Our RV Adventures

TEOTWAWKI  (The End Of The World As We Know It)

Well, it now looks like Brandi won’t start working from home until next week, so it looks like my Jan will be home this weekend. As of right now, Landon is out of school until April 10th,

Jan and I have our annual Doctor visits next Tuesday morning, that is, if they don’t get canceled. Jan also has her yearly mammogram that afternoon, and she got a voicemail this afternoon saying her appointment is still on. But I guess we’ll see what next week brings.

One thing I’m going to ask my doctor for is a prescription for Chloroquine. This is one of the two drugs that, according to doctors in other countries, seems to slow down and even eliminate the WuFlu (or Kung Flu, which now I like better) from the body, even after you’re showing symptoms.

The other drug is Remdesivir, an antiviral that’s been around for about a decade,

I’m hoping my doctor will give me a backup prescription for the chloroquine since I’ve taken it before. Twice, in fact.

Chloroquine is an anit-malarial drug that’s been around for a long time. Long enough that I took in it the early 60’s when we were living in Colombia, S.A. I got a mild case of malaria, and the chloroquine seemed to have cleared it right up. But apparently, not quite.

In 1967 when I was living in North Alabama, I started having occasional seizures, with chills, shortness of breath, and sometimes a slight fever. But when I finally went to a doctor, they had no idea what was causing them.

And it was not until I was down in Florida later that year that I again went to the doctor. And after I described my symptoms, he asked if I had ever had malaria. When I said yes, he said, “Well you’ve got it again.” A couple of months on chloroquine and I’ve never had another problem.

When I asked the doctor why they hadn’t been able to diagnose it up in Alabama, he laughed and said, “I imagine they don’t see much malaria in north Alabama. We see it a lot down here.”

On another drug note, if you do think you have the Kung Flu, it might be best to not take ibuprofen (Advil,Motrin), naproxen (Aleve, Naprosyn), or even aspirin. All of these are NSAIDS (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), and doctors in Europe are finding a lot of bad side-effects when NSAIDS are used for the Kung Flu.

So for that reason, I bought a big bottle of Tylenol when I was out and about today. Needless to say, Tylenol is not an NSAID.

Remember the H1N1 pandemic of 2009-2010? Remember all the empty store shelves, closed schools, stores and restaurants, canceled sport seasons, and ‘sheltering in place’?

Did you blink and miss it, like I apparently did?

Well, W.H.O. declared H1N1 (Swine Flu) a pandemic in June 2009. And by the time it faded away about a year later, 60 million Americans had been infected, over 270,000 people were hospitalized, and 12,469 deaths were recorded. In fact, over 1,000 Americans had died before the U.S. government ever declared it a National Emergency. And worldwide, about 200,000 people died.

As of right now, worldwide, there are about 200,000 known cases of Kung Flu, with about 8,000 deaths recorded. Again, that’s worldwide.  Right now in the U.S. we’ve got about 6000 cases with approximately 100 deaths.

And of course, remember that about 80.000 Americans died in 2018 from the plain old flu.

So when is a pandemic not a pandemic?

So far I’ve not been able to find any definitive reason on any of the medical sites why this pandemic might be worse than that pandemic. Or even if it really is.

And in the FWIW department, research in China seems to show that people with Type A blood are likely to be more vulnerable to the new virus, while Type O people seem to be more resistant.

Finishing up, Jan and I were extremely shocked and saddened to hear that our long-time friend Charles Yust has been hospitalized after he collapsed and suffered a traumatic head injury and multiple major brain bleed. According to his wife, Chris, he is not doing well.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Chris and Charles, and we hope for the best.

Thought For The Day:

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