Part seventeen of my ongoing journal entries about life in the time of the 2020-2021 Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Previous posts: Part One (Jan-Mar, 2020). Part Two (April 2020). Part Three (May 2020). Part Four (June 2020). Part Five (July 2020). Part Six (August 2020). Part Seven (September 2020). Part Eight (October 2020). Part Nine (November 2020). Part Ten (December 2020). Part Eleven (January 2021). Part Twelve (February 2021). Part Thirteen (March 2021). Part Fourteen (April 2021). Part Fifteen (May 2021). Part Sixteen (June 2021).
July 27
And we’re back. Like the virus, which I’ll get to in a moment.
For this moment, however, I want to explain why it’s been a month since my last journal entry. On July 1, Allie came from Boston with Perri and we had a full schedule of activities, mostly eating. A week later, we all headed to Colorado for a week with Betsy, Joe, Sara, Kristen and new baby Emmy. Since then, I’ve been working on documenting that trip in a new post. Once that post is done, I have hundreds of newly scanned photos from Betsy’s albums that I need to roll into Billzpage to more fully tell the story of Fred, Louise, Betsy and Barby. The upshot is that for the first two weeks of July I didn’t make time to write, and since we returned I’ve been working on the trip summary which took longer than I expected.
Also, at this very moment, I’m writing out of frustration with NBC’s coverage of the Tokyo Olympics and the vagaries of global timezones. The U.S. women’s soccer team played a “crucial” match against Australia last night at 4am and I don’t know what happened yet, nor do I want to. I’d like to watch the game without knowing how it will end. NBC’s replay will start at 10am, a few minutes from now. So I’m in a self-imposed media blackout which means not checking my phone or the internet since I got up. I hadn’t realized quite how addicted I was to my phone and the habit of getting instant updates on the news — well, I knew I was addicted but didn’t realize how badly. It’s like asking someone not to scratch a particularly itchy mosquito bite. You can’t help but think about it and thinking about it makes it worse.
Meanwhile, the women’s gymnastics team final is supposed to be underway at this moment and is presumably being carried live on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, not on one of the four regular cable channels that NBC has devoted to full-time Olympic coverage. NBC will broadcast the gymnastics as the centerpiece of its primetime coverage tonight, 12 hours later. I spent a few minutes wandering around Peacock’s menu of clips and highlights and some live action, all the while trying to make sure I didn’t stumble across a spoiler of what happened in the soccer game, but I couldn’t find the gymnastics live feed. Maybe it was already over. Who knows? I did see a quick headline about Simone Biles withdrawing but I don’t know what that’s about and didn’t want to chase it down for fear of finding out about the soccer match. So I turned the TV off altogether and started this little rant to keep myself occupied until 10am. These are my first world problems of the moment that I wanted to share.
But the real news I’ve been meaning to write about is the virus, which is coming back with a vengeance in the U.S. and never really went away around the world. A month ago, the U.S. was doing pretty well, with daily case counts under 10,000. But then the delta variant of the virus kicked in, particularly among the unvaccinated.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 194M; Daily average: 557K; Total Deaths: 4,162,000
- USA cases: 34.6M; Daily average: 63K; Total Deaths: 611,000
- Maryland cases: 467,000 Deaths: 9,810; “At risk of outbreak”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 1 state “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas)
- 2 states “Slow disease growth” (Montana, New Hampshire)
- 37 states “At risk of outbreak” (Utah, Kansas, Wyoming, Texas, Arizona…)
- 13 states “Active or imminent outbreak” (Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi…)
- 0 states “Severe outbreak”
It is especially frustrating and upsetting to see this resurgence in the U.S. because vaccines are plentiful, free, and have proved highly effective. At this point, more than 90% of people hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated, and while death rates remain relatively low, they are no longer declining. Nearly every new case or death in the U.S. is preventable and due to bad decision making or misinformation.
