Olympian Jessica Schultz/curlAK
A two-time Olympian from Anchorage, Alaska has revealed she is battling COVID-19.
Thirty-two-year-old Jessica Schultz, the skip on U.S. Olympic women’s curling teams in 2006 and again in 2014, did not respond to queries at the start of the month asking about rumors she had the disease, but she has now begun a blog to talk about her long run in dealing with the coronavirus.
Some believe she may have been infected by contact with the handle on the curling rock at the national curling championships in Maryland, but she has not detailed how or where she believes she contracted the disease.
Most of the North Dakota curling team last week revealed they had been infected in Maryland.
Contact transmission of COVID-19 has attracted little public attention to date, but the Centers for Disease Control is warning motorists refueling their vehicles to “use gloves or disinfecting wipes on handles and buttons before you touch them,” telling shoppers to “use hand sanitizer when you leave the store (and) wash your hands when you get home,” and advising a similar ritual “after accepting deliveries or collecting mail.”
Some physicians have suggested the risk of contact spread could be increasing from people regularly putting on and taking off face masks or other face coverings also suggested by the CDC.
Hong Kong doctors found the virus could survive for up to seven days on a surgical mask. There have been studies of how long the virus might survive on a bandana used as a face covering and regularly stuffed into and taken out of a pocket over the course of a week. The CDC recommends masks be cleaned after each use.
No fun
Schultz’s blog makes it clear the new, pandemic disease is something no one wants to catch although the risks of young, healthy people dying from it are relatively low. The death rate for those under age 40 appears in the range of 0.03 to 0.4 percent; that’s about three to four times the death rate for the common flu among the general population.
Schultz description of her personal involvement with COVID-19 makes it sound like the flu from hell. On April 14, she reported she had been in isolation for almost a month and was still not in the clear.
“My relationship with COVID-19 has been an interesting one. It has been unlike any illness I have ever had before,” she wrote. “Every day I check in with Nurse Michael to give him a temperature reading. Every passing week, I hope that maybe next week I can join the ‘new normal.'”
She said her symptoms now range from “joint pain and inability to function” to a “low-grade fever feeling.” She reported bouts of chills, fever, lethargy, headache, runny nose, chest tightness and more since the infection began.
The founder of curlAK – a company set up to grow the sport of curling in Alaska – Schultz has been unable to work because of the illness that began after winning silver at the Curling Club Nationals.
Before that trip, she wrote, “life was grand. I had a full-time job helping others and my curling non-profit was starting to take off, plus a whole lot of other exciting opportunities.
“I came back from that trip, entangled with Covid, and shortly to follow … filing for unemployment. Is this my worst nightmare? I don’t think it’s anything I could have dreamed up. I work hard. I have always paid my bills on time and usually bounce back from illness fairly quickly. Now, it’s been over a month and I have not seen income of any type, still waiting on that unemployment check (not to the fault of the overwhelmed unemployment office) or any of the government’s offerings. Am I concerned? Am I stressed? Am I scared?
“We all are in some way or another.”
Categories: News
Ms. Schultz ends her blog post with some wisdom:
“Before I wrap up on my Covid story …
The most devastating part is hearing about how other humans are acting toward each other. Acting out in anger and focused on placing blame. People turning against each other in accusations and acts of racism. People who have ignored the “hunker down” orders by continuing to invade others’ space. This kind of behavior only makes the reality we are living worse. Hearing about this negligent, arrogant behavior makes me want to puke. Regardless of your political backgrounds, where you think this virus came from, or that you think it is not real and that it is some sort of political hoax, that is fine. You can think what you want. But please, please act in a manner that will save a life. Follow the precautions, “hunker down”, stay out of other’s space. The reality of our situation is …. There is a virus. It is here. It is real. It is killing our loved ones. It spreads like wildfire. We are all living this reality. We ALL need to do our part to try to minimize the spread, regardless of what our personal beliefs are.
Let’s all work to be a part of the solution and not contribute to the problem.”
The end of her blog post seems most appropriate:
“Before I wrap up on my Covid story …
The most devastating part is hearing about how other humans are acting toward each other. Acting out in anger and focused on placing blame. People turning against each other in accusations and acts of racism. People who have ignored the “hunker down” orders by continuing to invade others’ space. This kind of behavior only makes the reality we are living worse. Hearing about this negligent, arrogant behavior makes me want to puke. Regardless of your political backgrounds, where you think this virus came from, or that you think it is not real and that it is some sort of political hoax, that is fine. You can think what you want. But please, please act in a manner that will save a life. Follow the precautions, “hunker down”, stay out of other’s space. The reality of our situation is …. There is a virus. It is here. It is real. It is killing our loved ones. It spreads like wildfire. We are all living this reality. We ALL need to do our part to try to minimize the spread, regardless of what our personal beliefs are.
