Day: April 21, 2020

And it gets better

Finally..yes, the back is still somewhat sore and stiff but the day was perfect: Cornstalk 5.1 plus extra for 10K (slightly less?) in 1:09:06; I was 58:5x at Markin.

Yes, I am aware of how slow this is; as I turned on Cooper I saw another runner..not that fast of a runner and yes, they opened distance on me. It is tough to accept that I am that slow but the numbers don’t lie.
But I am less slow than I was a month ago and that is something to celebrate.

When skepticism backfires

I remember that my uneducated parents were, in some sense, skeptics. Reason: they grew up poor, and one sad fact of life is that people are constantly trying to take advantage of poor people; this is sometimes called the poverty tax. And they heard all of the justifications from the well-to-do as to, why, during times of sacrifice, the commoners must sacrifice while THEY, well, get to do whatever they want (think of watering restrictions).

It is common for people with power to try to trick those without to do without even more while reaping the benefits for themselves.

And now we have the COVID-19 lockdown orders. And yes, some of “this is essential, this is not” business closings are debatable ..perhaps some of the decisions were even corrupt.
And COVID-19 is a truly vexing problem for humans to confront: if you go to a large gathering and get infected…you may well not feel symptoms or possibly just get a moderate illness which you will recover from.

But such things spread exponentially, and in the exponential spread, some of the truly vulnerable will get caught in it. And yes, a percentage of those who are vulnerable to it are not the obvious cases; some are younger and incredibly physically fit. Yes, those are the exceptions; statistically those who are older and have existing health conditions are more at risk.

Still, the danger lies in the spread, and the risk isn’t so much to YOUR health (though it is a real risk), but more about your being a pathway for the virus to spread to others that it WILL harm and kill.
And that is a difficult concept to wrap your head around, and to those who survived due to skepticism, it sounds like “bullshit.”

And part of the problem is that, all too often, those in power lie, and all too often, those in the media tout “SCIENCE SAYS” when, in fact, that new result is either very narrow OR, as yet, a result that has not been replicated and is probably a “false positive” (type I error)