Today there is new guidance that Americans should wear masks indoors in “high transmission” areas, but what counts as a high transmission area is not well defined. I’m fine with continuing to wear masks indoors, even though Maryland is generally pretty well vaccinated. I’ve gone a few times into stores or restaurants without a mask, but I don’t mind keeping one on for the sake of safety and herd immunity. I’d say lately the other people indoors have been about 50-50 wearing masks or not. I suspect there will be a higher percentage of mask wearers again in coming weeks. But suburban Maryland hasn’t really been a problem area lately. It’s mainly the more rural, Republican areas that have lower vaccination rates and mask wearing. And there are continued reports of vaccine hesitancy among people of color though that seems harder to quantify.
Barb and the newspapers report that Biden will soon require federal workers to get vaccinated. That seems like a reasonable step — Barb is certainly for it. She has only one employee that has resisted vaccination, but that one has caused continued heartburn for Barb and her colleagues. Most people are still working from home, and it’s not clear when they will be required to return to the office, but the time is coming in September, October or soon after.
Since we’ve returned from Colorado, Barb has gone into the office nearly every day. She’s simply fed up with working in our dining room and is now more comfortable going in. I suspect that will continue to be her new normal. Soon we’ll no doubt have to figure out how and when to move the stacks of papers and stuff in the dining room back to her office.
I’ve gotten my rant off my chest and I watched the replay of the soccer game. It turns out this game was not crucial after all — both sides will advance with a tie. In fact, the game ended in a scoreless tie and even the TV commentators couldn’t believe how dull and boring it was. I got myself worked up for no good reason…which is kind of a comment on the entire Olympic Games experience this year. I will probably have more to say about the Olympics in coming days. For now, I’m just going to stew in my frustrations for a little while then start working on the pictures from Fred and Louise.
August 4
Today is the first day in a month or so, it seems, that I haven’t felt like I’m running behind in various chores and activities. In other words, it’s the first day I’ve felt relaxed enough to write and not feel like I’m under the gun to get something else done. So, let me take a moment to note some of the odds and ends that have been occupying me and try to figure out what comes next.
We’ve had some neighborhood angst over our next door neighbor’s ongoing deck and pool project. Construction on the rather massive addition to their deck has been going on for months and is now stalled — evidently waiting on delivery of a hot tub. They are planning to also add a pool which will stretch the project well into next year. This has caused much consternation from Janice and Ron Ford, their neighbors on the other side (and our friends) who have to deal much more directly with the visible and audible effects of the construction. The actual construction is less of a concern to me, but I am a member of the Architectural Committee for the homeowner’s association so I’m in the middle of all the discussions over their plans. At this point, I’m also the Middle East negotiator shuttling among the various parties, trying to keep the peace. It has taken a fair amount of my time over the past week or two, and raises my blood pressure. After a tense round of negotiations yesterday, I think we’re at a good place for the moment, pending new plans from their contractor.
Barb’s car started making an odd noise a few days ago as we were driving back from dinner with the Harders in Baltimore. It was our first jaunt to Baltimore in a while and we banged along some pretty awful streets. I’m going to take the car into the shop on Friday and hope it’s nothing serious. The Camry is 10 years old with 140K miles, so it may be time to start shopping for some new wheels for Barb. I’ve started doing some internet research.
On a happier note, I’ve been looking in more detail at our upcoming trip to Boston and Cape Cod. I’ve found some good restaurants and a few activities around our destination, Chatham, on the elbow of the Cape. I’ve shared a planning document with Allie to help figure out the Boston days of the trip. I enjoy travel planning, though it always seems to take more time than I expect…but that’s because I enjoy wandering the web looking for things to do and eat.
While researching this trip, I’ve also been cooking up an itinerary for a potential road trip for myself to Nashville and Memphis. I think I’ve got a good idea for a two-week journey that includes stops in Bristol, TN for bluegrass and Muscle Shoals, AL, for blues, as well as Asheville to see Susanna for a couple of nights. I think this would be a good trip for me in October or November, if I can talk Barb into letting me go. The hangups would be leaving Barb alone for two weeks and the state of the virus, particularly in these southern, Republican states.
