It appears economic woes have overtaken public health woes in South Carolina, as in many of the states around the country. It’s alarming to consider as the virus hasn’t gone away, nor will it.
I’ve taken to watching the daily counts from DHEC, and have decided to track the new cases to see what the month of May, being the first month of the lifted stay-at-home order, will bring.
As you can see, April was fairly successful in holding down the trendline. There were increasing days as often as not, but there were never more than two consecutive days of decreasing cases. The Federal Government’s hastily produced guidelines for Opening Up America required states to show 14 consecutive days of decreasing cases to even enter Phase I of the plan. Clearly South Carolina isn’t there–and I’d guess few states are–but they are opening up nonetheless.
I will continue my isolated lifestyle, which doesn’t differ much from the pre-pandemic day-to-day I prefer anyway. My only daily excursions into the public sphere were to lift weights at the local Crunch Fitness, which has been closed since late March. I’ve been contemplating what I’d do should they reopen, everything from limiting my training to just two days each week to train legs (it’s quite difficult to overload quads in particular without some resistance), to going back only if they limit the people allowed at any one time.
Today, it popped into my head that if I had some kind of bar to attach the bands to, I might be able to squat better than just wrapping the bands around my neck. As I perused the worldwide web, I found this:
I read some reviews and pulled the trigger. If this works out, I believe I will stay out of the gym for as long as it takes to get this pandemic under true control. I’m 56, I live alone, I’m self-employed. I cannot afford to be ill, even if I’m one of the lucky ones who aren’t killed by COVID. It seems so capricious in its nature and individual responses to it vary from asymptomatic to fatal. Reading the harrowing and horrific tale of a 49-year old avid hiker, cyclist and runner who spent 32 days in ICU fighting to breathe removed any doubt that a generally healthy person would somehow be spared the horror. No, I will remember my #1 Joeism and do what I think is best:
If I don’t take care of me, who will?
Until the new contraption arrives, I continue to train with the resistance bands I have and some bodyweight movements like pushups, inverted rows and a handful of others. I’m training every day, eating in a deficit, steadily getting leaner and other than increased anxiety and loneliness, I’m feeling rather alright. I purchased a Fitbit and while it’s entertaining, I haven’t gotten what I ultimately wanted which was a full sleep analysis including 02 stats. Apparently I haven’t found the precise location on my arm just yet so either I get no sleep data at all, or just hours slept. I was surprised to find out how many steps I take each day without trying, putting in several miles of walking every day. Although at the pace I walk with Eddie I don’t think I’m getting much aerobic benefit from it.
In any case, that’s enough for tonight. I keep trying to come up with new ways to spend my time enjoyably and having lost rather quickly in my first day of online poker, writing this quick post has been an improvement over logging on again to try to recoup my losses and my self esteem. Honestly I made what I knew were bets on the second best hand, but I wanted to see if my opponents were tight players or trying to bluff me out of the hands. Lesson learned. I lost the first large chunk on a King high Flush, figuring there was only one card in the deck that could beat me and wanting to force my opponent to prove he actually had it. He did. My second major loss came with pocket K’s in my hand, which was the top pair of an ugly Flop, Turn and River. The only thing that would beat me would be a low straight, and my opponent would have had to be betting with nothing better than a 5 in his hand to have it. He did. So while I lost both hands, I knew what I was doing. Still stings though.
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