This Corona Thing...
...is driving me up the walls.
For a couple days now I've been feeling a bit sluggish, and today I got the sniffle. The early stages of a cold, it feels like. I took a slow walk anyway. Fresh air. No sunshine. I've been taking C-vitamin doses throughout the day and eating healthy. Resting a bit. Reading a bit. Catching up on stuff by the computer but not too much.
I watched a quick video of people with Corona speak about how they were perceiving the disease, and that was great, two of the guys were older men but they didn't seem to have any problems at all. One of them worked a bit during noon and then rested during the afternoon. A teenage girl talked about how the cough was a bit annoying, but that the biggest problem was not being able to meet people, only being able to talk to them via phone. How she looked out the window and saw everyone pass by outside, knowing she couldn't be there herself... for two weeks. #FirstWorldProblems
So that didn't seem so bad. I braved up a bit and watched this video next, detailing the different stages of the virus. How it focuses mainly on your lungs, how they can fill with liquid as the blood cells rush to fight the infection, giving you breathing problems, that this is when the respirators come into play, and how some people recover within the span of a couple weeks yet those in more critical condition can be fighting for months before it goes over and yet only a fraction of cases are severe, so most importantly wash your hands and don't worry!
Now of course I can feel the phlegm slowly assemble deep in my throat. I imagine it's stuck there, and that there's something attacking my lungs that I can not reach or combat, and though I feel mostly fine on the outside - just a little tired - it's inside that the real battle's going on, and the results might come later. A cough. Trouble breathing. A blockage of phlegm that's impossible to clear out and ultimately results in a slow, panicky and agonizing death. Not to mention lasting scars and lung issues.
Man. The Internet. The bane of our confidence and good health sometimes. And yet other sources keep saying this is nothing worse than a regular cold - if that. The death tolls are nowhere near that of our last big plague, and even that was nothing compared to the Spanish Flu in the early 1900's, that killed fifty million.
Last year we had 550 deaths in Sweden during flu season. It's been higher. So far covid-19 has killed about twenty.
But still. This is supposedly just the starting phase. That number may rise. The risk is there. The uncertainty too. But whatcha gonna do? I'm attempting and hoping to heal up fast, from whatever this is, so I'll be retiring for the day now, and maybe tomorrow I'll be all good. Maybe not. Who knows. I'll keep ya'll posted.
Just for the record I'm writing this to free my mind rather than make any kind of viral sensation here. The 'How I survived Corona' titles have me slightly annoyed. Writing's but relief. If all but a paragraph or a leaf. For a moment I feel at ease, at peace, sincere like birds and bees in air, so there, so breath, so breath... good night.