In the midst of these vacation musings, our Scattergories troupe of Blythe and Schmitt cousins cooked up the notion of meeting in Portugal (or Spain) sometime. I think it sounds like a fine idea and would likely be a candidate to join in — maybe Allie as well, though almost certainly not Barb. We’ll see where these notions lead. I find it hard to believe it could happen this year, but maybe next summer. We’ll let the travel industry girls take the lead.
Barb is actually more sensitive and antsy about the virus news than I am lately. I figure that we’re vaccinated and well-protected against the worst effects of the virus. Even if we (or I) get it at this point, I’m not too concerned about getting terribly sick or dying. Barb is more concerned than me, and madder at those still unvaccinated. I think it’s partly due to her own concerns about her health and also worries over getting people back to work. She’s been working in the office full time since we returned from Colorado. She’s tired of working in our dining room and has actually started slowly shuttling her piles of paperwork back into the office.
And so we get to the virus, which is raising blood pressures all over the place. I’ve started being more diligent about wearing masks in groups and indoors again. After seeing relatively few people with masks in stores last week, there seem to be more now. Barb’s getting more worried about eating indoors at restaurants. The virus levels are now higher than last summer. Deaths are still less than half what they were this time last year, which is the only glimmer of better news.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 200M; Daily average: 606K; Total Deaths: 4,250,000
- USA cases: 35.3M; Daily average: 92K; Total Deaths: 614,000
- Maryland cases: 470,000 Deaths: 9,835; “At risk of outbreak”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 1 state “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas)
- 1 states “Slow disease growth” (South Dakota)
- 27 states “At risk of outbreak” (California, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico…)
- 22 states “Active or imminent outbreak” (Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma…)
- 2 states “Severe outbreak” (Louisiana, Florida)
So, the virus news is not good. It makes it hard to plan for any other travels and we hope that things don’t get worse locally.
Closing with some good news, I had a financial review with my Schwab advisor and things are looking good on the retirement front. We are financially well set and can even afford to spend more on some things like cars or vacations when we need to or are able. So we’ve got that going for us. Just need to get that virus out of the way.
I didn’t write more about the Olympics yet. They’re about halfway through and it’s been more sad and dispiriting than it’s been uplifting. The lack of crowds, the time zone shift, and the USA boosterism and commercials that permeate NBC’s coverage make things hard to enjoy. I’m watching less and less. I guess that also contributes to a sense that I have more time to write and work on Betsy’s pictures — a process which is going slowly. I’ll get back to it. After lunch.
August 11
I was unable to access Billzpage.com for three days from Sunday through Tuesday this week. I will spare the gory details of what went wrong, but it had to do with domain name services and intricacies of setups from a company called CloudFlare that I didn’t even realize I was using. My domain hosting company, BlueHost, added a free layer of CloudFlare services to my account last year when I wasn’t really looking. Things worked fine until they didn’t on Sunday. I contacted BlueHost who told me I needed to change a setting in the CloudFlare account I didn’t know I had. Once I finally figured all that out, it took another 48 hours for the change to propagate to servers all around the world to support my hypothetical global audience.
I understood that I had to wait until that propagation was complete to access my site, which left me twiddling my thumbs for two days, getting antsy and bored and slowly getting around to doing other household tasks I’d been avoiding forever. Once the propagation was finally complete yesterday afternoon, I still couldn’t access my site so I contacted BlueHost again who reminded me that I needed to clear the cache from my local web browser. I’d encountered this problem once before and should have remembered it sooner. Now I think I might have been able to access the site much sooner, but what’s done is done…including some weed whacking, reading, filing and Coke points entry that wouldn’t have otherwise gotten done.
The episode is a reminder of how reliant I’ve become on caring and feeding this website. It’s moved from a hobby to a vocation. It fills my need for something to do that feels somewhat productive, an outlet for creative energies that helps me avoid doing things that I don’t want to do. It keeps me from facing the maw of existential retirement emptiness that looms if I’m not keeping myself busy — an overly dramatic way of saying that working on this site makes me feel good. I think it’s healthy, therefore it is.
