Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bob burden, Comics, coronavirus, coronavirus comics, covid-19, flaming carrott

Flaming Carrot Creator Bob Burden Had COVID-19, But Is Okay Now

Published Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:30:05 -0500

Bob Burden, creator of The Flaming Carrot and The Mystery Men has been in hospital these past few weeks with COVID-19, and that's now been confirmed. Thankfully he has come through the other side. On Facebook, Bob Burden posted;

Picture of me here, early March, shortly before the hospital: healthy, happy and with friends. Seems like a hundred years ago.

Got my results of the antibody test today. I got a green light – passed – positive for antibodies.

I have been sort of fixated on this ANTIBODY test for about two or three weeks now, but please understand, I have a good many relatives, friends and neighbors who are older or have respiratory issues and may need all the help they can get if they get hit with this nasty virus.

I've been pretty disappointed in the response from the hospital and my doctors and the public health services on my quest for information and closure. Never got a follow up on my stay at the hospital from early march. I was the 5th person (so I was told) tested in GA. (and tested inaccurately, so the antibody test tells us).

"They are busy with the virus" one of my friends said to me. Then how is that situation remedied when the hospital system spends 45 minutes reading from prepared sheets, making up excuses, passing the buck to other departments, bumbling and flip flopping when a professional would be able to solve my situation in three minutes or less? How do they even have the resources to spend so much time filling around?

Now that I've found places doing the antibody test, perhaps I should inform my doctors and the hospital.

In previous posts I lamented about the predominant focus on the Covid test and the lack of focus and information on the antibody test. I felt antibody test was as vital if not more vital than the Covid test, and felt that the sooner we got hundred and thousands and eventually millions of people out there helping the sick, participating in society and getting life back on line… should be a stronger of not primary focus.

Make no mistake – the corona virus is no walk in the park – if it hits you hard, and I speak from personal experience, it can be a total terror. Not being able to breath – coughing furiously every them you try to take a breath – and not being able to take a breath, is a frightening experience. I totally admit I was scared and knocking on heaven's door. I have to thank the medcal personal, who risked and are risking their own lives every day to help the sick, the helpless and even the hopeless while we sit home bingewatching Netflix, pontificating on facebook and sleeping late.

Never had a flu or cold like it.

But I also have to feel a real concern for people who need to see the doctor for many other serious issues, for people who will go out of business, or lost their jobs forever and people who will lose hope overall. Some are already doomed by the situation, lost and finished. Kaput. Thousands will be dead, both by the virus but also from the fear going to DRs and the hospital or worried about catching Covid in the clogged and besieged hospitals.

America is in triage right now, in life support, in a coma. No way around that. not just economically but morally and spiritually.and even when things get going again a lot of damage has already been done. We desperately need to get back up again and get life going and I don't think that's being recognized or addressed very well.

The idea that we need to lose hundred or thousands of lives – even if it saves only one life, just doesn't make sense to me.

And then please – just think of the rest of the world. when America even sneezes the rest fo the world is on death's door, or so they say. Can you imagine what this pandemic is like in the third world right now? I'm thinking that the whole rest of the world needs America to get back on its feet and going again, and they're counting on us.

Was it smart to freak out as much as we did or would we have been better to just let this blow thru like they did in 2009? This was a really bad one, more evil and devastating than anything I've ever had before, and I think it deserves special and unique consideration, – but I think we have to get things going again as soon as we possibly can.

This was followed by plenty of notes of gratitude and will wishes to Bob Burden, from lots of comic book creators but colourist Laura Martin had a tempering word.

So glad you're better and ready to help those who need it. However, may I make a gentle warning that just because you have antibodies, doesn't mean you can't transmit or even contract C19 again. It's mutating quickly, and there are numerous reported re-infection cases in early hotspots like Wuhan. Like it or not, this bastard virus will be controlling our lives for as long as it takes to create a vaccine that covers the mutated strains.

I hear your call to get back to work, and I agree that there can be a way to get a modified, safety-conscious workforce back to business. But there are two things that MUST be dealt with. The first may never be fixed, because it is the willful ignorance of those Americans who think their individual rights outweigh the needs of the many (I.e., people who refuse to comply with safety regulations and end up either directly or indirectly overrunning the hospital system). And second, we need to fix the shoddy absent parenting of our country's and states' leaderships. And we can't do that until November, not without an actual coup, which I'm pretty sure will happen in light of the unmitigated failures of government during these last few months.

No one is looking to America for guidance right now, Bob. Many countries are looking at America with pity. We have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's Covid cases. We are not the nation to be looking to for any sort of guidance.

While to Immortal Hulk's Joe Phillips, giving Bob a 'stay safe', Body Bags' Jason Pearson said "there's nothing in life that's safe. We could all die any day. Stay safe? You should know better than to stay safe. You're the most adventurous one" and to Bob "To the OOT of Burden and of your namesake- STAY STRONG. You too, Joe. Stay Strong during these perilous times."