More Bad News About Covid-19

The more I hear about this virus, the worse it gets. A friend of mine is in the medical field, working the front lines, and mentioned problems certain survivors (especially those requiring ventilators) face: the permanent lung scarring is already fairly well-known, but apparently another problem is kidney damage; something about the virus replacing the iron in hemoglobin, which does something-or-other with the end result that many of these poor people will either need a new kidney, or have to be on dialysis for the rest of their lives. 

When I first did the voluntary self-quarantine (voluntary meaning, I stayed out of the thrift stores and other favorite haunts even when they were still open), my basic attitude was "I'm not too worried about what would happen to Jeff or me if we caught it, as I'm sure we'd be fine and make full recoveries; I'm concerned about passing it to someone who CAN'T handle it due to immune-system problems or other high-risk factors." But at some point in the past couple of weeks, that changed to "Also I am worried about me and mine."

Another concern: the Worldometers site lists the number of people who have recovered from the virus in various states and countries -- but I have not yet found any data breaking down those who recovered: how many made full recoveries and are now just as healthy as before they got sick, how many recovered but have permanent lung damage, how many recovered but their kidneys are shot ....

Tl;dr: Don't go out if you don't have to, people. And if you DO have to, then for Zod's sake wear a mask and gloves, wash your hands, and follow the other anti-contamination protocols. Russian roulette is a stupid game to play even if there's only two or three bullets in a hundred-chamber gun.

In Georgia, It's NEVER the Right Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

The good news (relatively speaking): social distancing apparently has had some efficacy in “flattening the curve” of new covid-19 cases here in Georgia.

The bad news (no relativity needed): this news presumably inspired our thoroughly wise* and completely non-corrupt* governor Brian Kemp to announce plans to re-open the state starting this Friday, which I fear will cause those flattened curves to fill out faster than Dolly Parton after she hit puberty. As Kemp posted on Twitter barely two hours ago (blockquote contains two separate tweets):

Due to favorable data & more testing, gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, estheticians, their respective schools & massage therapists can reopen Friday, April 24 with Minimum Basic Operations. … Subject to specific social distancing & sanitation mandates, theaters, private social clubs & restaurant dine-in services will be allowed to reopen on Monday, April 27. We'll release more information in the next few days.

If the governor has explained how the hell people such as barbers/hair stylists, tattoo artists, manicurists and the like are supposed to provide their services while staying at least six feet away from their clients, I must have missed that.

Having said this: I must admit Georgia is not the only state, nor Republicans the only major American political party, to have many wise* people offering well-thought-out* ideas. Take for example Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who said today that “It's been weeks and health care workers on the front lines still don't have the PPE or medical supplies they need. We need to federalize the medical supply chain – now.”

In other words, he apparently believes the way to solve this problem is to give Trump and his administration even more power than they already have. Trump said earlier that Democratic governors have to be nice to him if they want federal aid in this crisis; I will assume Senator Murphy (whose state has a Democratic governor) missed that news report, because he was too busy formulating well-thought-out* plans to solve this unprecedented national crisis.

*I'm trying out a new “if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all” rule. Do you think it's working? Thank Zod for the sarcasm loophole.

A Super-Easy Quarantine Self-Improvement Tip

This sounds like an April Fool's joke, but I'm completely serious: for those of you stuck at home for the foreseeable future anyway, now would be a great time to kick your shampoo habit. I haven't used shampoo since 2009 -- I still wash my hair frequently, of course, but using only hot water and the pressure of my own fingertips to remove oil and dirt, followed by a very light conditioner (plus wide-tooth comb) to serve as a detangler. Compared to my shampoo days, my hair is far nicer and healthier than ever before -- less frizzy, far fewer split ends (I literally cannot remember the last time I found one, despite my hair being around 2.5 feet long), easier to care for, etc.

Shampoo is literally an "addictive" substance, in the sense that most people don't need it (modern detergent-based shampoo wasn't invented until the 20th century, yet clean, shiny hair existed well before that), but if you start using it, get used to it, and then stop, for awhile you'll go through "withdrawal" and be worse off than if you never started using in the first place.

Basically, healthy hair should have a certain amount of oil, or "sebum." Shampooing strips sebum from your hair, thus making your scalp's oil glands go into overdrive to make up the difference, and ... long story short, if you're a regular shampoo user, most of the time your hair is either much drier or (paradoxically) far more oily than if you'd never used shampoo in the first place. When I kicked the habit, I experienced about two to three weeks of consistently Bad Hair Days (fortunately during a New England winter, so I could hide the worst of it under a cloche hat), then my hair suddenly got better all at once: woke up one morning after an Atrociously Bad Hair Day, took another conditioner-only shower, braced myself for another ABHD, but this time when my hair dried it looked awesome -- better than ever.

At the time, I wrote a magazine article about my newly shampoo-free life (archived link here). A year or so later, an online friend of mine told me he'd shown his wife (also afflicted with long, fine, frizzy red hair) my article and a couple other things I'd said on the matter, and she decided to give it a try. Quoth he, "It took about 2 weeks for it to stop frizzing. It took another 2 weeks before she could, for the first time in her life, run her fingers through her hair. It's been 4 months and her hair looks the best it ever has. That is all I just wanted to thank Jennifer on behalf of my very grateful spouse."

{Preens}

Of course, none of this is to say "I never get frizzy hair anymore" -- I live in Georgia, after all -- but it's the frizz of "clean healthy hair that happens to be in a ridiculously humid environment," as opposed to the frizz of dry or damaged hair.

Seriously, people: ditch the shampoo and make do with a very light conditioner (nothing advertised as "moisturizing" or "for dry hair" -- those products are for regular shampoo users with unnaturally low sebum levels). If you give up shampoo now, your hair will indeed look icky for a couple weeks, but it will return to normal and look better than ever well before this quarantine is likely to end. (And you'll save a small fortune on shampoo costs, too.)