Greetings from Quarantine

COVID got us. Sort of. Because I think it will feel good to write it all out, here's how it has gone so far:

Wednesday night, after her Zoom ballet class, Petunia said her throat felt scratchy. I said it was probably allergies and we'd see how she felt in the morning. The ballet class had been moved online after the school had three COVID cases in other classes the week before. Smart move from the ballet school.

Thursday morning, Petunia's throat was still scratchy. We checked her temperature. It was normal. We did a rapid test. It was negative. I told her my throat was scratchy, too, so it was probably just allergies and we sent her off to school. Pumpkin, who'd received her booster shot Wednesday afternoon, also headed off to school, hoping for no side effects during the day. She later reported feeling achy during the day, and she went to bed early. As you'll see below, she didn't get as much attention from me as I would have liked Thursday night because I was dealing with Petunia's exposure.

Thursday around lunch time, I got an email from a contact tracer for the district. Petunia was a "close contact in a masked setting" for a covid case. Date of exposure, last Friday. I texted Petunia and told her not to go to her after school activity and to come home instead. I tried to determine from the instructions in the letter from the contact tracer whether or not I needed to take Petunia for an official test somewhere. I called the school to update Petunia's vaccination status with them but got voice mail. After I picked up Pumpkin from her school, I decided that Petunia should get a test and we drove down to the school district's testing site.

It took us an hour to get the test, and it was the same test I had at home. It came back negative. Twenty minutes later, I got an email confirming that no official testing was required because Petunia is fully vaccinated. 

We figured we'd dodged this particular exposure, ordered in for dinner, and went about our evening. Except that by bed time Petunia's throat was now hurting. We told her she might have to stay home from school on Friday because maybe she'd picked up some other bug. I went to bed early because I was feeling tired - but I'd had a long work day, starting with a call with my new boss at 7:30 a.m. (new boss is in the UK), and without a real lunch break. 

Still, to be safe I told Mr. Snarky he should sleep on the sofa, in case my scratchy throat was something other than allergies/asthma. I got out the extra air filter I have from the time that my air filter died during fire season and I desperately needed something but all the brand name filters were back ordered for weeks so I ordered some random Chinese brand off of Amazon. I put the spare air filter in Petunia's room and turned it on low. Then I went to sleep.

At 3 a.m., Petunia came into my room, upset. Her throat really hurt. I put my hand on her forehead and she was very hot. So I went and got my mask and put it on and got her mask and told her to put it on. I checked her temperature - 101.5. I got another rapid test out and started that. I wrestled with the stupid safety seal on the new bottle of liquid Tylenol I'd bought (Petunia won't swallow pills yet) and then struggled to peel back the label to find out the dosage. I gave her the Tylenol and then we waited for the test results. They were still negative. I put her back to bed, turning her air filter to high. I went to the living room and turned our main air filter to high. I cracked a couple of windows and turned the heat on to get air moving. Then I went back to bed.

I set my alarm for 7:30. When it went off, I knew I wouldn't be working at least for the morning. I was exhausted. So I logged on, canceled all my meetings, notified the people who needed to know, and called the school to tell them Petunia wouldn't be coming. Just as I was heading back to bed, Petunia came out. So I opened all the windows, gave her breakfast, and told her to stay in her room and wear a mask if she came out. Then I crashed back into bed and didn't wake up until 11 a.m.

I was thinking maybe I'd work in the afternoon, so I showered, ate something, mixed up the dough for pizza for dinner, and sat outside in the sun for a bit. And then I realized that no, I needed to lie down and went back to bed. When I next came out at about 3 p.m., Petunia was on the sofa with a mask on and looking miserable. Mr. Snarky had gotten her lunch but was back on work calls. (He apparently had a really frustrating work day, but I didn't hear about it until dinner time.) I checked her temperature again - 102. She said the adult liquid Tylenol burned her throat so I looked for any children's stuff we had. I found ibuprofen and gave her that. I got her set up to watch Netflix on my laptop and sent her back to her room. I went back to my room and read/wished I could sleep more.

Around 4:30 p.m., I came out and worked out a plan with Mr. Snarky, both of us masked and standing far apart. He went to pick up Pumpkin. Petunia and I did another rapid test and then I made dinner. We'd eat dinner outside by our fire pit, spaced apart. My test came back negative. Petunia's gave a very faint positive line.

Our first proof covid was in our house. This is after letting it sit for a couple of hours. After 15 minutes the line was so faint that it doesn't really show in the picture. But it was there.

Pumpkin decided not to join us and ate her dinner in her room. Petunia joined us for dinner but then went inside to call her friends and find out about homework. The reason she hates missing school - and wanted to go on Thursday despite the scratchy throat - is that not all of her teachers put good instructions in their online tool but they still expect things to be turned in on time, and so if you miss school you have to call someone to find out what to do and then rush to get it done in the evening. No amount of me telling her I will fix it for her and get her more time to finish things if needed helps. She doesn't want to turn things in late.

Mr. Snarky and I sat by the fire until it got too cold for me, even with my blanket. We came in and I disappeared back into the bedroom so that Mr. Snarky and Pumpkin could do something fun on Friday night. I think they played Mario Kart.  I read and went to bed early again.

I woke up this morning feeling fine. Petunia still has a sore throat but no fever. Mr. Snarky and Pumpkin still feel fine. We're still isolating in our rooms. I wish I had room for a chair in here. I am tired of sitting in bed! Petunia is happily playing Roblox in her room. Mr. Snarky and I are trying to figure out our testing strategy. We have six tests left. I have six more on their way, two of which say they are arriving tonight.  We can afford to buy more so I will. So I guess since we are "test rich" we will test Petunia and me at some point today and if I'm still negative maybe I will be allowed out of my room. I think it will depend a bit on what Petunia's test shows, since she is using the bathroom in here and I'm doing most of the care for her right now, so presumably if she's still infectious I could still be getting exposed. We're all wearing our KF94s, though, so maybe it would be OK. 

So that's where we're at. From what Petunia tells me, she was probably exposed for several class periods for several days to several people who were COVID positive and wearing surgical masks at best. I also learned that she was taking her mask off, holding her breath, and drinking water throughout the day. I told her it would be better to go outside to drink water but she says she is in the back of the class and doesn't want to walk through the class and disrupt everyone. So I told her she should only drink during passing periods. She is incredulous at this idea, even when Mr. Snarky and I explained that when we were kids we didn't have water bottles and our only option was to drink from the water fountain during passing period. So I send a hearty "eff you" to the "health influencers" and their bogus info about how much water we need to drink. I'll have to get more insistent on the water thing when she goes back to school and explain how just holding her breath isn't really keeping her safe.

But was the exposure at school? It is hard to say. It is a little odd that my throat was scratchy and I was fatigued on Friday. Was Petunia shedding virus earlier in the week and I got exposed from her? Did we both get exposed somewhere? There was that unmasked lady who stood next to us at Barnes and Noble last weekend. My theory is that anyone willing to ignore the big "masks required" signs right now is probably also unvaccinated. Did I pick it up while grocery shopping and then expose Petunia and am testing negative now because my infectious period was earlier? There's no way to know!

I really wish I'd kept Petunia home on Thursday. I wish the school had a set up that didn't make kids feel like they are falling behind if they stay home for a day or two. I wish I could convince my kids that it won't matter much in the grand scheme of things if they flub a test or miss an assignment right now. I wish I'd found a way to get Pumpkin her booster last weekend instead of Wednesday afternoon.  I wish Petunia and I didn't have allergies and asthma so that we'd have known the scratchy throat was something to worry about and not just our immune systems usual shenanigans. But none of those things are true so oh well. I emailed the parents of Petunia's friends that she eats lunch with (the only prolonged period of masks off during the day) and told them their daughters had been exposed.  My advice to anyone else with kids going to school right now: Don't shrug off a sore or scratchy throat.

We've canceled all of our plans for the weekend and will order our groceries for delivery instead of going to the store.

