Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: coronavirus

I’m (un)comfortably numb

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As the news about the coronavirus variants continues to pop up on a daily basis, I find myself becoming increasingly numb to it. I know why this is; it’s because my brain is shorting out and can’t take it. I’m so angry at the assholes who refuse to get vaccinated out of defiance (not those who can’t or POC who have reasons to be wary). We had a chance to get this thing on lock, but, no. We couldn’t be arsed to do that and I’m furious.

The fury is buried under layers of numbness, however, because I simply cannot. It’s the cumulation of the last four years and it’s my self-defense mechanism. I’m not proud of it, but I’m also not proud of how Americans are acting right now. It’s American individualism run amok and it’s a disgrace. I’m also pissed at the Republican leadership for fomenting the dissent strictly as a political move. A week ago, 50% of the Republican members of the House of Congress refused to say whether they were vaxxed or not. While shouting about how it was personal choice and no one got to tread on their freedom.

Riddle me this. If they truly believe that the vaccination is from the devil and to be refused at all costs, why won’t they say they’re not vaxxed? It’s simple: they’re vaxxed. They just want to keep their base riled up as a way to get at the Democrats. I don’t doubt there are some who are not vaxxed, but I’m pretty sure they’re fine with saying so. One of my Twitter people tweeted about a kid (well, late teens) posting on his Facebook that he was getting the vaccination, but don’t worry, he was still a Republican. This was in an article about the faces of the anti-vaxxers. I tweeted to her, “Tell me that the Republicans are terrible without saying the Republicans are terrible” because the vaccination should not be political.

Side Note: The CDC has not handled the messaging well at all. I understand when you make a message to the public, you want to be as definitive as possible. I once had a doctor (the best doctor) who, when I told her I smoked two or three cigarettes a day, she said it wasn’t that big a deal. I asked why the message around smoking, then, was that it was the very worst and if you inhaled one lungful of smoke, you were doomed to die before the age of thirty? She said because if doctors said one or two cigs a day was ok, the nuance would get lost and most people would take it to mean they could smoke a pack a day.

I saw her point, but there had to be people like me who would prefer the unvarnished truth. It was the same during the pandemic. At the beginning, the message was that masks were unnecessary for the hoi polloi. Supposedly, that was because they didn’t have enough masks for the health care providers. I call bullshit, but even if that was true, it was the worst way to get the message across.


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A mishmash of ideas floating in my brain

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I’m hot and swollen and just done with it all. In the last two months, we’ve had several weeks of 90+ temps, and a solid week of ‘feels like’ 102 and above. Yes, we get some 90 and 100 degree, but not like this. normally, I use my air three or four times a summer–it’s been putting in work this year. I’ also have my personal fan going on high 24/7 and drink tons of cold beverages. I’m wearing a tank top and shorts, and I’m STILL hot. To me, 65 is when it starts to get unpleasant for me and 90 is untenable. 100 and above? That just hurts my feelings.

Here’s the thing about the heat–it makes me very sleepy. However, I can’t actually sleep in the heat so I’m getting less sleep than usual. Then I spend the whole day being groggy and working at half-productivity. It’s a vicious cycle because no amount of cold can change the actual temperature outside. And, look, I realize that I’m very lucky. I have a house. I have air. I don’t have to be out in the heat. I don’t do physical labor. And still I hate the heat so much.

In addition, I have a multitude of swollen mosquito bites that are making me miserable. I am allergic* to them and they swell up, lasting for days if not weeks. They are tender to the touch and can sometimes be unbearably itchy. I try not to scratch them as it just makes it worse, but sometimes, nothing can stop that itch.

Pairing the heat with the mosquito bites means that I’m miserable. The temperature is currently climbing and is ‘feels like’ 94. It saps my energy and my will to do anything. Writing, my bread and butter, is interspersed with my bitterness at being miserable. The pandemic has been hell on my concentration and I don’t know when I’ll get my focus back. I am still able to get shit done, but it takes three times the mental energy.

I’m also mad about the pandemic itself. I can’t help thinking it didn’t have to reach this point, but that would have entailed changing the entire fabric of our society. It would mean we needed to have put our collective foot down years ago when the Republicans started going off the rails about science and not pretended that their viewpoint was equally valid. We’d actually need to go even further back and value education again, but I’m not getting into those weeds. Needless to say, it’s frustrating as hell to see all these people blithely ignoring science because of their feels, and what’s even worse, not learning a lesson from it.


