Tag: Covid (Page 3 of 5)

Heartbreaking Times

June 1, 2020 / DB

It is hard to know what to write today. We are in day four of an absolutely glorious run of weather. We got to see a few friends this weekend. The SpaceX launch was very cool. There’s a new wave of openings here in Indianapolis today which is making life feel a little more normal.

But all that is offset by what is going on in our country right now.

Last night Indianapolis was under a 10-hour curfew. We live far from where the violence and destruction was on Friday and Saturday nights, but it was still eerie to have all the restaurants and stores around the corner from our house close early to allow everyone to get home before 8:00. There was some traffic after 8:00, but it was certainly much lighter even compared to the reduced traffic of the past two months.

Indy got off light. There were a couple downtown banks and shops busted open, a few small fires. Minor compared to many other cities around the country.

It was very difficult not to follow the demonstrations around the country and not get emotional about it. Violence, destruction, looting is never the correct path. And I realize it is often two very distinct groups who are doing the peaceful protesting and the more violent acts. But I understand the motivation.

The George Floyd murder was just the latest and most egregious example of law enforcement using unreasonable and deadly force when dealing with Black men in this country. We’ve been seeing the videos for years, and before everyone had a phone in their hand we heard the stories for decades. But far too many white people wrote those stories off as exaggerations or outright lies. Others assumed that there had to be an act before the cameras started recording that justified the police’s acts. I think it’s this third group that bothers me the most. That view supports the idea that police can take any actions they want against a perceived criminal, even if those actions aren’t in proportion to the alleged crime. “Well, he had a criminal past and he was running, what do you expect?”

Plenty of white people sympathized, but none of us did enough to counter the racists, overt or covert, who twisted these incidents into opportunities to give the police more weapons rather than the public more protections. Or the politicians who look at the violence that came after the act and view it as the real problem, not the actions that caused the violence. Or the Thin Blue Line fanatics who forget that in a free society the police do not serve as judge, jury, and executioner out on the streets.

I don’t know what the answer is. It really feels like this country is broken, has been for some time, and we just keep getting worse. Plus we have a president who will use this as a gigantic wedge to anger the people he thinks will get him reelected, who will punish those who need help, who will reward those who took lives, who will somehow place blame on people who have zero responsibility but have the nerve to speak against him. Hell, it’s already starting. We can only hope that it backfires and is yet another epic failure in his presidency that will bring it to a resounding end next January.

As much as I want to believe a new president will change things, I don’t think it will make a huge difference. New elected officials may take over and implement new policies, but you can’t force people to be empathetic, and, as I’ve said before, I think empathy is on its last legs in this country.

It seems impossible for people to look at someone different than them and understand what their lives are like. White people and people of color. Men and women. Citizens and immigrants. Republicans and Democrats. Mask wearers and non-mask wearers. Someone with a different perspective is meant to be marginalized until they have no voice or power. We see it in everything from our legislatures to social media to youth league sports to the line at your grocery store. Everyone seems pissed off at everyone else, and if we can quickly identify a difference between us, we immediately turn it into a racial/political/gender fight.

We’ve told our girls over-and-over that it’s fine not to like people, it’s fine to be upset with someone else’s behavior, it’s ok to think someone is a jerk. But that’s all they are, a jerk. They aren’t a Black jerk or a gay jerk or a Mexican jerk.

I’m a cynic by nature, but I also often believe in a hopeful future. The arc of history bending toward social justice and such. That belief has fueled me through other tense moments in our nation’s history.

I’m not sure we are capable of overcoming all this hate, especially when so many elements of our society seem focused on glorifying our divisions to generate clicks, likes, favs, views, and votes.

I would love to be proven wrong. I would love it if I never see another video of police, or random strangers, killing Black men for no reason. I would love it if politicians realize it is better for our country to find areas of common ground rather than using scorched earth techniques that are focused more on destroying their opponents than governing. I would love it if social media companies didn’t hide behind the false flag of neutrality and took some responsibility for what is posted on their platforms. I would be fucking thrilled if white people in power didn’t think it was bad for business or would cost them votes to protect the most vulnerable people in our society.

Maybe the summer of 2020, which is off to a horrible start, will shake something loose and we’ll find a way to start getting along again.

Sadly, I think things are going to keep getting worse.