On the bright side, if this is the worse of our COVID experience, we're getting off really lucky. I felt worse yesterday than I did after my booster but nowhere near as bad as I did after my second shot. Petunia seems to be on the mend already. Hooray for vaccines!

Weekend Reading: The Back to Risk Assessing Edition

I don't know if I'll have many links for you this week. I got frustrated/depressed by the news about the Delta variant spreading and the heat waves and floods and other climate-related disasters and I decided to spend less time on Twitter and am instead working on a jigsaw puzzle my parents lent me. My husband has already done this one so he is staying away and therefore it is taking me longer to do (which is a good thing since I was looking for an offline distraction).

I am on the fence about what to do about social media long term, but for now I am cutting back and that seems to help a bit.

I don't just delete my accounts because I have gotten some real value out of Twitter. I've learned a lot about various topics over the years, and it was how I was ahead of the game during this pandemic. Tweets that came across my feed were why I'd stocked up a bit on staples before the lockdown. They are why I bought and started wearing masks early. Tweets (and the articles linked in them) have helped me figure out how to keep my family safe while also not being complete hermits.

This is breaking down now, though. I very much want to find reliable information to help me figure out how to keep my unvaccinated 11 year old safe right now, and I am not finding that. Instead, there is a lot of yelling about whether we should be mad at unvaccinated adults or whether our anger/ridicule is keeping them from getting vaccinated. There are a lot of anecdotes about breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, but when I do find real data on that it is still very, very rare.

And today, I read this short article that indicates the vaccines for 5-11 year olds might not be approved until mid-winter. That's going to suck for a lot of elementary schools, particularly in places that are prohibiting mask mandates in school. (My school district sent out an email saying all kids and staff, vaccinated or not, will need to wear masks indoors but probably not outdoors.)

So... what are we doing? I am working on new rules for us based on these observations. I will put links where I have them, but I don't have as many links as I'd like:

• The Delta variant is definitely easier to spread. I have seen scattered reports of outbreaks in outdoor events, but so far those are events where people are close together for long periods of time, like weddings and parties. I haven't yet found any systematic survey of the risk when outdoors, though.
• Fully vaccinated adults and teenagers are still really well protected from infection, even with the Delta variant. If they do get sick, they are more likely to have mild symptoms and less likely to end up hospitalized. 
• Older adults and people with compromised immune systems seem to be at higher risk of breakthrough infections. 
• There was one anecdote I came across of a family like ours, where 3 out of 4 members are vaccinated. Their 11 year old got infected on vacation and then passed it to the rest. I think vaccinated household contacts of an infected person are at particular risk of breakthrough, but I haven't seen data on this.  It makes sense to me that the vaccinated parents of a sick child would end up sick, because their exposure rate would be so high. 
• I saw a thread from a patient group that is tracking long COVID that indicated there are some long COVID cases among breakthrough infections. I have also seen plausible arguments from infectious disease experts that you'd expect fewer long COVID cases among the vaccinated who get sick, because there should be lower viral load. I think we just do not know yet what the risk of long COVID is for vaccinated people. 
• Data from the UK indicates that kids do get long COVID.
• Kids are also at risk for MIS-C, a covid-related disease that we don't really understand yet.

Looking at all of this, I think Petunia is the family member most at risk because she is completely unprotected. She has mild exercise induced asthma but no other risk factor, so if she gets sick, her risk of serious illness is low, but I have no way to assess her risk of long COVID or MIS-C. 

If Petunia gets sick, there is a good chance that the rest of us will, too. Our risk of serious illness is low but I don't really know what to think about our risk of long COVID.

Basically, we still need to be careful because the pandemic is not over and our vaccine protection cannot be complete until Petunia turns 12.

I wish all people who are eligible for vaccines would get them and that we'd all wear masks indoors until either transmission is really, really low or vaccines are available for everyone. But neither of those things will happen.

So what will our family do to keep safe? Here's my plan right now:

• We all wear masks in any indoor public place. I bought another box of KF94s. Petunia will wear those while shopping, etc. The vaccinated people in the family can wear our cloth masks, but I wore a KF94 for a recent doctor's appointment and I think that if in doubt, I will err on the side of the better mask.
• None of us will dine indoors at a restaurant until we are all vaccinated. We will eat outdoors at restaurants, though, looking for well-spaced patios.
• If we go to an outdoor event, we will not be in close quarters with other people whose vaccination status we cannot know. While the kids were in Arizona last month, my husband and I went to a local rugby game. That felt fine because it wasn't packed, so we could sit more than 6 feet away from other people. I would not go to a crowded event right now.
• We will still see vaccinated friends and family without masking, but will bias towards outdoor get togethers. Luckily, the weather in San Diego right now makes that an easy choice.

I wish I had prevailed in the discussion about where to take our vacation this year. I wanted to do a car trip here in California, but Mr. Snarky wanted to visit a new state. We settled on a trip to Washington state, with the majority of the time spent at National Parks. We will fly to Seattle. I am feeling far less good about this decision now than I did when we made the reservations but I think it is still not a very high risk.

We haven't cancelled our vacation but I am doing extra research to make sure I have a lot of restaurant options so that we can be sure we never eat indoors. As my kids got older, I starting doing less research ahead of a trip because they could roll with delayed meal times or a longer than expected walk a bit better. I am back to the level of research I did when they were toddlers. I don't mind doing this research (and even enjoy parts of it) so that's OK.

We'll all wear KF94 masks on the plane and the masks will go on when we enter the airport in San Diego and won't come off until we leave the airport in Seattle. We will hope that a flight between two cities with good vaccination rates will be OK, particularly since masks are still required on flights. And I will do my best not to worry.

OK, on to the minimal other links I have!

The stories coming out of Missouri are so sad.

On the impact of the child cash benefit. I hope we can make this permanent. 

This excerpt from Michael Bender's book about Trump supporters is definitely worth your time. It is interesting how the rallies made communities of like-minded people and how that filled a need for some people. This quote from one supporter who was at the Capitol on Jan 6, though, blew my mind:

“We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

In recommended listening: Jamil Smith's interview with Kiese Laymon is excellent.

In happy things:

Do you know about the Alaska bear cams? There was a bearapalooza Wednesday night and it was awesome:

Puffin selfie!

Just back from Wexford.
I lost my phone on Saltee Island yesterday.
A puffin came across it. Today someone saw puffin sitting on my phone, took it lads on ferry.

I HAVE MY PHONE BACK AND A PUFFIN SELFIE@HamSamboCinema @theskinnydoll pic.twitter.com/hv6tqzF2S3

— Niamh (@niamhgeraghty1) July 10, 2021

Here's your bunny for the week:

pic.twitter.com/ybDlfEhC5Z

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) July 13, 2021

Have a good weekend, everyone! 

Weekend Reading: School's Out for Summer Edition

The school year is over and we have done a drive-through fifth grade promotion ceremony and an outdoors, socially distanced eighth grade graduation ceremony. Both kids were happy with their celebrations and we are proud of both of their achievements. Attending a foreign language immersion school adds some extra challenges to school. Both of our kids have really excelled. 

So if you are wondering where last week's post was... well, it was sandwiched between fifth grade promotion and eighth grade graduation and family was in town and things were busy and I never found time to sit down and write anything.

This weekend, my kids are off visiting my parents - their first visit to to their grandparents' house in roughly two years. My parents had come over to stay with my kids the week before lockdown happened last March, so that my husband and I could go to LA for his birthday. Once we came back from that trip, we were all together up until Wednesday morning of this week, when the kids drove off my my parents. It has been a bit weird adjusting to not having them here! But they are having fun and so are we and I suspect this is good for everyone.

Mr. Snarky and I have gone out for a couple of dinners and had a couple of beers at two brewery tasting rooms. This being San Diego in June, everything has been outdoors or as good as outdoors (big open windows and lots of fresh air) but we have been a lot closer to people not in our family than we have been in a long, long time. That feels a little weird, too, but we're adjusting. I am not sure if this will last - I am watching the Delta variant a little nervously. San Diego county has high vaccination rates, but I am sure the distribution is not at all even and so I think we should all be aware that case rates could go back up. I am particularly nervous for the South, which has really low vaccination rates. 

