Month: April 2020

• Quarantine Day 32
• Another 5.2 million first-time unemployment claims filed last week.
• South Korea reports 163 patients who recovered and re-tested positive, including 61 becoming symptomatic.
• China corrects some death statistics upward by 50%, raising further concern over the veracity of their data.
• Brazil's president (who denies there's an issue) fires their health minister (who was trying to prevent catastrophe). So they're pretty well hosed.
• Livermore cases: 30
• Alameda County cases: 1,021; deaths: 39
• U.S. cases: 661,000+; deaths: 33,000+

The information out of South Korea is probably the most alarming news recently. Research continues to determine what's really going on. It's possible they're false positives and it's possible the patients becoming symptomatic have something else causing the symptoms. Also, transmissibility hasn't been determined. If, however, it turns out that reinfection is possible and transmissible then the war we're in is going to get much longer and uglier. Right now the only real information is, "More information needed."

I jogged down to Contreras Market (the nearby Mexican shop) for more milk on Wednesday. Their shelves were looking pretty good. I was only grabbing milk, but on my way through the store I saw bags of beans and rice. The milk cooler was full and there weren't any obviously barren shelves.

I made oatmeal cookies last night and tonight will be cheese pizza and, if we're not all insane, s'mores at the backyard firepit. Ooh! Oatmeal-cookie s'mores!

We are starting to make a noticeable impact on our supplies. We're down to one loaf of bread, one bag of bagels, and one bag of tortillas. We ran out of corndogs and are low on chicken nuggets. I believe tonight's pizza will use the last of our mozzarella cheese. Our cereal stockpile is probably down by about half. But we have lots of pasta and rice (not from stockpiling, just usual supplies). I probably have about 25 lbs of bread flour and I opened my last (50-lb) bag of all-purpose flour to make the cookies. I'm also on my last jar of yeast. But, most importantly:

We've eaten only meals prepared at home for over a month now. We had Thai food on March 14. We don't eat out very often, but even so, that feels like really long time ago.

In addition to the north-east coalition and the Pacific coalition there is also a coalition of 7 states in the mid-west (IL, IN, KY, MI, MN, OH) that will coordinate relaxation of suppression measures.

• Quarantine Day 30
• Protestors in Michigan hold gatherings and block roads to protest shelter-at-home orders.
• Trump continues to place ego above efficacy and requires relief checks be branded with his name (by some reports delaying them from being sent).
• Retail spending in March dropped a record 8.7%. Clothing down over 50%, furniture down over 25%.
• Texas considers implementing oil-production limits to prop up pricing.
• Livermore cases: 28 (yesterday was 29, maybe I misread or maybe it got corrected)
• Alameda County cases: 924; deaths: 35
• U.S. cases: 605,000+; deaths: 24,500+

We held two interviews for work yesterday via video conferencing. So that's becoming the new normal. The Lab is still scrambling to figure out how to run a Summer Student program remotely and whether they can waive the mandatory pre-employment drug screening since students won't be able to get one in most places.

The weather is nice now. Warming up to the mid-70's.

I spend most of my day in my closet working. I don't have a good awareness of what insanity is happening in the rest of the house. Occasionally, Corinne will wander in to my closet and ask if I can play.

Jess and I have been watching the TV comedy "Community" that aired from 2009-2015. It's on Netflix now. Trying to balance the new stresses of daily life with some laughs.

We're out of milk again. I walked down to the Mexican market over the weekend to buy more. But they only had two gallons, so I only bought one. I guess I'll have to head down to Safeway tonight to see what the shelves look like now.

On my walk today I saw an ice-cream truck driving around. It's probably not supposed to be doing that. Also, landscapers and house painters seem to have mostly declared themselves exempt from the shelter-at-home orders.

