One year ago this month, after finding out about the virus on a Chinese travel site in December, 2019, I began collecting supplies for the coronavirus. Since my Grandmother was a prepper, she instilled that spirit in me to always be as prepared as possible. This is an update on the local situation and how people are responding to the ongoing pandemic.

Gone are the days when others would point and make fun of me for being one of the first to don an N95 mask and gloves. Almost everyone is wearing the less effective surgical masks as they ignored my advice to choose the N95 masks which were still in plentiful stock a year ago. The reason? No one was buying them...

The nose exposed

One thing I see a lot of are noses sticking out over the top of masks. You'd think with all of the information out there about the importance of keeping your mouth AND NOSE covered, that people would actually do it. But no, that's not happening, and I believe it's part of what's driving the high infection rates. In the face of repeated warnings, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I'm now double-masking, as the new mutations coming out of England and South Africa are reported to be easier to spread and as PM Boris Johnson NOW relates, are more lethal. Remember just a few short weeks ago when they said the British variant wasn't any deadlier? Can't trust them. This is why you have to do your own research. I know it's tiring to breathe through those things, but it's huge in combating the spread of this virus. If your nose is sticking out over the top of the mask, you're breathing in (and exhaling) God only know what into your lungs and out amongst the people around you. Common sense, right? Yet around here, common sense isn't so common...

Trumpers and other non-maskers

You can tell them by the MAGA hats they still wear, but Trump supporters are easy to spot due to their continued refusal to wear any type of mask. With over 400,000 dead here in America, that choice is almost unbelievable. Here, our main city and the surrounding suburbs are vast majority democrat, with Trump country starting out in the boondocks. We run into them mostly in the suburban malls and at jobs in the city. I remain astonished at their response to the pandemic and they will also have no one to blame when they get infected.

The other group of local concern are the immigrants. With an asylum-seekers national immigrant processing center nearby, our community has been FLOODED with people from Central America. They wander around largely without masks and live packed together like sardines, with many people jammed into one apartment. It's not unusual to find 15 people living in a small 2 bedroom unit, with an explosion of coronvirus among them. If there is a mask on their face (which is rare) it's often below the nose, or hanging under the chin, rendering them completely ineffective.

Among the first people to laugh at me for wearing a mask last year, were two women from Guatemala who called me names when I was at Walmart picking up supplies for the pandemic. A few weeks later however, the laughing was gone as one of their relatives were among the first to die of COVID in our area. Unfortunately for them, the N95 masks were long gone by then, so the only thing available was one had on a surgical mask and the other wearing just a bandanna. Sad.

Campus blues

Last Fall, one of my instructors contracted COVID while teaching an in-person class. Thanks God my course with him was remote and I almost never set foot on campus. The scary thing is that he now thinks he cannot infect anyone else because he "survived" the corornvirus and is now teaching an IN-PERSON classes for the Spring semester. He's one of these super-macho guys who ended up bringing the virus home and infecting members of his own family. I flat out refused to take him, so they gave me a replacement course that is online. He's one of these reckless guys who thinks COVID is no big deal because he only had mild symptoms, despite me telling him that it affects everyone differently. He doesn't realize that there are multiple versions, including a mild "S" version and a lethal "L" type. I feel for his students who are now at risk, since he's been seen in the office he shares with other instructors without a mask, oblivious to the fact that a person can be infected more than once. I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not.

The guards and staff no longer take the temps of people arriving at the college as a number of them have become infected. This sis something I warned them about when I heard the campus was to be opened up in September. When I went in to get my books, I was so bundled up, you'd have thought I was about to walk on the surface of the Moon! I got my books and got the hell out of there! Why this school is open at all is beyond me, it is an infection magnet, with around 100 cases already. There is almost no ventilation, so who-knows-what just gets blown around throughout the buildings. I have repeatedly called for All classes to be moved online and the entire campus CLOSED to no avail...

Wait or go for it?

The disturbing reports in the news of people dying after being injected with the vaccine, has some here wondering if they should take it, or wait. My thoughts are that unless you're a front line worker at risk of exposure, it might be wise to wait a bit until they find out why these injections are killing people. Most shocking was the group of elderly residents of the nursing home in Norway who all died after being inoculated for the virus. That should give everyone pause that more testing needs to be done before this thing is rolled out to the masses. What do you think?