Are OMICRON rates soaring in senior housing? Public housing?

Our senior residence building is awash in COVID. It happened suddenly and proliferated exponentially. I doubt if anyone is reporting it any more.

The lady upstairs, called Kathy, died. Don’t know how many others. Everybody hunkering down.

A friend at the local tavern a couple blocks away died on Christmas day – Greg Fitzgerald. One of the nicest guys I ever met. Never heard a bad word in the twelve years I knew him, was always considerate yet distant. Didn’t engage in rumor or name calling. Half African, half Irish. A Viet Nam veteran.

Over the holidays I noticed people being less careful, a lot less careful, maybe intuitively thinking it may be their last holiday.

Steve and I think about it a lot. We’re both three times vaccinated; after contracting the virus end of 2020, beginning of 2021 when vaccines weren’t available yet. Steve’s improving after a long haul and is now in cardio-rehab. I’m still rehabbing on my own.

With this new wave of Omicron my confidence in seeing this to the other, brighter side of life not death dwindles.

We both have massive cold symptoms, aching joints, fatigue, extreme coughing. I tested negative at home. One day a low grade fever 99.8 in the morning. Wasn’t watching it. Maybe it went up at night like it does whenever I have a virus. Hot, cold, really cold, my skin feels like the inside of a refrigerator. When I turn the heat on, it’s too hot after 5 minutes; I can’t tolerate it. I’d call that a bi-polar temperature or something like that.

So while Steve does his cardio-rehab I’m going to do one of my own.

Lowering my stress level so the virus doesn’t recognize the familiarity is my plan. So Bye-Bye American Vi until I’m ready to rise from my self-imposed exile.

My usual cocoon upon examination has a multitude of holes, which spells weakness.

Communion is on my mind and my spirit slithers towards it like a moth to a lamp. The moth dies in five days with or without the lamp, so it’s a reminder, alert if you will, to take measures. I’ve been dancing all around it, organizing the hell out of my life and surroundings. How does one make a castle out of seven hundred and sixteen square feet, including closets? Of public housing.

After revisiting a piece I wrote on Scales & Mirrors in 2003, looks like I did that before. then it surrounded TOXIC MOLD EXPOSURE/SYNDROME.

Thirty days away from the hustle, bustle and mass hysteria of other humans with a massive death wish needing someone to complete the deed, whether in person or via the media, is where I will not be found.

A negative upbeat seems to be my normal these days, while my nose runs my mind in every direction, early to bed, earlier to rise, keeps me out of the mainstream of people cluttering that fifth dimension people once talked and sang about with their never-ending and increasingly violent demands.

My lungs hurt when I breathe, but not all the time. Does COVID lung ever get better? Nobody ever said.

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Steve goes for Cardio-Rehab three times a week for twelve weeks at the clinic.

This is Steve in cardio-rehab at home.

We both had a big laugh.

LAUGH YOUR FAT AWAY.

WITH PLANTERS PEANUTS.

When this new surge occurred in the building where I live it prompted me to consider the air circulation and how that impacts my safety here.

Right now I live in CAMP COVID or CAMP OMICRON or TWO in ONE. BOTH. Yes, enter at your own risk.

So if it’s so dangerous on the inside – I mean really, this VIRUS could wipe out the ENTIRE CAMP or most of it, then maybe it’s less dangerous on the outside.

Although most people aren’t being careful at the local taverns, maybe it’s actually safer there than in here.

Imagine multiple people breathing the same stale air – air that travels through the wall voids into everybody’s living spaces.

Imagine these multiple people having OMICRON who are required to sequester in these spaces so as not to infect anybody else with this highly contagious virus, filling the air in these spaces with this virus just from breathing in and out recycling the clean air into virus-laden air until there is no more clean air; it is all virus-laden.

Look, scientists will tell you that can’t happen, that you need more direct contact to contract this virus. Prove it then. They can’t, so they aim to reduce hysteria, by claiming something can’t happen, because they don’t want it to happen and there’s no way to prove it anyway.

Because something can’t be proven yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People need in those instances to follow their instincts, right or wrong, because that’s all they have to go on.