There is an absolutely tragic story out of Florida about a group of six employees, five of whom caught COVID and two of whom have died. The one who did not get sick was the only one who was vaccinated.

If anyone reading this is not yet vaccinated and is eligible to be vaccinated - please get vaccinated. But I suspect I am preaching to the choir here.

I am somewhat hopeful that once the Novavax vaccine is available (they have announced their trial results, which were good.) it might give some people who have been vocal against the other vaccines a graceful opportunity to climb down from that ledge - Novavax is a protein subunit vaccine, which is much more traditional vaccine technology and has no genetic material in it so the people worried about the vaccines "changing their DNA" (which they do not do!) can get the Novavax vaccine without admitting they were wrong about the other vaccines. We'll see. 

Of course, some people are worried about the Spike protein itself. Derek Lowe has a good writeup about that and why you shouldn't worry.

Here is a good thread about why the Delta variant makes so many people nervous:

Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 453

1/ I know everybody’s sick of playing 3-dimensional Covid chess. Sorry, but the Delta variant forces us back to the chess board. Ergo, this 🧵.
If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially if you’re in a highly vaxxed region.

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) June 13, 2021

In other news:

Monica Hesse's essay about motherhood in the US hit close to home.

In recommended listening:

I learned a lot from Ezra Klein's interview with Jamila Michener about poverty in the US.

In happy things:

I posted another music video in my video tourism series over at Adjusted Latitudes. This one is from Cape Town, South Africa, and I love the dancing in it.

Here's a cool story about a rare orchid being found in the rooftop garden of a bank in London.

This portal project in Lithuania and Poland is interesting.

And that's all I have this week. We have some errands to run and a beach to walk on!

Here's your rabbit for the week. Look how fuzzy!

📅19th June 2021
🐰 Parsnip Malone
🏷️ Instagram/zoohcornerrabbitrescue
💕#animaloftheday pic.twitter.com/axMH8WZpTL

— Rabbit of the Day 🐰 (@RabbitoftheDay) June 19, 2021

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Weekend Reading: The Catching Up Edition

So, last week's post didn't happen. My Friday afternoon was spent on kid things - I took Pumpkin for her first shot and then Petunia to get the tips of her hair dyed blue. She's experimenting with color with temporary dye before she decides if she wants something semi-permanent and so we had to reapply the dye last night. I did an OK job of that I think!

Anyway, I didn't get much work done on Friday afternoon and so I had to work Saturday morning and then I didn't really want to be on the computer after that.

Also, I was feeling pretty annoyed by the CDC's new mask guidance in general and by how the reporting on it was received by Petunia in particular. She has watched as time after time during this pandemic adults have made decisions that seem to ignore her and her peers. We opened indoor dining before we opened schools, and in fact it seemed like some of the opening we did back in last July was responsible for a spike in cases that kept schools closed in the fall. And then we did it again in October and the spike around the holidays scuppered plans to open after the winter break. 

Now she's back in school, with masks and distancing and weird rules at lunch and she's watching adults who can be vaccinated decide that masks aren't required even though she and her friends have no option to get vaccinated.

All of which means she's decided adults don't really care about kids and is feeling ignored and left behind. So it seemed a good time to finally take action on her request for blue hair.

I have been at a loss for how to help her understand the decisions our society has made over the last year and a half, but I think maybe I have the seed of what I need to tell her, which came from a podcast I listened to yesterday. It was Sean Illing's conversation with Max Linsky about Linsky's new podcast 70 over 70. The entire conversation is really, really good and I recommend it highly (and yes, now I've started 70 over 70). The bit that made me realize how I can help Petunia understand our pandemic response was when they were talking about how some people implied (or outright said) that the pandemic wasn't such a big deal because it was mostly killing people over 80. One of them made the point about how America has such a strong libertarian streak running through our culture and that gives us a "you are responsible for yourself and don't owe anyone else anything" ethos that really messes us up in times of crisis like a pandemic.

But what I'll point out to Petunia is that many, many people didn't take care of only themselves and that a lot of people have taken a lesson from the pandemic that maybe that "everyone is on their own" ethos is a bad one and are working to make a different ethos more common. Maybe we have a chance to truly build back better here. 

Also, in the end my state and county decided to stick with their original plans and keep the indoor mask mandate until June 15.  San Diego county's vaccination progress is good - we're at just over 50% of the population vaccinated, and if I'm reading the report right at over 65% of the eligible population have had at least one shot. Our case rates are way down, too.

We'll still need to figure out what we will do about masks once the mandates are gone. I found this article helpful on that topic.

This is the end of a long, data-filled thread about what we know about transmission of infection by vaccinated people:

When this data really matters is when there is partial vaccination and moderate amounts of circulating virus. That's when we really need to accurately understand the risk of transmission following breakthrough infections. And we don't have that data yet.

— Katy Stephenson, MD, MPH (@k_stephensonMD) May 19, 2021

And this is a good look at how we're undercounting the occurance of MIS-C (the post-COVID inflammatory syndrome) in kids.

Brian Beutler wrote about his experience with long COVID and it is a disturbing thing to read right after your husband reads statistics to you from the Economist about how many kids get long COVID (it is not as many as adults but it is also not zero).

Jessica Valenti is righteously angry - and right - about how American mothers have been treated during the pandemic.

I thought this Charlie Warzel piece about burnout and the need for companies to lead in giving workers time to recover from the weird and exhausting past year was really good. I looked at my leave balance and my burnout level and realized there was a serious mismatch. I asked for the ability to take some time off without pay and was granted it, so I am merrily burning down my leave balance this summer with plans to take time off without pay in the fall/winter when I am out of PTO. I can afford to do this and so I have a path to deal with burnout. But many people cannot or will not feel they can ask for the special accommodation and will just burn all the way out.  

Companies would be smart to head this off - because it is the right thing to do but also because if they don't they will lose a lot of good employees. Recruiters are out in force right now. It has been years since I have had so many recruiter contacts. Burned out people are more likely to listen to the recruiter and make a move. Also, a few weeks off between jobs is one of the few accepted ways to get a break in our culture and I wonder if that is playing into people switching jobs.

I had an interesting call with a recruiter and I've spent the past several days sorting through how it made me feel but I'm not quite ready to write about it - it is tied up with some more general thinking about jobs and career and life that I've been doing. I may write about it soon.

In other news... the results of the recent trial treating PTSD with MDMA and therapy are really encouraging and Derek Lowe has an excellent write-up on them.

I thought this was a good opinion piece about the anti-Trump Republicans, their best path for countering the pro-Trump Republicans, and why that is such a hard path for them to take.

This observation from the chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors is spot on:

As Calif governor announces plan to address homelessness, San Diego supe Nathan Fletcher on point: "Every community group that you go to demands that you solve the problem of homelessness, and then in the exact same meeting they'll demand you don't solve it anywhere near them."

— Juliet Williams (@JWilliamsAP) May 11, 2021

In recommended listening - the Sean Illing-Max Linsky interview I mentioned above is my top pick but I also enjoyed revisiting the 80s Satanic Panic in his interview with Sarah Marshall (and then trying to explain what happened to my husband...) and David Roberts' discussion with Washington state legislator Joe Fitzgibbon about Washington's awesome new climate laws is both encouraging and a good look at how laws that will impact climate change actually get passed.

Some smile-inducing things:

This beautiful bird:

#birdbot pic.twitter.com/NJWobwmnNX

— bird/h (@BirdPerHour) May 10, 2021

These beautiful babies:

open for a surprise u won’t regret it pic.twitter.com/u2Vs5Q0zhe

— William Yu 유규호 (@its_willyu) May 20, 2021

This looks so peaceful:

Stretch your legs and stroll the secluded beach at Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama.