Memorial Day Weekend Notes

May 26, 2020 / DB

Holiday number two of the Coronavirus era has come and gone. Memorial Day weekend was especially strange here in Indianapolis since there was no 500 mile race to dominate local events. The race has been pushed back to August, for now. But the month of May is the biggest month of the year in Indy, and the last three weeks have felt extra empty without all the race prep and coverage. Even as someone who is not a race enthusiast, my nearly two decades here has made the rhythms of May feel like an essential part of the beginning of summer.

It would have been a fine race day, too. Warm, humid, pop-up storms on the radar but which never threatened Speedway.

We spent much of the weekend in the pool. It has been warm enough so that the heater stays off and the water remains at the perfect temperature. A few friends of the girls rolled in and out over the past few days.

We also hosted a family gathering Saturday, which also served as a fourth birthday party for one of the nephews. We did get storms that afternoon, and had to rush everyone out of the pool and gather all our toys before the rains hit. Fortunately the boys all got to swim for an hour or so before they had to get out.

C and L are officially done with school for the year. I have to admit I wasn’t sure what day was their final day. There was a virtual field day built into the schedule, assignments for the last week were kind of sparse to begin with, and I think we had all checked out long before whatever the actual last day was. I would mock my parenting but I think most of us are in the same boat: let’s just get this year over with and, hopefully, find some normalcy in the fall.

We did get confirmation that Cathedral plans on beginning classes on time and in person in August. I would imagine days will not be the same as they were in early March, but the school has not shared any details about what protections/restrictions/requirements will be in place. M was excited to hear that she will be back on campus in three months, though.

We’ve had a mostly benign but annoying development over the past month at our house. Right above L’s room, where several sections of the roof come together, there are two small sheltered spaces. With the way that the roof falls, while they are outside our attic space, they are also above the ceiling of L’s room. Each of those spaces have become home to nests. One of them is full of baby birds. These birds wake up at about 5:30 every morning, squawking for their breakfast and rattling around in that space. L is an early riser, but 5:30 is a little early even for her. Worse, with the heat of the past week, we’re getting some odor into her room. A nest full of growing, shitting and pissing birds does not smell good.

The big issue is that the nests are beyond the reach of my extension ladder. There is a secondary roof about 10 feet up that, if I had the right equipment, I could get up to and place another ladder on to get at them. But I’m not about to hoist one ladder up another and then hope it remains in place while I fight off momma bird to stick my hand in and yank out the nest.

So looks like I’ll be having some critter control service out soon to both eliminate the nests and seal off those openings to avoid future issues.

We’ve also had a nest right outside our bedroom for over a year. It is wedged in between the gutter downspout and the siding, and actually bothers M more than us because of how her room and our room are positioned. We’ve had three sets of baby birds in it over the past year. I may go on a nest jihad and remove it once its babies have flown away.

Throw in some rabbits, lots of squirrels, a pair of ducks, bluejays, sparrows, robins, grackles, various finches, and as many as 20 geese at one time, and our property has quite the wildlife presence!

Covid Chronicles, 5/19

May 19, 2020 / DB

I’m not sure if it is time to transition the title of these assorted notes posts back to how I labelled them before March. Not everything in these is about what is going on with Covid anymore. At the same time, our lives are going to continue to be pretty boring for some time and much of what I share here will be affected, at least indirectly, by the state of the world. So for now they will remain Covid-tagged.

Sunday was C’s 14th birthday, which gave us a chance for our first quarantine celebration. We had some friends and family drive by to honk, wave hello, and toss gifts to her. We were dodging rain all day but it worked out pretty well.

After that we had our old neighbors over for a dinner celebration. The girls all got into the pool. Pools are safe! Or at least that’s what the initial studies suggest. I might be cranking up the chlorine level a notch or two higher than normal just to make sure. If we could just keep everyone from getting too close from each other when they aren’t in the pool. Both M and L had a friend over to swim on Saturday, but there was plenty of other hanging out during those visits.

Again, we’re going to have months of stress about what the proper way to socialize is. I tend to think small groups are ok, but should we be masking everyone up while we’re together? When we were running M’s friend home Saturday we passed a backyard party where everyone was seated six feet apart. If only kids understood social distancing with friends as well as they do with strangers.

As I said, the pool is open. It took until Saturday for the water to get up around 90 degrees where we like it. But it was warm enough Friday evening that the girls all jumped in for awhile. Now if we could just get this stupid cut-off low to pass us so the nice weather of last week could return.

We had a bunch of lawn restoration work done last week, right before the rainy weather hit. I’m really hoping the deluge of the past seven days hasn’t rendered all the new grass seed unable to germinate.

