Another Of My Illness Stories

As a person who has his own personal medical issues that are making him rather nervous in his life right now, I am certain that you will understand why I am writing a column such as this one.

Everything seems to be going so much quicker now respecting what is going on around the world. Obviously, just consider the number of people who have been identified as picking up the horrific disease in so many different places.

Take a look at the interesting early paragraph of a story I just saw a recently that caused me a lot of trouble:

“The coronavirus crisis inevitably prompts comparisons with the last epidemic that shook the world: the Spanish flu. Although the Great War overshadowed it in the public consciousness, this outbreak killed at least 30 million people worldwide – with some estimates even putting the figure at 100 million from 1918 to 1919. But are the two epidemics really comparable?” (Stéphanie Trouillard, France24.com, March 20, 2020) 

If that in itself does not make one quite upset, at least the last paragraph of the article should make one feel a little bit better:

“We learned a lot of lessons from each of these epidemics, with a much more efficient monitoring system – and we’re even better prepared today,” Rasmussen said. “Let’s not create more fear; the current state of affairs already provokes enough anxiety. It’s a different world now from the one that saw the Spanish flu. Things are done on a different scale now, with much more research and a much more efficient approach to dealing with diseases. There are great reasons for hope.”

The reason why I wanted to post the remarks above from my perspective is to confirm what I believe that you have been dealing with as well. There are so many stories coming out about different topics respecting this disease these days. Some of the stories talk about one side of a matter while the other stories deal with the other side. Your position, like mine, is which article should I accept when both of them seem to be so well researched and written.

Clearly, there is a lot of research going on by scientists around the world to come up with some kind of a medical treatment to provide assistance for citizens everywhere. I thought that I saw recently that there are two or three possible solutions that have been discovered but unfortunately it may take quite a bit of time, at least a year, for any one of them to be approved for usage anywhere.

Just consider the stories that I have read recently and what was written in them. What do I mean by recent… How about the last day or two:

--the US and Canada are effectively closing down their border crossings except for a limited group of those who require it to remain open for business purposes

--we are told to live now in “social isolation” to help provide us with protection against illness

--effectively universities in many countries are now educating their students in the computer world since classes cannot take place in classrooms at this time

--500,000 people this week in Canada sent in applications for unemployment benefits

--job losses in the US in April could go up to 5 million people

--many business operations are closing down for at least two weeks because of the medical situation here, with many of them at least providing financial assistance to their employees during this timeframe

--grocery stores are taking specific action to make sure they can remain open in order to provide clients with the food that they require, especially now when so many people go into the stores to get food for fear of some catastrophe happening

--the banks are changing how they do business and many of their employees may be losing their positions one day soon if some of their facilities are closed down

--the stock markets worldwide have done extremely poorly in a very short period of time going up and down like a yo-yo over the past week

--the US may well provide over a trillion dollars to citizens and business operations to help them concerning the disasters that are going on. Canada is talking about $100 billion. So far.

I could go on and outline more of the stories but I am certain that you understand what I am talking about just by looking at the ones that I have mentioned.