Friday, May 1st, 2020
Woke about to cloudy skies this morning which dispersed over the day after some rain in the morning to make way for a sunny afternoon. The weather is supposed to be beautiful tomorrow with a pleasant 24C and sunshine. Perfect for a Braai, so spare ribs, millies and a spinach salad for our lunch tomorrow. It also meant we could resume our post lunch walk!
While the plants I order 40 days ago have still not arrived, the bulbs have. It took over two weeks! These apparently are disliked by voles (which is why I bought them) as they all belong to the onion family and flower in spring; so too late to bring joy this year, but a nice activity for this weekend; albeit one promising back and thigh pains for Sunday.
I have been harassing EM to get a move on with her CAS project and finish her University research website. She did some work on it in the first two weeks of our #stayhome time when there was no school at all. Then she went in search for a sponsor at school and clarified if this needed to be a group effort and who was eligible to be part of the group. Since then no progress; in part I think because her BFFs are not terribly motivated to put in the effort now that the university tour in the summer may not be happening. I have suggested she work with her friends doing IB in Prague and Kiev, but have only received a lukewarm response to that. Today I offered to work on it with her over the weekend. Turns out she does not have time. She has to complete her art project by Monday and is taking a remote SAT test Sunday morning.
Even though there will only be pass/fail grades for schoolwork for this quarter, school seems to have eventually gotten the hang of remote teaching. All IB higher level classes give assignments and even quizzes. The same applies for math and physics. As a result EM has been working on essays and history reading guides – at times until the early hours of the morning. The latter mainly due to procrastination, not because of overwhelming amounts of assignments.
The grading issue has caused another flurry of activity on the school as well as the neighborhood Listserv. Apparently, it is unclear how grades for the second semester are to be established. There is a major discussion among parents to allow optional letter grades as both for juniors and seniors these are critical for college applications. I have a hard time distinguishing the different proposals. My key take away: it is very complicated. I did sign the petition though to allow optional grades as I believe the county must find a way to figure this out. Especially in light of potential second lock downs in autumn should the virus then surge again and necessitate further social distancing.
Scientists have developed three scenarios for how the pandemic may play out between now and 2022. They are advising governments to prepare for scenario two, which is worst case, and would see a new significant wave of infections in autumn/ winter of this year necessitating renewerd shut downs. It is not a thought I cherish, but I guess one we all need to wrap our heads around in the absence of either a viable a vaccine or treatment.
The world news on COVID sees some cheers today. Senegal, which is rather poor and certainly does not have a strong hospital infrastructure is testing every single one of its citizens for Corona in an effort to contain a spread. To do so, they have developed a simple test which provides results within the hour and costs USD 1 per test. I am stunned and grateful. They should sell the know how to each US State separately for a tidy fee!
If a so called third world country can do this, why not the so called developed world? Just as I was asking myself this, I came across more good news on testing. Apparently the US military has developed a test which can identify carriers before they become infectious. This would make for great news for travelers.
Emirates is already piloting this, conducting tests at the airport with results available within 10 minutes. If this is not only successful, but scalable it may bring travel back within reach and help open up economies. It might also make measures like those currently enforced in China unnecessary.
It is more than understandable that countries which have successfully curbed the virus in their jurisdictions are not interested in imported cases. As the world moves forward in the age of Corona there will need to be some reliable system in place which ensures that either sick people do not even take a flight, as is the case with the Emirates pilot, or that once they arrive, they cannot contaminate local residents, whcih is the Chinese approach.
Given the US approach to reopening and testing, I can well imagine that anyone arriving from the US is less than welcome, which does not bode well for either my work travel or our summer plans.
Testing in the US seems to have taken a downturn again, despite LA county testing all residents now. Total test administered to date stand at 6.32 million, which is only 100k more than yesterday, so 300k less compared to the difference between Wednesday and Thursday. Not sure what is going on.
Worldwide reported cases are at 3.33 million, up from 3.27 million yesterday. Numbers across the US continue to increase by 3% day to day. I am disconcerted by seeing numbers in the DMV continuing to increase by more than the national average. Maryland sees an 8% increase today, and after 51 days of #stayhome it does not bode well for a return to normalcy any time soon. Also disconcerting if a governor procures testing kits abroad and finds he needs to hide them from the federal government. Am hoping increased numbers are due to increased testing, but who knows?
The funniest read I came across today was on an aquarium in Japan which is asking the public to please video chat with its eels. The eels are not seeing any visitors so are now hiding when their human care takers make the roudns through the aquarium. The plan is to set up screes and feature people calling via video to the eels.
Happy Friday!