Fun fact guys, there’s a deadly virus on the loose in the Middle East. And yours truly, Cinderslut, is currently living mere miles from the epicenter of this epidemic. Ok, before you freak out, like my mom would if she knew, perhaps I am overstating a bit with the term “epidemic.” But there really is a nasty coronavirus popping up throughout this region. At this point, depending on what source you hear it from, there have been about 50 confirmed cases, and more than half of those people have died.
HALF?!?!?!
That troubling death rate figure has more than a few people around here a little nervous. Some people I know are taking their children out of school. A colleague of mine has taken to spraying disinfecting air freshener at her students whenever they dare approach her. It’s scary.
That’s how I feel too when I allow myself to dwell on it. I had to darken the door of the hospital yesterday in order to pick up a prescription, and you’d better believe I kept my hands pinned to my sides, touching nothing more than was absolutely necessary. I was even too scared to touch the hand sanitizer dispenser. The fact that everyone was walking around in those blue masks didn’t exactly ease my paranoia, either. You see, I’m a bit of a hypochondriac by nature, so it doesn’t take much to make my life flash before my eyes.
But, on the other hand, 50 cases is a pretty small number, considering that this has been happening for months now. And, they say most of the people contracting (and succumbing) to the disease had underlying medical conditions or were elderly. Perhaps this virus, like SARS and H1N1 before it, will come and go and leave the vast majority of us unscathed.
But still, even if it blows over soon, I feel entitled to some kind of pride. Someone should make me a T-shirt—“I survived the MERS epidemic of 2013.”
But in order to claim my T-shirt prize, I first have to survive. So yes, I’ll be continuing to bathe in hand sanitizer, at least for the foreseeable future.
Woah! I hadn’t heard about this. It sounds scary. I normally distrust hand sanitizer– yes, yes, I am one of those crazy-people who doubt many modern ‘advances’– yet this sort of situation might be an exception. Keep yourself safe Cinderslut!