The View from the Hermitage, Day 324

My normal early morning read-through of news sources got sidelined when I came across an article in The Guardian about Virginia's being on the brink of becoming the first southern, formerly Confederate state to abolish the death penalty and the 23rd state nationwide. I learned more about the history and practice of capital punishment in Virginia from an English newspaper as opposed to a home-grown one. Or perhaps it's easier for a foreign source to lay bare the bad side of the death penalty Virginia style. As might be expected given historic settlement patterns, the first execution in what is now the United States occurred in Jamestown in 1608. Again perhaps because of history, Virginia has carried out more executions than any other state, 1,390. There is a definite racial bias in Virginia's capital punishment history. Between 1800 and 1920, Virginia executed 625 black people and only 58 white people. Again looking historically, formerly Confederate states account for 80 percent of all executions. 

Besides all the above issues, what other evidence is there in favor of abolishing the death penalty? Try that 4 percent of all capital prosecutions are estimated to end in wrongful convictions. A sentence of life with no chance of parole can, if found to be mistaken, be reversed. The wrongfully convicted person can at least get some of their life back. The wrongfully executed person has no life to reclaim. 

Some bad news on the coronavirus front is that the monoclonal antibodies that have been used to treat the original covid-19 appear not to work against the variants. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed, so we can hope the researchers got it wrong, but I'm betting they didn't. If I were into writing science fiction, I could imagine an intelligent virus that consciously mutates to block treatments and/or vaccines. The US, while leading the world in many of the bad aspects of the virus, is woefully behind in terms of tracking viral mutations. We have shared the genetic sequence of only 0.3 percent of our covid-19 cases, not 3 percent, but 0.3 percent. That puts us 30th in the world behind such countries as Portugal, Latvia, and Sierra Leone. I wonder if Sierra Leone was one of the blank-hole countries Xpot was ranting about in a past life. 

Speaking of Xpot, the outline of his defense was provided to the Senate today. The principal argument is that he cannot be tried because he is no longer in office despite the fact that some other people have been. A secondary argument is that because he firmly believed he lost the election due to electoral fraud, his comments at the pre-riot rally were merely expressions of that belief and perfectly okay under the first amendment. I know what the outcome of the trial will be, but it will be interesting to see how those arguments fly and if Xpot has the nerve to appear as a witness.

The Super Bowl is this weekend. Back when The Sons lived in, the traditional Super Bowl dinner was chili or nachos. The Sons won't be here this year, but I can still make chili, this time using my Instant Pot. I also discovered a type of pie named after The Professor's favorite cookie, oatmeal raisin. The recommended crust is flaky cream cheese pie dough. This will be very interesting. I shall report the outcome of both resolutions on Monday.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 323

Not needing to go to work or school, I find Monday pretty much like any other day. The same goes for Friday. Still, the first things I found looking at the news this morning were enough to cause flashbacks of Monday as the worst day of the week. First, there was Singapore's education minister saying:

"It may take four or five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-COVID normal."

Then, there was Dutch officials of some sort saying that there "are essentially two separate COVID-19 epidemics," one from the original coronavirus and a second from the variant(s). Also put forward was the estimate that with the more transmissible variants, we may need 85 percent to achieve herd immunity. I'm thinking that there are probably enough anti-vaccination types out there that 85 percent will not come easily. The CDC is stepping up its efforts to find what variants are at play here in the US, offering one more way in which to raise my anxiety level.

It is now February. January, with over 95,000 deaths, has the distinction of being the deadliest month since the pandemic began. Vaccinations are still troublesome. The two feet of snow expected in New York City today is going to slow things up there. If you can't get vaccinated but know someone in Europe, though, you may be able to score a fake negative covid certificate. They're apparently a hot item on the black market there.

The social psychologist in me (social psych was my master's degree major; I returned to the quantitative realm for my PhD) found the results of a survey reporting that covid deadliness depends in large part on cultural differences in willingness to follow rules. This is not as counterintuitive as many other social psych results are, but still very interesting to me. The study considered the US, UK, Israel, Spain, and Italy to be "loose" cultures as opposed to the "tight" cultures in Singapore, Japan, China, and Austria. Controlling for other factors, loose cultures had five times the number of cases as the tight cultures and over eight times as many deaths. Perhaps more interesting, loose cultures were less afraid of the virus even as their case numbers rose. Nearly half of respondents in loose cultures (49 percent) reported being "very scared" of the coronavirus as opposed to 70 percent of respondents from tight cultures. It appears that people in loose cultures fear mitigation measures more than the virus itself. 

