The View from the Hermitage, Day 367

St. Patrick's Day! I guess my army green cargo pants will have to count since I didn't feel like finding a green t-shirt to wear. I do have some Irish ancestry but not so much as to ever have relatives going all out on St. Paddy's Day. I don't recall ever drinking green beer in my wayward youth. I would not make a good leprechaun.

This evening I will Zoom into the 49 Day Ceremony for my sister-in-law. She did not consider herself a Buddhist, but she was a practitioner of Zen meditation. The ceremony is being held at the Zen center she frequented. I did a bit of Googling, so I know a little bit about what will be going on. It sounded to me similar to the idea that, upon death, a Christian goes to Purgatory while the question of Heaven or Hell is debated. The spirit of the deceased person remains in the realm between the world of the living and the dead for 49 days; the ceremony lets it proceed to the world of the dead. My brother will attend the ceremony in person. I even cleaned up my office desk in the basement so that I have a quiet place to "attend" the ceremony.

Here in Virginia, the joke is that school is sometimes cancelled because snow is in the forecast. In that vein, the health district coronavirus vaccinations scheduled for tomorrow have been shifted to Friday due to the forecast of rain. I think this is because the location has people lining up outside. I can wait an extra day. 

Even getting vaccinated won't open the door to my visiting China (it is not high on the list of places I would like to go). They are opening up to tourists but only those who have been vaccinated with a Chinese-made vaccine. Getting a visa means you have taken either a full two-dose course or single-dose vaccine at least 14 days before traveling. Negative covid test and quarantine rules still apply. No Chinese-made vaccine has been approved for use in the US. In fact, it is really only used right now in Thailand, the Philippines, Iraq, and Hong Kong. The reported efficacy rates of the Chinese vaccines vary wildly, and it is not known how well any of them block transmission. 

The European Union is considering a covid-19 certificate that would show proof of vaccination, negative test result, or documented recovery from covid. Individual countries could decide which of their current restrictions such as quarantine would be waived for certificate holders.

While acknowledging that people do have the freedom to choose, XPot urged his supporters to get vaccinated. I give him props for that. He did not have to do so, but he did. Thank you,  Mr. XPot. And while we're speaking of the devil, I find it interesting that Russia meddled with the election lead-up seeking a victory for XPot, while Iran did the same seeking his defeat. China evidently stayed above the fray.

The CDC reports that two covid variants first detected in California are "officially" variants of concern. They may be 20 percent more transmissible than the original strain. More worrisome is that it appears some of the current treatments may not be as effective against them.

There was more news about the vaccine disparity between richer and poorer nations. None of it was breathtakingly new, so I'm not going there. I will wonder why one-third of US military personnel have refused to get vaccinated. Do they not trust the vaccines in general, or do they not trust the army that wants them to be vaccinated?

Discussion of the social distance required in school settings is gaining speed. With six feet of distance, a school can serve 50 percent of their student body at the same time. With three feet of distance, that jumps to 75 percent. There are states that already mandate only three feet of distance, and they report on increased risk to students or staff.

In a survey by the American Psychological Association (disclaimer: I was a member of this while I was in grad school some 40 years ago), about half the respondents said that they were worried about re-adjusting to in-person interaction. It seems that lockdown has offered a respite to a lot of people. Some people have essentially forgotten how to socially interact. I sometimes wonder if I am one of them or if I never learned how to do that in the first place. Some people say that they will miss the predictability of pandemic life. It should be noted that in many regards people can choose how much of pre-pandemic normal they want to go back to. Long meditative walks one started to do during the pandemic don't need to be stopped as the pandemic eases. Past pleasures with which one may have reconnected--listening to a certain genre of music, reading a certain magazine--do not need to be returned to one's mental closet. 

Finally, the current crop of high school seniors had a bumper crop of essay subjects from which to choose. The pandemic, Black Lives Matter and civil rights, the value of family. Interestingly, politics and the 2020 election were not popular topics according to the people who know such things.