The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 370 (870)

Another slow day. After taking today's notes, I worked on my next quilt; I'm embarrassed to say I started this one 25 years ago and never finished it. I can't say I was a beginner at quilting when I made it, but I see in it things I do much differently now. I then made the crust dough for the blueberry pie I will make tomorrow to take along on our weekend escape. And once I write this, I will have plenty of time for something else. Perhaps the bag I'm knitting or the 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle Son #1 gave me for my birthday. He wrapped the top of the box, so I'm doing it blind. The professor thinks that what we've done so far looks like curtains. I'm not sure what I think except that it's challengingly fun.

The CDC defines covid rebound (also known as Paxlovid rebound) as the return of symptoms or a "new positive viral test after having tested negative" occurring "2 to 8 days after initial recovery." Infectious disease docs evidently can attest that some respiratory diseases other than covid also can have a bimodal course. One problem in identifying covid rebound is that there are secondary bacterial infections that may be misidentified. Another problem is antigen testing. Such testing can't distinguish between viable or dead viruses. The first would be transmissible; the second, not.

New Zealand's borders are fully open for the first time since March 2020. Most visitors will still need to be fully vaccinated, but there are no longer any quarantine requirements. 

Up in the Great White North (also known as Canada), extortion cases rose nearly 300 percent in the last decade. More of those attempts are now online thanks to the increased internet activity of the pandemic. British Columbia is now vaccinating everyone ages six months or older. They're using the Moderna vaccine at one fourth the adult dosage with two shots given four weeks apart. 

Also in Canada, Alberta just had a bout of ... wait for it ... baseball-to-grapefruit-sized hail. I would not want to be outside or have left my car out in the open, but it would definitely rock to see such hail. I wonder how long it lasted before melting away.