I have been very open since the start of all this 323 days ago about being terrified of getting the virus. This is one reason Son #1 has gone out of his way to see that I do not have to leave the house except for dog- or exercise-walking and pretty much only leave the subdivision to take The Family Dog to trail walk in a nearby park. And the nearby park is early Sunday mornings only. That very real fear is a big factor in my not minding at all playing hermit. A little fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

Going in a totally different direction, Amsterdam is moving its (in)famous red light district out of the city center. An "erotic center" will be set up elsewhere in Amsterdam in a purpose-built center. The aim is to attract a different type of tourist. I have to wonder, though, just how many people visit Amsterdam with the main purpose of getting laid. I can think of so many other reasons to visit, having lived just down the road for a year. There is another proposal to ban tourists from buying weed, but that one is not garnering a lot of support. There is concern that enacting such a ban would hand the drug trade over to dealers on the street. That actually makes a lot of sense. 

To close on a totally weird note, Alan Dershowitz has nominated Xpot's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his deputy Avi Berkowitz for the Nobel Peace Prize, recognizing their work in the Middle East. The article in The Guardian reporting this noted that "the bar for nominations is low." Other nominees include Greta Thunberg, Alexei Navalny, and the World Health Organization. These three are backed by Norwegian lawmakers, who are said to have a good track record of picking the winner. Stay tuned til October, a month by which coronavirus things may or may not have improved.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 322

Forty-six weeks, and we're about to enter the month of some "lasts" for me. Last trip away from Virginia not to mention last trip via airplane: a gathering of my Internet quilt guild in San Antonio, Texas, February 19 to 24. Last dinner in a restaurant: February 28, to mark our 35th wedding anniversary. We ate at the inn at which we held our wedding reception in 1985. I think it's the fanciest restaurant at which I've ever eaten. February held the last times I've seen a couple of dear friends. March holds several more lasts, but March won't be here for four weeks. 

As for the pandemic that has caused all of us to have various lasts, transmission of the novel coronavirus appears to be slowing. The average number of new cases on January 29 was 40 percent lower than three weeks earlier. Covid hospitalizations are the lowest they've been in two months. Let's not get complacent, though, since we could see 100,000 to 150,000 more deaths in the coming two months. The British variant form of coronavirus could become the prominent strain in the US in a mere six to 14 weeks. When that happens, one infectious disease specialist says, "...we are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country."

As I said, we should not get complacent. We may now have multiple vaccines against the coronavirus, but we have few new treatments. All the attention and money went toward vaccine development rather than treatment such as antivirals to stop the disease early in its progression. Even after I get vaccinated, I plan to be obsessively careful. My knee replacement came about in large part because I fall into the 30 to 40 percent of people for whom hyaluronic acid will not work as an arthritis treatment. I really don't want to find out the hard way that I am also in the percentage of people in whom one coronavirus vaccine or another does not work. I'm living for the day there are decent treatments to go along with viable vaccines. 

Looking worldwide, I found a reference to an October 2019 document assessing the pandemic preparedness of 153 countries, Global Health Security Index: Building Collective Action and Accountability. You probably would not have been surprised to see that when the report came out, The US ranked first and the UK ranked second in terms of how prepared a nation was for a pandemic. Would it surprise you to learn that right now, only eight of the 153 countries have death rates worse than the US, and the UK is one of those? 

How did the pandemic get to the point it's now at? The two big factors (I am not coming up with these but borrowing them from today's Axios AM email) were the Chinese failure to contain the virus and their attempts to cover it up, and the failure of the US to take on a global leadership role. Perhaps Xpot's acknowledgement that the coronavirus was real and not likely to just disappear by April or any other time would have been a good starting point. Resistance to the notion that reopening the economy was more important than public health would have helped as well. New case rates were going in the right direction at least in the states where there was some nontrivial notion of a lockdown. Reopening even partway? We're in a worse place now than we were last spring. 

Finally as far as the pandemic goes, repeat after me: "No one is safe until everyone is safe." The US is not so far doing much to help vaccinate the third world. There have been reports that there may not be enough vaccine doses for true global coverage until 2023. I have no epidemiology training, but it seems to me that it would be harder for the first world to achieve herd immunity as long as a person with the virus is only a flight or a voyage away. I hope we don't get so involved in getting ourselves vaccinated that we make the third world wait until 2023, because we'd probably be waiting that long to be safe ourselves.

