Looking for Zero

I took the bus to Five Points and wasn't completely sure what I was looking for.  There was an address on Marietta Street but it wasn't clear if it was inside or outside; since it was raining, I hoped it was inside.  Once I got there, there was a cluster of people at the door of the building, and the door was locked.  We were dressed for the weather, with raincoats and umbrellas.  Someone got a message that the performers were running late.  We waited.  Maybe some people knew what to expect, but I did not.

Then we saw them -- two women in blue robes, lying on the wet sidewalk across the street.

I am not sure what I expected, but this was not it.  It was a jarring moment.  And then, admitting to myself that I see people on the sidewalk all the time in terrible weather, and almost always I try to act like I don't see them and hurry on by.

The other dancers seemed to arrive from all directions, walking slowly toward the intersection.  By that point, the people who had been waiting had crossed the street and there were other people watching too, 

I don't know how many of the spectators had planned to be there, to see glo's "Starting from Zero" intervention, and how many just happened on the performance and were curious and stayed to watch, pulled into the unexpected sight of blue-robed dancers making impossible moves on sidewalks and open spaces near Five Points, and later in an underground space that I didn't even really know was there.  The dancers pulled us with them, sometimes literally (spectators became part of the performance periodically, when dancers would take our hand and gently guide us to where they wanted us to go), and together we lingered in the streets and and on the sidewalks around Five Points.

Eventually we went down a staircase to a space under the streets.  I knew, vaguely, that there was another level, down from what is street level, that was important for Atlanta's early history, when transportation meant railroads, not airplanes or automobiles, but I'd never been there, and I would not have gone there without a guide.  On that rainy Sunday afternoon, my guides were a blue-robed dancers, whose wet skin sparkled in the dim light and who reminded me -- too late to get a good picture of it -- Matisse's dancers, and who were fearless in this grim space.  We heard the trains and the dripping water.  A few cars tried to come through, and some of them were redirected in another direction.  

For that first Sunday performance, I didn't stay until the very end -- I needed to get home, and the buses don't run that frequently on Sunday (or for that matter, pretty much any other time) -- but I came back for the final performance last Saturday.  That was when I heard the story, from glo's Lauri Stallings, about how Atlanta's original zero milepost has for a long time been in a nondescript and apparently no longer used building that is owned by the Georgia Building Authority and used to house the Capitol Police.

There were barricades there that we walked through, but the building itself is surrounded by a fence that is locked. One of the few authentic remnants of Atlanta's history -- why Atlanta is where it is, and how transportation has been central to the city's history from the very beginning -- is in a place where you cannot go, even if you want to.

In Atlanta, we knock down whole neighborhoods to build stadiums and expressways, so maybe we should not be surprised that the zero milepost is locked up in a fenced-off empty building in an underground parking lot.  But I was, and I am so glad that glo took me and many of my fellow Atlantans on this exploration of our city.  I will never again see these places as I did before -- thanks for the adventure.

Flu Season

I would have known it was a bad flu season even if I hadn't seen the surveillance reports from CDC each week.  There are the people missing work because they're sick or they are home with sick children.  There are the long-planned events, cancelled due to illness of critical participants.  There are the press reports of overwhelmed hospitals, and of the deaths of children and young adults, who had been healthy but then they got influenza and unexpectedly and tragically died.  Less dramatically, last week when I checked into a hotel, there was hand sanitizer with the shampoo and body lotion.

Yesterday it was texts from one of my kids, achy and miserable, who was tested positive for influenza and is now on oseltamivir.  

And then there's the weekly report from the CDC.  Here's a few excerpts from the report, posted on Friday, January 19, which covers the week of January 7-13, 2018.

For the second week in a row, every state but Hawaii is reporting widespread influenza activity.  This is unusual; last week, when they saw it the first time, the people at CDC who put these maps together said they hadn't seen this before.  And now, of course, it's two weeks in a row.

CDC also reports what proportion of doctor visits are for something that looks like influenza.  It might not be flu -- there are other viruses circulating, too, and some of them cause something that looks and feels like flu -- but it is one way to measure the level of misery at the state level.  And the level is high in 32 states.

And there are the deaths.  There often are delays in reporting these but last week ten -- ten -- pediatric deaths were reported, most of them deaths that actually had occurred earlier in the season (the new reports are the ones in turquoise).  We aren't even seeing, for the most part, the deaths that actually occurred during January 7-13.  Most of those will show up later.

CDC also monitors overall deaths due to pneumonia and influenza -- they aren't all influenza-related, of course, but many of them are, and the model allows for the seasonal variation in other respiratory illnesses.  This is the first time this season that the red line crossed the black line -- the "epidemic threshold" -- and because death can be a delayed outcome, the impact of the disease that was happening January 7-13 will mostly show up in coming weeks.  But it is not looking good.

I have gotten an influenza vaccine every year for decades, and I make sure that my husband and kids get a shot every year, too.  The vaccine won't prevent every case, but probably makes illness milder when if fails to prevent it altogether (the child that is currently ill and on oseltamivir was vaccinated, and probably would be much sicker without that vaccination).  If you have not gotten a flu shot yet, go do it.  Do not wait.  In most places teens and adults can get flu shots at a pharmacy without a prescription.  Go do it.  It will take some time for your immune system to respond, but in two weeks there still will be flu circulating -- so go do it. 

If you get sick and it turns out to be influenza, your doctor may prescribe an antiviral.  This is especially important for people with underlying conditions that make them more likely to get really sick or die when they get the flu.

And if you are sick, stay home and keep your viruses to yourself.  "Going viral" is not a good thing when we are talking about actual viruses that can kill people.

When I was in college, I got what I am sure was influenza, although there wasn't a test that was widely used back then.  I lived by myself and felt like I was too sick to be alone.  I remember talking to my mother on the phone (this was back when we only had landlines and had to pay for long distance calls, and I didn't talk to my parents frequently by phone) and she asked if she needed to come stay with me.  I told her no, that I'd go to the student health center.  It was February, and there was snow on the ground, and I walked the mile and half there (this also was pre-Uber, needless to say) and promptly collapsed on arrival.  I was admitted to the infirmary for a couple of days and had to come back for a chest x-ray, meaning they were concerned enough that I might have pneumonia that they wanted to make sure whatever abnormality they had seen when I was admitted had completely cleared up.  This is the only time in my life I have been admitted to a hospital for illness.  That's what influenza does -- it takes perfectly healthy people and can make them so sick that they end up in the hospital, or the morgue.

Influenza is a serial killer, and right now, it is pretty much everywhere. Take it seriously.  Take the vaccine.  Take antivirals if your doctor prescribes them.  And take to the sofa if you're sick.