Coronavirus Part 9

Today marks 2 years since the beginning of the pandemic in earnest - at least for me. I still remember the night of March 11th, 2020 when it felt like the world came to a halt and every institution was shutting down for three weeks in an effort to contain the virus. What a wild ride it's been.

In Coronavirus Part 8, I anticipated that my next entry would be a victory message. At this point cases counts are way down - back to pre-delta levels - and there doesn't appear to be any new variants on the horizon. The CDC even announced that unless there is a high rate of local transmission, we no longer need to wear masks - even indoors, even if unvaccinated. So in that regard it seems like COVID is over, at least when it comes to our day-to-day lives. 

But on the other hand, nearly 1,500 people are still dying in the US every day of COVID. But I believe most of those death are the unvaccinated which only goes to increase our vaccination rate. 

The case count in our county is so low that we took the whole family out for pizza on my birthday and it felt like COVID was over. I don't think it's going away completely, but at this point I predict it will linger in small pockets and localized outbreaks, but we won't see another major wave like delta or omicron.

I've made a fair number of predictions and open questions so far in this series. Let's check in and see how I've done so far:

Coronavirus Part 1 - March 2020
Question: Will this be a minor scare ala Y2K, or something future generations learn about in school.
Result: I think this one is making the text book. This is probably the biggest global event since WWII. But in truth I answered that this would be a major event in Coronavirus part 2 less than a month later.

Coronavirus Part 2 - April 2020
Question: Would this be a 6 month event or a 2 year event.
Result: Almost exactly a 2 year event.

Coronavirus Part 3 - June 2020
Prediction: This isn't going away anytime soon and the worst is ahead of us.
Result: Uh yeah, that was spot on. For context this is when things started to reopen and people were protesting the restrictions, so this might have been a somewhat contrarian opinion at the time.

Coronavirus Part 4 - August 2020
No predictions. Smart move on my part.

Coronavirus Part 5 - October 2020
Prediction: A fall spike is coming. It'll be 6 months until vaccines are widely available.
Results: Both were true. The late fall of 2020 was a bad time and while the first vaccine became available at the very end of December, they really weren't widely available until March/April. So that was spot on. But both those predictions we're gimmies and basically what everyone believed.

Coronavirus Part 6 - March 2021
Prediction: "It's hard to say when we'll finally be able to declare victory over COVID. That's probably a ways away until kids can be vaccinated, but even then I'm sure there will be pockets of cases in the news for a long time to come."
Results: A year ago I thought there will be pockets of cases, so I whiffed on the idea of the variant surges, but that might be true now. I just made that prediction too soon. 

Question: "It'll be interesting to see what the long term impact of this will be on American society. Part of me thinks things will spring back to normal and people will carry on as they always have, but I also wonder if this will result in some major changes in how we value in-person events and activities like traveling to weddings or attending work conferences. Only time will tell."
Results: Inconclusive? I mean there have definitely been shifts in the workplace that are likely to be long lasting. But I get the feeling that people are still wanting to travel and see each other in-person. The jury might still be out on this one. 

Coronavirus Part 7 - August 2021
Prediction: COVID will still be a thing for at least another 6 months.
Result: Pretty spot on, as the Omnicron variant died down almost exactly 6 months later, and is pretty much no longer a thing. At least for the moment!

Coronavirus Part 8 - January 2022
Question:  "I think we'll get to the point where it's better contained and we can go back to life as normal. The question now is how many variants and how many surges will it take to get there." 
Result: Hopefully just that last one. It's only been two months, but that was written at the height of the biggest case spike of this whole pandemic. Since then the variant has pretty much been stopped. We're back to life as normal. I'm back to letting strangers sneeze directly into my mouth! Who knows what happens next - and I guess we could get new variants and new waves of cases, but it really feels like this spike was the last one.

Here's to hopefully not making it to Coronavirus Part 10!

Coronavirus Part 6

My last coronavirus post was back in mid-October, in that post I predicted that we were still 6 months away from widely available vaccines. I'll give myself a point for that prediction.

In my second coronavirus post I wrote about my debate on whether to call it COVID-19 or Coronavirus and wondered which name would ultimately go down as the commonly used name. It turns out COVID was the winner, but I'm keeping the naming convention in these post titles, but I'll start calling it COVID in the post itself.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the day everything shut down. In the past year 530K Americans have died of COVID, which equates to about 1 death per minute. The good news is that it's the beginning of the end. Three vaccines are available today and they appear to be effective against even the more contagious variants of COVID that have popped up. Cases are way down and about 20% of Californians have been vaccinated. When things opened back up in the summer and the fall it felt too soon but now it feels like it's the right time. There are only 10-20 new cases a day in our county with 220,000 residents. 

