One of my siblings has COVID. Tested positive on home test. Not immunocompromised. Complete regimen of shots. Thinks the priest presiding at grandpikni’s baptism may have given the gift. (Priest has since tested positive.) Ten years my junior. Says last night was terrible but today is not so bad. Going into quarantine. How can I speak to him of long COVID? I did speak of LONG COVID to my goddawta, also infected, telling her to have herself thoroughly checked out out once it was over. I shall remind her to keep track of her body, ongoing, make sure she knows what’s happening with those—seven was what I learned, but two, four or five have since been added—systems that keep our bodies functioning.

(Here’s a freebie: https://open.oregonstate.education/aandp/ Can’t say how good the content is, but it is easy enough to research the authors’ credentials.)

COVID is kind of like fleas. When I told my older son I had found fleas in this likl space, he told me that, never mind that no four legged creature has entered my house (aka apartment) since I have lived here, until I found out where said fleas were coming from, I would not get rid of them. Not very encouraging. Do I knock on all my neighbours’ doors, pencil in hand, doing a census of flea-bearing creatures in the units above, below and next to me? And mi luv mi likl privacy? How mi fi do dat?

 

Deforestation in Amazonia, seen from satellite. The roads in the forest follow a typical “fish bone” pattern. This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that “NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted“.

Most of us also know COVID’s brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren and other near family by now. They are called sub-variants and sub-sub-variants. What we are busy ignoring is that his large extended family, whose names and MOs we do not know, still lie waiting where he came from. We know where COVID comes from. When we clear cut forests and deprive creatures of habitat, we degrade the natural barriers of ecosystems. This means in plain English, I think, that nature has its way of keeping biological communities of organisms that socialize with one another in their respective physical environments, sort of like big families in their own yards. When we break down the fences and doors and everybody goes charging into everybody else’s house, we lay ourselves open to zoonoses, those clever diseases that can jump species.

More distant family are also dormant (we hope) in the melting tundra, waiting to have their way with us. I shudder when I think of it. How would I like it if strange people came banging down my doors, making holes in my walls, crawling trough de plumbing into mi likl baatroom, turfing me out of di house where mi  been livin all dis time??

Me, I like to carefully select those with whom I tangle up close. Don’t want no strange species at close quarters, gazing at me across the table, romancing me in my bed uninvited. So I must remember to at least give a money to Greenpeace, chant down SCOTUS for tying the EPA up in ever tighter knots, leave Bolsinaro to the Almighty… Who to manage di likes of im down ere?