The View from the Hermitage, Day 429

The weather is always a safe subject, so let's start there. That by no means signifies that this post will be at all unsafe; it just jumped to mind as an opening line. I keep the weather app on my iPhone set for five places: where I live (Charlottesville, Virginia), where my brother lives (Bangor, Maine), where my brother-in-law lives (Tisdale, Saskatchewan), where Son #2 and DiL= live (Richmond, Virginia), and where their cabin is (Ruther Glen, Virginia). Imagine my surprise last night when, looking for what our overnight low temperature would be, I discovered that it was in the 80sF in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. It's 88F there now even as I type this. But don't get used to it too much, Tisdalians. There's a 50 percent chance of snow on Friday.

The CDC's new mask guidelines rely on an honor system. The local university has a very famous one that often does not work as intended. The mayor of Kansas City, Missouri says that the honor system isn't working there either. Localities can, however, keep local mask mandates even in the wake of a state's stopping theirs. Maryland has ended its statewide mask mandate, but Baltimore City is keeping their local one in place until at least 65 percent of the adult residents have gotten at least one shot of vaccine. As Dr. Fauci clarifies it, the guidance is "not a mandate to take masks off."

POTUS is taking a bit of heat over whether the donation of 80 million doses of vaccine to developing countries is enough. Some 11 billion doses will be needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the global population, but so far only 1.7 billion have been produced. If booster shots are needed, 11 billion won't be enough. Covax will soon finish delivering 65 million doses but should have delivered at least 170 million by now. The fact that the US has a glut of vaccine along with the problem of convincing vaccine-hesitant or -resistant people to get it is not seen in our favor. There are some who argue that along with donating doses of vaccine, the US needs to work on a plan to scale up production world-wide. The US cannot produce those 11 billion doses on its own. 

Storing some of that vaccine got a boost easier. The Pfizer vaccine has been through to require a storage temperature between -70 and -80C until a "few days" before use. For those few days, it can be stored in a standard medical refrigerator. The European Medicines Agency now says that the Pfizer vaccine can be stored in a standard medical refrigerator for five days to one month, at a temperature of 2 to 8C. This makes it much more practical to use is a wider variety of settings. 

The local paper used to have a sports columnist who would often start a section of his column with "Scatter-shooting around the ACC..." Well, scatter-shooting around the world, India just set a new record for deaths in one day, 4,329. Germany has put the residents of two tower blocks in Western Germany in quarantine after discovery of the Indian variant there. In the first week of April, Nepal was counting fewer than 200 covid-19 cases daily. The daily averages for the past week are 183 deaths and 8,600 new cases. European countries are continuing to reopen at various paces, but the growing presence of the Indian variant in the UK could throw a monkey wrench into those plans. Finally, Japanese opposition to the Olympics is now at 83 percent. A top medical group, the Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, also wants the Games cancelled.

I may have to start adding a political thread or two. I almost miss the absurdity of the XPot days. The news is certainly not as entertaining as it was in the fall. I don't think I want to get back to discussing the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Discussing the Party of XPot's treatment of Liz Cheney might double my blood pressure medicine, though I am seeing my doc for a physical next week. Matt Gaetz? That does get pretty bizarre, and the mainstream media so far has stayed away from the possibility that the young Cuban-American man living with Gaetz might be his son from a relationship with an underage young woman. I think I'll give that topic some thought. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 339

The weather forecast is ominous. The last advisory I read predicted 3 to 8 inches of snow and sleet alone with .2 to .4 inches of ice. The advisory runs from 9:00 tonight to 1:00 am Friday. Personally, I'm hoping for more snow and as little ice as possible. I'm not a big fan of slip slidin' away. Mother Nature, though, doesn't always see things as I do, so I fully expect tomorrow won't be pretty.

Remember Sweden at the start of the pandemic? They went without mitigation measures hoping for her immunity within their borders. It seems that they started gradual limits in November and are now preparing to close gyms, restaurants, and hair salons. This, as we start to open up even further here. I'm thinking they're on a more correct path than we are right now. Yes, the numbers are getting better here, but that doesn't mean we should stop being careful.

The UK is starting a human challenge study using 90 healthy volunteers 18 to 30 years old. The goal is to establish the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, look at the immune response, and see how the virus can be passed from person to person. They'll use the original virus not any of the variants currently in the news. I give those who volunteer for the study major props for being willing to be infected with the virus everyone else is so actively trying to avoid. As for the variants, the CDC has said they could lead to a rapid rise in the number of cases, predicting that deaths could reach 559,000 by March 13. Currently, we're at somewhere over 488,000. 

Vaccinations are still hard to come by in many spots. People locally are complaining in not-very-quiet voices about both the state health department's registration system as well as the system CVS drug stores are using for people to make appointments to get vaccinated. They're still not doing my group, the one with underlying conditions. Massachusetts is currently requiring two underlying  conditions for vaccination. It's like extra credit in school!

POTUS said in a town hall meeting last night that he hopes the nation could return to normal by "next Christmas." The article I read did not define "next" as being 2021 or 2022. I would think of Christmas 2021 as being "this Christmas" with 2022 being "next." Either way, I wonder what normal will mean as we emerge from the pandemic. Handshakes are probably gone for good. I'm not sure about hugs, though I expect if we do still hug, we'll save them for people with whom we are particularly close. There are probably quite a few men who prefer the no-necktie look and feel. Will we pack into a sold-out movie showing and sit shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger? What about a sports event? A wedding? A funeral? Will restaurants ever get back the capacity they've relinquished? Will people feel comfortable sitting with other people at the next table or in the next booth. 

The local university recorded 117 positive cases on Monday. I'm not sure quite how they did it, but they ascertained that the large number of cases came from people letting their guard down in terms of mitigation. They got too close to each other, or let their mask slip down from their nose, or did some other bad thing. As a result, they shut things down about as tight as they can without sending everyone home as they did last spring. No in-person gatherings on or off campus. In-person classes will continue but with added measures to keep students separated. Kids who live on campus can only leave their dorm rooms for class, meals, exercise, or picking something up at a library. Those will be open only for p8ick-ups. Gyms are closed. If things improve over the next 10 days, they'll relax theses measures. And surprise, surprise, they did not do the 4:00 pm update giving the number of new cases found yesterday. Inquiring minds, well, my mind wants to know.....

The View from the Hermitage, Day 337

How to take someone's mind off the pandemic or politics? Try Arctic cold as far south as the southern tip of Texas. The governor has issued a disaster declaration for the entire state. There is snow in Houston and Galveston. They know how to deal with a hurricane down there; I'm not so sure about a polar vortex. It's not just Texas either. Today one could travel from the Rio Grande on the southern border to the St. Lawrence on the northern and never leave a winter storm watch or warning. Actually, maybe some political hot air would help turn things around. 

And there's always the distraction of Ebola. There are now three confirmed Ebola deaths in Guinea, the first in five years. Four more people are confirmed to have it. All seven attended the funeral of a nurse who had it. The bad news? These cases are in no way related to the ones in the Congo.

The US has currently had over 27.5 million covid-19 cases and recorded over 484,000 deaths. However, both Friday and Saturday saw fewer than 100,000 new cases. The daily average case count in December was 200,000, and several days in January saw more than 250,000. Various reasons have been offered for the drop in case numbers. Vaccinations are easier to find, more people are following at least some mitigation measures, the virus may be following a seasonal pattern, and, frankly, new cases may be going undetected. The caveats are that the numbers, while better, are still now good; the number of cases of the variant forms are increasing; and some states may be reopening things too quickly.  

The CDC has issued new guidelines for reopening K-12 schools to very mixed reviews. The American Federation of Teachers supports the guidelines, though a number of individual teachers do not. Somewhat surprisingly, there are parents who feel the guidelines are too strict. The CDC views teacher vaccinations as a strategy but not a requirement. The guidelines put no emphasis on improved ventilation systems, something many school districts cannot afford to put in. 

