Day 65. Temp is over 103, still coughing nonstop, blood pressure is still a mess from vascular damage to my veins and inflammation in the arteries (I sometimes have hypertension in one arm and hypotension in the other due to the artery inflammation), still requiring constant oxygen with sats still only in the 80s on oxygen, still too exhausted and short of breath to do more than walk across a room, and still feel awful.

Does anyone know when the “asymptomatic” or “just a flu” parts of COVID-19 kick in? I’m looking forward to those.


I still see so many people who think this is no big deal. People who refuse to wear a mask to protect other people, despite scientific proof it helps. So, maybe you need to SEE what the virus does to someone who isn’t asymptomatic, but gets a severe case and doesn’t die. I’m the high-risk group everyone is willing to lock away in their houses forever and let fend for themselves, or die, for convenience.

So many say, “It’s only the elderly (15% of the U.S. population) or those with underlying conditions (40% of the U.S. population) who get really sick and die.” First, that’s not true. A lot of young and “healthy” people have died and a lot more have been severely ill and now have long-term effects (so no longer “healthy”). Second, even it weren’t false, why are you okay with risking their lives just so you don’t have to wear a mask? Elderly and people with underlying conditions are fellow humans - your friends, your family, your colleagues, your bosses, your kids’ teachers, your neighbors, your fellow church members...

This is what COVID-19 looks like in someone with underlying conditions - aside from the severe diarrhea with the most horrific cramping you can’t even imagine (coming from someone with Crohn’s, this is saying a lot), the severe eye pain, the excruciating headaches, the terrifying shortness of breath where you don’t want to go to sleep because you don’t know if you’ll stop breathing or your oxygen will drop too low and you won’t wake, the nausea and vomiting, the loss of smell and taste, the loss of appetite, the horrible bone and muscle pain, the broken ribs from coughing so much, coughing so hard it makes you vomit, the shortness of breath that is so bad you can’t talk or do anything, the weakness and incredible fatigue that makes it so you can barely walk across a room and sometimes can’t even make yourself pick up your phone because it’s too heavy... aside from all that, here is the visible stuff - when your lips turn purple from lack of oxygen, rashes all over your body from the virus attacking your organs and vascular system, scary-high blood pressures alternating with too-low blood pressures from vascular and artery damage from the virus, your fingers and toes turning colors and being numb from vascular inflammation and blood clots, vein inflammation and limbs changing colors from more vascular inflammation, irregular heartbeat from tachycardia (too fast) to bradycardia (too slow), high temperatures and too-low temperatures, eye inflammation, low oxygen levels that drop even lower every time you do any activity or remove the oxygen at all...

When you refuse to wear a mask in public, when you refuse to practice social distancing, when you think it’s no big deal or just a flu or it doesn’t matter because it’s not as likely to be you... maybe remember that I was a person who worked full-time, lived independently, was restoring a historic house, and a fellow human, but have spent 65 days in bed/on the couch in ‘solitary confinement’ (isolation) and am incredibly lucky to be one of the people who survived to tell about it. Those “underlying conditions” are humans with lives just as important and worthy as yours. Those “elderly people” are our parents and grandparents and friends and family.

When you refuse to wear a mask, you are saying you are okay with doing THIS to everyone you encounter or anyone who is in the same area after you and you are okay with them not being lucky to just suffer through hell, but to also die a horrible death in isolation.

65 days of being this sick. In isolation.

This is the reality of the horror that is COVID-19. Not the asymptomatic people or mild cases. Worry about the ones so many are willing to sacrifice for convenience. This is what will happen to them. Or they will die. Like the 100,000 U.S. citizens who already have.

(Yes, you may share this.)

The president's son-in-law and top adviser has told confidants he wants to shrink the GOP's extensive platform of policy beliefs and principles down to a single card that fits in people's pockets. That's a huge change. The 2016 platform runs 58 pages — the product of extensive debate and heated negotiations.

Kushner told colleagues he wanted "something like the 10 principles we believe in," per two sources familiar with his comments. He asked Stepien to find historical examples of Republican platforms that look more like a "mission statement," per a source familiar with one of their meetings.

Another source familiar with the discussions pointed to the GOP platform of 1856 as an example of a platform that is similarly short. The source used this example to argue that the idea of a one-page platform isn't so new or radical after all.

“It is a sad commentary on the sorry state of the Republican party that, under Trump, its only hope for winning in November is to try to suppress the vote,” said

The plans are still under discussion but could include the establishment of a White House-created commission that would examine allegations of online bias and censorship, these people said. The administration could also encourage similar reviews by federal regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, they said.

“Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we’re dealing with,” a White House official said.

Mr. Trump has long expressed that viewpoint, and in a recent Twitter post indicated that a plan to address complaints of bias is in the works.

“The president is increasingly aware of the headwinds we face from big-tech bias,” Rep. Gaetz said, according to the report. “There have been very active discussions about what the administration can do with executive action to create a fair marketplace of ideas.”

“Moderna’s stock price skyrocketed as much as 30% on Monday after the biotech company announced promising early results for its coronavirus vaccine. As ordinary investors piled in, two insiders were quietly heading for the exits,” CNN reports.

“Moderna’s chief financial officer and chief medical officer executed options and sold nearly $30 million of shares combined on Monday and Tuesday.”

“That Jon Stewart movie set in politically divided Wisconsin? It’s bypassing theaters and heading straight to video-on-demand, the movies’ latest casualty of the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdown of large-gathering events that followed,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

“Distributor Focus Features announced Friday that Irresistible,the new comedy starring Steve Carell and Rose Byrne, would go straight to “premium” video-on-demand June 26, from services including Amazon, Apple and cable television providers.”

Aides to President Trump are considering a plan to shift the government’s global response to future infectious disease outbreaks to a new unit inside the State Department, Politico reports.

“People familiar with the issue say Dr. Deborah Birx, a top official handling the administration’s response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, is likely to wind up in charge of the new unit if it becomes a reality.”