I recorded Sunday’s charity golf match that featured Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler, and Matthew Wolf. I was glad I recorded it because it allowed me to fast forward through the many slow spots. Even with the FF button in high use, it certainly had stretches where it was veeeeeerrrrry slow.

I was most excited to see Seminole Golf Club on TV. It has never hosted a televised event before, and the golf architecture geeks I follow think it’s an amazing course. One of those experts says it is a near ideal course because if you are a good-to-elite player it will really challenge you, while if you’re just a normal player you will have a good chance to shoot what you do on your home course. Not that I’ll ever have a chance to play it, but that was a comforting thought.

Sadly much of what makes people love the course doesn’t really translate to TV, and the broadcasting crew didn’t go out of their way to explain what is so cool about the course.

The golf was kind of crappy, too. You could tell the guys were rusty. DJ barely looked interested. And using the Skins format just doesn’t generate a lot of excitement. But Skins is easy to understand and made sure both teams earned some money for their charity of choice, so I understand the decision.

The broadcast was mixed. You have to grade on a scale, because this was done with a short lead-up, a limited production crew, on a course not designed to make TV easy. I think they could have used a few more cameras. I heard they had six. I think they could have put in some more that were fixed at tee boxes and greens that would have allowed them to miss fewer shots. Not having shot tracer for every tee shot was a big miss. And there were some issues with the announcers being in three different locations. The Bill Murray interview was flat bizarre and difficult to watch. I muted the entire time a certain politician called in. Jon Rahm was a pretty good interview, and I could have used more of him. That said, with so much dead time to kill as they players moved between shots, I think they could have spaced out these conversations better so they weren’t talking over the action.

Everyone involved gets credit for making the attempt, though. It was good to have some live sports on, even if flawed.

I finished The Last Dance last night. I think I’ll need to break my thoughts on it out from my monthly media list and share them here soon.

M wrapped up her freshman year last week. Unless something changes before final grades are posted, it looks like she carried a 4.21 GPA through all four quarters. Pretty good! I’m glad she’s tapped into her mom’s academic genes. I never got straight A’s in high school because of 1) math and 2) I was lazy. She was the only student in her English class to get an A on her research paper without having to re-write it, so maybe she got some of my skills, too.

She knows her sophomore year will be tougher. She’s adding three honors classes to her load, but they are all liberal arts rather than science courses, so I think she’ll do fine. She’s excited to be taking photography. I may be as excited about that as she is.

Now we just start hoping that her sophomore year is mostly normal. We are hearing rumors from other schools about mixed plans that may involve kids coming into school in rotations/waves, so only a certain percentage of the student population is in the school at the same time. I don’t see how that helps the teachers and staff, though, who will need to be at school daily. Perhaps they will be in masks and other protective measures will be take.

I kind of laughed that M said she was bored last week, when she still had a couple days of class left. I wanted to say, “Wait until next week when you have nothing to do at all!” Saturday she asked us, “What can we do today?” Normally that means where can we go to shop/eat. It was hard not to snap at her, “We literally can’t go anywhere!”

We found out last week that St. P’s will be making some adjustments in the fall. All we know is that instead of a 6th–8th middle school group, the 7th and 8th graders will now be considered middle schoolers while the 5th and 6th graders will be labeled as “intermediate” students and sharing teachers. We’re not sure what the mechanics of that will be, especially since those four grades, along with the fourth graders, all share a hallway. S guessed, based on what she’s heard from other schools, is that they may adjust how the classes change periods, have lunch, etc so fewer kids are in the hallway at one time. But we’ve received no details yet, so we’re not sure.

I know I do not envy school administrators right now. No plan seems like a good plan. I know private schools are facing pressure to have kids back in real class. We’ve heard several parents say “I’m not paying X-thousand dollars for an entire year of eLearning.” Which I totally understand. This pressure comes on top of knowing you’re probably going to lose some students because their families can’t afford private school tuition due to personal financial issues. It’s just a damn tough time.

L is not excited at all about the changes. There were a couple teacher changes that came with this reorganization and she may have to spend time with two teachers she doesn’t like very much while two she was hoping to get have moved away from her grade. She’s lived a charmed life with teachers, always getting the one she wanted and generally getting along well with them. She needs to toughen up and get over it!

The Risks

May 14, 2020 / DB

I’ve seen the article I’m linking to below passed around a lot this week, so many of you have probably at least seen it. I highly recommend reading through it. Erin Bromage is a biology professor who explains how things could go over the next few months, as we being to reopen while still navigating the back side of the curve.

