We set yet another coronavirus record here in the US yesterday with 125,544 people in hospital with covid-19. The number of people dead from covid is now over 351,000. It could get much worse in the coming weeks; it is certainly not going to get any better. Are there any national mitigation measures here as there are in some other countries? Heck, no! The Lame Duck and his Toadies are too busy committing crimes connected with The Duck's call to the Georgia secretary of state telling him to find more Duck votes. Someone should give that secretary of state a medal, especially given that he's a Republican. Not very many of those are standing up to The Duck these days.
England is entering another national lockdown, this one until at least February 15. People can leave home to procure food and medicine, seek essential care, or escape harm. People can also leave to go to work if they cannot work from home. People can also leave their home once daily for exercise which can be done with one other person from a different household. All non-essential businesses will close.
The Senate runoff elections in Georgia happen tomorrow, though early voting has been open for a couple of weeks. I can't say that I've seen any polls indicating who might win each race. I have read that The Lame Duck's actions in regard to the presidential election may make some Republicans reluctant to vote. I'm not sure enough of them will stay home to let the two Democrats win. It would certainly be nice for the Senate to have an edge to the Democrat side. Otherwise, the Republicans could wreak havoc with Uncle Joe's Cabinet and court nominees. Should that be proposed, I'd like to think that a couple of the more level-headed Republicans such as Mitt Romney would refuse to go along and would vote with the Democrats. Should both Republicans win reelection in Georgia, it would only take two Republican Senators to throw any vote to Vice President Harris. I guess we'll know on Wednesday just as the Electoral College certification process begins.
But enough about the world outside my door. Having collected all the data I need, today I began working on my pandemic quilt. I plan to recreate Virginia's graph of the number of new covid-19 cases every day starting on my birthday, July1, and ending at year's end, December 31. On July 1, there were 532 new covid cases; the high point, 5,239 new cases, came on December 30 followed by 5,182 on the 31st. I'm using striped fabric on which the alternating white and grey stripes are 1/4 inch wide. For 184 days, that will be 46 inches width. The vertical scale will use approximations using 100. The 532 will be as close to 5 1/3 inches as I can get, while the 5,239 will be as close to 52 1/3 inches as I can get. Running across the bar chart will be a line showing the rolling 7-day average number of new cases. At least one border will be black. I'm figuring out how to do the bars; right now, I'm leaning toward using one of the decorative stitches on my Bernina. I'll do the bars before quilting, I think, since I don't really want to do that much decorative stitching as quilting. I also want to mark certain bars, though I'm not sure if those will be the first of each month, every Sunday as in this blog, holidays, or something else that comes to mind. The nerd factor is high with this one.
I must admit that it was nice to focus on something creative today rather than go through boxes and deal with "stuff." Perhaps tomorrow I'll try for a healthy mixture of the two.
1 comment:
It's not quite as bleak here as it sounds. The shops that have shut their doors are allowed to run a click and collect service and this time we have garden centres open so people can go for emergency seed purchases. There's no-one checking whether you went out for two walks or whether your shopping was really essential. The big change on last week is the closure of schools which have been totally safe right up until they were a source of transmission. You only need to look at the age distribution of the new cases to see what's been driving the crazy figures but by some magical thinking we were supposed to assume that children catch it but don't pass it on. If they are catching it at school then presumably it was passed from another child so that never held much water for me. If they can infect one another then they can infect their families too. There's been too much politics and not enough science. Again.
My day is totally unchanged because I never went anywhere anyway. I am about to go out for milk and am expecting to see the results of panic buying again. Anyone who has reached this stage of the pandemic without a stash of all they hold dear did not learn their lesson in March. If there is no milk I will come home and break out the emergency powdered stuff.
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