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Thursday, March 12, 2020

Goines On: Health!

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The checkout lines at Costco were several times longer than the Goineses had ever seen them, extending from a wraparound at the very back of the store down both aisles to the registers.
    Many shopping carts contained a huge bale of rolls of toilet paper. One woman said, “Workers in the paper industries are worried about the virus affecting their jobs.” She had two bales in her cart.

    Another shopper grinned and announced, “I think the main problem might be Trump’s decree last night that American stores can only accept Russian rubles now. The currency exchanges take extra time.” Costco shoppers being the discreet shoppers they are, no one said yay or nay to this. But Goines noticed a couple of other grins, which he interpreted as knowing.
    A huge display of Irish Cream reminded Goines of the toast a friend had given him two days earlier: “Sláinte!” Goines had had to look it up, never having heard the Gaelic term before. But what was really amazing was that he and Mrs. Goines had watched a movie last night, set in Boston, with an Irish pub named “Sláinte!”
    To our health indeed, in these viral times! But Goines thought some relief might be on the way: A Brazilian official very recently tested positive for coronavirus days after meeting with Trump and Pence. And Jared and Ivanka were at the meeting, although sources are unable to say how close they sat. Nor is it known whether Trump and the official touched each other much, or whether Trump used his hand sanitizer.

Copyright © 2020 by Moristotle

5 comments:

  1. No toilet paper or paper towels anywhere in my county in Mid-Missouri for a few days now. Yesterday there was a run on bottled water. My question: why the run on bananas and sweet potatoes? A kind of armor, perhaps?

    My son reports beans and canned foods are no longer on the shelf anywhere in his community along the lake--Hyde Park by the University of Chicago. Toilet paper is no problem for him--the university has a large stock so all of the bathrooms are fully equipped.

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    1. All of this talk of toilet paper reminds me that an employee of IBM in San Jose, California, in the early 1970s was fired (and prosecuted) for trying to steal rolls of toilet paper from his employer. Toilet paper plays such a private, intimate place in humans’ lives, perhaps it has a profound symbolic value for us?
          I even wrote a column 13 years ago on how many times a person should fold his or her toilet paper. Interestingly, I learned that some people don’t fold their toilet paper at all – they just wad it up!

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  2. Something else: In my town people are now wearing masks over their mouth and nose, but the eyes remain uncovered. Open eyes are one of the main entrance this new virus seeks out to make us sick. Masks are sold out everywhere, but eye goggles and.or other eye protection is still available everywhere.

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    1. I have it on the reliable authority of an immunologist of my acquaintance that the only truly effective masks, especially made for tiny viruses, must be fitted to an individual’s face, so I am skeptical whether the masks you refer to do much. I also have to wonder how effective those “eye goggles and other eye protection” that are “available everywhere” might actually be....Alas.

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  3. Mrs. Goines reminded her husband the next day that President Wilson contracted the Spanish flu. Maybe Goines' fantasy about Trump & Pence wasn’t that far-fetched.

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