Let’s all work to be a part of the solution and not contribute to the problem.”
Although this virus is real, this is a numbers hoax. The numbers being reported are not given context relative to people that die everyday from the flu or other ailments. My next statement is not meant to be sexist, but the people that are most freaked out by this “pandemic” are women. Irrationally so. It must be the motherly concern they are born with innately. This hoax is being perpetrated by the WHO, the CDC, and people like Dr. Fauci. In this article, this athlete talks more about how she has lost her job than about her symptoms. The quarantine mandates, border restrictions, food production shutdowns and subsequent permanent company failures, millions of people without jobs, etc., are all about testing us to see what God-given rights, what constitutional rights, they can take away from us. What did Ben Franklin say? “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither. He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
Larry,
Im surprised how many people are duped into believing that this is all one big power grab/conspiracy.
I hope its just an outlet for frustration.
Regardless,good luck
Dave,
Calling Larry’s opinion on the loss of Constitutional Rights a “conspiracy” shows your lack of understanding in our history.
Of course these health officials like Dr. Fauci are leading the push towards health mandates, lockdowns and increased social distancing…he stands at the podium and says this himself.
Back in PA, an elected representative is protesting these mandates right along with his fellow citizens.
“…it pains me to see our capitalist system crippled and small businesses in my district closed…Unfortunately, many governors are abdicating their responsibility to manage this balancing act, handing over the keys to the health officials…Mike Jones, a Republican, represents Pennsylvania’s 93rd legislative district in the state’s House of Representatives”
Would you say that this Republican is spreading a “conspiracy theory” by claiming “our capitalist system” has been “crippled by handing over the keys to health officials”?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-saw-the-best-of-america-at-a-peaceful-reopen-rally/2020/04/21/566909b0-8416-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html
S.s While im certainly no history scholar,im well aware of many facets of our countries history.
Life and death of business,is much the same as it is for mortals.
Our system has been overleveradged and undercapitalized since 2001.
Risk taking has not been properly priced in.This is in a large part I believe due to cheap $’s.
If you look at a long term chart of 30yr bond yields youll plainly see that.
A good part of that is demographics,less prime age people spending $’s(credit not withstanding).
Productivity and inflation (along with real wages).
Have been trending down for years.
Basically i think of it like a body without functioning kidneys.Capitalism is slowly poisoning itself,due to its success.
Somehow it needs a reset,that does not include trillion dollar bailouts.
But unfortunately the alternative is complete breakdown.
So we are perpetuating the cycle,and will need larger and larger “fixes”.
Hence the term “pushing on a string.”
I dont know what the solution is,except protect yourself financially(less debt,more cash).
Wayne gretzgy is said to have replied,(more or less)when asked why he was so good.
“I dont skate to the puck,I try to skate to where its going to be.”
In other words,dont think like the crowd,do your own work.
Good luck,”this too shall pas”.
Dave,
I get the “in over your head” side to small businesses but the government overreach aspect is different “in and of itself”.
If you do not like the small business analogy lets look at the Church and religion.
I am no religious zealot by any means but I see a huge concern when government keeps practitioners away from their “freedom to assemble” for spiritual purposes.
This is fundamental to our Constitution.
My grandmother is 92 years old and said never in her life has she seen something like this …”I could not even get in to light a candle on Easter” is what she told me.
It made her very sad.
She said the churches were open during the great depression, WW2 and every crisis she can remember…
An experienced historian once said “you loose a thousand traditions when fascism takes hold”.
I have not been keeping full count but the toll is very high right now across the country as citizens face shelter at home orders and are told they will basically have to social distance until the government has a vaccine?
This is not a free democracy…being allowed to travel for work, but not for pleasure reaks of an Authoritarian Regime.
Americans will not be willing to accept a watered down version of the life we once had.
Right now, we are all sacrificing travel and opportunities, but when will the cost be too large of a burden to bear (either mentality, physically or economically) for our Nation?
Dave,
I agree, it is much more likely that big government is once again showing us that it is incapable of doing all things for all people than that there is a global conspiracy afoot.
