#you: oh yeah btw I have a respiratory condition

[saltymongoose]

How do you think Deimos would act around an asthmatic player?

Would our beloved chainsmoker make a few sacrifices or cut down for his darling?

Nicotine withdrawal can be a bitch-

Honestly, he'd probably be horrified after he finds out. He's been smoking around you all this time when you have a lung condition!?!? And he didn't find out about it until now? He feels awful; he's supposed to protect you, how could he ever endanger you this way? (Especially when they don't even know if grunt medicines actually work on you.)

He's extremely apologetic, and if anything that's putting it lightly; he legitimately begs you to forgive him, hoping that you believe how sorry he feels even if you end up distancing yourself from him after this. (Even thinking about it hurts him, but he'll respect your wishes. If anything that's what he'd deserve for endangering your health.)

You're extremely understanding though, and very quick to forgive him and try to get him to stop apologizing. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know, you honestly just forgot to tell him at first, so he doesn't really have anything to be sorry for. You explaining this is met with visible relief from him (and you probably have to help calm him down, because let's face it, the thought of him accidentally hurting you probably had him on the verge of tears).

I do think he'd make an effort to cut back on his smoking as much as possible, perhaps even outright quitting. Smoking kills, and although he stopped caring about that in reference to himself (as morbid as it sounds), in your case it could be far more literal, and he is not willing to risk that.

You only figure out that he's trying to cut back once you notice how he never lights a cigarette up around you, and how he's been behaving weirdly from the withdrawal. (Ordinarily, he'd try to wean himself off of them, but the matter is far too important to half-ass so he goes from a pack a day to only having one or two at most. Which, as it turns out, is not easy to adjust to at all.)

Once you notice, you're quick to help him out; you give him pain medication for his headaches, try finding some nicotine patches or gum for him, and distract him whenever the cravings come up. You even let him cuddle with you at night, since that apparently helps with the insomnia and restlessness he gets from withdrawal.

He's immensely grateful for it, of course. He hated the process of cutting out so much of his habit, but having you there made all the pain of withdrawal worth it. You served as both something to focus on and a reminder of why he was doing this to begin with. After all, his addiction to you and your presence had always seemed to trump the one he'd had with nicotine.

(Also, since it's worth mentioning, the others aren't happy about this at all. Anger is their first response when it comes to how you've probably been damaged by Deimos' carelessness (they are, of course, ignoring the fact that none of them knew). And while some, specifically Sanford, are pleased that he's cutting back on the cigarettes, the fact that you're doing so much for him in the meantime makes them very jealous. Doc's considered pretending they don't have any medication for him, and Hank is wondering if he could possibly fake having withdrawal symptoms himself. Though he's never been addicted to anything, so he doesn't know how that would work. Sanford doesn't know whether to be proud of Deimos for finally going through with cutting back or envious at how he seems to have all your attention now, so he just settles on mild annoyance.)

[arcticdementor]

Yesterday, on the Denver Post (I think! It’s a Colorado Newspaper anyway) site I came across a headline that’s so wrong that wrong would be an improvement.

“US tops 500000 Covid-19 cases. Europe looks on in horror.” [For those correcting the “typo” via various means: I think they meant NEW cases.  The article was muddled, but that was the feeling I got. The headline was JUST that.]

Do I need to break it down?

Half a million cases means, of course, a half million tests positive right now. Which means we have almost 0.2% of people positive for a respiratory virus.

…

Let’s then drill down into cases. What the hell are cases, actually? I bet you most people reading that headline think cases are deaths, or at the very minimum hospitalizations.

I want to point out right now even if we had a half million residents in hospitals right now, all it would mean was that the hospitals would not be laying off medical personnel, and perhaps it would cut down on the tik tok dance time for some nurses, but still no, let’s be clear cases aren’t hospitalizations.

And cases aren’t deaths — I have run into people who thought this too — and sure, if we topped half a million deaths it would be bad. Very bad. It would be about five times the mortality of a normal “bad flu year.”

Which when all is said and done would still leave us rather far of “condition zombie apocalypse.”

Why precisely Europe would be looking on in horror at that kind of numbers is something else. But of course, it depends on who in Europe they asked, which countries in Europe, and actually what the hell they mean by Europe or how Europe even heard about our “cases.”

Let me start by saying I have family in Europe. Despite their marked tendency to call me when there are fires in California, because this is “near” Colorado and therefore I must be at risk, I have yet to get a panicked phone call asking me if my sons — even my son who is a medical professional — are okay, or if I — who am notoriously hampered in the lung department and also have a tendency to catch everything that comes through town or even waves from the next town — am being careful, take all precautions, etc.

In fact, while my father in law asks us in every call if health professional son is okay and is taking all precautions, my family in Europe is more worried about whether we all have jobs, because of what this insanity is doing to the US economy. If they mention the dread plague from China, it usually starts with “I don’t understand why the US seems to be so scared. This is what is scaring our own government/s, that they think the US knows something special.”