Pic courtesy of Cary Schmies pic.twitter.com/v6t0YCBNjX

— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) May 22, 2021

This tweet and the embedded thread are delightful stories about New York City:

Was walking down the street in NYC with a friend who was wearing a t-shirt with a unicorn on it and a small child pointed as we passed and said "UNICORN." We still talk about this. https://t.co/uKEysNsqVf

— Greg Pak (@gregpak) May 15, 2021

Here's your bunny for the week:

📅 18th May 2021
🐰 Buddy
🏷️ @jennlinzi
💕#animaloftheday pic.twitter.com/CCtkiEI2MW

— Rabbit of the Day 🐰 (@RabbitoftheDay) May 18, 2021

Happy weekend, everyone!

Weekend Reading: The Trying Not to Whine Edition

At the start of the year, I thought I might set myself a goal of spending less time scrolling Twitter and more time doing more useful and/or restorative things with my downtime. 

And then January 6th happened, and I got sucked right back in.

I still think it is a good goal for me this year. My approach to social media is that if it isn't adding something good to my life, I shouldn't use it. This is why I am almost never on Facebook. I am on Instagram, originally to figure things out since Pumpkin was getting an account, and now because Petunia likes to scroll it during morning cuddles. We follow mostly zoos and nature accounts (plus some friends and a smattering of other accounts), and we post mostly photos of her pet hamster (plus the occasional sunset, flower from a walk, or other innocuous thing). 

I have long said that I like Twitter because it keeps me informed. And it has. My Twitter feed is why I was ahead of the curve on masks, and it is how I am gathering information about the B.1.1.7 variant and other coronavirus-related information that truly does help me keep my family safe. My Twitter feed has also broadened my horizons in innumerable ways and I think it has given me insights into a lot of different issues that I would not have found otherwise. And it can be fun and beautiful - the Sea Shanty thing is happening on TikTok but I know about it because of Twitter. I love the bird pictures that various accounts I follow post, and of course there's The Rabbit of the Day and The Hamster of the Day to make me smile.

But during a time like this, Twitter is also an anxiety amplifier and it is one that is hard to look away from, because there is a constant stream of new information. But it is not information that I need to use to make decisions, and so it is better for me if I find a way to look away.

At the start of the year, I thought I'd spend more time writing. I have some cool ideas in mind for Adjusted Latitudes, and a backlog of things I want to write about over on Beyond Managing as well as some things I'd like to write about here. But all of that feels a but trivial and weird to post about right now, so I haven't been doing it.

I started this post on Thursday night, but never finished it because from here, it turned a bit whiny (I just deleted all of that...) and I couldn't come up with an ending that wasn't whiny. Maybe this is because I was legitimately feeling whiny. I had a tough week on many fronts.

But it is the weekend, and the weather is glorious here. I am determined to have a good weekend.

First, though, let's get to the links.

After I gave up on my blog post on Thursday night, I finally sat down and read through the evidence I could find about the B.1.1.7 variant, masks, and other infection avoidance measures. I think I have already posted a link to the mask study Monica Gandhi and Linsey Marr did, but it turned out to be one of the most useful things I read, so here it is again.

I spent a lot of time trying to find out if the double mask method described in that study (a surgical mask under a well-fitting cloth mask) is better than a cloth mask with a p2.5 filter. The Gandhi and Marr study also recommends a cloth mask with a vacuum bag type filter, but that is different from a p2.5 filter. I did a lot of searching and didn't really find anything comparing the efficacy of the p2.5 filters. In the end, I decided that the double mask method would be better because it might help minimize gaps around the edges of the cloth mask. If anyone comes across some actual evidence on the effectiveness of a p2.5 filter in minimizing virus transmission, I'd love to see it. I'll hold on to my p2.5 filters, though, because they were handy during fire season.

My searching for info on the best filter options did turn up this useful write-up of different filter/mask options, which might be helpful if you prefer a single mask with a filter.

I also spent some time trying to understand the difference between a surgical and a procedure mask. I think most of the masks that people call "surgical masks" are actually procedure masks, because according to this source, surgical masks have ties and are designed to be worn with a surgical cap (so they won't slip) whereas procedure masks have earloops. There is some evidence that the tie masks fit better (see this article for that and also a summary of the double masking advice aimed at a general audience). If I needed to be indoors a lot, I would probably try to get surgical masks (or N95s...) but for my purposes I think the important thing about the non-cloth mask or filter is that it be made from non-woven material. I have some procedure masks that fit the bill (which I bought to keep in our cars in case we forgot a mask) and so we'll use those, and when they are almost gone I will go back down the rabbit hole trying to figure out what the best mask to buy will be. And I will try very hard not to dwell on the fact that it is ridiculous that I, an individual consumer, am left to figure out what mask to use on my own and that we still have such a shortage of N95 masks that the advice can't just be "buy some N95s and here's how to make sure they fit." 

But that is getting dangerously close to whining again, so moving on....

Next, I turned my attention to what we know about whether the B.1.1.7 variant increases the risk of transmission outdoors compared to the "regular" variant. We don't have a lot of data on this, but I found this thread from an infectious disease expert in Scotland useful:

Concerns about outdoor transmission risk seem to be trending again. What is the risk of transmission outdoors and should we be more worried about outdoors with the new more-transmissible variant? 🧵(1/n)

— Muge Cevik (@mugecevik) January 11, 2021

The bottom line is that she thinks the risk outdoors is still low, particularly when combined with other mitigation factors (e.g., masks and/or distance).

The evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant is more transmissible is getting stronger, though, and pretty much all of the experts I read take the higher transmissibility as a given. Julia Belluz had a nice write-up in Vox of what this means in practice. Basically, now is the time to redouble your efforts not to share air with anyone not in your household. So, minimize trips to stores and avoid non-essential indoor activities. And improve your masks, if you can. 

So, after all of my reading, the primary change to my earlier rules is that I'll be double masking when I go into stores, and I'll minimize trips to stores even more. I would still be OK with seeing friends occasionally as long as we do it outdoors and keep distance/wear masks... but that is currently against "the rules" in San Diego, and Petunia is convinced that if we break that rule we are contributing to her not being able to go back to in-person school, which is the thing she wants most right now. Any discussion of how we might see someone outside our household leads to tears, so for right now our little family is not seeing anyone. This is not sustainable for the length of time it is likely to take for us to get vaccines, so hopefully our local numbers start to come down soon and maybe then I can convince Petunia that we can see people safely.

In non-COVID links:

I thought this was a good open letter to the insurrectionists many of whom, if news accounts are to believed, are genuinely surprised that they are in so much trouble.

Dahlia Lithwick wrote a really good piece on the absurdity of Republicans whining about "cancel culture" and being censored in speeches on the House floor.

This group of scientists and moms who want to mobilize moms to fight climate change for the sake of our kids looks interesting. 

Some things that made me smile this week:

Paper bunnies!

Japanese paper artist Chie Hitotsuyama creates large scale sculptures of animals using a technique involving rolled strips of wet newspaper #womensart pic.twitter.com/nSES3ESkdy

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) January 15, 2021

This cat:

I forgot the best bit of my walk today: this cat who's owners are fed up pic.twitter.com/xQqwNnFNAz

— HP Fuckcraft (@Charlietrypsin) January 13, 2021

And yikes, that's all I have. I must look for some more happy things for next week!

And here's your weekly bunny:

pic.twitter.com/m5sEAmJ2Kd

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) January 12, 2021

Have a good weekend!

Weekend Reading: Dark Days Indeed Edition

When I titled last week's post, I didn't realize how dark things would get. I thought I was referencing my region's COVID numbers, which do in fact continue to get worse. But then Wednesday happened. I woke up Wednesday happy about the unexpectedly good results in the Georgia Senate races. I had a busy morning and when I checked my Twitter feed near lunchtime I was completely shocked by what I saw. 

I was not surprised the Trump rally had turned violent. To be honest, I expected there would be clashes with police. I never thought the Capitol would be overrun and people killed. I do not think we yet know what some of those people were planning for the day. 

I am glad the Democrats in Congress are moving to impeach. I don't know if the Senate will even take up the charges before Trump's term is up - McConnell is saying they won't but I don't think he's as in control of things as he thinks he is. (That, incidentally, is my summation of the entire Republican party leadership in recent times - they thought they could control the forces they were using to obtain and keep power, but they could not and we are all paying the price of that.)