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The end of the year is nigh

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The end of the year is right around the corner and I can’t stop thinking about what a strange year it’s been. Terrible in so many ways. The pandemic. The current president. The mingling of the two. I’ve been reading past posts I’ve done on my gaming throughout the year to get ready for my end of the year game awards I was playing Syndicate back at the end of February right before the soft lockdown. I can’t believe I played Syndicate this year. I feel like it was ages ago. I also realized I played a ton more games than I remembered playing. To be fair, most of them I only played for a few hours. But, still. Good Pizza, Great Pizza was this year? If Found? Code Vein? I feel as if I’m living in some alternate universe and I want to get out of it.

Anyway. I’m not here to talk about video games. That will be a post (or three) by itself later. I’m here to talk about how happy I am to see the end of this year and how weird that it’s simultaneously been the longest year and the shortest year ever. I have heard the same thing from several people so it’s not just me. February seems like such a long time ago, but it also seems like just yesterday. I can’t help thinking about that younger me and smile ruefully at how naive I was. Not just me, but everyone in America, really. So many of us thinking the pandemic would last a month or two. I was supposed to fly to NY in early July and pooh-poohed my mother at the end of February for suggesting I cancel it. I was also planning on flying out to Philly over Halloween and surely I would be able to do that!

Yeah, no. Looking back, the idea that I would be able to fly in July is unfathomable. I’m not beating myself up about it because very few people thought the pandemic would last as long as it did. Back in February/March, the general thought in America was that it would be a few months before life returning to normal or some semblance thereof. It isn’t our fault as our government handled it so fucking poorly in the beginning. Not only did they underplay how terrible it was, but their advice was contrary. Don’t wear masks and go about your business as usual! Do wear masks. Six-feet apart. But still buy things!

The worst is the president. He had done active harm and January 20th cannot come soon enough for me. Trevor Noah did a bit about all the things this president has done wrong concerning the handling of the coronavirus and I couldn’t watch the whole thing because it was both enraging and profoundly depressing. One thing that has been made crystal clear during the pandemic is how little certain lives mean to those in charge. All the talk about it only affecting those who were already at high-risk wore me down. Even if it were true (which it isn’t), don’t our lives count? Don’t we matter?

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Slouching towards a new normal

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It’s month…five? I think? of personal lockdown, and I’m pass the incandescent rage I was feeling a month ago. Now, it’s just resignation, almost fatal. A lot of numbness. My brain is still not able to be as productive as it was in the Before Times, but I just work around it. The outcome isn’t as good as it was before, but I’m trying to be forgiving of myself for that. I’ve set myself an ambitious goal to take me through the end of the year, and I don’t want to talk about it yet. It has to do with writing. I feel comfortable sharing that, but I’m going to keep the detalis to myself. I find that if I talk about a project too much as I’m doing it, I talk more than do.

This is a huge stretch for me, and I’ll be amazed if I accomplish it. I feel as if I need to set an ambitious goal, however, because I have no motivation otherwise. Wait. That’s not completely true. I feel motivated with my taiji weapons, but that’s it. I don’t want to talk to anyone other than a very few people, and I recognize that my depression is settling in. It’s not severe as it was before, but it’s there. I think back wistfully to the first two months of the pandemic when I was doing better than most people in general. I think it’s because I’m intensely introverted in general and work from home, anyway, so the physical ramifications weren’t that overt for me.

Now, however, I’m over it. I know there are people who are moving on as if the pandemic never happened. I can understand why because it’s draining. It’s awful to think about doing this for maybe a year or more. The thing is, though….Let me preface this by saying I understand that there are people who have to go out there for work, being on the front line, whatever. I also know that there are areas where the risk is low. Social (physical) distancing, masks, blah, blah, blah. I want to get that out of the way because I know it’s not everybody, but that said, fuck all y’all who are like, “100 people inside six foot dinner party LOL”. I can’t help thinking how much better things would be right now if we had taken this seriously from the start. I can’t blame people in general for the first few months because it was a shit-show from a governmental and public point of view. The government really fucked up how they presented it and dealt with it in the beginning. Now, however, it’s pretty simple. Don’t do anything that isn’t necessary. The more people and the smaller the place, the more risk. Masks help cut down on the risks. Don’t touch your face and wash your dang hands. Those are the basics.


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