Shutdown Diary
In the past week in the U.S. ...
New daily reported cases fell 1.2%
New daily reported deaths rose 13.1%
Covid-related hospitalizations fell 11.8%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 1.9%.
The number of tests reported rose 2.2%
At least 172.8 million people have received one or both doses of the vaccine in the U.S.
This includes more than 142.1 million people who have been fully vaccinated.
Make no mistake: COVID-19 is a deadly disease and hundreds of people in the US die from it daily, even two months after most American adults were eligible for vaccines. However, keep in mind the death toll is down from a few thousand per day to a few hundred. We're down to numbers we haven't seen since late March 2020. I would have to look at the numbers closely to see why a double digit increase in deaths; sometimes you have adjustments to previously released numbers. We are now seeing mid-teen thousands of cases reported per day.
Vaccinations are up slightly, about 5% and around 1M jabs daily. That's still only about 2% of American residents weekly, so we won't the above graphic move quickly, currently 52% at least partially vaccinated. I don't know if the boost is mostly newly eligible mid-teenagers, but we're still 20-30% shy of the level we would target for herd immunity. But assuming half the population in public is immune, natural or acquired, it's difficult to see a sustained wave reemerging in a sustained manner but there are in particular red states with less than a third of the residents vaccinated, so we could see some hotspots unfortunately, not to mention we could see a pickup past summer later this year.
I wouldn't say that I've retired my facemasks but I don't worry about confrontations with mask fetishists.. I'm back to working on-site on a semi-regular basis; the local facility is aiming for a 60% on-site schedule by summer. Ironically there's a bit of a pushback from those of us who have been teleworking for months. People, especially those with kids, like the flexibility; I've gotten used to civilians pinging back "I've got to feed the kiddos" or "I had to take the dogs out for a walk". I certainly don't miss crowded conference rooms for meetings; it's a lot more convenient to connect through Microsoft TEAMS. In my case, as a professional DBA, I've been to server rooms on an occasional basis over the years, so probably over 90% of my tasks can be done remotely, whether from a cubicle vs. home. There's an exception in that sometimes, say for more privileged or classified information systems for obvious reasons, access is limited generally to in-person work with layered security; you have to leave cellphones, smart watches, etc., in receptacles outside the facility. I haven't done a lot of that recently, but I remember of having to get escorted to replace a failed disk or having to arrange for a visiting field engineer replacing a defective power supply.
They are still spacing us white-collar workers out, maybe a couple dozen workers in my section of a floor wing cubicle suite. There's an honor system currently; if you're not vaccinated, you must wear a mask. I think supervisors can ask you to document your vaccination; I remember asking whether I had to bring my vaccination card on site if security challenged my being unmasked. I would say maybe 33 to 40% of the workers I've seen at work are masked, and I suspect some of those, just like in grocery stores, may be doing it out of habit or perhaps are vaccinated but think masks provide another level of security. I think the evidence to the latter is at best marginal; masks don't really provide much protection against bioaerosols which can mix in the air you breathe. It provides some two-way protection against virus-laden respiratory splatter, primarily by symptomatic individuals. The mask policy isn't for the sake of your own safety but to protect others from the risk you pose to them. The presumption that you are infected is troubling, no doubt exacerbated by the fact a significant percentage of the infected are asymptomatic. We libertarians have an issue with the concept of illegal searches or invasion of privacy without the burden of proof by the State.
Not much I've seen over the past week on the topic, although Marginal Revolution focused how much more effective Moderna's vaccine vs AstraZeneca's, but as last note, the latter's is still not approved for local distribution. There's a pledge by the Biden Administration to provide millions of vaccine supplies to Covax, which seeks to distribute doses to less wealthy nations without vaccine production capacity. There's also discussion about the possible contamination of millions of J&J's doses produced in Baltimore.
Finally, there's a recently revived speculation about whether the origins of COVID-19: was it a bioengineered virus that escaped Wuhan labs? Former President Trump desperately looked for a scapegoat to deflect attention from his incompetent handling of the crisis; the hypothesis has recently reemerged with Biden demanding a review of the matter. China's defensiveness and lack of cooperation with international authorities haven't been helpful in defusing the situation. (Many Asian cultures emphasize saving face.) Now let me be clear: I don't consider this hypothesis credible, and I've snapped out to anti-Fauci critics trying to exploit the current revival of the hypothesis for political reasons. It's easier to come up with a crackpot conspiracy than to discredit it in a tweet. For the interested reader, Scientific American has an even-handed discussion of the kerfuffle here.
