Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Sunday, May 17th, 2020

Fish & Octopus Soup

Going back and copying the text from the blog to a sepeaate file I noticed that today was a day I actually seem to have forgotten to write a post. I did put a picture so I remember it was the day we made fish soup following the recipe of an Italian I met a my friend Andrea's house in Addis Abba. That was my last trip in 2020, one week. Who knows when next I will be able to travel for work or pleasure.

Review

As most Sundays off to a very slow start. Spend most of the morning reading over coffee, so gone through my usual news digest and FB. Today I started with Spiegel and then worked my way through the Guardian, the Huffington Post, BBC and my Apple Newsfeed.

After yesterday’s outing with the first human social interaction in 66 days, we are taking it easy today. I had some work to do and have a super early start tomorrow, so early night is likely. TAs a result the day continued mostly uneventful. We did head out to the farmers market at noon, but did not get there until an hour before it was due to close, so the selection was rather limited on the vegetable side. It is a nice outing tough, making for a sense of normalcy while feeling like a very safe way to shop. People are maintaining their distance and crowd control is very well managed, though this means there are fewer vendors than normal.

Getting back I had a long chat with one of my friends and spend the afternoon making a tomato - fish soup infused with squid ink. While the color is unusual (black) it tasted very nice. Especially since I added the defrosted mussel- chorizo broth from when we made our pasta Vongole a few weeks back.

We did go on our Hood walk after lunch, which was very late today, making use of road closures for a change of scenery. And I had a chance to start a new book (physical!) “Before the River Takes Us” by Helen Thorfinn takes me to Bangladesh and based on the first 70 or so pages is a great read.

During my morning forage of the news I found this very entertaining piece by journalists of the Washington Post have written reviews of the places the sequester in as if assessing a hotel stay. 

Ours would read something like this:

Small gem, limited entertainment

This is boutique lodging set in a tranquil garden which is lovingly maintained by the owner. There is always something in bloom. Housekeeping is functioning well. All rooms are cleaned daily, laundry service is every other day and sheets are changed weekly in this environmentally conscious residence. Meal service leaves something to be desired. Breakfast is very much a DIY affair, however the one daily meal served by the chef is typically healthy and superb, though dining hours (somewhere between 1-3pm) are strange and can be erratic.

The property has no exercise facilities; so one has to resort to walking, jogging or biking through a residential suburb. Evening entertainment options are likewise limited to board games or movies. The TV does not function. This is compensated by a very large library, both physical and electronic books are available in abundance. The well stocked wine fridge also makes up for some of the short comings.

The dining room  appears to double as office for the general administrator whom the owner seems unwilling to control.

Given there is a fur ball head butting patrons every morning at 6am demanding to be let out, you might as well opt for an early night as it is impossible to go back to sleep due to the screaming birds.

Corona continues to dominate the news throughout the world and it is mostly unpleasant. Numbers are still going up. Today the world reports 4,71 million infected, which is 90k more than yesterday. The US accounts for a quarter of these. America’s total share is in excess of 1.5 million. The death toll in the US is now reduced by reporting death only as COVID if the death certificate explicitly states this as cause of death. Anyone who passed away and tested positive for COVID has been taken out of the statistics. Also a way to make the numbers look better I guess. Not sure it will help in battling the virus though.

As the US reopens, there is a spike in cases. Based on a number of different models CDC is predicting the US will have 100k dead by June 1; that is not a pleasant thought and likely means 150k by the end of summer as people go out and about and become less vigilant. This of course displeases the ruler in the WH so he and his croonies have embarked on a campgain against CDC, with CDC becoming the scape goat for the poor governmetn response.

In line with policies defunding health care and the WHO in the middle of a pandemic, the orange agent has now appointed the director of Moderna which received federal funds to head up the vaccine development for the administration. Strangely the man holds stock options worth US$10 million in said company.

Clearly there is a lot of “draining the swamp” going on.