Tuesday, April 27th, 2021
There is a noticeable return to normal, or at least that is what it feels like.
A hot sunny day ended with practice in the park – bokken again. B. P. Sensei has returned from Wyoming and is teaching class again and as per our arrangement I got to practice with T. Shihan for the entire class. What a treat. He showed me a few small twists of the wrist here and there. As always, I find that the little moves make a big difference in the balance of power.
Looking back at almost a year of practice in the park, I find I have understood a lot I could not fathom before, so just maybe this was not a wasted year in my practice, but an enlightening one. Maybe in open hand practice I would not have understood the concept of holding a line and changing my shape for years to come.
As almost all of us fully vaccinated and CDC has issued new guidelines on what fully vaccinated people can now do, P. Sensei put forward a notion of practicing without masks. Seems we are not quite there yet as no one followed. However, there is an ongoing discussion about reopening the Dojo! Hopefully this will happen before the Cicadas descend upon us as I fear it will become quite noisy in the park once they are out in full force. I fervently hope these creatures will stick to the trees and refrain from moving around the air space we share.
Practice ended with the first Tuesday beer waza since March 2021. There had been attempts to gather on some ones’ patio after class for two weeks, albeit without takers. I think once people are in their cars they just go home. Hence I brought whatever beers I still had chilling in the garage to the park today and almost everyone stayed for a drink and a chat. It was so pleasant and felt like we are retaking another step towards normalcy.
As to the latest CDC guidelines: now that over 50% of all US residents have received at least one shot, restrictions for fully vaccinate people are being lifted. We, the fully vaccinated, may exercise and walk outdoors alone or with other fully vaccinated people without face masks. We may gather in- and outdoors with other fully vaccinate people of multiple households and we may exercise indoors with groups of up to fifty people. Only indoor dining is still discouraged, and face masks should be worn at all large in- and outdoor gatherings; mainly because it is impossible to know if all participants have been vaccinated. It is also unclear if fully vaccinated people can still transmit the virus. As CDC learns more about the virus, we can expect more restrictions to be lifted. I am very much in favor for a cautious return to “normal” lest there be resistant mutants and we need to start this entire process over. Now that would be truly devastating. Especially given news from India where the virus is completely out of control, much like it was in the USA in January, when the USA reported roughly 300k new infections a day. This is where India is at, with a far more fragile health care system, but also roughly four times as many inhabitants as the USA. In comparison, while numbers are bad and many are dying India is still doing better than the US was in its worst months. Numbers in the USA continue to stabilize at a high level with 52k new cases reported over the past twenty-four hours to bring the total to 32.9 million.
How important it is to curb the spread in all countries of the world is illustrated by the Indian variant spreading, which is much quicker than anticipated. The Indian mutation B1.617 has reached other countries. It has been found in at least 18 countries and territories spanning from New Zealand to the USA. Scientists are still unclear how this variant responds to vaccines. This makes it imperative to have a global vaccination drive. And here there is some good news: The small biotech firm from Maryland, Novavax, is reporting first results from its phase 3 trials in the UK, putting the vaccine on par with BioNTech and Moderna. In the USA Novavax plans to produce 150 million doses. In addition, Novavax has signed up a number of production facilities around the globe and could be a game changer in getting the world vaccinated as the Serum Institute of India is set to produce two billion doses of the Novavax shot in the second half of the year all destined for COVAX. A big step towards getting the world vaccinated; hopefully not too late.
Reading this article about the risks of indoor dining makes me rather remorseful of our Sunday lunch. However, if restaurant like Sur in California are willing to invest in air circulation and purification indoor dining may come back.