As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off. I understand the reasons for reopening the economy, but I’ve said before, if you don’t solve the biology, the economy won’t recover.

Even if you are a stalwart “REOPEN NOW” person, you can still get some good takeaways from the piece, especially where she dives into the locations where the coronavirus is most easily spread. All of us will have to be out in the world at some point. It is good to arm ourselves with some knowledge that can be used to protect ourselves as we begin leaving the house on a more regular basis.

The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, outbreaks spread from shopping appear to be responsible for a small percentage of traced infections.

The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them

Covid Chronicles, 5/13

May 13, 2020 / DB

I’ve felt a lack of enthusiasm and motivation the past few days. School is winding down. M is done Friday. C and L are done next week. Assignments have already dried up and they’re just running out the clock. A few teachers seem to have checked out, too, which makes it tough to motivate the girls.

The news has devolved further, making me less and less interested in paying attention to what’s going on, and making my blood pressure rise when I do check in. I’ve starting to clear out my Twitter feed of some accounts that I very much enjoy and inform me simply because the stories they share are so infuriating.

The weather doesn’t help. This has been a wacky spring, full of swings back-and-forth. Which is what Midwest springs are supposed to be. But they’ve seemed especially wild this year simply because the nice days feel like moments of bliss and relief while the nasty days you can feel the walls creeping in on you.

Fortunately some of that may be changing. After today, we appear set for a long stretch of days near 80. It will likely rain several of those days, but at least it will be warm.

The crew was just here to open the pool. I’m guessing the girls will be jumping in the moment the heater has run long enough to make the water tolerable. It was 57 degrees last time I checked, so it may take awhile to get there.

L had a quick get together with her class Monday at a park. The motivation was so they could present their teacher with her year-end gifts and get a chance to see each other. Despite the cold, damp, raw day, we spent nearly 90 minutes there, mostly because all the parents were talking. The parents did pretty well with the social distancing. I’m not sure the kids did.

I think I mentioned this last week but every moment like that comes with very strong, mixed feelings. And then after the fact you wonder if it was worth it. It seems like being outside is the best way to safely interact with others, so I’m not super worried about it. This does seem to be how things are going to be for the foreseeable future, though: trying to balance safe and sane, hoping for the best in the process.

Normally S does not watch a lot of TV. Her evenings, in the past, were generally filled with hours of charting. She would come home, eat dinner, crack open the laptop, do one to four hours’ worth of charting, then go to bed. She has one show she watches, Outlander, and she’ll run through those seasons pretty quickly after they drop then re-watch them. There’s the occasional movie but otherwise she is not in front of a screen for fun very often.

Until the past two months. She has been extraordinarily busy at times, some days filled with 12 hours of conference calls and associated work. But she also has almost no charting and, after those first 2–3 weeks, the calls slowed down and actually left her with free time. (Worth mentioning that the calls are picking back up as her system tries to figure out the reopening process. This may be more stressful than the shutting down process as management is pushing for changes that no one seems happy about.)

That’s a long lead in to sharing how I think she’s watched more TV than any of us during this break. She’s plowed through a bunch of shows and movies. Most nights, and some afternoons, you can find her with her laptop and my headphones, laughing at whatever is currently amusing her. Often she’ll try to go to bed but can’t shut her brain off. I’ll come up an hour or so later to find her in bed, watching a show on her phone in the dark.

This break has sucked for all of us, but she’s had the most stress and responsibility throughout. I’m glad she’s found an outlet that allows her to check-out for a bit and actually have some fun.

Amazon delivery seems to be approaching normal again. There are still regular items that seem to be taking more like a week to show up, but more and more things show a delivery window within a couple days.

I’ve started gaming the system a little. Whenever I have a chance, I’ve been taking the second tier of free delivery that pushes arrival back a bit, but offers a credit for digital services in exchange. If I’m going to be buying more Kindle books than normal, I might as well collect some coupons to reduce that cost!

Indianapolis/Marion County just announced phase one of their reopening process. Restrictions begin lifting Friday. Restaurants can reopen to outside seating only next Friday. Man, I have no interest in being inside a restaurant any time soon. Not sure I even want to sit outside of one. I feel a little bad about that. The restaurant business is a tough one in good times. I’d like support locally owned places and their staffs by getting food and drink from them, tipping the wait staff, etc. I am not keen to be in any enclosed space with a bunch of strangers, though. I think we will be sticking to carryout for quite some time.