There are a lot, A LOT, of stupid people and there are also a lot, A LOT, of incompetent people and there are some that are both stupid and incompetent. This pandemic has made that abundantly clear.
Hi Larry. I keep hearing this assertion that there is a numbers “hoax”. Do you mean that too many deaths are being attributed to Covid-19? Deaths that ordinarily would have been attributed to whatever previous medical condition the person had? the report now is that about 40,000 people have died from “covid” just in the last 5 weeks…we don’t ever have that many deaths from the flu in that short of a period, do we?
Ask Cuomo/de Blassio, they added 3500 “Covid” deaths in one night.. 7500 people typically die daily in America. Hmm.
Panguingue,
Here is one small example, Alaska has at least two deaths in our total that shouldn’t be tabulated, per the CDC “Death data, once received and processed by National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), are tabulated by the state or jurisdiction in which the death occurred. Death counts are not tabulated by the decedent’s state of residence.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
If the state these people died in are counting these deaths the way CDC says they should then these deaths will have been counted twice, once in the state the death occurred in and once in the state of residence. Does that also go for confirmed cases?
Panguingue, yes, that is what I mean. Incorrectly attributed deaths. And the context surrounding their deaths, ages, pre-existing conditions, and especially the normal numbers of people that die all the time that the general public is completely unaware of, until now since the media has been reporting on these numbers. People hear the word, “hoax” and they immediately lay a brick and accuse a person of being a nut job. (Dave Mc). I see a whole lot of, “If you’re a hammer, everything is a nail” behavior happening. To politicians, everyone is a constituent that needs to be somehow satisfied. To doctors, everything is an illness or health issue. And the politicians are letting doctors make economic decisions that are destroying the country. The only people that should be quarantined are those with pre-existing conditions and their caregivers and visiting friends and families. Everything else should remain business as usual. They have gone about this completely ass-backwards, in my humble opinion. But as the saying goes, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.” Including me and Dave Mc. Ha!
Larry……I will not call you a sexiest, even though I am a female, however I would agree that most the verbal attacks that I receive online for not agreeing with their fears are more from women than men mostly, coming from people I have never personally met.
In real life though, around where I live, and my other friends from life, my male and female friends are equally not caught up in this panic pandemic. I have one male friend who thinks if we open back up the virus will get us all, and one female friend who wants Fairbanks people to not come down and infect us, even though we are all pretty sure we all had it back in January. Other than those two, the rest of my friends are level.
Me, I don’t have the time to mother anyone nor do I want to, so I find this whole thing a sham, and I am amazed with our governments past history record, that some are not questioning numbers and motives here. It is quite scary how some people have fallen bait, line and sinker for it though. That’s scarier than what the governments have done.
Zip,
I’ll take the bullet,you can call me “a sexiest”.
Its been years since anyone had the audacity to
label me such.
Dave…..
Isn’t it a sad society we have, when a person feels the need to explain themselves before making a simple statement or observation such as Larry did, because our society is so hypersensitive anymore. That’s why I said with me being a woman, I wasn’t calling him a sexist.
I have noticed more women getting caught up in this panic pandemic, however I crack it up to people are just more nuttier these days. I think some of these people, when they would be willing take a vaccine that hasn’t even been properly tested over their chances with a low grade virus, this proves they’ve gone crazy. When these people act like, they would be willing to forcibly hold you down and give that vaccine to you themselves, they are wacky. When these people men and woman will not research to find the real deal, and start hyperventilating over the 1918 Flu, when this could possibly be more like the 1976 Swine Flu, these people have lost it, and some of them are only being this way down party lines.
I guess I just wanted to make sure people knew that not all us women are freaking out on Panic Pandemic or voting for crazy Hillary, while wearing vagina hats. You could probably get one of them to call you a sexist.
“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
– Milton Friedman
A little more perspective since you referenced Italy and some clarity as their flu death rate reached 41.2%. Guess we could lump all these flu deaths into the Covid column for more effect?
Objectives: In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. Influenza epidemics have been indicated as one of the potential determinants of such an excess. The objective of our study was to estimate the influenza-attributable contribution to excess mortality during the influenza seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17 in Italy.
Results: We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly. However children less than 5 years old also reported a relevant influenza attributable excess death rate in the 2014/15 and 2016/17 seasons (1.05/100,000 and 1.54/100,000 respectively).
Conclusions: Over 68,000 deaths were attributable to influenza epidemics in the study period. The observed excess of deaths is not completely unexpected, given the high number of fragile very old subjects living in Italy.