As for us, Carly and I have both been vaccinated. Nearly all of the adults in her family near us have been too. Last weekend for my birthday we were able to have what would seem to be a pretty normal birthday party with us all sharing pizza and brownies & ice-cream. I'm now thinking about getting my first real haircut in over a year, though I still regret cutting off my mullet.

There is talk of being able to send the kids back to school soon, and we've started planning a trip to meet up with some friends on the Oregon coast for 4th of July on the assumption that all the adults will likely be vaccinated by then. We're still keeping our social interactions to a minimum but have started to think about opening the aperture (like for a haircut). While I'm excited to get back out to public places, if I've learned anything from the past year it's that I'm a bit of a homebody these days - especially with small children.

It's hard to say when we'll finally be able to declare victory over COVID. That's probably a ways away until kids can be vaccinated, but even then I'm sure there will be pockets of cases in the news for a long time to come. It'll be interesting to see what the long term impact of this will be on American society. Part of me thinks things will spring back to normal and people will carry on as they always have, but I also wonder if this will result in some major changes in how we value in-person events and activities like traveling to weddings or attending work conferences. Only time will tell.

Coronavirus Part 5

I really don't have much new to report over the last few months.

We did take a trip up to Davis, CA to visit my wife's family. It was nice to get away for a bit and visit the ranch my wife grew up on. It's very pretty and serene up there. Also, our youngest daughter turned one, and I did cut off my mullet. But other than than that we haven't been up to much. We've been trying to get out to the beach more since that's a pretty safe and fun activity.

I think like most people it's getting harder to stay vigilant. We've increased the number of interactions we have with other people, but I think we're still doing a pretty good job of staying safe. At this point it seems like there is another fall spike coming and while our area is doing pretty good right now, that could change pretty quickly. At this point it seems like we're still at least 6 months away from likely having any widely available vaccine. So I think we're trying to come around to the idea of being mostly homebound for awhile still.

I'm still holding up okay. Like I've mentioned before, it's pretty easy to stay home when you have young kids that are hard to take anywhere as is. I don't think we're really missing out on too much besides some social interaction that my older daughter is likely missing out on. But that's they way it goes I guess.

Coronavirus Part 3

Well, it's been two months since my last coronavirus post. I thought I'd write about my current thoughts on the situation.

In mid-may things started reopening in California. First non-essential retail followed by beaches, dine-in restaurants and - just last weekend -  bars. It didn't make much sense to me, since I look at our case counts daily for San Diego County and our new cases numbers never really went down. Instead it just was a pretty straight line increase. But perhaps we did enough during the lockdown to prevent the curve from turning exponential, so they thought it was safe to reopen. In the past week the number of cases have started to increase here, but are still relatively low compared to other big cities.

Even though much most things are reopen, we've still playing it safe. We haven't been out to the beach, or gone out to eat. We limit our trips to the store and our contact with others. But like most people, we've relaxed a bit from what we were doing in April. We've had my sister visit from LA twice and have been a bit more willing to go outside the house. As I see the number of cases grow here, I'm glad I've been a bit skeptical of the governments rush to reopen things.

For us it continues to be good family time. I've been working from home for 3 months now and it's been terrific. All of our trips have been cancelled, so we took a little mini-vacation out to our friend's vacation house in the desert just to get away from San Diego for a few days. After three months of being confined to the house it was really nice, and now that we're back we've decided to do a home improvement project to help us get the most out of our house since we're spending a lot more time here. I'm planning to build some shade structures in the back yard to replace the umbrellas we have back there. It will be a fun project and give me something to do. We typically do one big house project each year, and this is something we've talked about doing since we've moved in 4 years ago. So I'm excited about that.

I think mentally most people are over COVID-19. But the way things are going right now, I don't see this going away anytime soon. As people start going back out to restaurants & bars I have a feeling that the worst is ahead of us. But hopefully if that comes we'll be more prepared to deal with it, and not writing it off because they've been fatigued from 3 months of restrictions. 

I really have trouble with the people saying that they can't be expected to continue following lockdown orders after so long or who are unwilling to wear a facemask in public. These things are so modest, and have been for such a short amount of time compared to the sacrifices Americans were asked to make during WWII. During WWII the government rationed food, gas and clothes along with increasing taxes and implementing wage controls - all without barely any protest. What people are being asked to now do by comparison seems so minimal, and yet there was so much public pressure after only 8 weeks to eliminate even those restrictions. Its hard for me not to compare the American public's willingness to win WWII to their willingness to beat COVID-19. It seems like there are plenty of people out there who just don't care that much about preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Coronavirus Part 2

As I wrote my initial coronavirus blog post nearly a month ago, I contemplated whether I should refer to it as the Coronavirus or COVID-19. Those seem to be the two official names that I see in use the most often, but I do wonder which will succeed as the legacy name of the virus that caused the world to stop in 2020. Maybe it doesn't matter, or maybe it's a sign that I've moved past the question of my last post about whether this will be a major or minor event in my lifetime.