Once again, I try to place myself as a parent in the mix and see how I might feel. It doesn't help that The Sons did various virtual distance education classes and in most cases enjoyed them more than they did in-person classes. Son #2 might have missed the social aspect of school, but Son #1 would have preferred to work at home on his own. Neither son liked the group projects so popular in k-12 schools; they usually felt that they did the bouk of the work if not all of it. Given all that, I probably would be in the stay-virtual-as-long-as-you-can group.

Dr. Fauci mentioned in an interview that he did fear he could get covid attending so many meetings at the White House, location of multiple super-spreader events. He said he did not fixate on it, but it was usually in the back of his mind. He had not heard, nor had I, of the new term "fauci-ing" someone, or cutting off a relationship if you don't think the other person is taking the pandemic seriously. You won't wear a mask and you want to be close to me; prepare to be fauci-ed!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 327

I've decided to rename Mr. Biden to POTUS as a dig at Xpot. I don't expect that Xpot will know or care, but it suits me to do it this way. Speaking of Xpot, his time in office was a boon for The New York Times subscription-wise. I guess people developed a real taste for the fake news he said it ran. Digital-only subscriptions rose by 6.7 million during Xpot's time in office, compared with 3 million for The Washington Post and 2.46 million for The Wall Street Journal.

There won't be a glitzy new Budweiser Clydesdale ad during Sunday's Super Bowl, but Anheuser-Busch is running an ad that might moisten your eyes a wee bit. Parts might make you laugh or smile, while others might pull at your heartstrings. It's a good commercial considering the times in which it is airing. 

The governor held a coronavirus briefing this morning, catching me by surprise. He says the covid-19 numbers are improving to the point that he wants all school divisions in the state to be offering some form of in-person instruction by March 15. He did concede that should things worsen, he is quite willing to revert to virtual only. He also called on school divisions to craft some sort of summer school that will help bring kids up to speed on what they should have learned last spring and this year. It will not be mandatory, though, which makes me wonder if they will suggest to some families that their kids attend or make it totally voluntary. I guess we'll see.

I watched the governor's briefing on Facebook with a comment feed open. A surprisingly large number of angry faces wafted up on the sidebar, but that often happens during the briefings. What really caught my eye were the comments posted while the governor was discussing vaccinations. A very large number of people noted that they were not going to get vaccinated because they were scared. A noticeable number of those posted that people had died, sometimes within minutes, after being vaccinated. I guess I'm not reading, watching, or listening to the same news sources these folks are. 

The US recorded over 5,000 covid-19 deaths yesterday, but I'm happy (?) to say that the magnitude of the number was due to Indiana's inclusion of a backlog of around 1,500 previously unreported deaths. Don't get your hopes up, though. A newly released model predicts over 630,000 covid-19 deaths by June 1. I haven't seen an analogous number for the US, but the UK covid variant now accounts for 6 percent of cases in Germany.

And now a couple of non-covid comments. The Virginia House of Delegates yesterday voted to end capital punishment. The governor has already indicated that he will sign the bill, which makes us the first Southern state to end capital punishment. Weatherwise, we are about to experience a Siberian front that will take temperatures in the Upper Midwest down to the -30F to -50F range. In Tisdale,he tiny Saskatchewan town in which The Professor's brother lives, the high temperature Sunday is forecast to be -24F with a low of -31F. Yes, the -24F is the forecast high temperature. When The Professor comments that he is from Canada, he cites temperatures such as this as one of the reasons why.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 138

Today looks like a win on the weather front. Yesterday was the 35th straight day of 90-plus degrees Fahrenheit. Today seems a struggle to get to 80 degrees, though it probably has. Every time I've checked the temp, it's been in the high 70s. Looking ahead at what I know can be unreliable, there's only one day with a forecast high of 90 or higher in the next eight or nine days. Now if we could only win on the humidity front.

Both local school systems are starting all-virtual, though the county system does plan to have some sort of in-person instruction for English as a Second Language students and special needs students whose educational needs cannot be met virtually. Both will reassess halfway through the nine-week term as to what they should do for the next nine weeks. The county school board did give the superintendent permission to, at any point, close any in-person teaching. Should the county make it through the first nine weeks okay, kindergarten through grade 3 students will have some in-person classes during the next nine weeks. I have not yet heard if parental outrage has risen its ugly head, though there would have been parental outrage in the other direction were the schools to go in-person in any way.

