family news: sneezing at home

It's the hot season before the monsoon hits and cools things off in early June.

Both Joy and I are having problems with allergies: we live near the street so even though we clean our bedrooms every day, and Joy has a hepafilter air cleaner in her room and we both have hepafilters on or air conditioners, still we are sneezing away: we have to go out of the rooms to eat, to talk on the phone (bad signal inside our home, which has basalt walls), etc.

It's not just us: Our maid is having episodes of shortness of breath, chest pains, and thinks she is dying of a heart attack, since her brother died in his 30s of sudden cardiac death, and then she is diabetic. I checked her and suspect panic attacks due to menopause but gave her money to get an EKG tomorrow.

Why not today? Well, a lot of doctors are not seeing patients or are cutting back because of fear, so it's hard to get an appointment and there is no fulltime doctor in the local hospitals. One of our relatives developed shortness of breath  and got checked at a local private hospital, and was told to go into the hospital he needed 200 dollars deposit (usually the deposit was much less). Well, he is a musician in a marching band that plays for weddings, funerals, etc. and in lock down there is no work. (I should note that funerals frequently have music during the wake, which can last for days, and the band marches playing music in a funeral march from the church to the cemetery, about half a mile away. With the virus lockdown, such marches are forbidden, as are fiesta processions in the nieghborhoods).

well, I gave him 20 dollars and he went to the next town's government hospital and was admitted with a "heart attack", but tested negative for the virus. Presumably the family will hit me for more donations for his medicine when he is discharged.

20 dollars is not a lot of money for the USA but here the mimimum wage is seven dollars a day: You can live on that since families tend to have several people working and share expenses. But there is not a lot of money for emergencies, and that includes medicines for chronic diseases.

our province will be in lockdown through May 15... hopefully not longer, since the rice planting needs to start in May to plant in June when the rains come.

All of this explains why the prolonged lockdown for wuhanflu is likely to be more fatal than the actual disease.

And in the near future: Hunger, due to the inability to get supplies for farmers and then to get food to the markets in the cities, and the poverty of people out of work who won't be able to afford to buy food, or will not buy a well balanced diet (i.e. expect vitamin deficiency diseases to become common again).

here at home, we are self sufficient and are allowed to go to the farm: one more field and the harvest is done. Then comes the drying, packing, storing and repack to sell at the market.

one secretary lives here in our business compound with her family: low salary but meals and a small bedroom and of course the kids have the run of the place: Her husband, a tricycle driver, of course has no work since the demand for tricycles with the lockdown is low, so Kuya is hiring him to do gardening and cleaning so that he has a salary.

The secretary for Joy's rice business is using my good computer. We have two organic rice businesses: One for our rice, and Joy also supervises and teaches farmers i a coop in the neighborhood province for the Dept of Agri...well, that secretary usually uses my computer to do the accounting and other business stuff, but with the lockdown, she is working at home. So I am not doing much blogging, because I have to use my old Lenovo, a chinese built POS but never mind.

but with the lockdown there is no way to buy the needed computer (Yes, we have Levada etc. but who really trusts them ?)

the mayor here is giving out money and food, but in a lot of areas, that either isn't being done or the money is disappearing into someone's pocket... that helps for awhile, but I suspect that people will start complaining if they extend the lockdown again.

A good summary on the virus, from a geopolitical standpoint:


=== earlier discussions

SIGH.