Day 39: Social Distancing Begins at Home

Someone died across the street. I watched them remove the corpse. There was no hurry, no face.

Nina and I are quarreling about whether she should go outside. If she wanted to see a doctor or meet up with her friend from Knoxville, fine, but I think she just wants to roam around. It’s cloudy, chilly, windy. The last time she went out, she came back in a homicidal mood and promptly turned sick.

I wish she would get help. I wish she’d talk to me.

I recognize that bird flu is less risky to most people this month than it was last month (or may be next month), but pregnant women need to avoid any flu, let alone this one. I wouldn’t want our child to be damaged before he or she even has a chance.

Of course I couldn’t say that. Didn’t dare try.

So I’m sorry to report that I can’t follow any of the advice that so many of you offered. I’ve failed to “charm her into sharing.” I don’t really want to “kill the [*].” I feel paralyzed.

I offered to cook us a special dinner. Nina insisted we order in. She didn’t want spicy food—another symptom of pregnancy. (Instant expert here.)

We compromised on a Thai place neither likes and ate in silence after I disinfected from my quick trip outside to pay the Mexican guy. Nina rolled her eyes as I re-spiced my share of dinner. I was the only one watching her performance. Sneeky sat facing the closed bedroom door.

The loneliest people in the world must live with others who don’t talk to them.

Social distancing begins at home. We communicate so little that I almost addressed her as Nina. She is more real to me as a character on my screen than she is as my lost soul mate. Is that some sign of denial? Our song must be Tainted Love.

Nina’s voice is for her iPhone, mine is for my cat. When she talks with friends, she speaks in hushed tones. When she’s talking to someone at work, she sounds like she’s just conquered Deutsche Bank. I wish she’d try to fool me by acting warm.

I’d hate to have parents like us.

Day 40: A World of Preparation—for What?

I stopped by Ric’s Place for relief. The mood wasn’t much happier there than chez moi, though Ric was pleased to see me. When I entered the kitchen, he warned Anna to take care lest El Bandito Plastico (that’s me) steal the air from her lungs. She tried to smile. So did I. She looked as if she might burst into tears again.

MAYBE I SHOULD POUR BEFORE I ASKWe commiserated silently until Ric abruptly decided to show me things he wants to change for his restaurant reopening. I don’t remember anything he said. Anna was glancing at me sadly while she rinsed dishes, as if I’d tripped over a nerve no one knew was there. I still don’t know what upset her, but it’s still active, churning. I feel it.

Why are all the women I know suffering relentlessly?

If Nina is pregnant, Sneeky ought to be tested for toxoplasmosis. Is that why she expelled him from his/my former room? Nina’s procedures are a mishmash of things I’ve said, as if she’s memorized every third word I uttered about bird flu.

It’s extremely unlikely that Sneeky killed any sick mice recently. He’s not that sort of feline. If he found one that refused to run away, he’d meow in peremptory outrage until I dealt with the intruder.

Whatever the truth is, I wish to help. If Nina plans to bear a child, that’s her choice. I would go to any length to help our baby survive with full physical and mental faculties. She must know this. I don’t understand why we can’t discuss it.

I’m going to confront her condition in the morning, when I hear her turn on my TV. I haven’t prepared a statement—or even the question—but this has drifted too long. If she’s pregnant, she needs special nutrients, a doctor, lots of luck. Less wine, for sure.

I don’t communicate well when I’m so uncertain. I’m trying hard not to resent Nina’s attitude and behavior. I’m failing.

It’s a daunting time to be breeding, even if our baby turns out well. I wonder if bird flu is nature’s way of striking back at mammals. Our evolutionary line is devastating a world that’s far more active than we like to think it is. How reactive is it?

This disease may dramatically rearrange life on earth.

Bureaucrats everywhere are responding with plans to take control by doing it themselves—slaughtering birds. New York City has announced a poisoning campaign aimed at common street fowl. I suspect they hope the burgeoning rat population will eat the corpses and die, killing multiple ‘pests’ with one toxin. The law of unintended consequences will take dogs, too. (People and their pet canines get electrocuted here, just walking wintry sidewalks.)

Widespread avian slaughter will unleash a global fog of insects that are already flourishing amid rising levels of carbon dioxide. Bugs we can see and feel will thrive without birds to check their population growth. With bats, too, dying in vast numbers from a little-understood fungal plague known as white nose syndrome, insects will freely feast on people and crops. Sicknesses such as malaria, dengue fever, and chikungunya—surging northward as the climate heats—will surpass those Biblical scourges. Famine will kill hundreds of millions. Wars will follow.

I can’t resist noting that houseflies can carry avian flu. Along with dump flies and dung flies, they are known to have borne H5N2 in Pennsylvania during a huge, lethal outbreak in 1983-4. Twenty years later, the Japanese found “highly pathogenic” H5N1 in some blowflies near a stricken poultry farm. It’s not yet known if they can spread bird flu.

Day 41: Speechless, for Once

I‘ll post tomorrow.

Day 42: Dumb

The sun was high and bright. Looks like an early summer. More tomorrow. I promise.

Day 43: Vitamin D—A Gorgeous Steroid That Fights Disease

I’m sorry about the last two days. Call it functional difficulties.

Today’s regret is that I’ve never paid tribute to Vitamin D. Being locked up has inspired a greater appreciation of the sun. It’s no surprise that people get depressed in the winter, when the sun is distant and low. It drives me to google….

Which is how I discovered that Vitamin D is a profoundly useful natural hormone, essentially a steroid. (Yup.) The Vitamin D Council maintains an informative site.

