COVID Round 2

Right, right: COVID is still a thing. 

But what kind of thing will it be this time? It is already different from the last round. It's taking longer to fully manifest. We haven't even got to the fever, yet. In fact, my body temperature seems to be dropping. If I'm using the thermometer right. Low body temperature apparently correlates with severe COVID. But the thermometer was behaving oddly so I am not inclined to trust it; I think I would feel it if I had hypothermia.

Or my wife would. I apparently am radiating a normal amount of heat. 

Anyhow, this time last COVID it was fever, so that's different. Also different is that I have a weeping right eye!

If I had a finger on the trigger of BBAWF, I would suggest, "Best Biblical allusion in a (non-Christian) rock song," so I could nominate the Original Sins' "Possession": "There's something wrong with my right eye." Referring to Matthew 5:9., which I'd always thought was from Paul - where did I get that idea, Harlan Ellison's "The Deathbird," maybe? Not exactly scriptural scholarship. Robert Anton Wilson? (A bit more scholarly when he wanted to be but maybe not entirely reliable himself).

Whoever incorrectly identified that as being from Paul - y'know, Saul of Tarsus - also offered the opinion that it was referring to self-castration, to remove temptation. King James: "And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." 

NIV: "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." But this is medical advice I am not prepared to follow.

There is something wrong with my right eye, though. I woke up with my eyelashes gooed together two mornings in a row. They weren't quite stuck as bad this morning - I didn't even notice it until I got to the computer; I can see the liquid making my vision fuzzy on the right side of my right eye, a patch of fogginess that I can momentarily wipe away. 

(I pause to get a swab prepped for a home test. It's jammed up my nostril as I type this. Yesterday the line was very faint, but definitely visible).

I was reading Matt Taibbi on 9/11 Conspiracy theorists, in his book The Great Derangement, which was written pre-Trump, hearkening back to the "saner times" of the second GW Bush presidency.  He has a very funny series of interludes about the 9/11 Truth Movement that are a must-read, satirizing the internal logic of the movement. I remind myself that the friend I seem to have lost to COVID conspiracy theory was also into the 9/11 Truth Movement. 

Would things be different now if I'd kept up my boosters? I jumped off the booster train after my first; I'm triply-vaxxed, no more. There is, I suspect, a lot of "weaponized misinformation" out there from actors determined, for one reason or another, to undermine public safety responses to COVID. But when it seemed easily verifiable that the second COVID booster had not had a human trial at all... I got nervous. It didn't help that there did seem to be a tide of people shouting down with great hostility attempts to ask questions... there did seem to be a tendency to smear or discredit people. Mattias Desmet's idea of "mass formation" resonated (thank to Murray Acton for clueing me into that concept). And weirdly, about the time people started shouting loudly about totalitarianism, the government started scaling back its public safety measures, until the idea of having any concern at all about COVID seems a whisper. Mask up in hospitals? Mask up on transit? Why would we do that? It's not like the pandemic is still a problem...!

But now here's COVID round 2. Wonder what it will be like this time? (Would it be in any way different if I'd had that next booster, I wonder?). 

***

Addendum: I am being told to do a warm saline rinse, just with a homemade solution of salt and warm water, and get a medicated eyedrop if it doesn't improve. Rinsed both eyes and they feel clearer this evening, but then, my symptoms are always best in the evening - and worst in the morning. I actually feel almost okay at the moment, but there's a raspy/ wheezy quality in my throat and upper respiratory system and a bit of fog in the right eye. But it's interesting that I always feel worst on waking. Wonder why that is?