COVID-19 Blog

Everything that’s happening during this “corona-cation.”

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My friends and I following the six feet apart protocol while hanging out.

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5/3/20

Well...I almost lost my dog today. So I’m going to tell y’all how to convince your dog to come back to you if they decide to run away.

Obviously, try and call their name to see if they just wandered off to the neighbor’s yard. If that doesn’t work, then start bribing them with treats. This time, I called out “Honey! C’mon, let’s get a treat!” over and over and over again until she came back. Turns out, she was just in the neighbor’s yard looking for the dog that is usually outside and didn’t feel like listening to me. But if bribing them with treats doesn’t work, and walking around the neighborhood still turns up with them gone, don’t worry, there’s a good chance they will come back with this trick. Take some of your dog’s things, toys, blankets, their bed, and leave them outside where they can see and smell them. Keep gates or doors open, so that they can get back inside when they do decide to come back.

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ARTICLE ANALYSIS

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists have been researching vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. According to this article, researchers have found a potential vaccine that produces enough antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 that they believe is enough to neutralize the virus. The scientists tested this vaccine on mice that had the virus, and they’ve named the vaccine PittCoVacc which is short for Pittsburgh Coronavirus Vaccine. They used a new technique to administer the drug into the body, called a microneedle array. This technique increases potency, and is a fingertip sized patch of 400 small needles that deliver spike protein pieces into the skin, which is where immune reaction is the strongest. This patch goes on like a Band-aid and the needles, which are made up of sugar and proteins, just dissolve into the skin.

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5/1/20

I love going to shotgun practice. I enjoy feeling the warm sun on my face, the familiar weight of my gun in my hands, the kick of the gun on my shoulder, the invigorating scent of gunpowder and steel. I always feel more alive during practice. I can go into practice feeling exhausted, but as soon as I get on the platform and start hitting targets, the adrenaline that flows through my veins is like having a shot of caffeine straight into my bloodstream. It seems like time slows down when I’m on the platform to shoot, I tune everything out so all I can see is the clay pigeon flying in front of the trees. I pull the trigger after I breathe in, and when I pop open the gun, I catch the empty, smoking shells and toss them in the garbage can. The exhilaration I feel when my gun kicks back and I nail a target is intoxicating. Seeing the leaves flutter to the ground after I break the flying target is fun to watch, and watching the broken pieces fall to the growing pile of shattered orange clay targets.

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[the-spaztic-fantastic]

This legitimately needs to be in future literature textbooks to capture the Covid-19 Pandemic.

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4/24/20

So, I’ve started running to exercise during quarantine. And I hate it. So. Very. Much. You might be thinking, “But Bella, it’s so good for you” or “Don’t you get the runner’s high?” And my response is: I know it’s good for me, and no I absolutely do not get the runner’s high unfortunately. Running to me is like putting my lungs in a blender with nails and flipping the on switch. I have such low endurance that I can barely breathe after jogging for only a few minutes. Once I’ve been running for about thirty minutes, my legs start turning to jelly, and my calves BURN like the devil himself is poking at them with his pitchfork. The best part about running, is the very end when I get back into my car and chug down the water I brought like a man dying of thirst in the desert. The feeling of satisfaction and the fact that it’ll make me more athletic is the only reason why I even try to run. I have plans, and for me, they include running. I gotta push through to the finish line to get there.

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4/21/20

The Coronavirus has been the cause of many things. Quarantine, fear, loneliness, sickness and death. Since the virus came to the United States, people have been terrified to go outside of their homes. Schools have canceled the rest of the year, we’ve started wearing masks in public places, we have to stay at least 6 feet apart from other people, and no more than 10 people can be in the same room. The fear of this virus is going to cause some people to be too scared to go out in public without a mask again. My grandparents haven’t been out of their homes in almost two months, and other than my family’s once or twice a week Facetiming, they don’t talk to anyone besides each other. Staying at home day in and day out has caused all my days to get mixed up...I have to look at the date on my phone before I say anything that involves the days of the week.

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Article Analysis

According to the article In Pursuit of PPE (2020), chief physician executive,  Andrew W. Artenstein, M.D. enlightens his audience of the unfortunately necessary routes that he must take occasionally to get the medical supplies his hospital sorely needs during the coronavirus. He uses a personal story, pathos and rhetorical questions to support his claim. His purpose of the article is to show the absurdness of the lengths he must go to in order to get the supplies that his hospital staff requires. Artenstein’s intended audience is all non-medical personnel because they do not need the level of protection that doctors and nurses do, he writes his article in such a way that implies he wants his audience to understand the insanity in the world during this global pandemic. 

Article link

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4/17/20

Before the coronavirus, I think everyone took the lives they had for granted. We would make up excuses as to why we couldn’t go out with someone because we just didn’t want to get out of bed. Now I think I would give almost anything to be able to hang out with my friends again. I would jump at the chance to go do something today, anything other than lying in my bed or on the game room couch watching Netflix. I’ve seen that people have started going outside more often to exercise and just get out of the house, and I don’t remember seeing all these people outside before the virus outbreak. My friends and I used to be so indecisive about where we wanted to go eat lunch, now I’m pretty sure we would all just be like, “Who cares where we go? I just want something other than the food I have at my house!” Then we would probably go to every restaurant in the immediate area, and when we finish those, go to other restaurants in the surrounding areas. We might even go to someone else’s house for a while, and just hang out for hours and hours. Ever since the lock down, people have begun to realize how good their lives were. 

