The View from the Hermitage, Day 320

I found a quote from Lenin (the Communist, not the Beatle) the other day that sums up the pandemic pretty nicely:

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

I think that describes the past year pretty well. It may explain why there are times I struggle to remember what month it is let alone what day of the week. I think we're working on a year in which centuries happened.

Mexico now has the third highest covid-19 death rate in the world. Canada has no desire to rise in terms of their case or death numbers. They've suspended flights between Canada and Mexico and Canada and the Caribbean through the month of April. They have also tightened the quarantine restrictions on people entering or returning to the country. The US still leads the pack, though. We're approaching 26 million cases. Almost 4,000 people died of covid019 yesterday.Mitigation measures are relaxing in some states. New York, for example, will resume indoor dining as of Valentine's Day, though only at 25 percent of capacity. 

The South African covid variant has now been found in over 30 countries. Epidemiologists say that the two cases found so far in the US are from community spread, meaning the variant has been here longer than we thought and probably spread more widely. Going back to all the dystopian literature I read in my youth (referring to "my youth" makes me feel old), I wonder when and where the vaccine-resistant variant will arise. We have bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics; it's not hard for me to see a viral strain being resistant to existing vaccines.

Speaking of the vaccines, availability and distribution continue to be of concern. The CDC says that it is safe for schools to reopen for in-person instruction; however, teachers in many places refuse to teach in person until they have been vaccinated. Vaccination of teachers lags, though; only 18 states have included teachers in early priority groups. I wonder how I would have reacted as a parent without knowing then what I learned later about the interaction between The Sons and schools. It is easy to say now that I would have home-schooled them, which in retrospect would have been better for them. I probably would have let them go back but only after looking at the science and the stats. 

Moving closer to home in terms of the coronavirus, The Professor sent me the news that the county in which we live is listed by The New York Times as "very high risk." That's actually an improvement; from December 30 to January 19, we were "extremely high risk" after having been "very high risk" since November 26. Neither risk level sounds good to me, especially since the county tightened mitigation measures over what the state was mandating. 

County schools go back to hybrid instruction on Monday. The local university will start their in-person classes then as well. Unless it is a practicum, lab, or some type of course requiring physical presence, and class listed as being "in person" can be taken virtually. It will be an interesting semester for The Professor, and that may not be in a good way. He was scheduled to teach two sessions of the same class, but since they were the same course, one taped lecture would work for both. I'm not sure how it happened, but two class sections became three and the student headcount in those three sections now exceeds 500. Last semester he was available for questions during class time so that if students wanted to, they could watch the lecture early and then ask questions. This was apart from weekly office hours. He's not sure that will work with class sizes hovering in the 150 range. No one in his department has ever taught so many students in one course in the same semester. I may have to start wearing my super-hero underpants on a regular basis.

Here's hoping he can get Monday's lecture taped tomorrow. We could have some icy precipitation Sunday which opens the door for power outages. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting.