[Boomer]

Originally Posted by GoodLife

First, I commend you for being a gardener! My dad had a great tiered vegetable garden in his back yard. Every time I visited my mon would prepare an awesome salad made from freshly picked lettuces, herbs, and vegetables from that garden. He also had a fondness for tulips.

Now, I am not in any way amused by the fact that the USA was hit very hard by this virus, over 100k killed so far. My amusement re the mask frenzy is that I was the first to post a thread here warning people that Fauci and CDC were lying to us about masks, my thread got deleted, and the fact is that during the early stages of the pandemic is when they would have done the most good. Now I'm a mask basher endangering people? That's pretty funny.

2nd. I do practice what I preach. My exemplary 5 star behavior, staying outside of all buildings, staying 20 feet away from people, is designed not only to protect myself from the virus but also all others in case I was an asymptomatic carrier. The people that have insisted on going to supermarkets, even if they wear a cloth mask, are engaging in more risky behavior than I am. Those people can still catch the disease, and they can still spread it. I have also posted threads warning people that coughs, sneezes, even talking by infected individuals can spread virus clouds much further than 6 feet and hang in the air for hours.

I see a lot of misinformation posted here about how covid 19 spreads and what different masks will do to protect you. The most dangerous is aerosol spread, infected individuals eject these just by talking, and these are the smallest particles, they can hang in the air for hours in enclosed spaces, and the only mask capable of stopping them is an N95 respirator mask. These particles go through surgical and cloth masks like a chain link fence. Second most dangerous are sneeze droplets, these are larger and fall to the ground quicker, and cloth/surgical masks can stop them with various degrees of success but not even close to 100%. They are better than nothing at all but they are not totally efficient in preventing one from getting infected, or preventing an infected individual from spreading the virus to others while wearing one. The third vector of transmission, contaminated surfaces, is thought to be less of a factor, but still something to be aware of.

So, when I looked at the science, my solution to protect myself, and others, was to stay out of buildings altogether and maintain at least 20 feet of distance outdoors.

Enjoy your garden, its a nice day, possible rain later.

Thank you, GL. Ah, yes, tulips. Many years ago, I went tulip-crazy in response to a catalog from Breck’s. Those pictures were glorious.

I blissfully spent a blue fortune, ordering bulbs that promised many colors — red, pink, yellow, purple, even chartreuse, and black, too. Some had ruffles.

I then spent a whole day, early that November, planting those things. I even buried them in chicken wire to keep underground and digging critters from getting them. Spring came. Gorgeous. My work had paid off — or so I thought.

Then one morning I looked out the kitchen window and there was Bambi, gobbling up tulips just like popcorn. I took a shot — with my camera — and I never planted tulips again, although I do love them.

Now, about our back-and-forth other stuff here: I hope I do not sound like I am going all English teacher on you, but I really must give that old advice I gave so many times — about how to answer essay questions. The advice I gave was to first read the question carefully.

I am giving this advice because what I asked you in my earlier post was, “Why don’t you preach what you practice?” I had turned the phrase around but you missed that wording.

But then, your answer actually turned out pretty much OK anyway. You explained your focus well, and it was good to be reading your own thoughts instead of having to go around link after link. When you used your own words, you clarified things.

Now, before I get any bad press about how an English teacher sure can bastardize the hellouta punctuation and be so free with sentence fragments and start sentences with ‘and’ and be so much in love with dashes, etc., etc., I must say I know I do all those things. I let voice and tone beat stickler.

Well, now that I have cleared up all that, I would like to move forward with what I said earlier about the cover stories from June’s Atlantic.

I know I probably sound like I am assigning homework, but I am not trying to be a smartazz when I say I think you might find some of the articles interesting, thought-provoking, especially the one titled, “How QAnon is Warping Reality and Discrediting Science.” There are others, too, “How Can We Recover From This?” and “The Way Plagues Leave Societies Altered Forever.”

Reading articles in Atlantic magazine can take up an entire afternoon sometimes but that gives the brain a little workout by invoking critical thinking skills instead of letting the highly paid mouths on the various “news” channels tell us what to think. I really do hope you will at least peruse the June issue, in addition to your other research.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Boomer, Rm. 101