It’s also a reminder of how precarious my sandcastle of a life is, and how reliant I am upon things I barely understand. That the internet works, that my website and this collection of memories and photos exists in the cloud somewhere, that I have computers and electricity and plumbing and air conditioning and everything else that my equilibrium depends on is ultimately all magic. If any aspect fails, I’m sunk. Or at least swamped and depressed until I can get it working again, which usually involves another act of magic or at least finding a good magician.
But now everything’s working again, so I’ll forge ahead living in my sandcastle.
In news of the world, the Senate passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill with considerable bipartisan support — 19 Republican senators joined all the Democrats. It’s something of a small miracle, but the Republican calculation seems to be they wanted to demonstrate that they are not entirely recalcitrant so the Democrats do not torpedo the filibuster rule and jam through a bunch of other initiatives. Fair enough, I suppose, a compromise that harkens back to days when the government more or less worked. Now the Democrats are moving ahead with a $3+ trillion package of health, education and tax reforms that they will try to ram through with no Republican support. The test will be whether they can keep all the Democrats on board; they can’t afford to lose even one senator or only a handful of House members. This will be an interesting game of political hardball that Pelosi has generally excelled at. I wish them luck. There’s a window of only a few more months to get things done before the midterm elections loom.
Otherwise, Biden seems to be steering the ship of state reasonably well, staying in quiet waters whenever possible. Afghanistan is a mess as the U.S. withdraws but otherwise the international scene is relatively calm for the moment. The economy in the U.S. and globally seems resilient. The culture wars have abated a little bit, particularly since Trump and his loonies are less noisy. They still say crazy stuff every day, but it’s less amplified and you generally have to go looking for it, which seems more like it should be.
And then there’s this virus. The news on that front is not good, driven by spread of the Delta variant. The U.S. continues to spike higher, averaging nearly 120,000 new cases daily.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 204M; Daily average: 638K; Total Deaths: 4,320,000
- USA cases: 36.2M; Daily average: 118K; Total Deaths: 618,000
- Maryland cases: 475,000 Deaths: 9,869; “At risk of outbreak”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 1 state “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas)
- 0 states “Slow disease growth”
- 25 states “At risk of outbreak” (Montana, Puerto Rico, Illinois, West Virginia, Wisconsin…)
- 23 states “Active or imminent outbreak” (Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee…)
- 4 states “Severe outbreak” (Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas)
I had lunch indoors with our neighbor Mark yesterday at an Indian restaurant, but it’s time to slow that practice. I’m wearing a mask when shopping now, as are the majority (but not all) of other shoppers. Allie reports that her office’s plan to return to work in September has been pushed back to October, at least. Barb is still going into the office, but only because she’s tired of working at home. So far, few others are in her offices. There’s a greater realization that even vaccinated folks can get somewhat sick and suffer oddball long-term consequences from the virus. There are still just a lot of unknowns and uncertainties, so it’s back on with the masks and more social distancing. We know how to do this, even if we don’t want to. At least there’s toilet paper.
We’re still going to Boston and Cape Cod in a few weeks, driving up and staying at Allie’s apartment building again. I’ve made restaurant choices and will be mostly outside. The main plan is to be at the beach or in our hotel room at Chatham which seems safe. There are no other travels on the horizon, however. When we’re in Boston we’ll talk with Allie about holiday plans, but so far we have none. I have a nice road trip to Nashville, Memphis and Asheville mapped out but I rather doubt I’ll be able to do it in October/November this year when I think it would make sense. Maybe next spring? But by then I’d hope we can travel somewhere with Barb or Allie. Who knows? All travel plans wait for the virus to abate. I have some hope that the Delta variant will fizzle like it seems to have done in India and the U.K. but so far it’s still going strong.
And so we wait. Good thing I have this website to work on.
