Covid-19. A heads up.

[DCatSea]

Went to the boat yard yesterday. Hardly a soul around, a few recreationalists and a couple of pro-watermen trying to finish up winter work before launching.
Got a couple of small things done - fixed a dodgy fuel line (I hope), fitted new transducer, fitted new zincs, faffed around a bit inside and decided the saran wrap comes off next week and aggravated my torn rotator cuff. Went home - washed a couple of Naproxin Sodium (Aleve) down with Elijah Craig's Bourbon and fell asleep.
Woke up this morning when my physiotherapist called to say "heard you'd messed your shoulder up again", which freaked me out, so I had a breakfast bourbon and read the Washington Post, which freaked me out even more.

Will watch old Monty Pythons tonight - to hell with the news.

Aaaah! Living in the fast lane at last.

[DesertAlbin736]

Will watch old Monty Pythons tonight - to hell with the news.

Sounds like a great idea!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbR1J_4ICg

Arrrrhhh! 'Twill be a Dark & Stormy night as it were, sez I.

https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drin ... nk-recipe/

[jashmen]

Greetings from New Jersey! Glad to hear so far people here are surviving. Looks like boating here will remain open, until a-holes start rafting up in large numbers. Personally, I say leave it open and fine the hell out of those who violate distancing orders and give the money to the medical workers. Our boatyard has started launching, but are down on employees. Hopefully I will be ready in a week or so, if the weather would cooperate.

It's kinda hard to see all the people screaming we need to reopen everything. My wife is a regional HR director of our hospital system. It has not been a fun few months. It makes me scared every time she heads into the hospital. Thankfully for us, she does not do direct patient care, but does work with those that are. She ask me if I thought she was a "front line" worker. I told he she was the guy in the trench reloading the guns. She liked that. It made her smile after losing team members to this. Hopefully I can get Dragonfly's Rest floating for her.

[DesertAlbin736]

Jashmen,

Where in NJ? I'm a Jersey Shore native myself, first 15 years of life in Barnegat, 39 miles north of Atlantic City.

The bit about Monty Python was an attempt at bringing some levity in this dreadful situation.

[RobS]

jashmen, kudos to your wife, she is the commander in chief of her army of healthcare workers.

[jashmen]

Jashmen,

Where in NJ? I'm a Jersey Shore native myself, first 15 years of life in Barnegat, 39 miles north of Atlantic City.

The bit about Monty Python was an attempt at bringing some levity in this dreadful situation.

I live just north of Barnegat in Bayville.

[Nancy]

Jashmen, many thanks to your wife!

[DesertAlbin736]

Bayville is close, between Forked River (pronounced 'Fork-ed', not 'Forkt') & Toms River. Have a younger half brother in Manahawkin who works as a maintenance/cleaning guy for a doctor's office. I went to Southern Regional HS in Manahawkin through sophomore year before we moved to upstate NY.

Also kudos to your wife.

[hetek]

My wife works in the local hospital that was one of the first, if not the first, to start getting COVID-19 patients in Suffolk County, NY. As a hospital employee they have access to testing. Well, she got tested and came home and said "I'm positive".

She said that she tested positive that she had it, but is now over it. They want her to donate plasma now for the antibodies.

And here I thought that her crankiness and complaining was just her being her usual self. Guess I was wrong. No cough, no fever, no loss of smell or taste... just irritable.

And as the spouse of a hospital employee, I have access to testing and took full advantage of it once I heard about my wife. The results: "Not detected". Yay!!!

Unfortunately, Another employee at the hospital was not so lucky. She had it too and brought it home to her elderly mother. The outcome for the mother was not good.

[hetek]

A follow up...

For those that know the NY Metro area, you'd know that the eastern half of Suffolk county is known for the summer homes of the New York City folk. Think: The Hamptons.

So when the Governor issued the "stay at home" order, which "home" do you think they picked? The expansive and/or waterfront estate in the Hamptons or the much smaller NYC apartment?

I work in the Hamptons and it's looked more like the hustle and bustle of the 4th of July rather than the slow month of April.

I don't really have to think that hard to find out where "patient zero" for Suffolk county came from. Thanks a lot.

[DCatSea]

Jon,
Great Kudos and Thanks to your wife for being part of the A Team; all responder and medical staff are doing a phenomenal job under very trying circumstances. So thanks to her and hers. We have 4 (3 younger, 1 older) family members in the medical profession, and all are taking this very seriously.

I am really astonished by the number of boat people who don't seem to be that worried by this thing. I was at our MD winter quarters yesterday, and really happy that there were few people around, all well apart from each other and nearly all wearing appropriate face covers (yes, even outside). On the other hand, I swung by the new marina and was surprised by the number of people out, with virtually no-one wearing face covers and socializing at close quarters. A full range of ages was represented.

I know socializing is part of the marina thing, and that that social distancing, covering up, and all the other pandemic measures are a real pain in the arse, but I'm sure you and your wife would back me up when I say that just by hanging around the boat and marina doesn't guarantee immunity or reduce ones ability to be a "Typhoid Mary". This just makes the already difficult First Responder/Medical professions more risky that usual.

I also know that we all (me included) REALLY want to be a few miles offshore away from the risk of pandemic, but I also know that this damn thing is going to take a while to come down to anything approaching normalcy. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not as optimistic as usual.

At this stage of the game, it's not so much getting infected yourself, (Darwin was right?) but who you are going to infect by being in unprotected close proximity to others.

[DesertAlbin736]

We've pretty much scrapped our plans to trailer our boat on a cross country road trip for the summer (see our write up in February/March issue of BoatUS magazine) where we were going to do the 'Triangle Loop' thing. At the rate things are going driving across the plains states on the way to western NY state doesn't sound like a good idea. Kind of resigned to staying home inside in air conditioning & swimming in the pool this summer, maybe occasionally taking the camp trailer up to cooler forests in higher elevations of northern AZ to camp out in the woods for a few days at a time. Our case & death count for AZ is up to 9,305 cases & 395 deaths. The state is going to partial reopening as of May 12th. That's up from 152 cases back when this thread started.