Corona Virus and Spider Bites

There’s a news item by Gabrielle Fonrouge, Bernadette Hogan and Bruce Golding posted on the New York Times page on April 23, 2020, with the title, Coronavirus patients admitted to Queens nursing home – with body bags.

“Within days, three of the bags were filled with the first of 30 residents who would die thereafter Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Health Department handed down its March 25 directive that bars nursing homes from refusing to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients, the exec said.”

“‘Cuomo has blood on his hands.  He really does.  There’s no way to sugarcoat this”, the health care executive added.”  The article pointed out that the executives were concerned about retaliation and wished to remain anonymous since they are regulated by Cuomo’s office.

“Why in the world would you be sending coronavirus patients to a nursing home, where the most vulnerable population to this disease resides?”

My own opinion would be that there is sufficient negligence on the part of Andrew Cuomo and those directly linked to the March 25^th directive to support charges of Negligent Homicide for failing to consider the result of such actions, actions which they understood by the fact that they sent body bags as part of the transfer.

What has that got to do with Spider Bites?  A good question that deserves an answer…

(Image of spider is one that was on our house in Houston and has nothing to do with today’s article… isn’t it a beauty…)

In the early 1970s, while attending Military Police School at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, I came down with an Upper Respiratory Infection (URI).  Well, actually I’d entered Basic Training with it and it never went away, only getting worse the longer it went untreated.

We were nearing completion of training when they admitted me into the base hospital. I remember it so clearly because it was the same week we were supposed to report to the pistol range to qualify on the M1911, the old standard 45 caliber pistol that’s had been in use since Noah tied up at the dock to offload.  I was familiar with the weapon and could field strip it blindfolded and put it back together; something which was part of the training.

While confined to the URI Ward with all the other members of the Wheeze and Hack Choir, we noticed a civilian being brought in with his arm bandaged up as they assigned him a bunk.  Turns out he and his friend were hunting close by the base and he got bitten by a spider.

The nurse in admitting didn’t like the look of the bite and since his buddy was in the Army they let him use the Emergency Room to get checked out and given a shot of antibiotics just in case.  He had a reaction to the shot and rather than send him home the doctors decided it would be better to keep him overnight for observation.

That would have been a great idea except there were no beds available except the one in the URI Ward; that’s right, they put this poor schnook in with a bunch of contagious Wheeze and Hacks to spend the night.

Two or three more days went by and my upper respiratory infection went away and they let me get on with my Military Police training.  I was able to get over to the pistol range and qualify with the pistol without having ever fired it previously so the time in the hospital didn’t keep me from moving along with the rest of my buddies.

The spider bite on that fellow’s arm cleared up nicely and by the next day it was hardly noticeable, but he’d come down with a terrible case of… you got it…URI; he was still confined there a week after I’d left.  He was fit to be tied as he unleashed his disgust at the doctors for having put him in contact with god-knows-what.