I see I forgot to post Jess' most recent cross-stitch project. Particularly appropriate now, but also a general life motto around here:

Orange blossoms being visited by bees on my walk:

• Quarantine Day 29
• Models suggest--assuming suppression measures remain in place--that the U.S. overall has passed peak death rate. Individual states vary.
• California modeled to reach peak this week.
• A group of states in the northeast (CT, DE, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI) has formed a coalition to coordinate long-term response and lifting of suppression measures.
• A group of states in the west (CA, OR, WA) has formed a similar coalition.
• Congress delays next session by 2 weeks.
• The International Monetary Fund warns that we'll have the worst recession since the Great Depression.
• Trump pulls funding for the World Health Organization.
• Livermore cases: 29
• Alameda County cases: 850; deaths: 22
• U.S. cases: 579,000+; deaths: 22,200+

We've been getting headlines/blurbs from NPR pretty much constantly for the last couple of weeks which provide a statement from Trump juxtaposed with reality. I think today's is my favorite so far:

California documents the 6 key indicators they will use to guide relaxation/reinstatement of suppression measures:

• Ability to perform testing and contact tracing
• Ability to mitigate risk to high-risk groups
• Capacity of healthcare system to handle caseloads
• Ability to develop and supply therapeutics
• Ability for schools and child-care centers to maintain social-distancing measures
• Ability to effectively monitor spread in order to adjust measures as appropriate

Trump declared he will pull U.S. funding for the World Health Organization. Which seems like an incredibly immature thing to do. A responsible person might say something like, "We have serious concerns with the governance of the organization and we will demand action to improve how things are run, but right now we're in the middle of a catastrophic, global, medical emergency and is not the time to disrupt the main system for international collaboration." But no. Instead we get, "This can't be my fault, it must be their fault and to show I'm serious I'm going to take their money away."

Social media is being absolutely flooded with the narrative that the WHO is now just a puppet and propaganda tool for China. I may not know anything about WHO's operations and behavior and I'm sure it has faults, but when every social media outlet is simultaneously blasted with the exact same narrative, always presented without any evidence or sourcing it starts to look a lot to me like an intentional propaganda campaign. And, I would put money on it being one. Likely out of Russia which has both a continued interest in disrupting international institutions and collaborations and a known capability and willingness to engage in such campaigns.

We're also already seeing a, sadly predictable, narrative about how stupid it was/is to shut down so much of the economy and put in place suppression measures. "We were told there'd be a million deaths in the U.S. and look, now they're saying only like 100 thousand; so it was all just fear mongering by doctors, scientists, and politicians. Why'd we shut everything down for this?" Yes, this is what some people are saying. Apparently, completely oblivious that this was the exact hoped for outcome of shutting everything down. People are the worst.

We had a long weekend since Monday was a work holiday. The weather was finally nice on the weekend so I got a bunch of yard work done. Needed to spruce things up for the Easter Bunny. The yard looks pretty decent when it's cleaned up.

I baked rolls on Sunday for dinner. I was making a double batch when I realized I wasn't paying attention to the recipe and had added 50% too much flour, so I had to switch to an emergency triple batch to salvage my dough. My mixer isn't big enough for a triple batch and the flour was already mixed in (into a very dense mass). So I had to prepare the new liquids and then work them into the dough by hand on the counter top. I wasn't sure it was going to work, but the rolls seem to have come out alright.

Monday I was finally able to use the headlight cleaning kit I bought weeks ago, but it had always been raining on the weekends. It worked pretty well (you sand down the plastic lens, polish, and then apply a sealant). So that makes the headlights on my Civic look a lot less sad, and improve light output which is the safety reason for doing the work.

I'll have another post up with pictures of our Easter egg hunt later. But for now, the Peeps we found hanging out in the backyard. They're not following social-distancing guidelines, but at least they're wearing masks!

• Quarantine Day 24
• Another 6.6+ million first-time unemployment filings.
• Congress is discussing a 4th round of relief/stimulus spending.
• The Federal Reserve announces another $2.3 trillion in new lending programs.
• U.K. Prime Minister leaves ICU (still in hospital).
• Livermore cases: 28 (new level of detail from Alameda County)
• Alameda County cases: 681; deaths: 16
• U.S. cases: 427,000+; deaths: 14,600+

Researchers report having found evidence suggesting the "5g causes COVID-19" conspiracy theory is being pushed by a state-sponsored disinformation campaign. And there are apparently enough people stupid enough to make such a campaign worthwhile.

