JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Otsu, whom I hadn’t seen since our supermarket run on the day lockdown was announced, dropped off ice cream, cheese, and hopia. Along with my friend’s Garfield-level lasagna and another friend’s mercy mission delivery of good wine, I am set for the week.

These days Otsu can only read medical journals, and she reports that the single best indicator of covid resistance and recovery is high levels of vitamin D. (Which is not to say that chewing ginger or drinking virgin coconut oil is useless, but there hasn’t been enough research there.)

Time to start taking the vitamin D supplements that have lived in my fridge since last year. I bought them after a schoolmate mentioned that most Filipinos are probably deficient in vitamin D. Ridiculous to be deficient in a relentlessly sunny country, but between the warnings about heatstroke and skin cancer, and the widespread obsession with white skin, we’ve been conditioned to hide from the sun.

Being brown-skinned, we require more sunlight for our bodies to manufacture sufficient levels of vitamin D. Which should be easy. But dermatologists tell us that if we have to go outside in the day, we have to wear sunscreen, shades, and a big hat, like people who want to be mistaken for celebrities fleeing the paparazzi.

Vitamin D has long been linked to the prevention of rickets (soft bones) and more recently, depression. I get gloomy at times, and I hated sunshine, so I diagnosed myself as having a vitamin deficiency. You can also get vitamin D from food, but I wanted to be sure. Shortly afterwards I took to walking 8,000 steps a day outdoors (and at the mall), which made the supplements unnecessary. Now that I’m indoors all the time, I’m taking the supplements again. Under modified quarantine we’re allowed to go out for exercise, but cheerful paranoia has served me well and I’m not taking chances.

(I just learned that one of the reasons cats lick their fur is to get that vitamin D after sun exposure. They really are smarter than people.)

I finished writing a short story at last! Since March I have begun several stories but abandoned them halfway. Last Friday I decided that I would stay up until I finished something. It didn’t have to be great, it just had to have an ending. Since I value my sleep, the story was done.

So I am back on track. To remain on track, I am relaxing my sanity maintenance schedule, which takes time away from writing. From hereon, housecleaning is every other day, with extra mopping the floors once a week. But if a new wave of grime and clutter results from this modified regimen, it’s back to the hard protocols.

COVID-19 Curve, a presentation on the spread of coronavirus, by Dr. Reina Reyes. Translations to follow.