Post #5312 J

 Shutdown Diary

The latest stats from Washpo:

New daily reported cases rose 11.2% 

New daily reported deaths rose 40.9% 

Covid-related hospitalizations rose 6.6% 

Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 10.6%.

The number of tests reported rose 16.6% 

In the last week, an average of 886.3k doses per day were administered, a 6% increase  over the week before. An average of 300.2k adults received the first dose in the U.S. over the last week

According to CDC:

There isn't a lot of good news here; we haven't seen numbers in this range since the last wave peak around last January. On a more positive note, on the vaccination front, we are nearing the 75% partial vaccination rate among US adults, and just over half of Americans are fully vaccinated. The local federal installation shows that the area is now considered high saturation, a benchmark for compelling compulsory masking (including the vaccinated).

I did get my batch of N95 disposable masks via Amazon. It was one of my more unusual transactions, probably one of Amazon's small business partners. I was expecting an Amazon delivery on Thursday I recall. But one of my daily emails, a USPS daily email on upcoming deliveries, hinted was a UPS delivery from Michigan Monday or Tuesday. (I was confused why USPS was alerting me about UPS deliveries, never mind trying to remember what I had ordered  from Michigan.)

Speaking of facemasks, one of the points I've frequently made is most cloth masks do a terrible job filtering out bioaerosols. In fact, if you do a simple Google search, you'll find multiple European countries require use of a surgical mask or better. This Popular Mechanics article includes a good discussion of major types, including relevant sample online shopping links.

Another recent article of interest I've read is Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok's discussion of FDA restrictions on COVID-19 tests. Germany allows over 10 times the number of different tests than the US, and costs can amount to under $1 a test  vs. the US' $10-20; in fact, the UK and Canada have been known to give out free tests. I've made it clear since the early pandemic in this segment that by far, I consider the delay and initial rollout/failure of testing Trump's biggest failure in leading a strategy to contain the virus.  The cost issue is going to discourage frequent testing or early testing with initial symptoms. This is far from a free market in healthcare.

It looks like Biden wants to shorten the elapsed time for boosters by a few months, e.g., from 8 to 5 months. In the meanwhile, some international organizations see boosters in a zero-sum fashion vs. getting COVID-19 vaccines distributed in the developing world countries.

One of the problems I've constantly worried about during the COVID-19 waves is what happens to patients who find themselves with serious but treatable problems when hospitals lack capacity to treat them. CBS recently covered the case of a 46-year-old veteran who had a stuck gallstone--and died because he couldn't get medical treatment fast enough.

I'll conclude this segment with a few video clips of interest:.

Life's Little Problems

One of my annoyances in dealing with Windows on my PCs is when for some reason something changes on the presentation level which violates my expectations. I wouldn't say I'm obsessive-compulsive, but when Windows swerves me, it's highly annoying. I'm usually not sure what if anything on my part contributed to the problem. I must have been responsible in the taskbar docking problem, probably dragged my mouse unintentionally, having left the taskbar unlocked. 

I'm talking about things like my display flipping upside down or the taskbar docking on one of the other 3 (versus bottom) borders. Some people actually prefer these settings (bur I have different preferences; for example, I never eat French fries with ketchup--not that on my lower carb regimen I eat French fries regularly). 

There's a standard fix to the docking problem--drag the taskbar back using unused space on your taskbar--which, of course, assumes you have empty space on your taskbar. I eventually got it back after a reboot.

Jimmy Fallon apparently had a bit on people reporting horrible first date. I saw a webpage featuring some of the reader contributions. I feel for the lady who was on a date with a funeral director--and he showed up with a corpse in the backseat, saying he had to drop by work on their way to the date.

I personally had some BAD first dates (I've had some bad luck in asking out the wrong women; it's never been for superficial reasons like looks). Probably the first one that comes to mind is this Latina I had met through Catholic Newman at UH. I knew she was on a break from a relationship with John. My employer was hosting a dinner at a very good southwest Houston restaurant. So all the way in driving her to the restaurant she's reminding me not to read anything more into the date. She then spent the evening flirting with the male guest of a female colleague. I was dying of embarrassment in front of my co-worker. I later heard a rumor my date couldn't figure out why I never asked her out again.

I think I've mentioned this other young woman in prior posts (I ended breaking up with her after a few dates; she didn't take it well and wrote me any icy typewritten letter on Merrill Lynch letterhead I never read beyond the first paragraph, basically calling me the spawn of Satan; I once went to an Astros game, and I came back to literally 18 answering machine messages. The next day she vented about my not asking her to the game; "I didn't think you liked baseball." "I don't, but you should have asked. I was willing to do that for you." She then flipped into this other persona, where she invented a boyfriend who had driven them past the Astrodome (yeah, this was years back) and they had wondered why there were so many cars in the parking lot. So not only was she trying to get me jealous with an imaginary boyfriend, but he was a clueless idiot who can't figure out a full parking lot on game day...

I was inexperienced in dating at that point, and she was like "Advanced Topics in Dating". She had actually made the first move while I was taking a break at the Newman Center off campus (she wasn't a student; she lived in her family home a few blocks from campus; I think her dad was in prison, and I never pried into that). She was tall at 5'10.5" (taller than me, not an issue with me, although most women I have dated are shorter). It was weird because she was wearing these jean "hot pants", talking about her college nickname of "Miss Legs", and constantly flexing her legs while we're talking. So she was really aggressive. 

I remember our first date was an Indiana Jones movie. (I know that's aging me.) How could that go wrong? Let me count the ways. Apparently I was in the doghouse for not noticing she had gotten her hair done (it's like maybe I saw her once a week at Mass); I really didn't know why a girl would get her hair done to go into a dark theater. And I guess she was trying to impress me by translating the German dialogue in the film, but to be honest, I found that presumptuous and annoying, a variation on those those idiots giving away a movie plot while you're trying to enjoy a movie. Maybe if I had asked her what she thought they were saying....

Entertainment

As much as Hallmark Channel specializes in forgettable romantic comedies, it seems Lifetime is partial to psycho dramas. But I'm pretty sure it was on Lifetime where I first saw the movie "August Rush". It just struck me I haven't seen that or other romantic comedies like "Sundays at Tiffany's" or Katharine McPhee's "In My Dreams" (the latter two fantasies) in quite some time, the latter one on Hallmark.

Unfortunately, the flicks aren't available (for free) on Amazon Prime. The August Rush movie is about a u young musical prodigy whose parents, a young unwed couple, were separated by the girl's disapproving father, who also separates the girl, pregnant from the encounter, from her newborn son. The musician father never learns about his son but eventually unknowingly encounters him on the street as August has escaped from his grandfather's arrangements. The movie winds to a climax whether August's parents can reunite despite adversarial circumstances. (Well, it's predictable they do, or the whole movie would suck, but you wonder how it'll work out.)

I love musicals (at least through Grease), and I am fond of certain tunes from the movie, a favorite from which I embed below. 

College football is back; as I write this, I'm watching Illinois/Nebraska (no favorite). It's almost surreal seeing a full crowd and almost not a single mask in sight.