May
13
My pandemic story

I’ve had a week I wouldn’t want to repeat.

On Thursday, a friend I’d just seen on Tuesday notified me, as part of contact tracing, that they were being tested for COVID-19 because a family member caught it.

I got both the swab test (ouch!) and the antibodies test on Friday. I was isolated in quarantine from other human beings for nearly five nerve-wracking days packed with panic attacks.

After experiencing chest pain, I had to take a tranquilizer to distinguish whether I was having a panic attack, a heart attack or COVID symptoms. I somehow managed to get work done from home despite it being nearly impossible to concentrate.

I’d been so careful, going straight home from work and sharing information with others on how to protect themselves — yet I still looking this damn monster straight in the eyeball. I was angry. I was sad. I was exhausted with all of this.

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Apr
29
A New Hope, Hopefully

Will April 29, 2020 go down as the day that we turned a corner? Or a temporary blip on a long timeline of misery?

As I write this, there is reason to feel some optimism after a couple of months of bleak headlines about death and economic collapse. Like those first rays of warm sunshine after a cold and wet winter, I crave a true, real springtime with the social component it brings.

A New Hope

There’s a drug called Remdesivir made by Gilead Sciences Inc. that has shown some effectiveness in treating the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. Gilead said Covid-19 patients taking its drug Remdesivir had a speedier recovery than patients taking placebo in a large U.S. government-funded study. The company didn’t release detailed data showing the magnitude of the benefit, saying federal researchers would do so later.

Remdesivir, by the way, is a nucleotide analog, specifically an adenosine analogue, which inserts into viral RNA chains, causing their premature termination. In 2015, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) announced preclinical results that Remdesivir had blocked the Ebola virus in Rhesus monkeys. The drug was rapidly pushed through clinical trials due to the West African Ebola virus epidemic of 2013–2016, eventually being used in people with the disease.

Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was so impressed by the study results that he touted the effectiveness of the drug.

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Mar
29
Documenting History: The COVID-19 Pandemic

Images from the historic COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, by Steven Stiefel.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

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Mar
16
Coronavirus and the rise of telecommuting

These are surreal days. In a matter of a couple of weeks, America has gone from dismissing COVID-19 as a “hoax” to scrambling to limit contagion. Much of the world has done the unthinkable, shutting down public spaces and canceling major sports and entertainment events.

With workplaces shutting down, a lot of companies are moving toward telecommuting.

I did this for 8 years, working with colleagues on the other side of the planet (Sydney, Australia) to produce a men’s lifestyle website called Savvy.com. Then I continued it when I changed jobs and joined a TV network based from Los Angeles.

As an introvert, I absolutely loved it. I could go to visit the beach as long as I brought my laptop along and got my work done.
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Copyright Steven Stiefel 2018. All Rights Reserved