Month: March 2020

A novel virus requires a novel defense. So Happy Wife thought to re-purpose B-cups from old bras into face masks

The cup goes on first, then over that she fastens an N95, slips on gloves and a full-length gown and only then does she enter the exam room to greet the patient. That’s on days when she must go into the office for the unavoidable physical exam. Other days she works from home (like I do), providing more impersonal health care via Telemedicine.

There are ~70 >100 cases in the state of Alaska, ~42 ~50 in Anchorage. 1 in Seward, where we are now, a ghost town like so many other places worldwide. The livelihood of many of our neighbors here relies on summer tourism. Today on our beach walk we saw Paul and Linda, our neighbors to the south who run a B’nB, walking their dogs. We chatted a while, keeping our distance. I asked how bad their cancellations are so far. Paul appeared crestfallen, turned the pockets of his Carharts inside out, “It’s like money falling out of my pockets.” All along their policy had been cancel 90 days or more in advance and get a full refund. “We didn’t make that policy for times like this,” Linda said.

Tomorrow is HW’s 60th birthday. Welcome to the most vulnerable class! Septuagenarians and older are really the most vulnerable ones, but technically speaking we’re both cardholders now. Am I concerned? Sure, but I’m not frightened, not yet anyway. But if anything were to happen to her… I don’t know, I don’t even want to think about that

Twenty seconds from first soap to paper pull. 👍

As a molecular biologist of sorts it astonishes me that this worldwide disruption to human affairs was caused by a measly virus 29K bases long. To put that in perspective, there are single genes in the human genome almost ten times that long.