Sunday, July 5th, 2020
We are making the most of summer given the circumstances. Today, after a morning with the news we headed to Alexandria and the marina. We had a boat booked for noon. I was worried it might be way to hot, especially if the wind were to die down. But we had a steady 12mk/h which made for gentle sailing. Gentle enough to take my Aikido friend C. and his two daughters for a ride. The 11 and 12 year old girls were a little worried at first, but soon got very comfortably settled on the stern of the boat, ducking the jib at each turn.
It was nice to chat with libertarian leaning C. about current politics (and there is a lot to talk about) since his views are oftentimes refreshingly different. Following a conversation I had had with D.’s brother William on July 2nd I had posted the ideas we had developed for a Biden ticket on FB asking for thoughts and comments. Our line-up was:
VP – Harris
Treasury – Warren
Health & Education - Sanders
Defense – Buttgieg
Labor - Young
Justice – Abrams
State – Collins
C. did not like the idea of Harris as she apparently has been pro police and passed rather harsh sentences. Given the VP has no real role (other than potentially becoming president, which given Biden’s age is highly likely), her stance may not be so important. Then again, when lining her up as potential president a hard law and order image is not helpful. Another friend suggested Mitt Romney as VP in an effort to bridge the divide. This is an interesting idea, if only Biden had not committed to nominating a woman as his VP. Plus, it would line up another white male president. Both Abrams and Collins could however be viable VPs and be groomed for a presidency, in which case Harris would be out of the line-up all together. Anyway, just thought experiments, but fun ones.
I scored twice in the last 24 hours. I have a two-hour slot at the Bethesda pool for Monday and next Saturday. Now I am hoping there will be no thunderstorms during my timeslots. I will try to book there on weekends from now on and stay with the Y Monday-Friday, so tomorrow I need to remember to book a lane at the Y for Thursday; maybe I will try for the 1pm slot again which is now a 45 minute slot.
Globally 11.36 million cases of Corona infected are reported today. The US has seen another 50+K increase today, bringing the total up to 2.93 million. We will probably hit the 3 million mark tomorrow. Interestingly, the death toll is rising much slower than before, despite news of overwhelmed hospital sin Texas amongst others. The fact that most new infections have hit young people may be one explanation for the virus being less deadly. Another explanation may be the ever-growing knowledge about the disease which makes treating sick people easier earlier on. Also, better contact tracing is in place, even though many are uncooperative as previously noted.
Singapore is equipping all of its citizens with tokens that memorize other tokens encountered. If someone tests positive, the data is evaluated and every token owner notified and asked (or forced?) to quarantine in an effort to have optimal contact racing. I cannot even imagine the reaction of people refusing to wear masks in the USA if they had to wear this tracker developed by authorities in Singapore even if it is super effective and completely anonymous – or so they say. I am certain the data can be evaluated for all sorts of purposes if a government choose to do so.
As infections continue to spiral out of control in the USA it is not unknown what needs to be done. The problem is a complete lack of leadership at a time when there needs to be a nationwide strategy and solution which may be employed differently in different parts of the country; some of which may include lock downs restricted to particular hotspots. Just look at every other part of the world (well almost), where highly affected areas are shut down, most recently in Melbourne. In the absence of national leadership there are increasing calls for the governors to agree on a course of action, in what would basically amount to a parallel structure. I am not sure if that is a desirable precedent.
Woke up to torrential rainfalls this morning – of course – the one night I do not cover the cushions on the outside furniture it has to rain. The last four nights I diligently did, and it did not rain. As a result, I could not move my office outside despite beautiful sunshine later in the afternoon argh. On the upside, I did harvest some of the Cervil I planted last week and made a beautiful Cervil foam to go with our pan fried Kohlrabi for lunch. It is a delicious spring herb, so glad I found and bought it. Maybe I will end this quarantine with a small cook book😊.
Conversations in this household over the past 24 hours have revolved over the senior girls’ t-shirts. BCC appears to have a tradition where the senior girls all wear the same t-shirt on the first day of their senior school year. As a result, the rising seniors have over recent weeks engaged in design discussions eventually narrowing down the potential design to a few choices. These were put out for a vote; apparently the results were not to the satisfaction of the organizing committee so a second vote was scheduled within a few hours with the result being that a Hanna Montana design won.
Apart from the fact that the design is not popular in this household EM had significant grievances, her main complaint was around the process. There are roughly 250 rising senior girls. In the initial vote some 177 voted, despite the fact that the entire process was organized through a closed FB group, so from the outset the democratic process was flawed as not everyone has a FB account and even if they do, only administrators can add group members. This does not seem to dissimilar to the US election system, where one needs to register to vote and from my understanding that is not necessarily an easy process.
The initial design choices to be voted upon where “Dunkin Donuts” and “Barbie”, with Barbie winning. Since people did not like the primary result three other options were included: the “Rolling Stones Band Logo”, the “Rolling Stones Magazine Logo” and the “Hanna Montana” theme. This vote however was announced to take place at 10:00pm during a week when many students were swatting for their AP exams and less than half of the girls participated (133).
EM first raised her concerns about the process not being inclusive enough in the FB group. This resulted in her being attacked for not liking the choice the group had made, even though she had not disclosed her preferences. Again, this seems very reflective of the political culture in this country; if someone questions a process they are “poor losers”. However, she did not give up. Rather she put fingers to keyboard and raised her concerns with the teacher supervising the selection, making the point that firstly, half the constituents could not even vote as they had no access to the ballot, secondly pointing out that a process where a few people decided to take a revote in the middle of the night when many students are preparing for exams the next day would lead to many girls feeling disenfranchised.
And she succeeded. Two final designs (Hanna Montana and Rolling Stones Magazine) will now be send to all rising senior girls through the school email with a link giving them the opportunity to vote until next Tuesday when all exams are done. So very proud of her for pursuing what she considered to be fair to all. Seems I must have done something right in teaching her values also.
News on the Corona front is pretty much the same: rising case numbers (5,2 million today), increasing death toll (337k globally) and the US is following that trend with new reported case hovering around 20k every day. The New York Times provides a good summary of all that is noteworthy today. Florida will allow summer camps, church services have been declared essential by the occupant of the WH, the drug advertised by him is still toxic and China has tested a vaccine on 108 people with mild success and as yet to be proven effectiveness.
It is probably not feasible to remain locked-up until a viable vaccine has been developed and manufactured at scale. And I, like most everyone else I know, really want this to end, but much rather than risking a second three months of what we are currently doing, I would much rather do another one now and be sure infection numbers can be contained, cases isolated, then a reapt in a few months.
I have serious doubts that this country is able to continuously contain the spread at a a rate of say 0.7. Even if from a capacity point of view some States maybe, there are too many people out there who will not cooperate with contact tracing as evidenced by the comments I read on the official FB site of the State of Maryland on the COVID19 situation. Yesterday they announced that as of Tuesday the State would have all the needed capacity to test, trace and isolate in place. The comments of people were truly shocking.