Sunday, November 15th, 2020
All the careful preparation to keep us safe was in vain. My brilliant friend had blocked Saturday for me, I just did not know since it was never confirmed and after two day’s of silence I had no reason to believe the initial arrangement would stand. Seems there were work obligations in the evening. And today never happened. Clearly, there was a major breakdown in communication which resulted in this unfortunate and for me emotionally very stressful weekend.
I am of course sad now. Maybe we shall meet in 2021, maybe not. If not, maybe it is for the best.
Throughout the coming week we will be super cautious seeing the teens got back from their camping trip shacked up in a cabin together for three days and two nights. While I, through our test results, am certain they all were virus free, one never knows for sure, so better to err on the side of caution, especially since we plan to spend Thanksgiving with our pod family. I just agreed with them to get tested ahead of our Thanksgiving get together, just to be safe.
The week after Thanksgiving is our Christmas event and then we will isolate for a week and have multiple tests done again in preparation for our trip to Germany. Same spiel when we return in mid-January. My only worry is the cat. He will be home alone at night for a month, given Jennifer is not back and it is unclear when she may be able to return, which seems very sad. At least one of EM's friends has agreed to spend days schooling form our house and be with Max while we are gone. And then there is the son of my neighbor who would be willing to look after Max as well.
I did spend sometime last night enjoying the beautiful evening by my outdoor fire, and later sat by my inside fire. Also I got some fun out of the evening as my FWB stopped by, so I did make some use of my alone time. Glad to say he has also had two COVID-19 test done last week as a co-worker of his daughter tested positive. His test came bak negative. Since he spends a lot of time with his immune compromised ex-wife, who is paranoid about catching the virus, he is also very cautious. It was strange to spend three nights and days home alone. In our former life I would have made good use of the time; seeing friends, going out; alas in COVID times all of that is far to risky.
I did not manage to book a lane at either of my two pools for today, partially because I had put all plan making on hold yesterday after the text exchanges, keeping my time free for my brilliant friend. I made up for teh lack of swimming by working out in the garden; raking the leaves for the better part of an hour, an exercise I had engaged in the day before already, when I swept the leaves of the Patio. That turned out to be a rewarding exercis,e as I found the lost bracelet in the process. It must have dropped of my arm when I had lunch outside on Thursday. Now there is a crazy wind outside, whcih will hopefully blow many of the leaves into the street for the county sweepers to deal with.
Developments on the virus front continue to be disconcerting, with cases in the USA continuously rising, possibly not quite as fast anymore with “only” 159k new cases reported yesterday versus the 18k reported the day before to bring the US total to 11.1 million. And not just new infections are on the rise, but also hospitalizations and deaths (currently 1.500 per day).
Most of the world is also in the stronghold of surging infections with the global total today at 54.2 million, particularly Europe. Governments in Europe at least are taking action. Austria has now imposed a new lock down and many other countries have at least partial lock downs, which has led to a slower rise in cases so far. The hope is to have enough control over the virus to enable Christmas family gatherings; though small indoor gatherings have been at the core of current spikes.
There seems to be reason to be cautiously hopeful at leas:.
A vaccine may be on the horizon and scientists keep learning about treatments. Nonetheless, given the current spike, advise is to limit all outings to the absolute essential ones. No gym classes, ideally no office visits and no indoor gatherings with anyone not in the pod to curb the spread. Self-lockdown so to speak.
Also, scientists in Korea have been researching viral transmission since February and published their findings that viral replication is highest in the first 2 days and viral replication stops after 7 days. So the first two days after people contracts the virus they are most infectious and no longer infectious after 7 days.
The founders of BioNTech and de facto developers of the current front runner vaccine predict life can be back to normal by next winter.
Wouldn’t that be nice?