The Senate should remove Trump because he is a danger to our country. But regardless of what the Senate does when it receives the Articles of Impeachment, I want Trump impeached again because it would show our kids that at least some of our elected leaders were willing to respond to the shocking events on Wednesday with something approaching the seriousness they deserve. I want my kids to see that our government isn't entirely broken.

Think of the lesson the last 12 months has given our children about our government. We failed to respond adequately to the pandemic, consigning them to either school from home or head to school every day knowing that they might bring a potentially fatal infection home to their family. And now they are watching to see how our leaders will respond to an actual attempted insurrection. Maybe the Senate will run out the clock. But maybe they won't. And maybe if they do, that will also have an impact. The Anchorage Daily News had an interesting interview with Lisa Murkowski that I suspect contains a warning to her fellow Republican Senators.

The point is, we don't know what will happen and I think an act as egregious as this one warrants an attempt to apply whatever consequences we can. Impeach him, because that is the right thing to do.

Anyway, on to the links.

I burned two of my three free Atlantic articles on Clint Smith's two pieces this week, but they are both worth your time: On the Georgia Senate election and the Black Americans who have personal memories of the time before the Voting Rights Act, and on the photo of the man parading the Confederate flag in the Capitol, and the history encapsulated by that photo.

Zack Beauchamp tracing Wednesday's events to years of mainstream Republican politics.

Take a moment to listen to the brother-in-law of the woman who was crushed to death during the riot in the Capitol:

Heartbreak. Exclusive reaction from Rosanne Boyland's family after finding out the 34-year-old Kennesaw woman was likely crushed to death during the unrest at the US Capital yesterday. @FOX5Atlanta pic.twitter.com/dxLvLRn0bF

— Aungelique Proctor (@aungeliquefox5) January 7, 2021

I thought this was a good thread. We should insist on leaders who act as though the truth is true. 

Want to share something that's been on my mind the past few days. Congressman Raskin and his wife wrote a beautiful and crushing tribute to their son who died over the holidays. One quote in particular stuck with me.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) January 7, 2021

This, from Adam Sewer:

I wish I could tell my paternal and maternal grandmothers that Republicans did the whole rootless cosmopolitan and radical black preacher shtick in Georgia and still lost.

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) January 6, 2021

And, looking ahead to the new administration and new Congress:

Rebecca Traister on why Democrats should take up their mandate and stop trying to placate Republicans.

David Roberts on what climate legislation is possible with 50 votes, one of whom is Joe Manchin.

In pandemic news:

Kevin Esvelt and Mark Lipsitch wrote an article urging governments to act quickly to contain the B.1.1.7 variant.

Vaccine delivery is starting to ramp up. Juliette Kayyem has a good thread on that:

CAUTIOUSLY HAPPY THREAD: vaccine distribution. I promised I would return to this prediction.

After first full non-holiday week, US is getting closer to 1 million doses a day (865K Fri, up from @700K Th) and we may be hitting inflection point.
1/https://t.co/SfWHH9bB7Q https://t.co/XOr1GWqebO

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 9, 2021

California is changing its vaccination strategy to increase speed. Since San Diego county has a growing number of cases in general and of the B.1.1.7 variant, I am glad vaccinations will speed up. 

I am planning to spend some time reading about masks this weekend. With the new variant spreading in my city, I think we need to improve our masking strategy. For the most part, we just won't go near people but for the few shops we do need to go into and in case something happens that requires us to go inside near other people, I want to figure out what our best masks would be. Here are a couple of things I have skimmed and plan to read more carefully:

An article in STAT arguing that we all need some N95s. N95s are prohibitively expensive right now, so perhaps I need to get some KN95s, but to do that I have to navigate a much-less regulated marketplace and so that will take some additional research.

This article in Cell from from Monica Gandhi and Linsey Marr looking at mask effectiveness.

Here's the important quote:

"For maximal protection (Figure 1, bottom panel), members of the public can either (1) wear a cloth mask tightly on top of a surgical mask where the surgical mask acts as a filter and the cloth mask provides an additional layer of filtration while improving the fit; or (2) wear a three-layer mask with outer layers consisting of a flexible, tightly woven fabric that can conform well to the face and a middle layer consisting of a non-woven high-efficiency filter material (e.g., vacuum bag material). If the masks fit well, these combinations should produce an overall efficiency of >90% for particles 1 μm and larger, which corresponds to the size of respiratory aerosols that we think are most important in mediating transmission of COVID-19."

I'm thinking that when we must go inside near other people that we should wear one of the masks that allow us to insert a filter. I need to do some research on the best filters I can get. I have some P2.5 filters but those were bought with the idea of filtering out smoke not virus particles. 

Things that made me smile this week:

The dendrology episode and follow up from the Ologies podcast. I asked on Twitter for new podcast ideas and this is one of the recommendations I got and it is a great podcast! I've listened to several episodes. This one is apparently a fan favorite and I can see why.

Sea Shanty tik-tok:

SeaShantyTok keeps getting better pic.twitter.com/yWLEHzlPlB

— Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021

The fields of Athenry:

Today's lockdown moment of music, The Fields of Athenry from the fields of Co. Mayo pic.twitter.com/d46jt0BVTW

— Patrick Dexter (@patrickdextervc) January 6, 2021

A beautiful sunrise:

Good morning everyone. 👋 pic.twitter.com/S8XVNoBR0X

— Carl Bovis (@CarlBovisNature) January 5, 2021

Your bunny for the week:

📅 9th January 2021
🐰 Croqueta
🏷️Instagram/croquetabunny
💕#animaloftheday pic.twitter.com/E3593oEEMn

— Rabbit of the Day 🐰 (@RabbitoftheDay) January 9, 2021

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Weekend Reading: Dark Days Ahead Edition

I've had a nice holiday break, and am now coming to terms with the fact that it is basically over. I go back to work on Monday. I needed a little more time. One thing I learned from 2020 is that I really need a proper 2 week vacation each year. I wasn't able to get one this year, and I think that was a mistake. I'll do better in 2021. 

Anyway, the break I did have was good and so I'll be happy with that. We had glorious weather here in San Diego. I didn't get as much time on creative endeavors as I would have liked, but I got two beach walks and a rollerblade outing and I crossed a couple of things off my long term to do list that remove some irritants from my daily life (I cleaned my desk and I moved my recipes from a spiral notebook that was falling apart to recipe binders). And there is still this weekend....

On to the links.

The big local news is that we have found four cases of the B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19. Since the four cases are spread across the county, none had contact with each other, and the three they've fully interviewed so far have no history of travel outside the county, I think it is safe to assume the variant has been circulating in our community for awhile. 

I think the variant has probably made it to many places in the US. For the most part, we aren't sequencing enough samples to have a good picture of what the US cases look like on a genomic level. 

Between this new variant and the slower than ideal rollout of vaccines here in the US, it has been a tough couple of weeks in coronavirus news. I really wish we had the new team in the White House now, because I think this moment could really benefit from better messaging from the top. I'll say what I think of our situation right now (with all the usual "I am not an expert" caveats) with evidence linked in as possible, and then I'll share some additional things that have informed my opinion.

All of the evidence so far is that the B.1.1.7 variant is not more dangerous to any single individual who catches it, but that it is more dangerous to the community as a whole because it is more transmissible. The early studies indicate it raises the reproduction rate by ~0.4 - 0.7. You can read the preprint of this study.

These are epidemiological studies, and we don't yet have answers about the mechanism by which the reproduction rate is raised. Two theories I have seen are that the mutation in the spike protein makes it easier for the virus to get into cells and that the variant accumulates a higher viral load in the upper respiratory tract. These are just theories, though. Since we don't yet know the mechanism by which the variant is easier to transmit, we can't have specific advice on how to protect ourselves from this variant. However, we do know in general how to protect ourselves from COVID-19: Wear a mask, avoid groups, don't be indoors with people from outside our household, have good hand hygiene, etc., etc. 