Covid Chronicles, 5/5

May 5, 2020 / DB

It feels typical for this stage in life here on earth that anytime there is good news, it is heavily balanced by awful news.

The worst, early hot spots are all calming down. Italy and Spain are taking steps to return to normal. The New York City/State area are trending in a positive direction. Across the US, many restrictions are being relaxed.

All that is countered by the brutal reality that we are likely moving back toward normal too early and too quickly. There is also heavy evidence that Covid–19 is just beginning to attack the more rural parts of the US, where healthcare is much more difficult to come by and, theoretically, its impact could be much worse without a medical support system to aid those who fall ill.

And then there are the numbers. You can choose to follow the model you want to, but they are all changing. And even for those of us who understood that this wasn’t a six-week event, who listened when physicians and epidemiologists and other experts warned of second and third waves, getting a whiff of normalcy only to be battered by the reality that the worst is likely still to come was a tough way to begin the week.

The thing that continues to hearten me is that a majority of Americans seem focused on doing all they can to protect themselves and their families. Most people think localities that are opening are moving too quickly, most Americans are reluctant to jump back into eating in restaurants, shopping in malls, attending sporting events, and doing other things that require us to squeeze many people into confined spaces.

Of course, there is a vocal minority of people who feel the opposite. I’m honestly not sure what to think about the groups who have protested in various capitals over the past week or so. I think some of these people are motivated solely by partisan politics, seeking to make noise in order to support the president and to disparage those who oppose him. I think you could throw out any Trump-approved issue, or subject that they viewed his opponents as using to weaken him, and they would show up with their signs and flags and assault weapons, claiming their freedoms are being threatened. The fact they are arguing against preventing the spread of a deadly virus just makes them look dumber than they normally look.

These people are easy to dismiss as nut jobs.

At the same time, I think there are genuine concerns within these groups that go beyond who holds what office. Moments of heavy government action are also moments that require a vocal opposition. This was true in the Vietnam era. It’s true today.

However, that message is undermined when they, or members of their flock, call Covid a hoax, start resorting to blame rather than seeking solutions, and seem more interested in grinding government to a halt than adjusting the government’s efforts to assist more toward their desired path.

People can be afraid of government overreach. They can be concerned about their businesses being destroyed because of shut down orders. They can feel that their voices are not being heard. They can present all of these grievances peacefully.

Showing up in large groups without masks, calling people childish names, while toting guns around and acting like those aren’t a threat of direct violence on elected officials needlessly complicates their arguments, turning them into emotional shouting matches instead of moments for true political discourse.

Restrictions began relaxing a bit here over the weekend. Indianapolis remains locked down for at least another week, as Marion County in the hardest hit in the state. We did allow M to visit a friend for a few hours Saturday. Then we went to our old neighbors’ for a fire pit that evening. Afterward I realized while the parents were being pretty good about social distancing, the kids were acting like kids: sitting near each other, throwing balls around, sharing phones, etc. After six weeks I think all the parents thought that the kids needed a release. I don’t think any of us were interested in being hyper vigilant about their distancing efforts. Sunday, though, I was re-thinking the entire thing.

I guess I’m likely not alone in that, and many of us will be going through those same mental battles for months ahead. We need to get out of the house, to see people, to do things in order to remain sane. But it is tough to know where the lines are and how rigidly we need to be aware of them. If two families haven’t left the house is six weeks, are we all safe? What about when another kid shows up and we have no idea how strictly her family has been locked down?

Along those lines I was part of a text thread last week that included several parents in C’s class, wondering what everyone’s thoughts were about getting kids together once shelter in place was lifted. The thread began on S’s first day back in the office, and since we had not had this discussion yet, I didn’t chime in until the evening. Throughout the day there were no other responses, either. Once I did share our opinion, mentioning that I had waited to talk it over with S, the rest of the group suddenly came alive. I had to laugh at how everyone was waiting to hear what the doctor said before they said anything. Or at least it appeared that way.

C’s class had an assignment a couple weeks back to send a letter to a classmate. She sent one off and received a couple. M quickly jumped on the idea and sent a whole stack of letters out. She sent so many I had to brave the post office to buy more stamps. She’s received a few back in the mail, had a couple dropped off at the front door.

I thought it was a pretty sweet little moment, as kids these days – kids these days! – don’t really use the postal service for communicating with friends very much.

Two weeks ago I went to exchange our backup propane tank for a full one. I went three places and each was out of new tanks. I did some quick searching online and found that there appears to be sporadic propane shortages. As soon as I got home I ordered a Weber charcoal grill.

