Thursday, November 6, 2008
Is everyone in the city sick?
Posted by Kevin Allman on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:57 PM
...because it sure seems that way.
Sneezes at Rouses, coughs on the streetcar, hoarse voices in the halls. I can hear A&E editor Will Coviello sneezing it up in his office. Listings editor Alex Woodward just got to the place where he's sorta over-something, but not quite.
I've been washing my hands compulsively, taking vitamins, and Purell-ing whenever I think of it...and despite all the precautions I just sneezed a time or two myself.
Do we as New Orleanians not put in our time with nine months of sinusitis and pollen-mold cough? Is that not enough sacrifice for the health gods? What foul new crud infests our city this first week of November? And is everyone around you sick, too?
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A lot of stuff comes home with the children and then gets passed around. Of course, if you throw in all the gunk from the trees (someone I know had allergies to the oaks here - sad, sad state of affairs), the various six-legged bugs and many-legged buckmoth caterpillars, and the many weather changes that constitute a "change of seasons" around here these days, it really does bring one back to "living in the Old Testament", as Julia Reed has said.
I've been sick for the last three weeks it seems. It got really bad two weekends ago and then, just as I was starting to get better, a half dozen friends flew in from NYC for Halloween and I medicated my illness with alcohol and tobacco (a treatment that is apparently not approved by the FDA)
I arrived from the U.K. six weeks ago. What I noticed is that everybody is sick, everybody is on some kind of prescription drug and nobody takes time off the rest. If they did that, they couldn't afford their health care insurance. In the UK, we have free health care, and people can take sick days to rest. I know it's a complicated issue, but when you add up your taxes and what you pay for insurance here, it's a lot more than what the Brits pay in tax. I'm still having trouble running the numbers through my head.
