Thursday, September 3rd, 2020
Just another regular day at work from home. We are mainly trying to figure out our schedule in the new virtual school world. It looks like a 3:45 lunch is too late for people in this household as we will invariably start snacking around 13:00 at the late so we are experimenting with different times. My main challenge is the jour fix I have organized to start at 12:30 every day with the strategy group. This is not so much of an issue as classes resume at 12:30 also, but having to cook to eat at noon takes up some of my most productive time. No more elaborate recipes, but fast and easy to cook fare seems to be in order. That would take out the last bit of fun left in this rather restrictive life of ours as food preparation has become one of our favorite past times. Definitely after lunch walks are out of the question, even if the weather permits us to do so, now that it has become cooler.
Also, there is swim time and the Tuesday weapon class in the park. Swim time and Aikido practice are the only times I ever escape the house. With classes virtual neither EM nor I ever have alone time at home, and we are both starting to think of this as awkward at times. While I love for her to have people at home and have remodeled the house to give her her own entertainment space, there are times when I wish she would not be home so I could have a special friend over. At the same time, it is nice to have this closeness seeing it is her last year to be home.
The coming year anyway is full of uncertainties. Will she pass the IB? Where will she go to university? Will I stay in the US or move elsewhere? It will take some careful planning to make some space for both of our needs and I hope we will figure out a system over the coming weeks and even more planning to figure out our whereabouts after July 2021. Where is it she would be coming home too once at university? And could she even come home?
As infections spread around campuses this is a pertinent question. Not sending infected students across the country or continents to recuperate, but rather have isolation facilities on campus makes a lot of sense to me. The best case scenario would be for a vaccine to be out on the market and there is hope for that.
Experts believe it is feasible to have a viable and effective vaccine – or several – available early 2021. Another vaccine candidate is just entering phase 2 trials: Novavax, which has followed a more traditional approach in developing this vaccine than Moderna and others. There are now five vaccines in clinical trials in the USA and 33 in trials worldwide. With its decision to opt out of COVAX (see day 175), the US has limited itself to five options. Noteworthy that Novax has tested on 131 people and will now need to enroll thousands, so results on the vaccines efficacy are only expected in a some months.
In the meantime, CDC has alerted local health authorities to prepare for the distribution of a vaccine on November 1st, 2020.Of course the administration denies that this is in any way related to the upcoming elections, but who believes an administration that only spouts lies?
CDC seem to prepare for rolling out the vaccines by Pfizer (currently starting phase 3 trials, but no results yet) and Moderna (which has not even started clinical phase 3 trials yet, but is favored by the moron in chief). Rumors are CDC will license either or both for emergency use. This can only be an election ploy as there is no licensed viable vaccine yet and no one has completed phase 3 trials.
This is complete insanity and weirdly contradictory to the operation Quack Hack launched by the FDA. Quack Hack is directed conspiracy theories and unproven medication. Great name, sadly with advancing an untested vaccine CDC itself becomes a quack. Based on this article there are more than enough idiots and conspiracies out there. Really one does not need CDC to become one of them.
Oh, today the world reports 26.1 million and the USA 6.3 million infections. India is setting record highs reporting 83k new cases in a day. Sad.