Life's Little Problems
One of the problems I face back at work is my cellphone gets rather spotty coverage. I can get calls but my WIFI is unusable, and incoming texts, at least not in direct response, appear as un-downloadable blobs (except I can see who sent them, and for some reason ads from Best Buy or Amazon get through). So when I get a cluster of family texts, I get concerned; is there something wrong with Mom? And you get home and find out it's all stupid stuff, like a reference to my talkative Mom's past conversation on breastfeeding with some priests also on a cruise! (My Mom's late brother was also a priest.) I have no idea how that conversation started; I joke-texted back, "As long as she didn't complain I ruined her breasts for the other siblings..." One of my sisters-in-law texted back, "Well, she did mention that once [my] big head made it out during childbirth, it made the other sibling childbirths much easier..." Heh. I've actually heard that one before.
The biggest annoyance of the cellphone coverage is sometimes I have issues with Microsoft Authenticator, a variation of multi-factor authentication, in logging into Teams. (Authenticator is like one of those RSA tokens I've had with multiple former employers, where a randomized PIN is only active for a few seconds and constantly changes; it's annoying when the PIN changes during input.) I pretty much have to be in open status on Teams during work. One time I recall having to go through the pain of setting up a phone call to confirm my logon; if I go outside to get a strong enough WIFI, the PIN has changed long before I get to my upper-floor cubicle.
Having a VPN account is great for security but it has its issues. For example, one day I was logging into my brokerage account one day when all of a sudden the company pushed an international policy statement into the foreground; and I'm like, "What the hell?" I usually connect to a domestic location but the VPN service does have international locations. Probably the weirdest was when I was on Twitter one day and all the trends were east European. Amazon doesn't like it one bit, won't even let me download my new Kindle titles or connect to certain webpages (my VPN usually has a snooze button). Even Google gets confused; I'll get ads local to NY or NJ sometimes pushed to my browser.
I've gained and lost weight on various diets all my life. I never had a problem through high school because, although I had plenty to eat growing up, we were a one-income family, and Dad didn't make much money as an NCO in the USAF; of course, I have 6 younger siblings, and we usually qualified for the free lunch program. We rarely ate out or did fast food, and when we did, it was usually Dad giving Mom a break from cooking, special occasions like religious sacraments and the like. Soda pop and ice cream were rare treats.
I'm not sure what happened when I got to college; it's not like OLL dorm food was all that great. (And I had the additional perspective of working for the vendor for our dining facility, at one point getting promoted to assistant cook. I knew all the gross things like leftover fried fish fillets getting mixed in with the freshly fried. But somehow I gained more than the freshman 15. Maybe it was stress eating or too much of the wrong foods. It really wasn't comments from other people that led to my awakening. I remember attending some academic awards ceremony (I think my Presidential scholarship had been renewed) and I was in a group photo with others, including my taller (5'10") rail-thin coed friend. In the picture I looked like a blimp taking up half the photo next to a trio of thin coeds. Dude, not good! I became obsessed, sending away for some liquid protein diet; another coed friend thought I was going to kill myself on that, so I sent it back unused. I recall, however, by sheer willpower, dropping some 75 pounds over several months.
But it's been a struggle all my life. I think I weighed in at 175 for my Navy physical, which was fine for my height, but at some point when I reported in at Orlando after OIC in Newport, I weighed in at 193--and the military has a no-nonsense policy when it comes to weight and fitness. They can and do resort to measures of public humiliation. Now as a math instructor my weight wasn't really an issue in work performance, but military rules are rules. I once had a supervisor scream at me for 15 minutes because I hadn't polished my belt buckle. In this case I was ordered to mandatory fitness training outdoors, in full view and ridicule of guys coming off shift.
Now for much of my adult life, even though I was big, I've exercised from jogging through my college years (including my doctoral residency) and/or doing a mix of cardio (bike riding, steppers, etc.) and weight training in the gym. To be honest, I never really had a bad diet at home. I didn't buy any sugary items (doughnuts, chips, baked desserts), ate lots of fast food etc. I did eat my fair share of pizza, an IT staple at various work luncheons, etc., and occasionally I went to all-you-care-to-eat Pizza Hut lunch buffets or Indian buffet restaurants with work colleagues, but I almost never eat out on my own, order carryout, etc. The exceptions tend to be things like traveling or moving or when I live the road warrior lifestyle like for a few years around the turn of the century. I remember at one point when I moved to California, I had been unable to find a local (San Jose) fitness center affiliate for my national chain membership (the nearest was around SF and I really didn't want to battle Highway 101 traffic to work out. (Yes, they had other fitness chains in the area, but I didn't want to buy another membership.) On the road it was hard to stick to a diet. I remember this one engagement in Utah around Provo when I often got off work around midnight and my dining choices were a greasy always-open diner on the interstate or a Taco Bell in town. And then almost immediately I went home to grab some sleep at the Hampton Inn. Rinse, Repeat. Yes, some hotels do have fitness centers but I rarely had the time to use them.