Uh uh. To an extent, they are in fact looking on in horror, and wondering if we should have put anti-psychotics in the water a while back. In fact, their tone reminds me exactly of the tone I heard around me in 1968 (about the earliest I remember hearing the US mentioned) and it has this undertone of “Whatever the hell is going on in America, can you guys fix it already?” To the extent they are worried about the bug in their own countries, it is because they have this, totally unwarranted, belief that the Americans are possessors and learners of secret knowledge, and that if we are going ape shit, there must be something they aren’t seeing.

…

Who in hell is horrified? Poles? Swedes? Spaniards? Europe, despite the EU is — for purposes of culture and communication — not a version of the US with the countries instead of states. Europe, fragmented into languages and dialects and broken into very, very different cultures (yes, the US has very different cultures per state and region, too, but not that different. For those differences you need to marinade in insularity for a few centuries) is a fragmentation of peoples most of whom until the EU would need a passport (for the cat) to swing a cat, and would need a translator to tell their neighbor to duck while the cat is swung.

If Europe is horrified at our number of cases, exactly why are they so?

Is it because they have no idea that our population is somewhere between 300 million and 350 million? Or is it because their governments lie to them and tell them they’re doing much better? Or is it because their entire information about our country comes via CNN who makes up shit to make it seem like we’re all dropping dead in the streets and then is spun by THEIR individual press, in their individual countries who firmly believe the government in the US has some control over the press, and therefore what they hear via CNN is dressed up to “best case scenario?”

Yeah, I imagine Europe (Whoever the hell is meant by that) looks on in horror at the US. But they also look down in horror at our crime situation, which they believe to be something out of Fast and Furious, our gun ownership (speaking of fast and furious) because — I swear I’m not making this up — they believe we all fight duels in the streets all the time, and our health (in general, not just winnie the flu) situation, because they believe that our hospitals refuse to treat the uninsured, and therefore we’re all piling up dead at the door to the hospitals. (Which of course means they’re horrified. As many decades as they think we’ve been shooting/murdering/refusing care to each other, not to mention the fact that they take those idiotic “hunger” surveys from the Obama years (remember, when they asked if you ate everything you wanted to that day and took a no to mean you were suffering from hunger. (To be fair, most of us are dieting, so that too is not even wrong.)) and assume we’ve been starting for decades. I mean, at this point they probably think the last half million Americans just fell down dead.)

And given the silliness of that picture above, and the bizarre ideas of the trolls who regularly come here to school us about what is “really” going on in America, bring up the most interesting question of all: Who the f*ck actually cares if Europe is “horrified”? They neither pay our taxes nor are in any state to make war on us. They have nothing we want, and know nothing about us and why PRECISELY should we give a d*mn if they’re horrified, elated, jumping for joy, or picking their nose?

Of course, this plays on the insecurities of the pseudo intellectuals with journalism degrees, who have been taught that Marxist Europe is the be all and end all, the pattern card of perfection of which we will forever fall short. They’re afraid that some random European will tell them how backward America is.

I have a solution: leave. Go to Europe. Leave there. Only before you go give up your citizenship, because when you try to come back — and you will. It will in fact take tops 5 years — I want to be able to make sure you’ve learned better.

But this is the kind of nonsensical headline people are being scared with. The ridiculousness is at a point some survey found that Americans thought “10%” of Americans had died of Covid-19.

…

So– what in actual hell? Why do people believe that ten percent of the population have died?

Well, it’s the news. In the few times I had to read a local paper for some reason, or was trapped in front of streaming news, or got input from the MSM in some way, they always fudge “cases” with “cases actually needing treatment” — the second is a fraction of the first — and “deaths” which is a much, much smaller fraction, and even that inflated by the fact that they are counting people dead while positive for covid, instead of people who died of COVID-19.

And always, always, our media sneeringly implies that other countries did much better/are doing much better. Even if they were — they’re not — when is the last time they told us we were so much harder-hit by the flu or the common cold than oh, Spain, and therefore Spain is better? Never?

But no, they’re not. In fact if you take away the cases in places that are hives of humanity, like NYC or Chicago (where being ventilated with a shot through the chest causes COVID-19) our cases are right in the middle of the pack for north European and Scandinavian cultures, whether they locked up or not. Which makes perfect sense, of course, because what actually matters is not the measures but the culture. And in the US, the chances of you coming cheek to jowl with humanity is zero or close to it.

Which, btw, bring us to “But Korea” well, yes, Korea — and other Asian countries — had to do a lot more control and be a lot more proactive because they live in density and proximity and social conviviality that would in fact make most Americans start singing “don’t stand so close to me.”

Look, guys, if this virus hasn’t actually utterly depopulated North Korea? No big.