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4/16/20

This past Monday, I think it was, I FaceTimed my best friend, Mikaela, for over 4 1/2 hours... We started at 2am, and didn’t get off the phone til 6:50am. And the only reason we went to sleep, was because we both had class in a few hours. We reminisced about our lives before high school, before I moved to Georgia. We almost cried a few times because we miss how it used to be. She and I laughed at our eighth grade field trip to Washington DC, because our favorite teacher let us run to the CVS across the street from our hotel at like, 9 o’clock at night because we were snacky. One of the nights we were in the hotel, and one of my roommates, Ana, pulled a candy bar out of a bag and asked “What is this?” I was at the other side of the room and I slithered off the chair and “demon crawled” (my roommates’ words, not mine) my way over to her and hissed, “I KNOW WHAT THAT IS! THAT’S A YORK PEPPERMINT PATTY!” that has been an inside joke for almost 4 years now, and the four of us still laugh so hard at that memory.That week in DC was one of our favorite memories during our middle school years. At around 5am, we got hungry, so we tried to quietly sneak downstairs into the kitchen to grab snacks, but it seemed that no matter how hard we tried to be quiet, we couldn’t stop laughing at each other’s ridiculous sneaking skills. Turns out trying to walk down stairs and through the kitchen quietly in the dark is hilarious when you’re on FaceTime with your best friend.

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4/15/20

In the Coronavirus edition of Myth Busters article (2020), the World Health Organization refutes myths on the Coronavirus that the public came up with. The organization uses pictures, logos and repetition to rebut the myths that have been created about the virus. The health organization disproves these myths in order to provide factual advice and information on what to do to prevent the contraction of the virus, or how to properly identify symptoms to go to the hospital for treatment. The professional tone the World Health Organization uses conveys the seriousness of this virus on an international level to anyone concerned about the Coronavirus.

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4/3/20

Another day in quarantine, the good thing is, SPRING BREAK IS TOMORROW!! So happy I can truly just lay around and do nothing. The bad thing? No one can go anywhere.

According to this Foreign Policy article, there are some countries that managed to keep the cases of coronavirus relatively low. These countries are: Taiwan, South Korea, Iceland, Canada, and Georgia. Some of these countries haven’t had any deaths so far from the virus. They either began testing everyone much earlier or shutting everything down earlier. Iceland has tested the most people per capita in the world. There are also countries that didn’t listen to the warnings of the virus. Iran especially didn’t want to acknowledge the virus. The Iranians did not close their borders u til the first COVID-19 deaths. Russia waited until mid-March to close their borders down, and now it could present a political challenge for President Vladimir Putin.

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4/1/20

According to another article, Georgia has reached over four thousand cases of the virus as of today at 7pm. The majority of cases are made up of patients between the ages of 18 and 59 years old, where only 35% of cases are made up of patients 60+ years old. Friday, Georgia only had 2,000 cases, and today there are over 4,500. Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 139 of them have reported at least one case. The article says that the numbers will increase before they peak. For the most part, the symptoms of the coronavirus are mild, only the older patients or those with previously existing health problems are more at risk to have severe symptoms. We are also not supposed to show up at the emergency room, we have to consult their primary doctor or an urgent care center, or call the COVID-19 hotline [phone]).

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3/30/20

So, I read this article from CNN, and it just kind of gives a brief overview of what’s going on right now with the virus. According to the article, the US now has the most confirmed cases in the world. Many retail stores have been temporarily closed and laid off employees because of the coronavirus in order to make sure that the company continues to thrive. There have been the first reported cases in the homeless community in Los Angeles, CA. The Public Health Director in LA, Barbara Ferrer, says that there are 2,474 confirmed cases, with 342 new ones overnight. The CNN article also says that the US is home to over 160,000 cases of the coronavirus, with nearly 3,000 deaths. The death rate of this virus is much larger than the rates from the flu. The flu’s death rate is .1% while the COVID-19 virus has a .66% death rate, which, while not high, is still more deadly than the flu.

So as always, stay safe and please wash your hands.

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3/27/20

So....another day in quarantine... Someone dissed my love for The Conjuring, and I almost threw hands with that person. I know there are probably other, better scary movies out there, but The Conjuring is my favorite because it was the first scary movie I had watched by myself. So it holds a special place in my heart. Today I did some chores, vacuumed, put dishes away, cleaned my room, all that good stuff. After that, I played some Assassin’s Creed for a bit. When dinner was over, my family attempted to learn Korean and Polish from google translate. We already knew my mom can’t speak a language other than English, turns out my dad can’t speak anything but English and a little bit of German, and we learned that I can mimic those languages pretty well. I mentioned how I wanted to learn Russian, but they said that learning that language is crazy, because I’ll never be able to go there. I still think it would be a cool language to know. I facetimed my best friend in Texas today, and it was the best thing I’ve done in the past two weeks since we’ve been in quarantine. I think I’m going to start teaching myself to write left-handed to pass the time.

This has been my study/cuddle buddy during this time at home.

Maybe if she ever wants to get up I’ll teach her some tricks.