Us, January 19, 2020: John, Leo, Shadow, Roy, Ondine
Us, January 19, 2020: John, Leo, Shadow, Roy, Ondine
So "pandemic journaling" is all the rage. We've had a pandemic journal from day one right here, but now we're trendy. Ha! Anyways, we compiled all our journals since March on the archives page as documentation in real time of our daily lives in these strange times.
Coronavirus update: The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker shows that COVID-19 has been confirmed in over 3.1 million people worldwide, and has claimed over 216,000 lives. That's an increase of over 300,000 cases and 16,000 lives lost in the past four days. The U.S. has over 1 million confirmed cases with over 58,300 deaths, up over 87,100 cases and another 6,200 deaths in the past four days. The U.S. has more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Spain, Italy, France, the UK, Germany, and China combined. In San Diego, the toll rose to 3,141 cases with 113 deaths.
Those figures, compared to previous totals, might be interpreted to indicate that coronavirus is losing momentum. But data always lags behind the thing studied; the latest figures also show the rate of doubling has shortened after steadily lengthening. That's evidence that the virus has already increased its rate of spread, perhaps a significant turn for the worse.
Yet, more and more people are agitating to re-open public spaces and businesses and lift social distancing restrictions. Protests are being held all over the country, actively encouraged by president Trump, who has called on state governors to begin easing restrictions as appropriate.
It may be that American society has become so individualistic that it now lacks the social cohesion to deal with any sustained challenge, from coronavirus to terrorism to climate change. And that right there is why after a 30+ year career building brands and crafting ads, John is sick of the whole industry: it created this self-centered world.
More bad news: meat producers are warning that coronavirus will affect the U.S. food supply because crowded working conditions in meat processing and packing plants enabled COVID-19 to spread rapidly among employees, forcing many meat companies to shut down facilities. Going forward, worker safety considerations will fundamentally change how those plants operate, right down to facility and process design.
Some might say those improvements are long overdue. But that doesn't help with the vast economic impact of having most of the nation's biggest meat processing facilities become, all at once, obsolete. That could affect the food supply and prices for years to come.
Even in the face of all that, though, San Diego opened its parks and beaches, and the first nice weekend saw crowds out and about.
The weather continues hot and sunny here, hence the crowds at the beaches, and will be in the mid to upper 80s all this week. Globally, meteorologists and climate scientists are predicting the hottest year on record. Locally, the hot weather is why yesterday John fired up the grill for the first time of the season. Yum, teriyaki chicken!
We signed up for Disney Plus on the annual plan, so that gives us 12 months of access to Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, and National Geographic movies, TV shows, and content for $70. We'd gotten the free trial with a monthly payment plan, but the only way to get the annual plan was to cancel the subscription then restart it with the annual plan.
So far on Disney Plus, we've watched Frozen, Frozen 2, Coco and binge-watched all of The Mandalorian as a family, and Ondine got into a National Geographic series on Arctic Wolves. And the kints still enjoy Kitchen Nightmares, which is on Amazon Prime. We also still have Acorn and Britbox. Yes, we now have four streaming services. We considered dropping Acorn, but it has a lot of history programs that John especially likes.
Our blender died after a few years service, and John replaced it with an Amazon Basics model with a much more powerful motor and a dial control. The pandemic shut-down has more people nesting at home, so many common blender models were out of stock, plus since most are made in China the supply chain has slowed significantly. We won't receive the new blender for over a week, a far cry from the old Amazon same-day delivery.
Leo is apparently doing just enough online education to pick up some new vocabulary words and phrases. His current fun phrase is "glacial resolve," which he is using, with glacial resolve, to bug the heck out of Roy. He's also thinking of using Duolingo to learn Spanish or Latin, and John has challenged him to a Duolingo race. Other than that, because of the San Diego School District's grading policy of "hold harmless," that is, grades are locked in where they stood in March and can only go up, Leo doesn't feel inclined to participate in Patrick Henry's online programs. Most of his day is spent playing with friends online, making music, or watching funny videos.
Roy has online lectures and classwork off and on through the week because UCCS is still in session, albeit online. The rest of the time he hangs out with friends online playing games.
Now that the weather has turned hot, Roy has realized all his summer clothes are in Colorado! See, when he came home for spring break, he thought he'd be going back to school this semester, so he left most of his summer clothes behind. When the school closed, it packed all his stuff up and put it in storage for him to retrieve in the fall. But for now, he needs shorts and summer shirts.
Judo has moved online, with classes on Zoom. So far, neither Roy nor Leo have shown an interest in judo via Zoom. But the dojo is working hard to keep students engaged, and recently found a source for Unidos Judo Clubs face masks! Cool!
Ondine continues to work from home. Her union seems to have settled a contract, which will be voted on soon. She also continues to post a haiku a day for the challenge, and will do so through this month.
Over the weekend, she suddenly got all social and distributed home-grown lemons with a nice note to the neighbors immediately around us. That gesture seemed well received. In other news, she ordered a neck hammock that just arrived, and she ordered a bunch of face masks off Etsy, and those started arriving. Monday she tried the exercise bike after work and really liked it, so that might become a regular thing for her.
John is still doing a one-hour cross-training exercise bike ride every morning. He's doing a forensic archaeology MOOC through the University of Durham, which is slanted more toward modern forensics than archaeology. But if he pays for the certificate, he can help look for genocide victims in Kosovo. He is also trying to learn Latin using the free version of Duolingo.
Neighborhood gas prices are about $2.89 per gallon. And the stock market is sitting at about 24,101 right now.
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