Category Archives: Health

To enjoy cycling you need to stay healthy, otherwise you are missing out on riding.

MMT is not a happy camper… :-( YAFV strikes back

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT is not a happy camper. After a year of really good health, presumably due to COVID lockdown and working from home, he’s been sick with Norovirus.  ‘What the heck is a norovirus?’ MMT hears his loyal readership ask.  Well, it’s a very small and very contagious virus that causes gastroenteritis aka in MMT’s case stomach cramps and ghastly diarrhoea.  In MMT’s case its about 99.9% certain that he caught from close proximity to his weaponised pathogen carriers (WPCs), aka his kids, via their Childcare. This is what the little rascal looks like under an electron microscope. 

Little bastard - YAFV
How can something so small cause so much trouble?…Ladies and Gentlemen, the Norovirus.

In case you, dear readers were wondering, the Norovirus is named after the city of Norwalk, Ohio, USA where an outbreak occurred in 1968. Apparently, this is when Western medicine figured out what was going on. So in the dubious honour of being completely nobbled by this stomach virus, aka the Winter Vommiting Virus …ghastly…. MMT now has a new FLA for his blog tags. YAFV, which stays for Yet Another F*&king Virus. After the last 12 months, MMT surmises that entire population is fed up with YAFV. After this illness, MMT is beginning to think that may be Howard Hughes was on to something.

The trouble with Norovirus is that there doesn’t appear to be much that modern medicine can do about it.  MMT visited his GP clinic a couple of times and was given a prescription for anti-nausea/cramping medicine. The second visit resulted in a ‘sample’ test which confirmed a very high viral count.  Both times the doctor advised aganist antibiotics, correctly. That kind of medicine simply doesn’t work against a tiny virus. Now in most normal human beings this lasts a few days, at worst 2 weeks.  MMT had it for 17 days.  This pretty much ruined Easter and any plans about around cycling or even being well enough watch it via GCN+ or SBS.

Norovirus is a serious business.  In fact, putting aside COVID’s awful fatality fate, Norovirus is  very bad news and its largely gone under the radar.  According to the USA’s Centre for Disease Control, there are upwards of 680 million cases a year, resulting about 200,000 deaths. Sadly 25% of the fatalities are children under 5 in developing countries. Most of these deaths arise from dehydration.

There doesn’t appear to be any vaccine for this on the horizon, unlike Coronvirus.  To make matters worse the virus seems to mutate like crazy and a victim only needs to ingest approximately 20 virus particles to become infected.  About the only effective mechanisms available to prevent the spread of the virus are social distancing and vigorous hand washing.

So there you have it, Coronavirus be damned, watch out for the dreaded Norovirus

Later

MMT

Melbourne is stage three lock down and someone at Garmin is having a very bad day…

Dear Rouleurs,

Of course it was too good to last. Back in May, Australia looked like it had dodged a COVID-19 bullet. Now that bloody virus gotten loose loose in Northern Melbourne and trigger this new stage 3, 6 week lockdown. Almost all the COVID-19 cases in Australian are in Victoria at present. About the only silver lining in this awful mess, is that road traffic around Melbourne has reduced significantly, which is great for cyclists. Who knows may be Melbournians will adopt the bike as their preferred mode of transport.


MMT took a snap shot of a great Mark Knight cartoon, that is in all honesty is bit rough on Victorian Preimer Dan Andrews. However it does capture the mood of frustration about how Victoria’s quaratine system was clearly being run by muppets. It appears that the Rydges on Swanston in Carlton and the Stamford Plaza in Melbourne’s city centre have been the epicentre for this new surge….WTF…. As the number of new cases keeps bounding along in the high 400’s, it will be interesting to see how the security company running fares in the recently announced inquiry.

Now speaking of stuff ups, something very odd is going on the Garmin Connect website. MMT has been trying to upload today’s ride around the Capital City trail when he encountered this error. Its been down for nearly 8 hours, which is seriously weird, given that its probably sitting on a Google or AWS cloud. MMT will be really f%#ked off if his 56 km ride disappears in into thin air. He finally navigated, clockwise the Capital City Trail, on the third attempt.

MMT checked a few social media groups and tried the website again tonight and its apparent something has gone wrong. Even an a UK newspaper, The Independant, has reported the outage. Someone at Garmin must be having a very bad day. In word…bugger..may be the website has caught COVID-19 or been done over by Chinese hackers…conspiracy theories run wild.

Until next time, ride safe and keep safe

Marv

COVID Photo gallery

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT has been busy collating a series of happy snaps and social media memes as a record of COVID-19 and its impact on Melbourne. Most of these photos have been taken whilst MMT has been out and about on his bike. Speaking of which, MMT is quietly chuffed at doing over 1000 km in June.

So the photo below, isn’t included in the gallery as it was taken in Sydney. MMT thinks it perfectly captured the insanity of what was occurring in Australia’s grocery stores back in March 2020.

Chapeau!! to the Newtown branch of NSW Fire and Rescue service. Readers you can find MMT’s COVID Gallery <-here.

Until next time, ride safe and stay safe.

Marv

Its the end of the world and I feel fine or Apologies to REM

Dear Rouleurs,

All over the world, a lot of people are having incredibly shit experiences with worst global event since World War 2. People are sick, dying, unemployed, suffering from extreme social distancing and wondering what happens next. MMT is no different. Europe’s death toll is slowly abating and has been overtaken by the USA. At least here in Australia and in our next door neighbour New Zealand we have been spared the worst.

In MMT’s small part of the world, he’s been deeply concerned, seemingly struck down by the common flu after his last ride on Good Friday. Stupidly, MMT rode in the wind and wet for nearly three hours and by Sunday afternoon was feeling pretty average. His youngest daughter has a much milder version of the same thing. Given the asbence of a few key symptoms its seems unlikely that either of us have COVID-19. Daughter No.2 has had a couple of trips to the ER with breathing difficulties attributed to Croup. However next week, once the worst of this is over, MMT plans on visiting his GP and having a chat.

So last blog MMT shamelessly stole a couple of graphs documenting the infection rate in Victoria and in Australia overall. The latest version of the graphs spell out how effective Australia has been contact tracing, isolating oversea visitors or returning Australians and controlling cluster outbreaks. If the Ruby Princess cruiseship debacle hadn’t occurred it could have been better.

This is Victoria’s:

This is Australia’s:

The curves in both graphs have experienced the required flattening. The cost of which is likley to paid for by generations of Australias, present and future.

So to tie back to were MMT started, MMT has been revisiting the music of his youth via a social media platform, that he refuses to name on principle. One of those albums was Document No.5, which contained the song and lyric, ‘Its the end of the world and I feel fine’. MMT is not sure about the ‘fine’ part yet.

Until next time, stay safe out there

MMT