Ian Mackay (one of the experts I follow on Twitter) created an infographic showing a Swiss cheese model of COVID-19 avoidance. That infographic has spread far and wide (he wrote about it on his blog), and I think it is a particularly useful way to think about how to protect yourself from the variant COVID-19, so I'll embed a tweet that shows the graphic: 

A new version with colour & division inspiration from @uq_news and strict mouse design oversight by @kat_arden (ver3.0).
It reorganises slices into personal & shared responsibilities (think of this in terms of all the slices rather than any single layer being most important) pic.twitter.com/nNwLWZTWOL

— ɪᴀɴ ᴍ. ᴍᴀᴄᴋᴀʏ, ᴘʜᴅ 🦠🤧🧬🥼🦟🧻 (@MackayIM) October 24, 2020

Clearly, what was working for some people isn't sufficient against this variant - hence the higher reproductive rate. Therefore, I think the thing to do is to take a look at your practices and think about where you can further reduce risk. Can you make some of the holes in the Swiss cheese smaller? Before Christmas, I shared the rules my little family of four have been living by. Given the high case load in San Diego and the evidence that we have the B.1.1.7 variant here, we've decided to decrease our risk by being even more careful about seeing friends. We aren't yet sure what that will mean. Our old rule was we could occasionally see friends outdoors as long as we wore masks or were ~6 feet apart. We're going to halt seeing people outside our family for a little bit while we figure out the new rules. We will figure out new rules and see friends, though, because we think the grown ups in our family are at least 6 months from getting a vaccine and who knows when there will even be a vaccine for kids? So again, we need to find some set of rules that minimize risk that we can sustain for many months.

Speaking of vaccines... wow, what a mess. The rollout is not going as well as we'd like. I think the pace will pick up as we leave the holiday period and as the local officials who have had managing vaccinations dumped on them on top of all the other extra work brought by the pandemic figure out how to manage. This undoubtedly could have been better coordinated and it is infuriating that it was not. However, I don't think the slow rollout is a reason to change the overall plan. We have a problem with getting actual vaccinations coordinated and done. Let's fix that problem. I don't see how delaying the second dose helps fix the actual problem at all. Basically, I agree with this:

So we're not good at getting shots into people at scale.
So instead of fixing that problem (a strategy with incontrovertible data for high efficacy and safety)

Let's double the number of people to get shots without any data (beyond 3-4 weeks) to support it.
That's so logical.🤦‍♂️

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 1, 2021

Delaying the second shot would address a supply problem, but our vaccination rate is not currently limited by supply. Let's solve the problem we actually have.

I also found this point compelling. We aren't going to outrun an exponential curve by vaccinating faster. We need to double down on our non-pharmaceutical interventions!

Best case with that plan is you double the slope of a linear function (vaccinated fraction) racing against an exponential function (virus spread). The exponential function will win.

— Nicholas Bauer, PhD 👨‍🔬🔬 (@BioTurboNick) January 1, 2021

Finally, this long thread from Carl Bergstrom matches my thinking on why I don't think we should change our plan, even though I have zero experience with cold-weather mountaineering!

Why do I have this reaction? I've been trying to put my finger on it all day.

There are a lot of reasons, but at the core of them has to do with the way that going off plan compounds risk.

— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) January 2, 2021

I know everyone is frustrated that people aren't avoiding crowds and wearing their masks, and so they are looking for a way to work around that. I don't think there is one. I think our energy would be better spent fixing the vaccine rollout problems and working on improving compliance with the non-pharmaceutical interventions we know work. Can we come up with a "wear your mask" campaign that would reach some of the people who won't wear them now? Can we help stores and other indoor places where people need to be improve their ventilation?  And so on.

However, it doesn't really matter what I think about our vaccine strategies. I will control what I can control (my own behavior and my family's activities) and hope for the best on the rest.

Also: more vaccines may be coming soon, which further argues for investing our effort in figuring out how to get vaccinations done as quickly as possible. The J&J trial is expecting to provide results by the end of the month. The US study on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will perhaps help sort out the confusing set of information we have about that vaccine. Novavax has fully enrolled their phase 3 trial. And there are more.... Derek Lowe has an excellent round up of where we are at.

And here's a good thread summarizing what we know about the B.1.1.7 variant so far:

We’re in a new year and we have also entered a new phase of this pandemic. So I thought I’d start off the new year with a quick catch-up thread on the UK variant B.1.1.7 and where we are at in this pandemic.

— Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape) January 2, 2021

Of course, the highest levels of the US government aren't focused on vaccines and handling the new variant at all. They are focused on a futile but deeply disturbing attempt to overturn the results of the November Presidential election. 

I saw this tweet this morning and I am honestly stunned. We have a big problem.

Source confirms this list and says it will include nearly a dozen Republican senators joining Hawley in rejecting the results. They're seeking an independent commission on voter fraud, per the source. https://t.co/5gwbmBTJxw

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 2, 2021

I am glad some Republicans have started speaking out against this nonsense, but honestly I fear they may be too late to really help.

I recommend this interview Chris Hayes did with Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, two NBC reporters who cover QAnon. It is from before the election, but remains very relevant. 

Enough of that. Here are some things that made me happy:

David Roberts on why he is a progressive.

All the tweets about health care workers getting their vaccines! Too many to share. Here's one particularly moving picture:

Nurse Elena Betti reacts after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Careggi hospital in Florence, Italy. More photos of the day: https://t.co/JHNdi4zsrg 📷 Jennifer Lorenzini pic.twitter.com/QdXsdM6xsw

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) December 28, 2020

Some beautiful art:

"Wind Spiral II" (2006) by Bronwyn Berman #womensart pic.twitter.com/rfy06eS7dV

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) January 2, 2021

Patrick Dexter's Twitter feed. Here's Auld Lang Syne:

You can watch Auld Lang Syne in full here: https://t.co/Cs9WtYgKpM Happy New Year!

— Patrick Dexter (@patrickdextervc) December 31, 2020

These pictures:

I went to photograph ducks tonight, but found something even more magical. pic.twitter.com/nnWHbPuY5i

— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) December 23, 2020

And this photo:

Well here is my #1 photo of the year click for full screen. The reason I chose this photo was it exudes Sask. and our amazing skies. I feel as we go into a new year that if we can just stay the course and stay on track good things are sure to come in #2021 #HappyNewYear2021 pic.twitter.com/J1wNHnTN90

— Craig Boehm (@Skstormchaser) January 1, 2021

This quote (click through to read the full thread):

From the historian Tony Judt before he died of ALS in 2010: “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest..." 1/

— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) December 30, 2020

The Blue Forest in Belgium went on my "things I want to see" list.

The guy who got the deer off the ice:

This was in Cranmoor, WI, three days ago. Our hero's name is Gil Lencour. Full story here: https://t.co/BQ1d6nbAcc https://t.co/IObMG2dHnL

— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) December 25, 2020

Service dogs, learning how to listen to a live performance:

In 2019, @stratfest staged a performance of the musical Billy Eliot solely for trainee service dogs being taught how to sit quietly through a live performance. pic.twitter.com/t9FcNG64JK

— Mass for Shut-ins (Podcast) (@edburmila) December 22, 2020

This dog, living his best life:

I’ve watched this 10 times at least. Hope it brings all who need it some laughter! pic.twitter.com/8pvSiHfKWr

— Dr. Adriane Lam (@ForamWhisperer) December 25, 2020

Here's some bunnies to end on:

pic.twitter.com/3hrSfh4PGg

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) December 30, 2020

Happy New Year, everyone! Have a good weekend, and stay safe.

Good-Bye and Good Riddance to 2020

Well, here we are at the end of 2020. I took a peek back at my post about my 2020 goals and unsurprisingly, most of them didn't happen. I was doing pretty well for the first couple of months and then March came and my goals morphed into: stay alive, keep my family alive, and keep us all reasonably sane. Oh, and work to make sure we didn't re-elect Trump. By those revised goals, 2020 was a resounding success. It also sucked.