It arrived last Monday and I’ve used it twice. I don’t think I’ve used a charcoal grill since college. I have some work to do to get my technique locked in. Despite using a chimney starter I don’t feel like I’m getting my coals hot enough. But I’m enjoying the experimentation. And the added flavor that comes with cooking on charcoal rather than gas.

Finally, after I took my shower this morning and came downstairs, L told me someone had been knocking at the door and standing there for several minutes while I was upstairs. I checked our security camera’s history and saw a young guy did come to the door, knock twice and wait before leaving. He had a logo-ed hat on and was holding an iPad, so I assume he was selling something. Exterminator services love to hit our neighborhood for some reason, so that would be my guess.

My first thought was that it was kind of strange to be knocking on stranger’s doors trying to push a product or service in the age of Covid. But what was really strange was that homeboy was not wearing a mask. I get how it would be creepy to walk up to someone’s door unsolicited with your face covered. But how on earth can you expect a stranger to open the door for you with your face uncovered? He didn’t have a mask pulled up over his hat or slung beneath his chin that could have easily been pulled over his face when the door was answered. Nor did he have one in his hand.

If I had been downstairs I most likely would have ignored him anyway. The lack of mask reduced that chance to zero.

Reading Assignments: The Challenge Ahead

April 30, 2020 / DB

I shared earlier this week that I’m paying less direct attention to the news over the past couple weeks. I am, though, still reading plenty of deeper pieces on where we are at and where we are headed. I still have several articles in the queue but I thought these two pieces were very good and worth sharing. They take a look at the structural issues in our country, largely political, that the Coronavirus crisis has highlighted.

In general I am optimistic that we can restart and rebuild when the time is right. America does crisis recovery pretty well. But as these pieces note, there are some serious hurdles inherit to modern America that will make that process an even bigger challenge.

We Are Living in a Failed State

Why we can’t build

Covid Chronicles, 4/28

April 28, 2020 / DB

A big step back toward normalcy today: S went back to work. She’s on a limited schedule, just two days a week and only seeing two patients per hour, all of whom are age two and under. She’s also not back in her office as it remains closed for the time being. This will be the plan for six weeks or so and then there is a phase 2 and 3 in the works before her practice is completely open again. I think she was pleased to be out of the house again. I woke up before 7:00 and she was already gone. It’s only one step, but it is the first on what should be a long and slow trek back toward the world restarting.

The whole concept of reopening has, like everything else these days, been so completely politicized that it is nearly impossible to have a reasonable discussion about it.

We absolutely need to reopen. What we do NOT need to do, though, is just open up the gates and tell everyone to pretend it is March 13 and pick up where we left off then. The reopening needs to be cautious, planned, and controlled. People need to keep social distancing, keep staying at home unless they absolutely need to be outside the house. Wearing masks and gloves when they shop. Avoiding large groups. And so on.

I get the feeling from the public statements of many politicians that they far prefer the idea of rushing back to normal. Many of them express little interest in setting up a system of testing that is required if we hope to get society anywhere near where it was before the coronavirus hit. Those people are idiots.

There will be a second wave of coronavirus. If we remain vigilant and continue to make individual sacrifices for the greater good, we can put off that second wave and make it more manageable, flattening the second curve as we did the first. If we cast aside all the restrictions we’ve adopted over the past six weeks too quickly, the second wave will arrive quickly and with ferocity. Parents are already sweating the idea of school beginning on time in August. If we start having birthday parties and other gatherings, we can go ahead and write off the fall quarter (if not semester) because wave number two will be burning the country up just when schools are set to open.

There have been many maddening statements and actions by our political leaders over the past four months. Fortunately there have been some who have proven themselves to be true leaders by taking decisive, definitive actions based on science and the desire to protect their citizens, regardless of whether they voted for them or not. The cowards, the fakes, the bullies have been more interested in casting blame, attempting to claim credit for things they had nothing to do with, pandering to their base, trying to distract, and otherwise doing all they can to NOT make rational, reasoned, intelligent decisions.

I’m thankful our governor, who I did not vote for, is firmly in the first camp. He’s held daily press conferences that have been honest and sober. He’s relied on the experts around him and not attempted to present himself on an expert. His tone has been one of caring and concern. He seems guided by a desire to keep as many Hoosiers safe as he can. Most of all, he has behaved like an adult.

