With coronavirus ravaging the world once again, some places worse than others, my wife noted that I was coughing more than usual this morning. My throat felt a little dry. The coffee wasn't helping, so I drank a glass of kiselis, a thick cranberry concoction. I also think I have a bit of an allergic reaction to the cat. Not used to having a feline around the house.
The latest wave seems to be abating a bit. The quarantine imposed over the holidays appears to have helped. My wife's brother had to go through a road block to deliver gifts on Christmas Eve. You are only allowed to have contact with one family member outside the house and no travel between cities except for essential services. Cases in Lithuania are still too high. Much higher than in neighboring Latvia and Estonia, and one of the highest per capita rates in the world.
We were discussing this over Christmas Eve dinner. Even with 3000 new cases being reported per day, the odds of getting coronavirus are still very low so people are treating it like a crap shoot. They aren't taking necessary precautions or keeping their distances. My son said its mostly middle-aged women that bothered him. Getting too close at the vegetable bins at the grocery store, as they pick over produce. He said he watched one woman pick up each and everyone of the carrots in the bin before selecting two to her liking. I could understand this when it comes to avocados, but carrots? He skipped on the carrots. Of course, the odds of getting coronavirus through shared contact are extremely small but you can't be too careful.
The hospitals in Lithuania reached a crisis point with the daily death toll surpassing 40 recently. We worry mostly about my wife's father, who is a very frail 82. Even though we have limited our contacts, we still go to the grocery store and post office. We try to keep our distance but you never know where the airborne virus comes from. We've had several colleagues get COVID. Fortunately, all had mild symptoms and recovered quickly. We figure that at some point one or both of us will come down with it and then what to do with Grandpa?
Lithuania only received 10,000 vaccines in its first shipment. Not enough to even cover essential medical workers. I was glad to see MPs held off taking the vaccine themselves, unlike American Congresspersons, who were the first to get in line, despite the reservations many Republicans expressed about coronavirus. Here, there hasn't been a politicization of the virus, although the previous government didn't do enough to contain the virus when the numbers started to rise in September.
We had enjoyed a relatively carefree summer and I guess it was assumed persons would take the necessary precautions when autumn arrived. Such was not the case. Numbers quickly rose above 100, then 200, then a 1000 and the government still wasn't willing to close businesses down. The ruling coalition was too afraid of losing votes in the November parliamentary elections if it did. They lost anyway. The new government did what the old government should have done by imposing a quarantine over the holidays.
On-line retailers certainly didn't suffer. My wife was going to parcel machines almost everyday to pick up items she ordered for Christmas. Even small businesses found a way to keep going by letting shoppers buy their products on-line and then have them available for pick-up, cutting out the middle man. I'm still waiting for things I ordered through amazon as the mail service is moving much slower. They will be New Year's or Three Kings' gifts.
Too be honest, I don't really miss my colleagues and friends that much. I've always preferred working at home where I can mix work with other activities. In the meantime, My wife, two or our children, our son's girlfriend, her father and I ride out the coronavirus as Boccaccio's friends rode out the plague in the Decameron, finding ways to entertain each other, doing a little bit of work here and there and being thankful to each other for tolerating our unpleasant traits. We always did spend a lot of time together so it is nothing really new, although my son's girfriend, who has been in isolation with him, remarked how funny my wife and I are in the way we peck at each other at the dinner table.
Still one can't completely lock oneself off from the outside world, one picks up viruses, one has a little cough from time to time. I keep drinking the kiselis left over from Kučos and taking my supplements of fish oil tablets, vitamins C and D3. The cough will go away.
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