As for the current winner in the front page, above the fold contest, five of Xpot's lawyers for the second impeachment trial have quit, apparently over what strategy(ies) to use in his defense. One report cited Xpot's insistence on using only one argument, that he can't be impeached because he is no longer in office. Another report cited Xpot's insistence on using as a defense that he was the victim of a stolen election. Finally, just for chuckles, Xpot is supposed to have fumed in front of aides that the case is simple enough he could defend himself and save the money he'd have to pay lawyer(s). When the aides picked their jaws up off the floor, they apparently talked him out of this one for now ... they hope.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 321

If you haven't already suspected, I'm not going to post anything today. It's been a rough week, and I'm ready to shut my mind off life things and do a little weaving. I hoped my brother might email me, but I haven't heard from him. I may call him tomorrow. The thought of his being at home alone makes me wonder how I would feel were The Professor to be gone. I am used to his traveling for his research, but I know he's coming home. If I knew he wouldn't be ... I don't really want to think about that. Mind, disengage now.

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.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 319

In the vein of No News Is Good News, I'm going to skip the news today. Why risk spoiling what is left of the day? What shall I write about then? Let's start with the doing something every day that scares you, in other words, weaving. I have something of a history with weaving. When I was in the fourth grade, there was a rather large (to a fourth grader) loom that moved from classroom to classroom. At least in my classroom, when you finished your work you could go weave. I finally had to be barred from weaving. I always got my work done first; it seems that the other kids didn't like that I got to the loom first. I did relinquish it when someone else was ready to use it, but I usually managed to have it for a nice bit of time.     

Fast forward to adulthood. I always somewhat entertained the idea of getting a loom, but always talked myself out of it, money and space being the two counterarguments I used. I did not really know at that point that small looms were a thing. Sometime about 15 years ago, I learned that there was a fiber person who lived just over a mile from me who taught a weaving class twice a year. It was all day for five days and cost what seemed like an extraordinary amount. It was limited to four students. We started with a project for which the instructor had warped a small loom for each of us. I say "small" but the looms were not rigid heddle looms. Finishing that project took about a day and a half, after which we designed our own project, chose or brought yarn for it, and then did it. We used a warping board, about which I remembered very little, and went at it. By the end of the week, I had the first project and my own to take with me. I referred to the class as Weaving Boot Camp because it was pretty demanding. 

A few years ago, I learned about smaller, rigid heddle looms and put one on my Christmas wish list. The Professor and Son #2 got one for me. It's about a yard wide and can sit on a stand. And it sat, un-put-together and unused for a year. I was scared to do anything. Son #2 finally put it together and informed me that he wanted to see something I'd done. I put on my super-hero underpants, got The Professor to help with the warping, and wove something. As part of my merchandise payment for working at the Fall Fiber Festival, I got a small, SampleIt loom as a Christmas present for Son #2. He went crazy, weaving all sort of different types of yarn, planning how to make a jacket, and gave me a hard time for not using my loom as much as he used his. I noted that it sometimes seemed too big, and I couldn't really think of what to weave that wasn't just a sample. 

For my birthday in July he got me the same smaller loom I had given him. He also bought a larger one similar to the one he'd originally given me.  I did a couple of small things on it, and then it sat. I didn't want to bother The Professor to help me warp it; I was scared to try doing that by myself. Son #2 heard that and informed me he used a warping board and would make me one like the one he'd made for himself. And he did. I tried to harness my nerves by acquiring Weaving Made Easy, a book that claimed to be able to have you warping your loom in 20 minutes. Can you see where this is going?

The book arrived on Sunday or Monday, and I took a day or two to read and re-read the sections on direct as well as indirect warping. Yesterday, I got brave enough to give it a try. The warping board that Son #2 had made me looked very unlike the one shown in the book. It took me more time than I care to admit to figuring out how to wrap the yarn so as to get the necessary cross. On the way, I realized that the project I had in mind was above my current skill level, and I should pull some different yarn to work with. (I need to ask Son #2 how he warps with it, because it sounded as if he did it without the all-important or so they say cross.) I finished with the yarn wound on the warping board with the cross. Getting to that point had taken longer than I should admit, so I decided to leave the next part until today.

Today. Let's just say that of everything that could have gone wrong, I did at least half. In the process I decided that I may never again use a warping board. Warping using a warping peg on my own scared me because of keeping the threads straight after they come off the peg and need to be wound on to the rear beam. That is not going to scare me any longer. It beats trying the warping board again at least for now. The loom is ready to go, and I may or may not get to weaving this evening.

That's a very cumbersome description, and the regular commentator who is an excellent weaver has probably rolled her eyes a time of two. After wrestling with the warping for more than three hours this afternoon, I don't have the energy to go for coherence.