I went to bed last night around 9:15 with a pounding headache. And then Corinne was up for ~3 hours in the middle of the night. I was sleeping poorly already, so that really didn't help. So I'm pretty tired today.

A package from Mom arrived yesterday containing some packs of Skittles, some microwavable popcorn, a container of sugar cookies, and some masks she made. I'll try to get a picture of all of us wearing our masks at some point.

Not much else going on. The weather was supposed to become sunny this week, but it's still been mostly cloudy and rainy. Now the nice weather is scheduled for the weekend.

• Quarantine Day 22
• Wisconsin continued with a Primary election today after the State's Supreme Court blocked the governor's attempt to postpone (after repeatedly trying to get the legislature to either postpone or move to mail-in ballots).
• Without explanation, Trump used a bureaucratic move to block the appointment of the legally-selected head of oversight for the relief/stimulus disbursement program.
• California has prepared/is preparing 4,613 temporary medical facilities throughout the state.
• Seeing the curve flatten quite dramatically within the state, California is supplying medical equipment to help other states.
• Alameda County cases: 602; deaths: 15
• U.S. cases: 374,000+; deaths: 12,000+

I tried making tortillas last night. It was....moderately successful. I had trouble rolling them out thin enough while still being able to handle them. Also, shaping had some struggles. So they're very "handmade" looking. We'll use them for tacos tonight. I realized this morning I should have been rolling them out on my silicone mats, less likely to stick and even if they did I could have just flipped the whole thing over onto the griddle. Next time I guess.

Heather had a pretty solid meltdown this morning. Ostensibly it was because "Corinne was dancing, but I was dancing and I need to dance alone!" She was spiraling, so I carried her back to my bedroom and set her on the bed. She thrashed and cried for a bit and then broke down about not wanting to be stuck at home anymore, wanting to go back to school and see her friends and teachers, wanting to go to the park.

So we had a long talk about why we are staying at home. How it was helping keep people safe. How hospitals in many places don't have enough doctors or supplies to take care of everyone that's sick. So we're staying home so that more people don't get sick. So that the people that are sick can be taken care of until they're healthy again without more people showing up sick and needing help.

We talked about how there are lots of doctors and scientists all around the world right now working in their labs to understand the virus better so we can learn how to safely start leaving the house again without too many people getting sick at the same time. Working to develop treatments and vaccines so that people can stay safe and healthy. But until they figure those things out we need stay home.

We talked about how it sucks. It's not fun. It's inconvenient. It's boring. But we do it because it's important. And keeping people safe and healthy is more important than us being bored for a couple months.

We talked about how I expect that in May we'll start figuring out ways for people to be out of their houses safely because we'll have been able to treat all the people that are sick right now. But it will be slow because if we just all go out and start doing all the normal things then too many people might get sick at the same time again and we'll have to stay home again.

So maybe we'll be able to go to the park, but not the zoo. Or maybe we'll be able to visit the playground if we wear masks. I told her about going to the grocery store and needing to make sure to stay 6 feet away from other people. Those are the things all the doctors and scientists are trying to figure out so we can not be cooped up at home any more, but still stay safe.

It was actually (and somewhat surprisingly) a really productive conversation. And it was a conversation. She was asking questions and clarifying points, offering additional examples, suggesting what she thought the protective measures could be. It seemed to be really helpful for her to get that off her chest and process her feelings.

By the end she had calmed down and was feeling better and we started talking about what to have for lunch. Then she went to the game cabinet and got out "Pandemic" and asked if we could play that today. So she seems to be ready to jump right into helping people and finding cures. She's awesome.

After dinner Heather and I did play "Pandemic". We won! Though I modified it for an easier difficulty and even then we only barely won.