He’s been a leader. I’m pleased that he has been in charge, as opposed to his predecessor. His actions this year have likely earned my vote in November, even though I disagree with many of his other policies.

With the politics of this in mind, I have again stepped way back from the news. A month ago I was deep into news, checking a series of websites constantly, listening to the BBC, adding news sources to my Twitter feed. I’ve scaled all that back. I only check a couple news sites a few times each day, usually when I hear that something noteworthy has happened somewhere else. I haven’t listened to the BBC in weeks. I’ve culled many of those Twitter accounts.

All this is an attempt to maintain a sense of sanity. There’s no avoiding so many of the worst parts of the news: the daily death and new case numbers, the afternoon meltdowns in the White House. But I’ve found I can’t do it all day the way I could a month ago.

Covid Chronicles, 4/22

April 22, 2020 / DB

This is more of a random tidbits post. Nothing real earth-shattering in it. More mundane details of life in April 2020.

I think we’ve reached the point in our house where we are all a little pissy with each other. Last week did not help. Damp, dreary, cool. We were stuck inside all last week due to the chilly, wet weather. My mind kept reaching for something that would get us out of the house: a practice or game, a birthday party, a sleepover, a dinner with friends.

I’ve certainly been a little shorter with the girls the past few days. Their moods seem darker, too.

Fortunately the sun is back out this week. Tuesday was unseasonably cool despite the sun, but Monday was warm and nice. C and L asked me to put our tent up in the backyard and they actually spent a good chunk of the day outside. If we can just keep the temperatures in the 60s and have a few dry hours each day, that will go a long way toward improving everyone’s moods.

I put off calling our pool company a week too long. I finally called yesterday in hopes of opening the pool up in 10–14 days. The best they could do was May 13. Which isn’t terrible, especially given how we are going to have cool nights for awhile and opening the pool now means the heater would be running constantly.

My big accomplishment of the week was doing some work in our bedroom closet. It began with some normal, seasonal movements. Taking most of my cold-weather clothes to the basement, tossing some items I don’t wear anymore into the Goodwill pile, putting the warm-weather clothes in a more convenient spot. Standard April stuff.

I really got nutty, though, and completely changed how I deal with my everyday shorts. For years I’ve been hanging them up. I did this with the idea that this keeps them from getting wrinkled plus you can see each pair rather than having to dig through a pile to find the ones you’re looking for. But I tossed them over a standard hanger, which means they would get kind of bunched up and hang awkwardly. I was not interested in buying a bunch of expense hangers with clips to let them fall off rather than over the hanger.

So I texted a couple college friends and asked how they store their shorts. Neither of them hang theirs. One stacked his on a shelf, the other in a drawer. I did some moving of items around to create space on a closet shelf and now my summer shorts are all stacked in two neat piles.

One of my friends suggested this was the most important issue the three of us had ever texted about. I’m inclined to agree.

Some academic changes. M will have no finals and now finishes classes a week earlier than planned, May 15. St. P’s will adjust their grading scale for Q4 and have a 3–1 scale, three being highest, one being lowest. They will not have GPAs or an honor roll this quarter, and for the year the grades from Q’s 1–3 and four will be separated. What a nightmare to be a school administrator right now, between trying to figure out how to handle e-learning and grading while also making contingencies for how to begin the 2020–21 academic year. I do not envy those folks at all and keep reminding our girls, when they get frustrated, how hard that job is at the moment.

S does telemedicine visits each morning. She had a call last week that made us both laugh. A lot of times her patients get on the phone with their parents, especially older kids that can explain exactly what they’re experiencing. The younger kids just like to get on and talk to Dr. S. After one of those visits with a three-year-old, the kid asked if he could have a sucker like when he visits her office. We thought that was great.

L has taken over the house office for her school work. S does most of her calls and computer work from the living room couch. Me? I spend most of my days in our sunroom. I have all my electronics in here. Several books, magazines, and my Kindle stacked on the coffee table. There’s a deck of Uno cards that L and I have used a few times. My old Strat-o-matic baseball game that I keep meaning to actually open up and play. A couple golf clubs leaning against a chair. It’s pretty random, it is (hopefully) relatively temporary, but still feels pretty comfortable. Especially on the days I can open the windows.

Covid Chronicles, 4/16

April 16, 2020 / DB

First, some great news. I have not shared here that a good high school friend of S has been in the hospital with Covid–19 for over three weeks. He was in the ICU on a ventilator for over two of those weeks. Based on the updates we were getting, we think he was very close to death on at least two occasions. We know the hospital chaplain paid him a visit three Saturdays ago and believed that would be his final visit.