2020 was exhausting. It was probably the most difficult year of my professional life, as it was my job to keep projects on track while also enabling the flexibility we all needed while also supporting my kids doing school from home. It was nowhere near as hard as what health care workers, public health workers, and other essential employees faced but it was a hard year professionally. 

We also had to revise all our home routines, and I realized how much I leaned on the fact that we had routines. Between the busy work schedule, the need to find new routines for the work of keeping our home running, and the extra attention my kids needed, I struggled to find time for myself. I would often find myself awake before 6 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep, and the silver lining of that was a few minutes of quiet time on the sofa, watching the colors change through the frosted glass on my front door with no one asking anything of me.

But more than all of that, I think the most exhausting thing about 2020 was watching my government and my fellow citizens make bad decisions. It was exhausting to be so continually disappointed, and to need to keep trying to explain the inexplicable to my daughters. Even now, we seem determined to screw up the vaccines, which were the one part of our pandemic response we did well. 

Good riddance to all of that. I know that we are in for more difficult months in 2021, but I am hopeful that we're on the upswing now and that once the new administration is in place we'll at least have a plan for getting through to the end of this pandemic.

2020 brought some things I hope we'll carry forward with us, too. My older daughter discovered a love of long walks. My younger daughter's interest in art really blossomed. The crunch for time forced me to clarify my priorities, and while I hope I can open up more space for the lower priority things soon, I am grateful for that clarity about what really matters to me.

I haven't decided if I'll make goals for 2021 or not. On the one hand, the clarity 2020 brought could probably be channeled into some good goals. On the other hand, I am still exhausted and so perhaps my goal will simply be to make it through to my turn for the vaccine and to re-evaluate then.  

Luckily, I don't have to decide right now. Right now, I need to go make some cookies with my daughter and then settle in for New Year's Eve.  See you in 2021!

Lessons from Our Pandemic Failures

I have been thinking a lot lately about what we can learn from the current coronavirus pandemic. Ed Yong has a good story out today looking ahead to the next year of this pandemic, and he includes a section about the lessons we might learn, along with an acknowledgement that we may well decide not to learn them.

The lessons Yong highlights are ones I hope we manage to learn, but the focus of my musings has been a bit different. Perhaps it is because I live in a region that managed to do reasonably well at suppressing the virus for months, and then have that effort spectacularly fail to the point that we're now in the midst of a terrible surge with hospitals stretched thin and daily case counts stuck at 10 times their previous level. I have been wondering what happened and why.

We may never know exactly what went wrong, of course - our health department is too busy managing the surge to be able to collect the data that might tell us where the surge came from. It is probably a combination of things: political polarization leading to some groups in the area refusing to wear masks or follow health orders; competing economic and health needs leading to nonsensical rules, e.g., allowing dining at restaurants while telling people they can't gather in their own backyards; fatigue with the rules and the very real effect of loneliness building up over many months; and of course Thanksgiving (and now Christmas) pulling people to gather to maintain their traditions and connections.

I very much hope that people are studying the US's failed response because we urgently need to learn from our failures (and other country's successes), both to prepare for the next pandemic (which, as the WHO's Mike Ryan recently warned may be worse) and to help us address climate change.

One of the most depressing things about watching large swaths of the American public buy into conspiracy theories about coronavirus and refuse to do something as simple as a wearing a mask is the realization that if we can't even get our collective act together to respond sensibly to a pandemic that is literally killing people in all parts of the country, how will we muster the will to respond to climate change before it has reached catastrophic levels?

I mentioned in an earlier post that I recently read Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry of the Future. I did not find it to be a particularly good novel (although I have heard that perhaps it is better as an audiobook), but one thing it does really well is make you understand what a climate catastrophe would be like. I found the catastrophe that opens the book particularly haunting. A heat wave strikes India, and it raises the wet bulb temperature above the limits of human endurance. Hundreds of thousands of people die a terrible, desperate death. (I did not know much about the potential for this particular catastrophe, so I did a little reading on it. If you want to know more about it, there is a sobering study that came out in May. NOAA has a good summary of it, and the Washington Post has a good article.)

Deadly heat waves will become more common, but since they will first strike in parts of the world that Americans usually ignore, it seems tragically unlikely that Americans will pay attention. 

Of course, there are climate disasters that will hit closer to home - we already see what they might be, with longer and more intense wildfire and hurricane seasons. But humans are really good at adjusting to the new normal and ignoring the warning these events bring. This may well have been a solid survival instinct in earlier times, but it is threatening our survival now. Here again, we have a lesson we can learn from the pandemic, in which people have grown inured to the mounting death toll. 

As all of these things have sloshed around in my brain, I've developed some thoughts about what we might learn from the pandemic to help us better respond to climate change. These are just the ideas of a moderately informed lay person. Consider them hypotheses. I hope academic studies give us more insight into which of these might actually be correct, and I'll be looking for those studies. But with that caveat in place, here are my ideas:

1. People will make serious sacrifices for the common good - but only for a limited time and with a clear goal in mind. In the pandemic, this meant that the countries that went for eradication or at least strong suppression were able to succeed with stringent lockdowns. In the US, where we always said we'd be managing but not suppressing the virus's spread, we probably needed to pivot aggressively to a different approach. Maybe a message of risk management? Maybe more extensive testing surveillance? I don't know what the better approach would have been, but the soft shutdowns we used were probably always going to fail eventually as people grew tired of the restrictions with no end in sight.

2. If you want people to change their behavior, you have to make it economically possible for them to do so. You cannot expect people who are just getting by to voluntarily take a short term economic hit for a long term greater good. Furthermore, when people are facing the loss of their livelihood or of a business they worked hard to build, they will fight to save it even when that fight causes harm to the community. We saw this in the pandemic with gyms and restaurants fighting against the public health rules even though allowing them to stay open would just prolong the underlying problem. We didn't give them enough support to survive in stasis for the length of the pandemic, and so of course some business owners fought the rules.

Both of these hypotheses can inform our response to climate change. Here's what I think they tell us: 

We should try to limit the personal sacrifice we ask of people as we reduce carbon emissions. This means we need programs to make electrifying our lives economically beneficial for individuals, but it also means that we need to think long and hard about how we handle the fossil fuel industries, which employ a lot of people. Investing public funds to help them transition gracefully may feel like paying ransom to some very bad actors, but we need to be clear-eyed about what the alternative would look like. This may be a case where the best move is to pay the ransom.

If we're going to ask for a sacrifice to achieve a common good, we need to make sure that sacrifice is time-limited and the end point is clear. I am not sure what this looks like in the climate response. Perhaps it is just that when we ask a community to accept change to support our response, we need to be clear what the end point will be for them and how long it will take to get there. Instead of saying "we'll retrain coal miners into other jobs" we need to provide specifics about what the new economic plan for their region is and how we will get them there.

During the pandemic, we have asked people to sacrifice to get back to normal. As we address climate change, we will be asking people to sacrifice to get to a new normal. I think that new normal will be better, but change is hard for people and we need to acknowledge that and have plans to ease the transition to the new normal. If we ever thought we could just tell people what they needed to do for the common good and they would do it, surely the pandemic response has shown us that this is not the case. We must learn from our failures and do better.

Weekend Reading: Our Turn in the Surge Edition

Covid case numbers are high here in San Diego, and all over California. After doing so well for so many months, we're now most definitely not doing well. Vaccinations are underway, but they won't come in time for so many people.  I don't really have an explanation for what happened. Thanksgiving, yes, but our numbers were already headed up before Thanksgiving. Maybe people just got tired and let their guard down. I suspect we missed an opportunity by not giving people better advice about how to safely see friends and family outdoors. Our weather should have given us a great advantage, and I think we didn't use it as much as we could.

