Sunday, June 21st, 2020
None of the thunderstorms predicted for the day happened! It started of a bit on the grey side of blue skies which made for a pleasantly cool morning.
Just as I had finished my first coffee and was ready to settle into the morning read my colleague and friend and soon to be new neighbor stopped by for a chat and a tea bringing with her self-harvested cherries, which is another idea for EM and I to pursue on a weekend – a trip to an orchard. So the day had a social component at its start.
Seeing the weather held, we did go sailing, though there was not much wind sadly, and being out on the water between 13:00 and 15:00 with cloudless skies made me long for a hose to rise down once we made land. Sadly, no such thing at the marina. Thsi prompted me to check on the Bethesda pool yet again, just to find out it will only open in the coming weeks; whatever that may mean. So glad we have the Y membership and ow have a lane booked for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I will need to remember to book one for Thursday! This weight gaining needs to be reversed. Glad to say that at least it seems to have stopped following cutting back on any snacks outside of the two meals we have. Today was fresh spring roll day, healthy, light and fun to make. In the meantime, the baker in residence is making chocolate pies. I will stay far away from those.
The rest of the afternoon/ evening was spend doing what now has become the norm: scanning the news and making progress on “The Warmth of Other Suns”, the Blog. So glad I have my garden, where I sit with either the ipad or with the laptop, as the name suggest,s on my lap.
The Virus continues to spread in the USA at least, but also Germany is reporting spikes in certain communities. No one has the appetite for more lock downs and it appears as if taking social distancing serious is a challenge for most people, which is disconcerting. Accordingly, global infection rates are going up faster again, with the tally at 8,9 million reported cases today. The USA has seen a staggering 32k increase in a single day! Increasingly people in their 20s and 30s test positive. There is a direct correlation between increasing infections And decreasing social distancing. Who woudl have thought?
Seems like the young folks considered themselves invincible, well they are not. And the administration has now lost the plot completely calling for testing to slow down to fix the numbers, while at the same time accusing China of sending infected people around the world to spread the Virus. How insane can the government get? Every time I think it can not get worse, it gets even more stupid. Have these people no brains? Or worse, do they think the population consists of a bunch of nitwits? Then again,.....
The virus may be weakening in severity, not an uncontroversial discussion. But if true, it might make for good news as it is the deadliness which is causing the greatest concerns. There is also more research on the reliability of test results, with a strong indication that people may show negative results even though they are infected. From what I can tell, the tests need a certain amount of virus in the body to reliably identify the infection. Hence, a negative test result is no clean bill of health. This of course is a problem on many levels, but especially for travel. It also means that it is unlikely life will return to normal without any vaccine. So praying efforts of University of Oxford are working out and we get a vaccine by the end of this year.
While on the topic of travel; travel to Europe may none the less become possible sometime in July. Still not sure if we would go even if we could.
Between COVID and police brutality two issues are almost forgotten entirely: climate change and Brexit. The latter will hopefully be completed in coming months, one way or another, and then disappear from the news entirely. I tend to agree with the “hard stand” of no deal at any price.