The Cellar / Epidemic

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 6/23/2024 1:41 am

Boomers are dirty birds. They thought pregnancy and armed spouses were the only worries...

**Posted by Clodfobble** 6/23/2024 2:25 pm

I wonder how much of that is relaxing sexual taboos, and how much is just the availability of Viagra. Can't spread an STD if you can't get it up.

**Posted by griff** 6/25/2024 7:24 am

As a Cusper, it certainly feeds the Boomers ruin everything narrative.

**Posted by glatt** 6/28/2024 2:59 pm

I'm convinced Covid is currently running loose around here, but nobody is testing or tracking it because it is so mild. Everyone seems to have a dry cough.

I actually dug out an old testing kit on Saturday after taking a 3 hour afternoon nap, and wasn't really surprised to see it come back positive.

**Posted by Flint** 6/28/2024 3:18 pm

Years ago when I was really sick with a cold, I thought about how much I never really appreciated the times that I didn't feel like total shit. How different my normal experience was from the intense and all-consuming the sensation of feeling sick. Then I had the depressing thought, "what if I felt like this all the time?" Then I thought of the even-more depressing sci-fi scenario wherein the entire human race was infected with a permanent "super cold" and every living human felt like total shit for their entire lives.

Is this where we're headed? Either 1) nature is smart enough that pervasive infectious organisms are selected to not totally debilitate their hosts, or 2) nature doesn't care about our subjective "experience of living"

...

eta: cognitohazard warning, but if an infectious organism could alter our qualia, how would we know, i.e. how would we know if the subjective, incommunicable experience of consiousness had been changed from how it was in the past?

Last edited by Flint (6/28/2024 3:23 pm)

**Posted by griff** 6/28/2024 5:43 pm

Allergy season is a convenient mask for COVID… I’m seeing a lot of little kids with continuously running noses.

**Posted by griff** 6/29/2024 7:53 am

Flint wrote:
Years ago when I was really sick with a cold, I thought about how much I never really appreciated the times that I didn't feel like total shit. How different my normal experience was from the intense and all-consuming the sensation of feeling sick. Then I had the depressing thought, "what if I felt like this all the time?" Then I thought of the even-more depressing sci-fi scenario wherein the entire human race was infected with a permanent "super cold" and every living human felt like total shit for their entire lives.

Is this where we're headed? Either 1) nature is smart enough that pervasive infectious organisms are selected to not totally debilitate their hosts, or 2) nature doesn't care about our subjective "experience of living"

...

eta: cognitohazard warning, but if an infectious organism could alter our qualia, how would we know, i.e. how would we know if the subjective, incommunicable experience of consiousness had been changed from how it was in the past?

I got thinking about this when I woke up this morning. In my youth when cycling I'd would get up on my pedals and hammer so smoothly that it just felt effortless. That feeling is something I pursue on the bike now. Whether it's achievable or not is kind of irrelevant, I know how it could feel. What if I never felt that? A lot of folks are riding e-bikes when mountain biking and in my gut I hate it. It's a disconnection between work and output that is the antithesis of my vision of mountain biking. However, if they've never felt a real match between input and output then anything goes. In a world where unrecognized disease has destroyed that connection for a generation of people suddenly cheating yourself out of an experience isn't a cheat.

**Posted by tw** 6/29/2024 8:52 am

I got a car with a big engine. It burns gasoline in the exhaust pipe making lots of noise. So I must be a real man.

Same mentality with e-bikes. E-bikes mean one is planning to be dead by 50. Due to no exercise. But it has those bigger tires. He must be more of a man.

A real man need not worry about Covid. And need neither know nor care how he feels.

**Posted by TheNeverWas** 6/29/2024 7:41 pm

tw wrote:
It burns gasoline in the exhaust pipe...

Just sayin'...

**Posted by glatt** 3/12/2025 7:35 am

Measles. WTF?

I'm getting an MMR vaccine tomorrow because I don't have copies of my records and I am of an age where I might have received the measles vaccine that doesn't work.

So maybe you saw that over the weekend, someone with active measles flew into Dulles and took the Metro home. Went to the doctor a day or two later and learned it was measles. They must have exposed thousands of people from this region.

Maybe the shot tomorrow will be too late. On the other hand, maybe I don't even need the shot because I might have received one of the booster shots for older kids who got the worthless shots when they were younger. Hell if I know.

Show of hands, how many of you have actual records of your childhood vaccinations?

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 3/12/2025 11:12 am

This is a time when "he/she" would be better than "they".

**Posted by glatt** 3/12/2025 12:10 pm

why?

**Posted by Clodfobble** 3/12/2025 2:51 pm

glatt wrote:
Measles. WTF?

I'm getting an MMR vaccine tomorrow because I don't have copies of my records and I am of an age where I might have received the measles vaccine that doesn't work.

So maybe you saw that over the weekend, someone with active measles flew into Dulles and took the Metro home. Went to the doctor a day or two later and learned it was measles. They must have exposed thousands of people from this region.

Maybe the shot tomorrow will be too late. On the other hand, maybe I don't even need the shot because I might have received one of the booster shots for older kids who got the worthless shots when they were younger. Hell if I know.

Show of hands, how many of you have actual records of your childhood vaccinations?

Another option, if you're not sure you need it (and perhaps want to save the shots for those who do, if they end up in short supply in the future,) is you can ask your doctor for a measles titer test, which will measure the level of antibodies in your blood. That will definitively tell you whether you're currently immune.

**Posted by griff** 3/13/2025 6:35 am

My mom gave me my shot records when I went to college, the blessing of having a Registered Nurse in the house. My measles vaccine was in June of 1965. That puts me in the early group which may not have been effectively protected. My doctor keeps cancelling my annual, but I intend to get the titer done or just get the vaccine. My older sister's titer said she is protected, so it seems possible we were maybe exposed to measles after getting vaccinated.

**Posted by fargon** 3/13/2025 5:08 pm

"Show of hands, how many of you have been vaccinated for Smallpox?"
Me.

**Posted by monster** 3/13/2025 11:58 pm

If only there were vaccines for mental illness

**Posted by griff** 3/14/2025 7:49 am

fargon wrote:
"Show of hands, how many of you have been vaccinated for Smallpox?"
Me.

Yep.

Regarding the mental illness vaccination, considering the state of this country it's too damn late.

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 3/14/2025 11:07 am

Girls in my era often got smallpox vaccinations on their thighs so the little (sometimes not so little) scars would not show while wear sleeveless blouses or gowns.