IT'S EVERYWHERE, FREE & GOOD FOR YOUVitamin D boosts your immune system. It’s a biocide that seems to kill bacteria, fungi, and viral particles by stimulating white blood cells to produce more cathelicidin, an antimicrobial compound. Studies show that it fights rickets, osteoporosis, diabetes, breast and bowel cancers, and other cancers.

Vitamin D is even considered helpful in repressing immune overreactions. It seems to support heart health and fight high blood pressure. Aging, too.

A deficiency of Vitamin D in the womb may contribute to making the unborn child schizophrenic. Just like the presence of flu. It is suspected of causing autism.

Our need for Vitamin D—think of it as a substance that rich sunlight inspires inside us—may even explain the seasonality of influenza. A lot of people lack adequate Vitamin D, particularly in late autumn, winter, and early spring.

In the really old days, we ran around at least half-naked and worked outside when there was light (indoors being a stinky, smoky cave). Even those in temperate climates got plenty of D much of the year. Nowadays people work indoors, overdress, and use sunscreen. We are told to fear any exposure to the sun.

But it’s nearly impossible to obtain enough Vitamin D through diet.

Milk is not the answer, at least not the whole answer. It doesn’t come with D naturally; the dairy industry adds 100 international units to fortify an 8-ounce glass. Studies show that most retail milk fails to contain as much D as the labels claim. When it does, you’d have to drink almost a gallon a day to get what many leading Vitamin D experts consider necessary—up to 2,000 IU daily. (Some recommend 5,000 in the winter.)

Twenty minutes of full-body exposure to the sun in summertime generates 20,000 IU within 48 hours. That’s how much our bodies are geared to handle from nature.

We Come From Fish

Our need for Vitamin D reflects human evolution. We originated in oceans rich in calcium and then crawled onto land that didn’t offer it. Mammals developed Vitamin D to keep blood calcium at levels critical to maintaining heart, brain, and muscle functions without having to dip into the calcium stored in their bones—at least 90% of human calcium is stashed there. (Forget the monkey talk; read Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, now available on this site.)

Because Homo sapiens emerged in tropical Africa, where sunlight is plentiful and rich in Vitamin D, we evolved dark protective melanin, pigment to guard against melanoma. Then some of us marched north into Europe and Asia, where our skin bleached to absorb more of the invaluable hormone.

Today most of the world’s economic activity takes place above the 35^th parallel in the northern hemisphere, where winter sun isn’t sufficiently intense to keep residents healthy. I could stand naked on a heated Manhattan rooftop through a bright and clear New Year’s Day and derive next to no Vitamin D. In the U.S., the 35^th parallel runs from just north of Santa Barbara through Albuquerque and Chattanooga to Cape Hatteras.

All of Europe lies above the 35^th. It runs just under Tokyo and most of South Korea, with much of China happily below it (though air pollution blocks much of their D). In the southern hemisphere, far fewer people live on the polar side of the 35^th parallel—residents of Melbourne and those who live south of Buenos Aires and Valparaiso.

Black people make very little vitamin D, so those who dwell in the north are thought to suffer more prostate and pancreatic cancer for want of it. Tuberculosis, too.

This applies to all non-whites. In 2007 a University of Toronto study found that 85% of students who had originated in East Asia lacked sufficient D, as did 93% of students from South Asia, and all those of African descent. A Harvard Medical School study said 97% of African Americans and 70% of white Americans are deficient in Vitamin D.

A GRADUAL SOLAR ECLIPSE AS WE AGEI must point out that I found a study of studies by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine for the U.S. and Canadian governments. It concluded that few people lack Vitamin D and there’s no need to take supplements. The report ignored most of the best work on the subject. I disagree, respectfully or not. So did these experts at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

There’s no question that, as we age, our bodies produce less D in response to sunlight. An 80-year-old needs four times as much rich sunlight as a 20-year-old. A black octogenarian needs eight times as much as a young white adult. The arithmetic leaves older folks plundering their bones for calcium, causing osteoporosis.

There’s a certain elasticity of supply if we proceed wisely. (To thwart skin cancer, avoid more than 20 minutes of naked sun between 10 am and 2 pm in the brighter months.) If we achieve sufficient exposure in the sunny months, we store Vitamin D in our body fat and then draw on it.

Tomatoes, Coffee & Exercise Fight Skin Damage

Unless we use too much sunscreen (which may accelerate cancer). Children are so sensitive to Vitamin D that sunscreens won’t prevent them from getting what they need if they circulate under the sun. (Rickets is coming back, so some kids obviously aren’t getting enough D.) But a sunscreen with an SPF of 8 is enough to turn adult Vikings into the equivalent of Black Alaskans—heavily inclined toward D deficiency. To help protect your skin against sun damage, eat tomatoes and exercise and drink coffee. That’s a regimen I could live with, if my gym were open.

In the darker months, people can eat oily, fatty fish like mackerel and sardines, drink fortified milks (including rice milk or soy milk), eat egg yolks and such organ meats as liver, and take vitamin pills. Cod liver oil has some D, but a teaspoonful is worth a mere 400 IU and contains a lot of Vitamin A, which can be very toxic.

Many folks supplement daily with pills containing from 2,000 to 5,000 IU of cholecalciferol (D3). Be careful: One can overdose on D in food and pills.

Have your Vitamin D level tested if for any reason you think you might be deficient or overdosing. Many advocates think everyone should be tested because we all have different absorption rates.

Stay strong: Get naked outside, somehow.