The other thing I've been pondering today comes from an article I read noting how the pandemic has made people reconsider friendships. The pandemic, or my reaction to it of self-isolation, has let me see which friends I most miss seeing. Friends versus acquaintances? A fellow quilter says she has friends and Friends; the capital F means they're the special ones. In thinking of the people with whom I had social interaction pre-pandemic, there are some that I would be quite all right staying isolated from. There are a few, though, whom I do miss seeing and want to see again once we're all vaccinated and as safe as we can be. I've been pondering what it is about certain people that puts them in the capital F or non-acquaintance categories. The best I've come up with is that those people understand me better, whether it be because we have similar tastes in various things, similar attitudes, or similar interests. Actually, we probably share more than one of those categories. I'll have to ponder this further.

Not a very thought-provoking post today. Being honest about it, my whole day has been colored by last night's call from my brother with the news that his wife had died. The advanced cancer diagnosis and her decision not to do chemo told them what the eventual outcome would be. They just thought they'd have a bit longer. A nurse did call my brother in the morning and told him not to wait until visiting hours, but to come then; the hospital was around 100 miles away. At least they had the last day together. He lives in Maine, which makes helping him directly difficult. I wish there were something I could do other than tell him to call me any time of day even if it's just to cry over the phone with me. 

Maybe I'll think more clearly tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 318

The Department of Homeland Security says that for the next several weeks we will face heightened threats from the extremist groups who carried out the Capitol insurrection. Possible (I hope not likely) targets are elected officials and government facilities. Evidently, during Xpot's reign, the use of the term "domestic terrorist" was discouraged. That's what these people would be, though, if they plan for the attacks to destabilize the government or Americans' daily lives. I'd say I would keep my eyes open for warning signs, but if terrorists or extremists attack my 20-house subdivision, they're pretty hard up for targets.

I talked with my mom today. She had her first coronavirus vaccination last week and will get the second one in two weeks. She said that while all the residents of her assisted living facility got vaccinated, only about half of the staff did. The staff members she sees daily are all aides who likely have no medical training per se. Still, I find it disconcerting that in a facility that several months ago had twenty-some covid cases, so many people are declining the only real path we have toward herd immunity. Mr. Biden has pledged or at least expressed the desire to have vaccinated 300 million people in the US by the end of summer or early fall. How the people who refuse the vaccinations figure into that plan I do not know.

Bill and Melinda Gates have issued their annual letter. In it, they warn of "immunity inequality," a widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else. If large areas such as those countries Xpot disparaged as a certain type of hole remain unvaccinated, we will not be able to get the pandemic under control. They also called for the creation of a "global alert system" to detect disease outbreaks as they happen, and proposed "germ games" to help train first responders.

The covid death toll is currently about 423,000. The CDC says we could have 508,000 by mid-February. Still, it was interesting to hear on the news this morning that the per capita death rate in England is higher than that in the US. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Might the population density of the two countries play a factor? There probably is some obvious reason that is escaping me at the moment. If I think of it, I'll let you know.

A psychology professor at the local university published a column in which he recommended mandatory K-12 summer school. He cited the number of IQ points children lose each year that they are in front of a screen and not in a classroom. He noted that this decline will have economic effects likely reaching into the next century. Mandatory summer school, mornings only, offers the chance to get students back to where they should be. It should not be limited to the kids who are behind the others. Kids who have not declined in ability could get enrichment rather than remediation. 

A few random pot-shots. Remember the wildfires in California? Areas cleared by fire now face flash floods and landslides. Talk about adding insult to injury. As many as 89,000 households have left San Francisco since March. People and companies are embracing the notion that for many jobs, people can work from anywhere. Miami, Florida and Austin, Texas are becoming the new tech hot spots. At the same time, working from home may raise interesting tax questions. If you work at home in one state for a company located in another state, which state gets your state income tax payment? Or do you have to pay tax in both states? 

I put on my super-hero underpants and practiced using a warping board today. The warping board I'm using was made by Son #2 and is what he said he uses to warp his loom. I need to inquire as to how he uses it, because one hard part was that there was no real space in which to cross the warp threads. I also need to figure out where to secure my small rigid heddle loom so that I can load the warp. The warping board is clamped to my sewing room work table, leaving not enough room to secure the look there with it. That's a tomorrow problem, though. By the time I finished winding the warp, I knew I'd likely screw something up if I kept at it then. I guess I'll need those super-hero underpants tomorrow as well.