August 19
Last week I noted in my little recap of the Biden administration’s accomplishments, “Afghanistan is a mess as the U.S. withdraws but otherwise the international scene is relatively calm for the moment.” Wrong. Five days later, the country’s military and government collapsed and the Taliban walked into Kabul. Since then, there’s been a frenzy to evacuate thousands of U.S. and international personnel from Kabul and, hopefully, tens of thousands of Afghans that worked closely with U.S. and international forces and organizations over the past 20 years. It was an astonishingly rapid collapse of Afghan forces, and an astonishingly — what’s the word? incompetent, naive, short-sighted, flat-footed, poor, fumbling, bumbling…you pick — response from Biden and his administration. The knives are out from all quarters to assign blame and there’s plenty to go around.
It’s now the fourth day since Kabul fell. The American military has secured Kabul Airport and is operating commercial and military flights to extract foreigners and Afghans with proper visas. They evacuated something like 2,000 people yesterday and expect to quickly ramp up to 5,000 or more daily. This will have to go on for several more weeks, at least, but it remains to be seen if the Taliban will have the patience to let it last that long. Already, there is some level of chaos outside the airport as the Taliban decides who is allowed to get into the airport and who is turned away. As time goes on, that scene will only grow more desperate. And if the Taliban get more restless or lose control over their own forces, it would seem all too easy to take down one or more of the departing planes or start bombarding the airport.
And that doesn’t begin to address the safety or well-being of millions of other Afghans, especially women who fear the reimposition of the harsh, violent, restrictive rule the Taliban enforced 20 years ago. Taliban spokespeople are on a charm offensive to say they’ve changed, and maybe a portion of the new generation really do have more moderate views, but it’s difficult to believe the tiger has really changed its stripes. It seems likely there will be months or years of reprisals and repression, an ongoing time of terror for Afghan people who have been living more or less in this mode for decades if not centuries. Maybe the best that can be hoped for is that after some years or decades under the Taliban or their successors, Afghanistan will come to resemble Vietnam — a country that may be ruled under a disreputable system but enjoys some level of internal stability, a prospect of peace and sanity for its citizens, and is not a threat to its neighbors. But that seems like distant wishful thinking at this point.
It’s on-going proof of the Princess Bride definition of the most classic blunder, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” All of life’s most important lessons are in the Princess Bride.
The virus, meanwhile, continues to confound. As of yesterday, we now can look forward to getting vaccine booster shots…in December for us, eight months after our initial round. The Delta variant is still spreading and evidently our vaccine immunity decays over time and as the virus mutates. Fortunately, the vaccines still appear to be highly effective at preventing death or major illness, but it’s increasingly clear they do not prevent the spread of the virus. You might think this information would only fuel the vaccine deniers’ arguments that the vaccines are not proven or stable, but in fact, vaccinations are up about 50% from a month ago (but still way below capacity and less than 25% of the number of shots administered in April).
Numbers:
- Global cases: 209M; Daily average: 656K; Total Deaths: 4,390,000
- USA cases: 37.3M; Daily average: 141K; Total Deaths: 624,000
- Maryland cases: 483,000 Deaths: 9,907; “At risk of outbreak” per CovidActNow.org
- 0 states “On track to contain COVID”
- 1 state “Slow disease growth” (Northern Marianas)
- 19 states “At risk of outbreak” (Virginia, Iowa, New York, Wisconsin, Nebraska…)
- 30 states “Active or imminent outbreak” (Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee…)
- 3 states “Severe outbreak” (Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana)
Maryland and Massachusetts remain among the least vulnerable states, so yay for us. Our plans to go visit Allie in two weeks have not changed. More people are wearing masks in stores, I can report, but not everyone. I’m more reluctant to eat inside a restaurant than I was a week or two ago, but everything is still available and there are no further restrictions.
