{"id":365,"date":"2009-02-22T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T21:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/02\/22\/dear-mr-norovirus\/"},"modified":"2009-02-22T21:36:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T21:36:00","slug":"dear-mr-norovirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/02\/22\/dear-mr-norovirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Mr Norovirus,"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, so <a href=\"http:\/\/vwxynot.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/snowed-under.htm\">you ruined Christmas Day<\/a>. Rather than eating delicious turkey and socialising with the neighbours, I spent the day alternating between throwing up and shivering under a duvet with a hot water bottle.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I think we can call that Round One to you.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And I know what you were thinking when I woke up to the sound of our house guest* throwing up at 3 am last weekend, because I was thinking the same thing:<\/div>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">&#8220;Hmm, that must be the same thing his kid had a few days ago. Infectious, then. Oh bloody hell, it&#8217;s my old friend Mr Norovirus. Let me see, person with highly infectious virus throwing up repeatedly in our one and only bathroom. Aerosols, all surfaces will be infected&#8230; oh, and I bet that&#8217;s the same noise that woke me up half an hour ago, so I was in there immediately after him without realising. I washed my hands, but then I used the towel and touched the door handle. 24-48 hour incubation period, hmm, it&#8217;s my birthday on Monday, I guess I&#8217;ll be spending that the same way as Christmas. Oh, fuck, citizenship test on Tuesday, if I miss that it&#8217;ll set me back by months. And even if by some miracle I&#8217;m not already infected, he&#8217;ll still be infectious for at least another three or four days&#8230; which, if I&#8217;m not careful, would see me getting sick on Saturday, big birthday dinner&#8230; this is gonna SUCK.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div>But! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME. I&#8217;ve learned a few things since our last encounter:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>I boiled my toothbrush for 10 minutes before using it. And I brushed my teeth in the kitchen for a whole week.<\/li>\n<li>I threw out my contact lenses a few days early, and switched to a new case when I opened the new pair of lenses.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve washed my hands so often and so well, my skin is cracked and painful despite all the lotion.<\/li>\n<li>I abandoned all environmental principles and bought some bleach spray. I&#8217;ve sprayed it on all hard surfaces in the bathroom at regular intervals for a week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>WE CAN&#8217;T GET FOOLED AGAIN!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>As of today &#8211; eight days after that dark, dark night &#8211; I am symptom free.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Round Two to me.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Infect THAT, mo fo.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Yeah, OK, so the CDC says that &#8220;some people&#8221; are infectious for up to three weeks after symptoms stop. Too bad it doesn&#8217;t say which people&#8230; So FYI I will not be dropping my guard any time soon.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But even if you DO make me sick some time this month, the joke will be on YOU, because I enjoyed my birthday AND my birthday dinner AND I took my citizenship test on schedule. So while I will curse your name from my battle station in the bathroom, victory will still me mine. Mwa ha ha ha!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>You are a worthy adversary. And I&#8217;m sure we will meet again. \u00a0I will be forewarned, forearmed, and ready to kick your butt.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now if you will excuse me, I need to write a letter of complaint to Mr Sangria. His behaviour last night was really quite appalling.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: small\">*Friend of Mr E Man&#8217;s, staying with us indefinitely while he navigates his way through a particularly vicious divorce. And that is all I have to say about that.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, so you ruined Christmas Day. Rather than eating delicious turkey and socialising with the neighbours, I spent the day alternating between throwing up and shivering under a duvet with a hot water bottle. I think we can call that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/02\/22\/dear-mr-norovirus\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,25,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-silliness","category-virology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}