Day 4 of self-quarantine

The next coronavirus bill passed by Congress and signed by the president should require that anyone ordered to self-quarantine by their doctor should be able to do so on a small island of their choosing. Contact your congressional representative today.

So, Day 4 of this stay-at-home stuff, and I’m already feeling better. I’m now 57 percent sure I’m not carrying coronavirus. But, because I cannot definitively say I don’t have Covid-19, or the flu, or pneumonia, or ebola, or the Bubonic Plague with this extreme lack of testing, I’m supposed to stay home for another 10 days or so before I go back out into the world, bumping elbows and wearing a mask … well, except when I decide to lick a doorknob or two, just for funsies.

I almost got tested yesterday. My doctor’s office called and said they someone there had gotten their hands on a few tests. I assume they bought it from some guy (Mike Pence) wearing a trenchcoat whom they met in an alley after he said, “Psst, I got some high-grade coronavirus tests here.”

So, they told me to come at 3:15 p.m. yesterday for a drive-up test where a team of folks dressed like the people who treated “E.T.” would collect a sample of my snot, saliva or brain matter or something. But, no. I got a call about 1 minute before we hopped in the car. They said they only had 10 tests, and since I was getting better, they needed to save them for the sickest folks. That makes perfect sense.

Still, I keep seeing reports about “1 coronavirus patient in Houston County” or “1 somewhere else.” Um, there ain’t such thing as that right now. Multiply every number you hear. With barely any testing available for average folks — and they don’t get much more average than me — we have absolutely no clue about how much coronavirus is out there in Houston County, Georgia, New York City or Frank’s Watermelon Farm. We have no idea.

So, I implore “the media” to use an asterisk with each coronavirus tally or to use language such as, “There are now 200 coronavirus cases in Georgia, as confirmed by a miniscule amount of testing on a select few patients in a small handful of sites. So, take that number for what it’s worth — which, again, is a warm bucket of hamster vomit. And now here’s Jake with the weather …”