On the Billzpage front, I have finished working through Betsy’s photos we scanned in Colorado. They are now spread over five posts: Background on Fred and Louise’s families, Fred and Louise’s Album, Barb’s Album from Betsy, Chincoteague and Austria Ski Trips. I need to see if Betsy or Barb can help flesh out the narrative stories to accompany them. Barb has helped a little as she’s walked by from time to time but I still can’t get her to sit down and look at the site. With all these photos, we certainly have a more complete record of Barb’s youth and a somewhat better idea of Fred and Louise’s. I started to crack the nut of Louise’s parents, uncles and grandparents, too. There should be more to dig up there; I’ve made requests for the military records of Fred and Grandpa Charley. I’m not holding my breath that anything will show up soon, however, due to Covid staff reductions at the Veterans office.
August 27
I was going to sit down and write yesterday but as I did, news filtered in about a bombing at the Kabul airport. It took much of the day for details to emerge but it was evidently two suicide bombers at an airport entrance and nearby hotel. The death toll includes 13 American soldiers and dozens of Afghans who were trying to get into the airport and on flights to safety. Scores more were injured though accurate counts are difficult in the Taliban-controlled chaos of Kabul. Most of those in the area were trying to escape the Taliban so they may not be very forthcoming with their injuries or identities.
ISIS-K claimed credit for the bombing and there was much fulminating and hand-wringing all day in the media. Biden is already taking the brunt of the criticism, much well-deserved though a lot of it is political opportunism. It seemed sadly inevitable that something like this would happen as the U.S. and its allies pulled out of Afghanistan, no matter where, when or how. That the allies already extracted more than 100,000 people in the past 10 days or so is pretty remarkable, but there are many thousands more that are desperate to leave and hundreds of thousands if not millions that would probably leave if they could. The U.S. and allied evacuation operations are due to wrap up by August 31, just four days from now. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. That the Taliban will exact revenge on those who tried to leave seems highly likely, despite their claims of general amnesty. It seems like some of the Taliban want to form a quasi-legitimate government and operate as a somewhat “normal” nation but the odds seem stacked against them. More likely is an extended period of civil strife, warring factions and humanitarian crisis, a source of instability in the region and the world for years to come. Osama bin Laden’s battle will reverberate for generations.
The problems in Afghanistan have shoved the coronavirus off the front pages, but within the past week the Pfizer vaccine was granted full FDA approval which may bump up the number of people getting vaccinated. Certainly it has prompted a number of organizations, from the military to major corporations to insist on vaccinations for their workers. It seems like a positive development.
While caseloads of the Delta variant are still rising, the rate of growth has slowed and may be peaking. One can hope. The global daily average has started to drop.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 215M; Daily average: 608K; Total Deaths: 4,480,000
- USA cases: 38.6M; Daily average: 156K; Total Deaths: 635,000
- Maryland cases: 483,000 Deaths: 9,907; “At risk of outbreak” per CovidActNow.org
- 0 states “On track to contain COVID”
- 1 state “Slow disease growth” (Northern Marianas)
- 11 states “At risk of outbreak” (DC, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts…)
- 33 states “Active or imminent outbreak” (Wyoming, Alaska, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina…)
- 8 states “Severe outbreak” (Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky…)
Locally, we are prepared for our visit to Allie next week. We leave in two days. We have all our meals pretty much mapped out. What else matters? The rest depends on the weather which so far looks mild though possibly rainy on the days Barb wanted to sun. We’ll see. Mostly we’re looking forward to seeing Allie and Perri. And eating.
And watching too much television. We have several shows we want to see on services that Allie has and we don’t, mainly Ted Lasso and possibly Schmigadoon. I haven’t been impressed by much that I’ve seen lately. White Lotus was diverting for a few episodes until it became a darker version of Love Boat. We’re watching The Chair now and are largely disappointed, though we still root for Sandra Oh. Barb and I have wandered through My Life is Murder, an Australian detective show that at least makes Melbourne look lovely (next season: Auckland). The most enjoyable thing I’ve seen lately was Count Me In, a Netflix documentary about rock and roll drummers. I still haven’t ventured back into a movie theater and probably won’t for a good while. Allie and I are going to a John Mulaney show in Boston which should be fun…and my first time in a theater since…when? Wish us luck.
Related Post: Coronavirus Journey, Part 18
Related Post: Coronavirus Journey, Part 16