Loading ...When Aunt Ruby died recently, one daughter… cousin ‘Tiny’. Was working with the Funeral Home for arrangements. ‘Tiny’ was a social butterfly and hairdresser, and she was going to people’s homes, in and out of the family, to do hair. She figured she was safe because no one in the family was sick. Then she started feeling poorly at home, took a COVID test and came up positive. Funeral home staff freaked out as they were working closely with her.
Aunt Ruby’s funeral was very ‘social distanced’, but family groups of the cousins tended to cluster in the parking lot. Brother Junior and I had quite a time keeping our 89 year old Papa away from all the well-wishers at his sister’s funeral. Everyone was quite aware there was COVID in the family now, and cousin ‘Tiny’ was quarantined at home and unable to attend her mother’s funeral and burial.
Several days passed and we learned from family that ‘Tiny’ was admitted to the hospital and directly into the ICU with pneumonia. Two days later she was put on a ventilator. ‘Tiny’ is Filipina/Asian and this genome has five times the ACE2 receptors to get infected versus a caucasian. Now before the conspiracy theorists start saying this is all a fake, my source is unimpeachable. One cousin is an ex-Marine medic, and RN, and the nursing staff supervisor at Hilo Medical Center. He tells us that ‘Tiny’ has about a 50-50 chance of survival at this point. He also tells us he is working his butt off because a shortage of nurses in Hawaii. Hilo has gotten several extra nurses from Honolulu, and the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu has gotten a couple dozen nurses from the mainland after an urgent request to FEMA. This from the family nurse/supervisor working the front line. Even our Lt. Governor, Dr. Josh Green, MD, who is the state COVID coordinator, has come down with the virus. He was a still-working ER doctor here on the neighbor islands.
It’s not a conspiracy when your family catches this virus and it threatens the lives of those you love. This is SARS, and it is deadly, especially to the Asian genome.