The weight crept up on me. I knew it, of course; because I had to buy bigger clothes. Still, it was a shock when I hit the magic 300 lb. level in California. The "job by extortion" (my boss would drop me as a contractor if I didn't agree to a perm offer, which my contractor agreement prohibited) had me working ungodly hours, I wasn't working out.
But when I had my "come to Jesus" moment was I had to fly to a job interview (ultimately unsuccessful) in Baltimore in 2003 and found I could barely squeeze into my one good suit. After I got back, I resolved to do something. Now when I worked as a contractor for a Chicago department, I encountered an oddball project DBA commuting out of Florida. He had mentioned losing a lot of weight on a low carb diet and recommended it.
It suddenly dawned on me for all my academic success through 4 degrees, I had never put the same discipline in researching my own diet. Along the way, I ended up dropping about 90 lbs. over the coming year dropping well below 300 lbs. Since then my weight has oscillated up and down and continues to be a struggle. My appetite has changed over the years; now of course, restaurants have often served sizeable portions, but the last time I went to San Antonio, I went to Bayseas, a seafood place in Converse and ordered the catfish platter; I could barely make it halfway through the main course and had to order a doggie bag (which made for a later meal at home).
Several years back, some time after I started this blog, I started another blog, more of a layman's chronicle on nutrition and weight loss. In early September, I had hit what for me was a highly unusual one or 2 day bug; naturally I was worried at the time if somehow I had contracted COVID-19 (no, I didn't run a fever or exhibit any other symptom, but I was basically knocked out and in bed for a couple of days). I barely ate anything for a few days (in fact the idea of eating nauseated me) and probably got a little dehydrated, but I weighed in at a weight I hadn't seen since the early 1990's. Long story short, I quickly gained back much of what I had lost during the illness/recovery and since then I've steathily surged back another 20-odd pounds. I don't think my diet has radically changed but there was a medication change earlier this year. I've sent lost back a few of those pounds.
Long introduction to set up the context. I have a couple of nephews (third sister) who had remarkable weight losses after college graduation. Both have regained much of what they had lost, one very recently. So the second nephew went on Facebook asking for suggestions. He got a variety of tips, including protein drinks and intermittent fasting. I responded with the following:
You're still doing better than your uncle. I've been over 200 probably since my late 20's, although for years I spent a lot of time in the gym lifting weights. Be very careful about calorie-restrictive diets because they can trigger a starvation defense where the body cuts down calorie burn. I eat a lot of grass-fed meats and oily fish (wild-caught salmon, mackerel, sardines, etc.) Mostly low-carb but some complex carbs (whole wheat or Ezekiel bread, beans, etc., and an occasional baked potato is good fiber) I've done the lower-carb protein stuff for lunch, although I mostly avoid liquid products. I avoid juice, prefer fruit (e.g., pears, berries, cherries). Try to vary your diet. I don't have a fetish for white meat (e.g., chicken breasts). If you want tasty chicken, try air-chilled and/or heritage chickens (I had an Emmer & Co bird in a ButcherBox--oh my God! Pricey bird. I don't know if they're still in business...)
Entertainment
Whatever happened to the western? In part that was triggered by seeing Shane and Quigley Down Under on Positiv.TV. (I would add Tender Mercies, but technically that's about country/western music.) When I was growing up, there were Lone Ranger reruns (my favorite), long-running series like Bonanza, Daniel Boone and Gunsmoke, not to mention reruns of The Rifleman, Rawhide, etc. Even shows like Little House on the Prairie and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman were set in the nineteenth century Old West. This is just so Americana; I remember when my Dad was assigned to an AFB in northeastern France, he couldn't get family housing on base, so we rented a house on the outskirts of Mars La Tour., next door to a small France farm. One day the boy from the farm knocked on our door wanting to play Cowboys & Indians with me.
Now, granted, I haven't kept up with recent movies, but other than Clint Eastwood's track record of some 20-odd western features, there haven't been many others (TV or movie) I can recall over the past 20 years or so. Maybe it has to do with the fickle preferences of the American viewer or the politically correct view of "exploited" Native Americans, a variation on Rousseau's notion of the "noble savage". We already saw storylines on the theme of victimized Indians in the Dr. Quinn series, and God knows it's been a hot topic since Marlon Brando's 1973 infamous snub of his Best Actor win. It's not like I'm unsympathetic to the fact of Uncle Sam's bad faith treaties with indigenous peoples, but I dislike PC propaganda promoted through storylines; the truth is more nuanced. For those of us libertarians, there's something romantic with the notion of relative individual freedom of living in new territories.
