Today I cut down a dead tree to feed the stove this winter (haven’t needed to cut a live one for years) and was faced with the nerve-wracking situation of a thousand pounds of wood standing upright with no telling which way it wanted to go. Normally, I can aim the tree to within 20° or so of where I want it to fall but this one was caught up in the branches of the one next to it.
There’s a bit of a #forestry story here and also a point about #Covid at the end. 🧵
2/ A few years ago, I was in this same situation and it wound up being one of the closer calls I’ve had with something Very Bad happening. That particular thousand pounds of wood decided it would tip straight toward me. I got set to GTFO. Except I couldn’t move; my feet had gotten stuck in the slash I’d left at my feet just getting to that point with the tree. A network of interconnected branches was holding me fast, right there.
The tree left a small scratch on my head going down. Damn lucky.
3/ Today I made sure the space around my feet was nice and clear. Tidied things up and got to work. Let me also add that I am very grateful, after an injury left me unable to even sit up for long and took over a year for the #ChronicPain to finally stop, that it was fucking awesome to be able to hold fifteen pounds of engine and cutting chain over my shoulders for all the time it took to make that foot-thick trunk come crashing down at my feet. Not a twinge.
Anyhow, five feet of tree came down.
4/ And then another five feet, but now I was getting pretty nervous because the little bit of lean the trunk had to it was disappearing as what was left up there got more and more to the vertical part. The dead tree had been in a years-long embrace of branches with a bigger one that is thankfully healthy and going strong after a hundred years.
But cutting the dead one anymore meant it would come thudding down somewhere right around my feet. Not great.
Here’s where #Covid comes in. About risk.
5/ I probably could have kept going. I’ve been at this for a long time and know how to dance with my chainsaw. I can judge where trees are going to go, mostly.
I could probably get my feet away from where that trunk would come crashing down. Probably. Let’s say I’m 95% sure.
But you know what? I didn’t like that remaining 5%. So I got my tractor and lifted up the forks on the front to about 10 feet up and then pushed the damn tree over. Not entirely safe, but much safer.
Seems logical, right?
6/ Of course it was. I’d be a damn fool to take a 5% risk of being maimed for life when I could drop that to probably less than 0.1% risk (if the bottom of the tree got pushed out instead of it tipping away from me). It was a small inconvenience to hike back to where the tractor was and bring it to the site. For an excellent reason.
Now, you know what’s not at all logical? You walking around rooms full of people exhaling #SARS2 without filtering that shit out with an #n95
Want to talk risk?
7/ Right now, probably 3-4% of the people around you at the Piggly-Wiggly have #Covid and are expelling zillions of copies of one of the most transmissible viruses of all time with every breath they take. They aren’t wearing masks, either. Nobody give a shit anymore about anyone else.
Let’s say there are 40 people in the store. Your chance of getting out of there without being in the same room as a disease vector are, generously, 0.97^40 = 30%.
Yes, that’s less than half.
We’re not done yet.
8/ What this thing does when one (yes, just one is now enough) of those copies rides a microscopic water-ball into your nose along with the delicious aroma of fresh-ground coffee is not actually just a “cold.” It’s a vascular disease. It causes fucking #brain damage, and not just as some rare outcome, either. A lot of the people around you are a little bit slower now, a little bit more forgetful, a shorter fuse on their temper. Caring less about others.
That’s the result of dead neurons.
9/ Nobody is talking about this, I’ve known about it for two years now, but only because I used to read academic papers on #Covid. I saw what this little fucker does inside people’s brains, how it makes its way along nanotubes connecting neurons. That’s when I vowed my #N95 is not coming off for the foreseeable future.
Here’s a hard cold fact for you: Nothing I’ve seen in the two years since has in any way lessened that realization that Covid causes #brain #damage. To the contrary, there have…
10/ …been ample studies showing that #Covid is significantly reducing one of the most well-known metrics we have of cognitive functioning, perhaps imperfect but still an excellent way to see relative changes.
Those changes point down. A loss of 3 IQ points per infections is not something you should just accept. But the more it happens, the more you’ll be inclined to accept it, because—speaking candidly here—you’ll be dumber than a box of hammers.
This of course serves the goals of the virus.
11/ And this only partially overlaps the living hell that millions—yes, millions—of people in just this country alone are now experiencing from #LongCovid. Their old lives are gone. It would be false hope and toxic positivity to tell them it’ll be fine, they’ll be OK. They might not be, ever. It sucks. We don’t respect what they’re dealing with if we refuse to face that reality.
I know a guy on Twitter who goes by the handle D.Bone who has never healed. Nearly bedridden. Used to run a bar.
12//Which is all to say, in summary, that walking around not wearing an #N95 during yet another surge of this #pandemic that quite obviously not over—unless you are a billionaire, business owner, politician, or political/media prostitute thereof, or your brain is already too far gone to change course—is an incredibly stupid thing to be doing.
Far dumber than taking a 5% chance of losing a foot out in the woods today.
Wake up. Thanks, Ted Talk etc. etc.
@kaffando Yes, the worst thing about covid for me is the fucking bullying from others. It's making me stay home and not bother with people at all.
You wouldn't believe the look I got when we walked into the doctor office in June. Two MA's stared at me with anger. One was a big fat girl at a desk, (not fat shaming), but she gave me such a look. These women should be fired.
I've noticed the same for one of our local radio newsreaders. Things have improved for him now, often doing a full newsread w/o error, but he first caught my attention by making multiple errors on every newscast.
I don't know him, and I'm glad he wasn't fired over whatever is going on. 🙂
But previously I've heard few such errors in my life. Now? At least a few each week, and not just by him.
I worry. ☹️
Good thread!
Now when I run errands, all I will see are crowds of widdowmakers in stores waiting to fall on me.
Thank you! Well said.
And I'm glad you were able to coax the tree down safely enough to keep you warm and remain personally unbroken! 🙂
Ed Suominen
kaffando
Debbie Belair
epicdemiologist
Likely Jan Lukas
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Catherine is not complacent
No Gods , no Masters! RESIST
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