If I can smell the guy downstairs smoking like it’s in the next room, that’s proof enough to me that what’s in the air in his apartment can and does travel to mine.

If the woman down the hall – way down the hall on the other side of the elevators – cooks chitterlings and I can smell them in my kitchen as if I were the one cooking them, then what is in her air can travel to my living space. If I can still smell them the next day, long after she stopped cooking, then some of what came in remained.

Somebody must have gotten the message about hot water being necessary to kill germs. Our water is hotter than it’s ever been and I’m loving it. The water at the local Tavern in the restroom, same thing – hot as hell. And I love it.

I used to wonder about the all-night restaurant a block away, why in their restroom is a sign telling employees to wash their hands, yet there was no hot water – none. Both faucets spouted cold – very cold – water. Now, how does cold water encourage people to wash their hands? It doesn’t. It discourages them.

Maybe they have hot water now. Maybe it was mandated by the government. I do know that about a year ago, people from the water company were coming out to the building to turn down the thermostats, then lied about it. They cited conservation reasons. A guy with the manager came to my door and explained why there was no hot water in the washing machines. Oh, there’s plenty of hot water he said, it just takes time to get all the way to the machines. A fe weeks later the manager called me to say he lied and apologized. We’d have hot water again. Well, it came and went from cold to warm to just barely hot to cold again. something always needed fixing.

People knew there was no hot water coming from the sinks and shower and tub, because they could feel it with their hands. That’s not proof enough for scientists. People knew there was no hot water to wash clothes when they felt the cold clothes as they removed them from the washers. That wasn’t proof enough for scientists, because they had an agenda – they were purposely lowering the temperature for conservation purposes and then lying about it. Do you think we’re stupid because we’re not rich?

These water company people would come after hours to lower the thermostat. Why after hours whereby the management didn’t even know? Guess they have unfettered access to our water supply. People who lie have that access. What else are they doing with the water? What did water tests show that suddenly the water is near scalding? What were we all drinking all this time? And is the cold water safe? Should we be boiling our cold water? The water company will say no, so as not to create chaos. So why should we trust them?

Headaches, like a spike going up into my brain, can’t shake it loose. Then it goes on it’s own, not by my direction. I think I have it, but the test says no. By now if I did get OMICRON it would be gone. the incubation period is over, given I had the symptoms. A cold they say. Omicron is a cold. Then why so many people hospitalized with it? Never went to a doctor, much less a hospital for a cold.

Now bases are being covered. People seek medical care for a different reason and they test positive for OMICRON. Really? Is that so? Then what are the symptoms they presented with that were not Omicron-related? Or COVID-related? Tell us, tell us.

You mean there’s a test for Omicron? Not readily or commonly available to medical institutions and it takes days to get a result.

So there’s another lie.

Steve tested negative in the doctor’s office.

So what’s with the never-ending cold? We both also had the flu shot.

It’s like being in a perpetual state of allergic reaction.

When a body is continuously fighting off the virus – especially those viruses which mutate in order to gain entry without notice of the defense mechanisms in play – then the body goes into an exaggerated state of alert causing accelerated modes of defense called Septis and lowers the metabolic rate to fool the virus into submission. It doesn’t skip any steps. It’s predictable, so why aren’t scientists exploring this process?

We need to detect the virus before Sepsis occurs.

I’m wondering why I’m cooking with so many gum powders recently? Is it because I ran out of cornstarch and didn’t feel like going to the store or maybe some other reason.

Ever make a gum pudding? Gum salad dressings, gum spreads, gum sauces, gums in soups – gum with everything.

Are you gaining weight and eating less? Are you having trouble losing weight? Maybe your body is protecting itself from all these viruses with a lowered metabolic rate.

I don’t know, but the gums are doing something right by me.

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Another person died in the building a few days ago. Carmen, an very active member of her community. Shocking. Somebody put up her obituary in the elevator. I imagine most people living here, if they died, wouldn’t have somebody to do that on their behalf.

Twelve years ago when we first arrived, the manager told me that ninety percent of the people living here never leave their apartments. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but looking back there are a few people I see fairly often, and they’re nearly always the same people.

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