Anther 10 Days....Another World

Masks were not necessary unless you were sick for the better part of 3 weeks.  Now masks are suggested for anyone leaving their house.  But not the N95 masks....save those for medical workers.  Make your own, they say.  This was suggested by trump, who wasn't wearing a mask, while standing next to members of his COVID 19 Task Force.  Idiot.

California is currently looking better than NYC for infections and deaths.  But is that because we haven't tested as many?  Or because of early SIP?  It'll take time to know why.

It's very hard to keep up with the daily changes.  News abounds.  Or should I say, information abounds.  But is it all real???

One big story is the relieving of the CO of the aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt (Brett Crozier from Santa Rosa), for writing a letter (that got out to the papers) notifying the Navy that there were 100+ sailors on board with the virus.  He was protecting his crew and gets dumped.  Hmmm.  Fallout is just starting.  By the next day (April 4), he had 90,000 people supporting him online.  Book deal?  Movie?  Egg on your face, SecNav??  (Well, the next day, the SecNav resigned.  And the CO is now infected.  Oops.)

I'm constantly daydreaming about the changes happening as I write this blog.  I don't think there's really anything that has NOT changed.  Many institutions, whether local, state, federal, private.  Schools from K-PhD.  The stock market.  Restaurants.  Small independent stores, large big box stores, malls.  Performance spaces.  Nightclubs.  Literally ALL sporting events, from kids to the pros are cancelled.  Public offices - closed.  Parks, all the way up to National Parks.  Even tolls (just pass thru....we'll mail the bill to you.)  Any family related event from dinners to funerals (lockdown).  Many, many jobs, especially hourly jobs.  Gig jobs - gone.  The ability to work from home doesn't count you out.  If there's no customers to sell goods to, there is no need to manufacture stock.   The essential jobs include medical, police, fire, grocery stores, post offices, liquor stores (I think), bike shops (!), public transit and gas stations.  Speaking of public transit, because so few are working or traveling, public transit is getting into a fiscal bind with 90% or so of it revenue stream down.  So, schedule cuts are happening.  Regardless, it's unfathomable the breadth of impacts this thing has wrought throughout the world.  Yes, the world.  There's no escaping it for the foreseeable future.

Today, I heard a story about a 51 year old healthy NYC guy who had run 83 marathons over the past 20 years who was infected and died, just days later.  This is unusual, as it typically infects older, compromised people (many smokers).  But it's certainly not exclusive to that demographic.  The sign of the times remains "Stay home and if you cannot, than stay at least 6 feet apart."

PS  April 9 news.  Now we're at 16.6M people nationally claiming unemployment.  Up from 10M just a few days ago.  Yikes.

Adding to new words/phrases for this "special time", we obviously have "zoom" for video chatting.  But it's also become a verb.  And how about "contact tracing", which is the process of collecting peoples' location info using their cell phones.  Actually it's not location, but with bluetooth, they can see track if one person was (past tense) near someone who was later infected.  And then they can notify each other.  In other countries, I think they actually tracked people with their GPS, which could be more nefarious.  But don't forget "contact tracing".....I think we'll all know about it soon.

The Administration keeps pulling stuff out of its ass during this pandemic.  It seems to be all about getting the economy going again, regardless of whether people will die.  "Let's get back to work!  Let's have sports!  It's a tradeoff we need to take!"  For a tally of all the BS, it's best to check this webpage out.  (In fact, it's a good to catch up any questions about the whole presidential term.)  https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/

Risk.  It's something we in the US use a lot in finance, environmental cleanups and I'm sure many other disciplines.  In cleanups, the world I worked in for 24 years, the policy was particularly strict in that a very small cancer risk from a spilled compound would dictate how a cleanup was triggered.  Sometimes it seemed like overkill (a teaspoon of TCE in an Olympic sized swimming pool was too much.)  But I also understood the concept behind it, that these cancer causing compounds shouldn't be in water delivered to people who had no choice.  It was not voluntary, so yes, it had to be cleaned up no matter how low the levels seemed.  I believe the same concept is being applied to COVID 19.  The world has shut down because governments have pretty much agreed that the estimated infections and resulting death tolls without intervention would be beyond acceptable.  Other viruses cause deaths.  Cigarettes cause deaths.  Car crashes cause death.  But many of those are either by choice (smoking) or not high enough.  It was estimated that COVID 19 would cross a threshold of unacceptability.  So here we are, in week 5 of shelter in place, at least in California, with no real end in sight.  Deaths have happened here in California.  But NYC, where SIP didn't happen early enough, the death toll is much much worse.  So maybe it's actually working here.  Do we open the society, economy, venues soon?  Not so soon.  If the curve is flattened, that's great.  But the asymptote takes awhile to get low enough to avoid a recurrence (that happened with the Spanish Flu in 1918).  So, we are still in the world of unknowns, fighting against those who only worry about money.

Cycling?  Oh, cycling!  We're still doing ok here with cycling.  Luckily, since that's our medicine.  I've been refraining from riding with too many people, taking most rides solo or with Caryn or just one other person.  It's not a hard and fast rule or even required.  I don't know.....I just worry about perception more than actual risk.  Seems like a slap in the face of so many people stuck inside.  (Even if they are allowed outside.)  So, while I continue to ride, but hopefully in an acceptable manner.