As it stands today, it's definitely a major event, but whether it's a 6 month or 2 year event is still hard to say. It's not as bad as many predicted a month ago, but at the same time the death toll and economic toll has been substantial but not not to the point where cities are being wiped out of people and jobs.  At this point it seems that were on the other side of the initial hump, but there are quite a few more humps to go before this is over, and while this one was supposed to be the biggest one... who really knows?

On a personal front, it really hasn't been bad for us. So far we have no first degree connections that are infected. We've been following the stay-at-home order and limiting our contact outside the house. We've begun wearing masks on our trips outside the house, but the past 2 weeks have been overcast and rainy so we've mostly been inside. Besides a trip to the doctor for a 6 month check-up and a Costco run, we haven't really left much.

I've been working from home for the past 5 weeks. It's been really nice. I get to sleep in a bit more and eat lunch with the family. It's been nice to be able to help out and change a diaper or grab some fresh air in the backyard while I'm on a call. It's probably not a great thing for my health that I'm working at our breakfast nook with easy access to the pantry, but it's a good set-up.

We've been cooking more at home, and even making more food from scratch. We've been doing homemade pizza every Friday, and even made some homemade pasta. The other night we decided to do enchiladas but didn't have any enchilada sauce - so we looked up a recipe and it was super easy to make at home. We typically get takeout 1-2 times a week, and while most restaurants are still open for take-out, we've been trying to limit take-out to lower our risk. I've started thinking about what I want once we can go out to eat again. So far Chicken Wings, Sushi and BBQ are at the top of the cravings list. 

Our house and yard are about as clean as they've been since we've had kids. It's really nice getting to spend the weekends just hanging out and playing instead of being busy with projects and errands. So far we haven't been significantly negatively impacted by it. There are a few things we can't do that we would like to, but really we have all we need at our house and I'm not minding the isolation.

The Week Coronavirus Hit

There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen. 

-V.I. Lenin

At the beginning of 2020 I had a conversation with my wife about how I felt like we were overdue for a global/national calamity. I told her how it felt like we had been on a long run of peace and prosperity in the world and that I wondered if there would be some global economic downturn or world war in the 2020s. I didn't realize that the global calamity would happen sooner than I thought.

Despite it being in the news since early January, like most things Coronavirus happened gradually and then suddenly. I recall being in the Seoul airport in mid-January and reading about how the first cases in South Korea were thought to have passed through the airport just days before. Then we were in Hawaii in February and hearing about a Japanese tourist who spent a week in Waikiki before testing positive. Still more cases popped up in DC as I was there for a work trip in early March. Despite these little overlaps it seemed like something that very likely wouldn't impact my life.

As early March progressed into mid-March it started getting more and more attention -  from both the media and me. Then all of the sudden it exploded in a 24 hour period a week ago. It seems much has changed since then.

The day it all seemed to come to a head was Wednesday the 11th. Over the previous few days it became increasingly clear that the virus was spreading throughout the country, and spreading fast. That evening in the course of about 30 minutes the following happened: 1) The NBA postponed their season, 2) The president announced a travel ban on all personnel coming from Europe, 3) Tom Hanks announced he had tested positive. I think any of those things would have made it feel more real to me, but all three happening at once was a total shock.

The next day more universities cancelled classes, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was cancelled and more and more companies announced they would be sending their employees home. That afternoon when I got home from work my wife went to Costco to stock up on some essentials. She reported that it was a madhouse and the biggest shortage was - oddly enough - Toilet Paper.

On Friday morning we got word that our daughter's school would be closing at the end of the day for three weeks. I prepared to begin teleworking starting the next week, and all of the sudden it seemed like every event was being cancelled.

During the weekend we made a few more runs to the store for more essentials (booze & spaghetti) and we planned for what we would do if we were stuck it our house for awhile. Our house guests for the following two weekends both cancelled their trips. Since then we've barely left the house besides for walks around the neighborhood. I've teleworked the past few days, and so far we've handled the isolation pretty well.

It feels a bit surreal. But we have no idea how long this might last, and while we've stocked up on food, the stores are still open and have plenty of food. Hell, we can still order a pizza for delivery. So it's not like things are dire by any means, but we're trying to be a cautious as we can. After all, I do have the ass-mar.

I wonder how this will play out and how this is remembered. If the social distancing works and it fizzles out quickly will people look back on the stockpiling and TP hoarding as a major overreaction like we do with the people who built fallout shelters before Y2K or will these be days that future generations ask us about as they study it in school. If it's the latter, it's why I blog.