There are approximately 250 people in our area.  But there is rarely ever EXACTLY a predictable number because folks move around and, further, we are all spread all over our district/neighbourhood (about 250 square miles over several islands).  Most of us just move to the local town and back but that social mobility counts when you are ‘monitoring’ the latest disease.  Costco is at another town forty miles away and so that trip exposes us all a bit more, I suppose.  But, basically, one would think that those living ‘remote’ would seem to have an advantage……

…..but we do not.  “WHY NOT!”  Well, a lot of folks living remote go south to Mexico or other foreign destinations for the winter.  I would estimate that at least ten are gone for the whole of the winter and maybe 25 leave for two weeks or even three.  In fact, two of our young people just came back from Japan and Mexico.  Gasp!

And some in the community want them to self-isolate.  I am ambivalent.  They do NOT exhibit symptoms.  They were NOT in ‘infected’ areas and our local doctor said that they do not have to quarantine.  But, of course, fear/concern is not logic or science based….it is fear based and the knee-jerk thinking there is simple: “Let them sit it out til we are all safe.”

The problem with that kind of simple thinking, of course, is that ‘they’ have already been all through the system from airplanes to airports, from being picked up to greeting friends and, worst of the worst, living with a parent who is very ‘active’ all through the community.  If they have C-19, the bug is out of the bag.  If they do not, the community is over reacting.  What are ya gonna do?

And what are you gonna do about the dozens of friends and visitors that come every summer?

And therein lies the fallacy that living OTG makes you safe.  I honestly think that, with the exception of the urban zombies and the roving bands of killers that we all expect to emerge at any moment, OTG is only a bit less vulnerable to your basic earth-shattering events.  In truth, we are more vulnerable to ‘physical harm’ from falling off ladders to tool-use accidents, from drowning to catastrophic fires and earthquakes – because we do not have any real big-scale ‘accident response infrastructure’.  OTG living is physical and being active and working hard physically results in injuries.  That is just the way of OTG life.

In other words, we are not MORE safe, we are likely generally a bit LESS safe.

And a disease is a very, very hard threat to combat.  Just ask the CDC.  Sal was in the hospital and contracted the normal flu from there.  I shopped at Save-On and Costco this past month…and many of the staff and patrons did NOT look the picture of health to me.  Buy gas at the station and you likely pick up the gas pump bare-handed…..push the store doors open to get inside, shop from shelves, gather fruits and veggies from bins and open coolers with bare hands.  If the bug is out there, it will find you.

Merkel is estimating 75% of Germany will eventually get the C-19 virus.  Other countries are saying similar.  And very little of that will happen because of people kissing.  The means of transmission required to impact that many people will not be by way of loose lips.

It’s here.  It’ll get you or it’ll get someone you know.  The only consolation is that the disease is NOT Ebola or the Plague.  It is just a nasty, nasty flu.  The biggest concern for me is that once a flu is ‘in the general population’, it keeps coming back.  We’re gonna be revisited by Covid-19 for a long time, I think.  And that is a bummer of threatening proportions.