2020
Over the weekend i had noticed that an increasing number of people were wearing face masks whilst within my local supermarket...
Possibly rather flagrant robbers in times of greater need thought i - especially given the shelf-stackers seeming continued work-to-rule impasse that was still seemingly being played out, and the customer purchasing restrictions that had seemingly inevitably ensued, thought i further...
I had of course noticed the deployment of more security staff, whom had seemed, at the time, to have been of a rather poor standard, as they had seemed, to me, to have been completely oblivious to what i had considered to have been the rather obvious intentions of such face-mask wearing individuals...
...A fact that i had found myself duty-bound to point out to one of the said security staff/personnel btw...
Imagine my surprise eh, upon finding out that said face-mask wearing individuals were apparently not intended robbers at all, but rather, members of the afflicted - apparently there had, unknown to myself, been a virus spreading itself around for quite some time...
Anyway, personal embarrassment put aside, and armed with such fresh knowledge, yesterday i began searching the internet for information regarding such a viral outbreak, so i did - only to find (to my very great surprise may i add) that there has apparently been a growing pandemic on the loose throughout most of the world for many weeks now (it would now seem that watching television does indeed have certain advantages after all)...
...However it is not a seasonal flu outbreak, as i had suspected, but something new called a 'covid-19' pandemic - surprise upon surprise eh...
Apparently shoppers have been panic-buying for quite some time - which could perhaps more readily explain why customers have recently been forced to join in with what i had previously thought had been some sort of rather enjoyable 'boxes and orderly entry' game that the management of said supermarket had decided to implement in order to keep us more readily entertained (the previously, sometimes rather entertaining, in-store music has not been played for quite a while now, after all)...
...Silly me eh - however, you would have thought that said management would perhaps have set a separate period of time aside, specifically for the face-mask wearing afflicted amongst us to do their shopping within, rather than allowing them to rather recklessly (in my opinion at least) mingle with the rest of us shoppers, wouldn't you...
***
Hmmm, twood certainly seem that my various Muses may have decided to slip into a 'Mr Bean portrayal mode' within this blog article - at times at least...
Yep, like it was perhaps hinted at earlier - through one of David's songs perchance???...
...'If you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too' - well, if so, it is definitely a case of 'message received and finally understood (from my perspective at least) ever-so-kind Sirs and Siresses', that's for sure...
***
Anyway, now electing to rather firmly drop out of our formal (main blog) 'tongue-in-cheek' mode, and instead, moving firmly back into 'me mode' - let's crunch some numbers shall we...
Okay...
a) COVID-19 2020 Global Statistics as of 29 March...
'Aggregated Confirmed' cases = 723,819
'Active Confirmed' cases = 542,999
'Deaths' = 33,917
Mortality Rate = 4.7%
b) USA COVID-19 statistics as of 29 March...
'Total Confirmed' cases = 143,055
'Deaths' = 2,157
Mortality Rate (so far) = 1.5%
c) Global Flu statistics...
'Illnesses' = unknown
'Deaths' = estimated to be between 290,000 and 650,000 annually ('The Times' newspaper Thursday March 19 2020)
d) USA 'Seasonal Flu' statistics (late September 2019 to 29 February 2020)...
'Illnesses' = 34 million
'Hospitalisations' = 350,000
'Deaths' = 20,000
Mortality Rate (of those hospitalised) = 5.7%
So, in summary, there have so far been almost 34,000 COVID-19 deaths worldwide this year - and 20,000 'seasonal flu' deaths so far in the USA alone between the end of September 2019 and 29 February 2020...
And that is the end of such a 'number crunching' exercise folks...
So, to the wearing of face masks...
Is it important that we wear face masks??? - (the CDC says (https://www.medicinenet.com/do_face_masks_protect_you_from_the_new_coronavirus/article.htm) that 'a healthy individual in a normal situation does not need to wear a mask' unless 'you are caring for a person infected with the virus' btw - although said CDC does say that 'a surgical face mask is highly recommended for people who have the coronavirus infection or have a high risk of exposure')...
Well, from a purely personal and unprofessional perspective, i would ask the following question...
What is the size of the COVID-19 virus??? - and what is the size of each of the many gaps within (and along the edges of) the breathable fabric within such face masks???...
Well, i would guess (and it is purely a scientifically uninformed guess - at this stage at least) that such breathable gaps within (and along the edges of) the fabric of such face masks are larger than the size of each individual COVID-19 virus...
So, for me personally (as a so far healthy individual), i simply see no point in wearing such face masks - but hey if you are one of the infected, then yes, definitely wear one, and make darned sure that you don't come anywhere near me okay...
(https://www.ourquantumparticulates.org/videos/wearing-face-masks)