Journaling Covid: 2021
After looking back at the start of Covid from early July, and checking in about ‘things that suck’ in late October, I realized another 4 months cover a full year — and here we are (almost).
An effective vaccine changed everything
In my October post, I didn’t even mention vaccines and asked if I believed my family could stay covid-free for another year. One older relative had asked if she would ever see the world go back to normal.
Within a few weeks, Moderna and Pfizer trials proved >90% effective (much much better than expected). By the end of the year, we were discussing if the rate of vaccinations was fast enough. Biden’s soon-to-be surgeon general cautioned that it might not be generally available until summer or early fall.
Today I saw a hiker coming, put on my mask, and for the first time heard someone say: “it’s alright, I’m vaccinated”. Walgreens had Clorox wipes. It’s gotten easier to order KN95 and KF94 masks.
When I started planning out 2021, I decided that in mid-April I’ll move to Colorado Springs and then stay there until fully vaccinated. I don’t want to screw up by moving between doses! I anticipated September for final dose + 2 weeks for efficacy. After recent news I am hopeful for end of July.
Sometimes I hear the vaccine means ‘you just need to hold on a little longer’ as if it is like holding in your pee? If the vaccine took another 3 months would we say ‘never mind’? I don’t like it.
Maybe I caught Covid
It’s bad to think you’re immune to Covid and act careless, so I’m reluctant to say anything definitive. In the spring I had a suspicious cough, then in mid November I had a frequently re-emerging cough and one day with a fever. But by the weekend I was going on long walks (empty beach) and feeling fine. I didn’t feel the need to look up where to get walk-in testing. I am generally isolated either way.
As a kid, I had whooping cough and some other colds which kept me awake all night, so whatever this was, it felt less significant.
El Paso, Texas
As Myrtle Beach was getting cold in January, I made my escape to El Paso (apparently one of the few Texan cities connected to the national power grid).
We’ve mostly had warm weather, and I can go hiking. My dad is from New Mexico, but I can’t visit due to a state quarantine. While I’m here, I can have some good Tex-Mex and think about my family’s experience with the desert (there was a week in January when I got super-invested in genealogy).
People in El Paso — whether you see them on a trail or at the store — are virtually always responsible with masks. They were hit hard in 2020.
Bigger or smaller
I recently read a new article about homemade nasal vaccines, which you can cook up for about $1,000. Then I closed the tab and moved on. Sometimes I thought-experiment about what I’d do differently if there was a virus which was 3x or 1/3x as serious.
- If I expected to die of a 3x+ virus, of course I would spend $1,000 or maneuver onto a vaccine list (i.e.: volunteering for a trial, essential jobs, waitlists). I would point to how Russia did deployment as quickly as a vaccine can be manufactured. Open schools, theme parks, or untested flights would be unthinkable. If it spread easily on surfaces, our 2020 issues with toilet paper, meat, and deliveries would be trifles.
- On the other hand, if we had time to prepare and evaluate a 1/3-as-serious virus, maybe I would talk about a smaller response like swine flu. If we can maintain mask norms and PPE supply chains, use them as our primary defense. Pay people in specific industries to stay home, housing for medical staff, and help to the elderly. This is not a let the wave wash over us argument, but trying to find the next rung down the ladder.
For examples, we can look to how short-term, localized lockdowns and shifts/cohorts are currently used in American schools, Australia, and New Zealand (noting these countries benefit from strict national lockdowns early in the pandemic).
This second thought experiment challenges me because anti-lockdown protests infuriated me last year. Looking back, we saw a rare, coordinated, nonpartisan-ish action on lockdowns because within a week or two:
- hospitals were rationing PPE
- the delayed then sudden reveal of community spread due to CDC errors and CDC restrictions on labs
- no office, school, or organization had a feasible open-with-testing plan
- colleges and universities decisions about Spring Break
- massive death estimates study published by Imperial College London
The discourse suddenly changed from ‘don’t shake hands’ and ‘remember Toronto had SARS once’ to ‘oh shit oh shit’.
Our lack of information led to confusion about risk. When people asked, who is at risk? And, where is the risk? They got confused answers, they got weird numbers, they asked why they needed to be in lockdown when their county had no patients (testing) positive in their hospital.
If testing and epidemiology improve to the point that we can detect and reliably measure an oncoming mini-pandemic, maybe we have a chance at a softer approach?
Surely DARPA+NSF+NIH will fund a bajillion dollars of post-Covid research into this. And maybe the next pandemic is 3x or 5x Covid where this is useless. But I hope we can talk about this someday without sounding like conspiracy theorists.
Places I want to go
- New York City — I haven’t been away this long for many years. There are some people who I should see in person. MoMA has a whole new building. Movies take me back to random NYC moments.
- Turkey (+?)— it was super cool working with a refugee code school, and would like to continue supporting students now that I know more about data science, ML, and NLP. This would need to wait until it’s safe for students to meet in-person.
- Taiwan — to see my friends and their baby (my godson) who turned 3. They sent me a link about applying for a ‘gold card’ and 2-year work visa, but I’m afraid of paperwork, testing, strict 2-week in-room quarantine, and how I would handle my job.
- Crete —I haven’t been to Greece, but have a vision of Crete from mythology books and my Airbnb bookmarks.
- Alexandria, Egypt — I want to present at a conference at the current Library of Alexandria.
Back in 2019 I saw a refugee law/policy mini-course at the American University in Cairo’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies… so maybe this would be a double-feature trip? - Bodhgaya, India — home of the Buddha tree — I often think back to my time in Lumbini (Buddha’s birthplace) and Pokhara in Nepal. I added Bodhgaya to my list after watching an Indian TV series. There is a pilgrim train which connects Delhi to Bodhgaya and other important sites.
