When I first heard of the Coronavirus, I was one of those who actually believed that this was a crisis for China alone to endure. Never, ever, did I suspect that we would also very soon fall victim to the same pathological disaster that it now upon us and is growing more real every day. I was one who shrugged the possibility off, calming those around me who were becoming "viral phobic" with my opinion that the virus has been here amongst us for some time now, not doing much more harm than the "regular" flu, and that our awareness and our reactions were only due to the fact that we had not considered Covid-19 and now that we have become enlightened, we have a name to an illness that once was in the "Fever of Unknown Origin" class. I was wrong.
Fourteen years ago, I retired from my job as a Corporate Nurse, having served a global company for a few years. Years that included 911, a major black-out of New York City, and several rounds of responses to suspected and threatened acts of bio-terrorism. My former employer, Colgate-Palmolive, is one of the largest global consumer companies in the world and seventy percent of its business is transacted outside of the U.S. In addition to being home to Global Headquarters, my building also was home to the U.S. Company. There were hundreds of people going and coming at any given moment and their health and safety were just as important as their product. My ability to remain calm during a crisis was born at that location, out of necessity and a sense of duty.
And, I am so relieved that my tenure there is over. This would have been a bit of too-much for a woman who has traded her moments walking on Park Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan, for lovely, calm walks on Corporation Beach in Dennis, Massachusetts, a beautiful Cape Cod town.
My current life is not dictated by the need to assimilate information and formulate plans of action for masses of people. I only minimally miss that feeling of being thought of as "mother" to twelve hundred individuals at a time. But, my current life does have dictates. Nobody gets totally off the hook when it comes to reality. I'm fairly done with keeping up with the media as our lives change with each passing hour. I've done what I did in the past only without a paycheck this time. I've reconciled myself to the fact that this is new and that it is not going to go away until some drastic measures are enforced. There is no treatment for viral activity, unlike bacterial activity which can be stopped with antibiotics, viruses can only be assuaged, symptoms attenuated until the body calls an end to the internal war. Well-trained medical professionals can tell you that they probably learned the basic principle during their first weeks of their training. Antisepsis is antisepsis. Hygiene is hygiene.
And people are people. Pathogens come and go. These things never change.
My friends in Italy are entrenched in their struggle to stay ahead of the rampaging virus. Many of them grew up with an abundance of stories about the ravages of a World War, fought in their own backyards. They are not alarmists by nature and for the most part, are fiercely independent and strong. I have heard references that tell me that they are feeling in some areas, as if they were living through that war, altering their lives as their parents and grandparents may have during that crisis. This time, we are allied from the get-go. Our friends across the ocean have a message for us that comes from their hearts. They are imploring us to listen, to pay closer attention to the approach of what is now known as a pandemic, than they did; to learn by their omissions. They are trying to help us in this new war. Perhaps it is pay back.
Times are tough but as we have been shown by those who have had it a lot tougher, we will survive this and many more crises to come. We have the basic principles, we now have the technology and the good advice of friends who used to feel so far away before that technology. What used to take the health care community weeks and months to figure out is now available in minutes. We are blessed even while feeling damned at times.
I don't have to be the harbinger. The media is over-run with information and stories from everywhere in the world a the moment making it almost impossible to filter out what we really need to know from what we might like to think. Rumors abound. It's every which-way, every single day. But, I do want to share some honest journalism. A well-respected fellow-blogger who is an expat, living in Italy, has written from his heart and I think it is worth sharing. So, allow me to introduce Jed from Italywise.
https://italywise.com/the-coronavirus-or-the-blame-virus/
https://italywise.com/the-coronavirus-or-the-blame-virus/
Fourteen years ago, I retired from my job as a Corporate Nurse, having served a global company for a few years. Years that included 911, a major black-out of New York City, and several rounds of responses to suspected and threatened acts of bio-terrorism. My former employer, Colgate-Palmolive, is one of the largest global consumer companies in the world and seventy percent of its business is transacted outside of the U.S. In addition to being home to Global Headquarters, my building also was home to the U.S. Company. There were hundreds of people going and coming at any given moment and their health and safety were just as important as their product. My ability to remain calm during a crisis was born at that location, out of necessity and a sense of duty.
And, I am so relieved that my tenure there is over. This would have been a bit of too-much for a woman who has traded her moments walking on Park Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan, for lovely, calm walks on Corporation Beach in Dennis, Massachusetts, a beautiful Cape Cod town.
My current life is not dictated by the need to assimilate information and formulate plans of action for masses of people. I only minimally miss that feeling of being thought of as "mother" to twelve hundred individuals at a time. But, my current life does have dictates. Nobody gets totally off the hook when it comes to reality. I'm fairly done with keeping up with the media as our lives change with each passing hour. I've done what I did in the past only without a paycheck this time. I've reconciled myself to the fact that this is new and that it is not going to go away until some drastic measures are enforced. There is no treatment for viral activity, unlike bacterial activity which can be stopped with antibiotics, viruses can only be assuaged, symptoms attenuated until the body calls an end to the internal war. Well-trained medical professionals can tell you that they probably learned the basic principle during their first weeks of their training. Antisepsis is antisepsis. Hygiene is hygiene.
And people are people. Pathogens come and go. These things never change.
My friends in Italy are entrenched in their struggle to stay ahead of the rampaging virus. Many of them grew up with an abundance of stories about the ravages of a World War, fought in their own backyards. They are not alarmists by nature and for the most part, are fiercely independent and strong. I have heard references that tell me that they are feeling in some areas, as if they were living through that war, altering their lives as their parents and grandparents may have during that crisis. This time, we are allied from the get-go. Our friends across the ocean have a message for us that comes from their hearts. They are imploring us to listen, to pay closer attention to the approach of what is now known as a pandemic, than they did; to learn by their omissions. They are trying to help us in this new war. Perhaps it is pay back.
Times are tough but as we have been shown by those who have had it a lot tougher, we will survive this and many more crises to come. We have the basic principles, we now have the technology and the good advice of friends who used to feel so far away before that technology. What used to take the health care community weeks and months to figure out is now available in minutes. We are blessed even while feeling damned at times.
I don't have to be the harbinger. The media is over-run with information and stories from everywhere in the world a the moment making it almost impossible to filter out what we really need to know from what we might like to think. Rumors abound. It's every which-way, every single day. But, I do want to share some honest journalism. A well-respected fellow-blogger who is an expat, living in Italy, has written from his heart and I think it is worth sharing. So, allow me to introduce Jed from Italywise.
https://italywise.com/the-coronavirus-or-the-blame-virus/
https://italywise.com/the-coronavirus-or-the-blame-virus/
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