The message I pieced together from reading studies and advice from experts was: 

• See friends and family outside and either distanced or masked. Be careful, but see people now and then because we're in for a long haul and we needed an approach we can stick with for a year or more. 
• Try not to be inside with people you don't live with (or haven't quarantined to see). 
• If you can't avoid being inside with people, wear a mask no matter how far apart you are and try to increase ventilation. 
• If you want to be indoors and unmasked with someone, both parties need to quarantine for two weeks first.
• If anyone from outside our family needs to be in the house for awhile (e.g., the people who installed our heat pump), we go outside and open windows and run our whole house fan for 20-30 minutes after they leave.
• Surface transmission doesn't seem to be a major route, but since I follow the news from New Zealand where they traced a few cases to surface transmission I know it is a possible route. My approach is to continue to wash my hands frequently, try to avoid touching my face, particularly when out and about and touching other things, and to clean high contact surfaces frequently.

But I am not a public health expert, so I acknowledge that my rules may not be the ideal ones. I am also not an expert on health communication and risk reduction during a pandemic, so I don't know if something like my rules, clearly communicated from all levels of leadership would have been more successful than the "stay home, don't see people" message was. I also don't know how my more nuanced message would have worked out in our current political moment. Anyone who says there would have been an easy way to avoid the mess we're in has not been paying attention to what public communication is like right now. 

Anyway, we're in the surge now and our hospitals and ICUs are full and it is a tragedy. I have a lot of thoughts about what we might learn from this tragedy in terms of preventing future tragedies, but they are not fully formed and anyway, that's not where I want to dwell right now.

So, on to the links. I don't have many because I've been spending most of my spare time finding gifts for people. Our response to the surge has been to avoid all unnecessary trips to stores, so shopping has been all online this year, which has been hard! 

But here's what I do have:

Here is some concise advice from one of the experts I've been listening to:

Everyone must weak a mask indoors in public at all times when others are present. There is no safe social distance indoors. Many have become too complacent. Note that what worked a month ago will not work now as the virus is here now and more people are contagious. #COVID19 https://t.co/QU7jG4woUb

— Kimberly Prather, Ph.D. (@kprather88) December 18, 2020

David Perry wrote a very good piece on how utterly we have failed our children. I think a lot about how this year is shaping the world views of my daughters and their friends.

Some good news: The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is fully enrolled. A third vaccine with a different modality and manufacturing path would surely help our supply issues. I hope for a successful trial.

In political news: I agree with this argument from Josh Marshall that we must not let bad faith behavior from Republican leaders trick us into wasting time on them.

Dan Pfeiffer has a sobering look at why Republican politicians might get even worse over the next few years. 

Some things that made me happy:

These ice and snow sculptures are beautiful.

What beautiful pictures:

Here are some photos that are sure to warm your heart ... nature's beauty on full display thanks to these short-eared owls and a very colorful backdrop. Short-eared owls can be found in Will County, and they prefer grasslands and open areas. (Photos courtesy of Monika Bobek) pic.twitter.com/1Hgnwku5gR

— WillCoForestPreserve (@WillCoForests) December 16, 2020

Beautiful embroidery:

Swedish Sami textile artist Britta Marakatt conveys Sami culture and legends in her embroidery #womensart pic.twitter.com/iJNIWjz0YD

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) December 19, 2020

O Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song, and somehow I'd never heard Tracy Chapman's beautiful version of it.

Here's your bunny for the week:

pic.twitter.com/2ZC8uPjnyT

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) December 15, 2020

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Weekend Reading: A Somewhat Grim Edition

Times are grim. They are grim here, and we are in nowhere near as much trouble as many parts of the country. But our cases are up and we've reached the limit on ICU bed space (less than 15% available) that is the governor's new threshold for a stay at home order. I think we'll be under a stay at home order tomorrow. Businesses here are already struggling - there are so many stories about long standing businesses closing for good - and while our county and state have both released some funds to try to help, it is nowhere near enough. We needed federal aid, and Mitch McConnell is instead focused on shielding employers from COVID-related lawsuits. I could maybe see providing such a shield in conjunction with generous aid that allows people to do the right thing without losing everything... but as it is being offered with just a small amount of aid, I think it is a recipe for businesses opening and employees getting sick and dying.

And he hasn't even passed this. Everyone is yelling about what Democrats should or should not accept, and McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate haven't passed a damn thing. There's nothing to accept or reject right now, just a lot of talk. I don't have a clue about why this is how things work now, but does anyone else remember conference committees? 

We really have the wrong type of federal leadership for this moment. But lots of people - people in places with far higher infection and death rates than my area has - looked at that leadership and said "yep, that's what we want" and so somehow the rest of us have to figure out how to deal with this.

The stay at home order won't change anything about how my little family is living right now. We'd already pulled back as cases rose - no more going to shops for anything other than essentials! - and have been limiting our restaurant patronage to take out from the beginning. 

This week brought us another study showing that indoor dining is just not safe. Masks are off because you can't eat with a mask on. People are talking, because people go to restaurants for a social experience. And people are probably talking loudly due to ambient noise. It is just not possible to make this safe. It is always going to come down to a matter of luck, and with more cases around these days the odds are not with you. 

Zeynep Tufecki has a good writeup of the new study, putting in context of earlier studies as well.

The CDC has released new guidelines that match what my personal guideline has been for quite awhile: Don't be indoors with people not in your household without a mask.

You don't want this disease, and you particularly don't want to get sick during a surge - as this story spells out, hospitals are getting overwhelmed and that means people are dying who probably would have lived if they'd gotten the disease earlier, when case loads were lower.

If you're wondering why FDA emergency authorization of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is taking a little longer than approval in other countries, this article explains it. Personally, I think the more thorough review is a good idea particularly since there are non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., masks, avoiding indoor gatherings) that can reduce spread during the review time. The tragedy, of course, is that so many people refuse to follow advice about non-pharmaceutical interventions.

David Roberts argues that Biden should learn from Trump's "flood the zone" strategy and run a blitz to get things done. 

In recommended listening: Ezra Klein's interview with Kim Stanley Robinson did indeed convince me to read The Ministry for the Future. I am about halfway through it now. I will probably write some more about it when I finish it.

Here are some things that made me smile this week:

This is a really interesting story about diacetyl, the compound that makes Chardonnay buttery but also can cause "popcorn lung."

I want a book of these "where are they now" snippets Jane Austen told her family!

This is delightful: Jane Austen used to regale her relatives with anecdotes about what happened to her characters after their novels ended. (From David A. Brewer’s “The Afterlife of Character”) pic.twitter.com/Oyussw0rqk

— Evan Kindley (@evankindley) December 4, 2020

This tweet blew my mind. Someone do some historical studies to find out if it is true!

A lot of really good stuff has been written about the revolution in women’s fashion in the 1920’s — but nothing is as good an explanation as flapper dresses and flat shoes as post-pandemic wardrobe.

We’d been inside for 2.5 years of course women weren’t putting that back on.

— jess mcintosh (@jess_mc) December 3, 2020

This made me laugh. My husband also does most of our laundry (although I tend to be the one who folds it). That is probably the only thing I have in common with Angela Merkel.

Merkel is asked (at a tech conf): Do you use smart technology at home or do you switch on the washing machine yourself?

Merkel: My husband does the laundry. https://t.co/j2q1Sal3yL

— Deborah Cole (@doberah) December 1, 2020

On discovering that you're a meme:

Here’s a very 2020 thing I just learned about myself: this picture of the 8-year-old, 3rd grade version of me has been a meme FOR YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like, there’s merch and everything. Internet is weird. thread 👇 pic.twitter.com/4oUVjz5FEK

— Adrian Smith (@DrAdrianSmith) December 2, 2020

I love little quirks of language like this:

TODAY I HAVE LEARNED that TO EGG, as in 'to egg someone on' is from the Old Norse 'eggja', 'to urge', and has nothing to do with eggs.

— Dr Kate Wiles (@katemond) November 30, 2020

This week's bunny looks so cozy! I am a little jealous.

🗓 1st December 2020
🐰 Hochi
🏷️ @melodramahesc
💕#animaloftheday pic.twitter.com/p6MERSibUN

— Rabbit of the Day 🐰 (@RabbitoftheDay) December 1, 2020

Have a good weekend, everyone!