I was interested in how some of the local private schools were going to handle fall, so I checked the websites of three. One had a discussion of how they handled things in the spring, but made no mention if that was the way the fall would be. The other two had no mention at all, not even something left behind about the school's closing back in March. Do they think that putting something up about going online only will force applications down? The three schools I checked are not cheap; I know that a year at two of them costs more than a year at the local university for an in-state student. It just seems a bit dishonest not to put up on the school website what the plans for fall might be. Or perhaps they have yet to decide.

Several colleges and universities in the Washington, DC area have announced plans to go totally online for the fall semester. One is even refunding a small amount of tuition as compensation. The new case numbers in DC and Maryland are similar to those in Virginia, not rising steeply but not headed down in any noticeable way. The local university is holding on letting any students who want to come back come. They would be doing virtual classes from their dorm rooms. Given that all classes with 40 or more students will only be offered online, it's probably first- and second-year students whose large introductory classes won't be in person.

Older son and the husband were discussing the advantages that taped lectures and virtual office hours can offer. A student can stop the lecture at any time and try to work things out on their own. They can also make a note about what to ask the prof about the specific item. I do remember a class or two in which something just flew by me as I was trying to take notes on what had just been said. The prof who oversaw my dissertation research handed out copies of the notes at the start of class for that very reason. He wanted students to be paying attention and not taking notes.

The husband just left on his first trip to the university to meet with his graduate students. When he comes home, he will enter through the basement, shower, put on clean clothes, and deposit the clothes he wore into the washer. This is the procedure we're looking at for the coming semester. If I have to go into public for any reason, I'll do the same when I come home.

I go now to restock the liquor cabinet or at least the bottles back in their new location. We so rarely drink liquor as opposed to beer or wine that I'm not sure why we have as many various bottles as we do. After that, I may get back to reading Mary Trump's book.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 54

My brother lives in Maine, as does my sister by another mother, and a fellow quilter friend. The forecast for Maine this weekend raises the possibility of 12 inches of snow. A foot of snow on May 9-10 with May 10 being Mother's Day. That actually doesn't sound all too bad given our Virginia winter of next to no snow. We never used the fireplace either. We're supposed to have near-freezing nighttime temperatures here, but it's not the same as the white stuff.

Weather aside, the governor says he anticipates and hopes that we will move into Phase One a week from today. Non-essential retailers that up to now have been limited to 10 customers at a time will be able to admit a number equal to 50 percent of their capacity. I understand how a restaurant would determine capacity, but I'm not sure what that means to, say, a department store. Eating establishments that have outdoor seating can serve 50 percent of the capacity of that seating. They can continue to offer take-out and/or delivery, but there will be no inside service. Restaurant staff have to wear masks, and diners must order from disposable menus.

Church services must be limited to 50 percent of capacity. I guess they can fill every other pew? Or do a sort of checkerboard arrangement of groups using all the pews? Gyms must stay closed though outdoor exercise classes can meet if the maximum size is 10 people and they exercise 10 feet apart. Beaches remain open for exercise or fishing, but no basking or swimming. Outdoor pools can open for lap swimming with one person per lane maximum.

Movie theaters, bowling areas, and other entertainment centers must stay closed. If you want your hair done, you will have to have an appointment, the salon must operate at 50 percent capacity (aside: My stylist works in a small salon with one other person. Does this mean only one of them can be working at a time?), and both stylist and client must wear masks. No services that would require mask removal can be done.

The above is all part of what they're calling Phase One. Phase One will last at least two weeks, possibly longer. The governor reserves the right next week to keep everything closed should the numbers head in the wrong direction over the weekend. He also said that he had no problems with ordering everything to close if the numbers went up after things reopened. I hope he keeps his word. The fact that he cannot run for re-election does, I'm sure, relieve some of the pressure about doing what people want rather than what is best according to the metrics. That said, do I think reopening is the right thing? Not really. I think the numbers will head back up, and a second closing will be harder for people to take than the first one was. But they don't pay me the big bucks to make big decisions.