After this long battle, that included several moments of false hope, he has finally been doing better for the past week, getting steadily better each day. He came off the vent over the weekend. He ate real food Sunday. He sat upright in a chair for six hours Monday.

S has been getting updates from other classmates and his wife. This morning she got a text from the man himself, saying he was about to be discharged and sent home. Absolutely fantastic news! This is a great guy with a big family that has been through a lot already. His kids needed their dad to stick around, and we are so pleased that is the case.

He is the only person we are close to who has gotten this sick. We know of a few other folks who have been hospitalized, but none were in as dire a situation as him. We are hopeful he can fully recover and he is our last friend to go through this.

Now some quick not-so-good news. This week felt like we were beginning to turn a corner. Positive cases seemed to be plateauing in most areas. Although deaths lag behind those numbers and we still have several more weeks of horrific news on that front, the curve did seem to be flattening. Intelligent people realize this doesn’t mean the end is close, but at least we may be seeing the early stages of a positive trend.

What bummed me out, though, was reading several articles that focused on the summer and beyond. None of them were optimistic. There are real concerns about our medical supply chain. Beyond PPE and ventilators, we are seeing a significant dip in the availability of important medicines. There are issues getting medical equipment, supplies, and medicines out of China, India, and Italy. There are also worries about people with other chronic issues being forced to go several months without getting needed, regular, in-person interactions with their physicians.

There are some food supply chain concerns. Several processing plants have shut down because they are overrun with the virus. Delivery services are struggling in some areas to get food from processing to storage to location of sale. In some areas perishables are being trashed because they are spoiling before they can be distributed.

And then there’s the whole “What happens to the virus?” question. We are still in the very early days of this, and while there are dozens if not hundreds of studies in process, the experts can’t yet determine if people who are Covid–19 positive develop an immunity to it. They don’t know what the true infection rate. Combine those two details and you get to an idea of how soon we can get back to normal. If former positive patients develop immunity and the US infection rate is around 20%, we are on a path to recovery. If either we don’t develop immunity or the infection rate is much lower – many physicians think it is more in the 2–5% range – there is no way to get back to a normal economy and society until there’s an effective vaccine.

Although I knew the “good news” was fairly light, it still gave me a glimmer of hope after a month of shitty news. But these long term views, which stretch this crisis out much further than most people expected, was a real kick in the nads. There was always the late spike in the models that allowed for the curve being flattened. But these articles suggested the worst is still ahead of us, and I really wasn’t prepared to hear that right now.

The saving grace to all of this is that we are still so early in this, and know so little about the virus. When dealing with the unknown, in the midst of a crisis, I think scientists tend to default to scenarios that are closer to worst case than optimistic ones. I’m hopeful that the many incredibly smart people working on this will find unexpected ways to keep us safe and allow us to begin transitioning back to normalcy sooner than the darkest scenarios lay out.

I’ve said before in one of these messages that I’m working hard not to judge people who are handling the Covid–19 crisis differently than I am. There is enough pressure in the world without being a dick because you disagree with whether or not to wear masks, whether it was appropriate to shut down schools and businesses, and how long we need to remain in lockdown. We can certainly have those arguments later, when the stress level has come down significantly.

Still, I have a hard time when I scroll past posts of Facebook friends who are pushing back hard against the restrictions we are living under. There are just a few, but they are definitely in my feed, as I’m sure they are in yours. I realize many of them are doing so not because they are bored and restless, but rather because they face serious financial pressures because of the lockdown.

I’ve seen a couple throw out the “It’s no worse than the flu” or “It’s just a bad flu” argument. I want to rip my hair out when I see these posts. Especially since they are often couched as insightful statements based on hard facts despite all the data telling us the opposite.

I have not engaged any of these people. It’s not my place and, again, I don’t want to be a dick. The whole “Well my wife is a doctor and here’s what she says…” isn’t a great look right now. Plus S would probably kick my ass for drawing her into these conversations. She has enough stress of her own right now.

Being a passive aggressive person by nature, I did kind of want to post the chart and article I link to below with some snarky comment about it clearly NOT just being a bad flu. I decided I should not engage people, even passive aggressively.

But I will do it here on my personal blog that gets a handful of views every day, mostly from people who agree with me! Feel free to be more direct than me and post it to your social media feeds.

People who look at this and still say Covid–19 is overhyped are either purposefully being dicks or aren’t interested in getting into the truth of the numbers.

Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like…