Health

My old assumption:  The pandemic will end.

My current assumptions: 

COVID, because it is a virus, and (arguably) a life form, has an innate drive to survive. On top of that, COVID seems to be extraordinarily talented at adapting to new obstacles to achieve its mandate to survive, thrive, and reproduce. I am reminded of an old article from the Atlantic Monthly, which considers new-at-the-time thinking on infection in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the series, A New Germ Theory, which focuses on the work of scientist Paul Ewald. Pretty damn fascinating, which is why I have remembered it all these years. 

A core concept from the series: 

"Say you're a disease organism -- a rhinovirus, perhaps, the cause of one of the many varieties of the common cold; or the mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis; or perhaps the pathogen [for] diarrhea. Your best bet is to multiply inside your host as fast as you can. However, if you produce too many copies of yourself, you'll risk killing or immobilizing your host before you can spread. If you're the average airborne respiratory virus, it's best if your host is well enough to go to work and sneeze on people in the subway.

"Now imagine that host mobility is unnecessary for transmission. If you're a germ that can travel from person to person by way of a "vector," or carrier, such as a mosquito or a tsetse fly, you can afford to become very harmful. This is why, Ewald argues, insect-borne diseases such as yellow fever, malaria, and sleeping sickness get so ugly. Cholera uses another kind of vector for transmission: it is generally waterborne, traveling easily by way of fecal matter shed into the water supply. And it, too, is very ugly."

 

A conjecture: There are ugly surprises ahead for just how pernicious this virus is in its skill at insinuating itself in the nooks and crannies of our neurological and cardiac systems, irrespective of the mildness or severity of a person's infection(s). We already know it goes into these areas. We already know it does have some effects, for some people, some of the time, to a greater or lesser degree, for a longer or shorter duration. 

A wild-ass thought experiment: As an almost-life-long science fiction fangirl (and before that, before I knew science fiction existed, a fairy tale and mythology fan) ....... 

Sometimes I wonder if any ancient pandemics such as this, created by novel-at-the-time viruses, changed the course of our anthropological, i.e. biological/sociological/intellectual trajectories, as a consequence of mutations that occurred from viruses that wormed their way into our brains, modifying them. 

In other words, are we who we are today (well, who we were in 2019), as a result of one or more ancient novel viral inundations?  And if the answer is yes, then wouldn't such a phenomenon be possible again?

Mobile, Alabama: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 8888: The Free Tests Delivered

 

Free rapid COVID tests from US government. March 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

To add to the future archives of COVID-19 history, I bring to our societal photo album the four boxes of free rapid tests. Each box holds two tests. 

 

 

Screenshot of COVIDtests.gov on March 15 2022

 

 

I have taken one of the tests. Negative. 

By the way: The instructions suck because of inconsistencies or weirdness in style, confusing punctuation, and a red-herring alert. 

To wit: 

A.      You may have Test Set 1 or Test Set 2 in the package. Please follow proper steps based on the specific set you received. 

There is no written guidance to tell you which test set you have. To discern which you have, you've got to look at the content images and then the contents of your package. It would have been so simple to state: Test Set 1 has a prefilled tube. Test Set 2 has an empty tube and a bottle of solution. And then the images can support the text. 

B.      Instructions for Test Set 2: Open the package, take out the COVID-19 Test Card in Pouch, empty Tube, sealed Solution and the Swab. 

So you've got a combination of verbal commands and also a series of nouns. And the weird capitalization of the nouns. A lack of articles before the nouns. And silence on the screw-on top for the tube.

This would have been much clearer: Open the package. Remove the contents: a test stick (inside a plastic pouch), an empty tube, a screw-on top for the tube, a bottle of solution, and a cotton swab.  

 C.    Weird information about the TWO EDGES in the empty tube: Please look carefully, there are two edges on the empty tube. Then squeeze the sealed solution completely into the empty tube. 

What? Why are the two edges important? The sentence following this alert gives no guidance. It isn't until after the images that they become relevant. 

This would have been much clearer: Squeeze all of the solution from the bottle into the tube. There are two edges in the side of the tube. Look at the edges in the drawing. The solution in the tube must be at Edge 1 or higher. If the solution is below Edge 1, the test result might be invalid. 

Finally: The technical writers and their supervisors have not followed the principles of plain language. When a target readership is the general public, plain language is a must. Not because the general public lacks intelligence. It's because, in the case of the COVID-19 self-testing kits, most members of the general public have neither experience in lab testing nor exposure to the clinical vocabulary. 

The INTENDED USE section of the test instructions seems directed to health care professionals, based on the polysyllabic clusterfuck in same, in addition to the:

• Use of third person in reference to the test takers; and
• Reliance on passive voice. 

However, the technical writers change the voice in the FAQ to second person ("you" form), which is an improvement in readability for us regular folks. 

 

Lotsa tubes. Exhibit name: Chubasco. Tohono Chul, Tucson, Arizona. April 2019. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Word of the Year: Joy 6: Color

 

Colorful coverlet, Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

 

At the thrift store, a cotton coverlet called to me from atop sedimentary layers of cloth.

The colors!

Sweet 'n juicy cantaloupe, butterscotch hard candy, periwinkle blossoms, hot-skinned August tomatoes.

My spirit soaked 'em up like a parched plant does water.

I felt deeply satisfied. Joyful. I even sighed, I think.

I brought the coverlet home. I shook it out, let it fall floaty-like onto my airbed, and smoothed my hand over the slightly nubby surface. I'm pretty sure I sighed again. These colors, like a dawn that cracks a crevice of red-orange-yellow light from behind the dark.

A few weeks later, I saw a flash of a young woman on the street in a summer dress, ostentatiously, outrageously, loudly, flowery colorful. So fresh! Ah! 

And then, and then ...... when I stepped into a Target, I saw more splashy, happy, joyful colors!  A produce stand of a summer's first fruits. 

 

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

The colors bring hope that the end of a long sepia COVID winter is coming. They bring joy.