COVID Archives - Page 3 of 10 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lydster: Collegium interrupit

so much for orientation

My Latin may be imprecise, but the household has experienced collegium interrupit. The villain of the piece is COVID.

The plan was for the family to drive from Albany, NY, to western Massachusetts and stay at a hotel on Wednesday night. Then on Thursday morning, we would go the five or ten miles to the campus to be there by 9 a.m. A coterie of students would take my daughter’s belongings to her dorm room.

There would be an orientation for her on the first few days and, separately, for her parents as well. The parents would leave the area on Friday, and the college experience would begin.

Instead

On Tuesday, my daughter spent hours sitting on our front porch hanging out with two of her best friends before they too headed for college. They finished off the pizza and ice cream.

Wednesday, my daughter loaded the car on her own. We were 15 minutes from leaving when she got a call from one of her friends saying that the friend tested positive for COVID. Then she tested herself twice, and she likewise was infected.

She was largely asymptomatic initially, with a stuffy head that could have been brought on by her cleaning her room. Soon, though, she developed chills and a fever. BTW, she has had three COVID shots, proving this latest variant is inscrutable.

The college dean wrote that my daughter should complete the quarantine process at home. “We will notify residence life, health services, and any other staff who need to know that she will be coming to campus later. They will maintain confidentiality and will only let specific individuals know so they can relay information about [the late arrival]. A staff member from health and counseling services will be in touch, and we will have someone in Residence Life make contact through email with specific instructions for move-in.”

Quarantine for three

Meanwhile, the health services at the college recommended that both my wife and I should stay home for five days as well. We will, except when we go to the urgent care place for a more precise COVID test; they don’t let you in the building until it’s time for the test. If our daughter has negative tests on Monday AND Tuesday, then we can take her to school. But if either is positive, we have to wait ANOTHER five days, by which time classes will have started.

BTW, per the instructions from the Albany County Health Department, we reported the positive findings to them.

ARRRGH!

Still COVID-free, knock wood

reinfections

Several people I know IRL have gotten COVID in recent weeks. They are mostly the cautious, mask-wearing, vaccine-taking types. Also, Biden, Harris, and Fauci got it.

I’m still COVID-free, knock wood.

We have been going to the theater. All venues still require masks, and some, vax cards, and I am pleased. CDTA buses still require masks and have dispensers for those without, but about 30% of the riders are either maskless or wearing them on their chins. Frankly, I have run out of mojo to give them the evil eye.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times last week read: “‘I’m over it.’ Many in L.A. shrug off COVID-19 wave despite super-infectious subvariants.” I’m not sure I’d go anywhere in California. Look at the map from last week.

For instance, I’d be terrified to go to ComicCon in San Diego, even though participants are getting their vax status confirmed. Mark Evanier went to the first 50 of these notes and says he “can’t explain my assorted feelings about going this time. I know I’m happy that Comic-Con exists again as I’ve always had a good time at them. I’m just hoping everyone rises to the occasion and respects everyone else’s concerns about too much close contact. Comic-Con has never been the place you go to get away from crowds. Quite the opposite.”

Reversal

Something that fillyjonk said I totally understand. “One thing I think the pandemic has done to my mental health that’s a bad thing is, I’ve gotten in this mindset where ‘what is now, will be forever.’ So if things are bad, if I’m anxious, if I hurt – that’s forever now. ‘This is where I live now, I guess.'” I guess I was hoping for “THAT’S IT; COVID is gone.”

An article in the Boston Globe was scary. ‘Oh my god, not again’: COVID variant making reinfections more common. “Officials reassured people that if they get a booster now, they will still be able to get the updated booster that’s expected to be available in the fall.” But I got my second booster in April, so now what?

The CDC says “potentially more infections to come before that fall booster is available, which is why we really want to make sure people have as much protection as they can right now.”

I AM comforted somewhat by the fact that most of upstate New York is green or yellow, even as NYC, the three counties to its north, and Long Island are red. This is a reversal from three months ago when upstate was redder, and downstate was greener.

Still, I’ll be happy when I get my BA.4/BA.5 specific shot.

May rambling: Uvalde, TX

1400th episode of Coverville

health_data_2x — **From https://xkcd.com/2620/**

Fourteen children and one adult are dead. The assault at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed fourteen students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018. Wait, now it’s 19 children and two adults murdered. The assault at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.

And… Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) blames CRT? The time for politics – the politics of actually doing something – is now. Not, as Lee Goldberg points out: “The GOP’s answer is to have a third-grade teacher, armed w/a handgun, take [on a shooter]. Are they insane!?” Evil Stalks the Hall at the NRA. How the Uvalde police kept changing their story. The Weekly Sift guy repeats himself.

Jacinda Ardern talks about gun control on The Late Show and gives the 2022 Harvard Commencement Address. (Should we move to New Zealand?)

Also

The Rising Tide Of Color, a 1920 book, “is sometimes cited as the origin of Replacement Theory. It’s available for free at Project Gutenberg, but you need a strong stomach to read it because it’s unapologetically racist in a way you seldom see today.”

D’Souza’s ‘Big Lie’ Movie Is So Bad Fox Won’t Promote It

Subway franchises and Utilities: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

USPSTF Guidance Misses the Mark on Youth Suicide Risk Screening

How many lives could have been saved with COVID vaccinations in each state

He Donated His Kidney and Received a $13,064 Bill in Return

Rod Serling sitting around talking about writing

Big ‘Saturday Night Live’ Departures Will Test the Show’s Depth

Before Pixar’s ‘Turning Red,’ ‘Braceface’ and a 1946 Disney Short Tackled the “Taboo” of Menstruation

Now I Know: The Eye Shield That Keeps the Grumps Away and And He Couldn’t Use the Discount Anyway and The €222 Million Nap and The Mystery of the 175-Year-Old Battery-Powered Bell

Undamming the Hudson River

RIP

Roger Angell, Revered Baseball Essayist, Dies at 101

Into The Storm: Alan White, YES drummer

Ray Liotta Dies: ‘Goodfellas’ Star & ‘Field Of Dreams’ Actor Was 67

Fred Carter, the little-known Black artist behind Chick tracts of evangelism cartoons, Died. Those Chick tracks could be theologically… challenging.

R.I.P. Neal Adams, 1941-2022

MUSIC

Thoughts and Prayers – Drive-By Truckers

Beethoven Symphony No. 7, recast as a piano virtuoso work by Franz Liszt

Mr. Blue Sky and Kodachrome – Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem

Field Of Dreams – The Place Where Dreams Come True/End Titles (James Horner)

You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lie – Dana Valery

Finale from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones by John Williams

Broken/Head Over Heels – Tears For Fears

Avatar suite by James Horner

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You – Randy Rainbow

Coverville 1400: The Subject of this Cover Story is Talking Heads and 1401: Covers of 50-Year-Olds

I’m Alright – Jo Dee Messina

MARVEL Uptown Funk

The Untold Story of the White House’s Weirdly Hip Record Collection

So it’s NOT allergies?

rhinitis

This spring has been terrible for my nose and throat. I assumed the cause. But it’s NOT allergies?

I would have coughing jags. One at church on May 8 was so severe that I had to leave the choir loft, lest I hack through the sermon. I seemed OK enough the following Wednesday to ride my bike a few days later to a memorial service for a choir member, then onto my Dad’s group at church. But by the time I rode home, I couldn’t get enough air. This wasn’t the not-fit-enough response, but the my-lungs-feel-awful scenario.

The next morning, I had another coughing event WHILE I was taking my blood pressure. That 168 systolic reading WAS an aberration. Later, I went to my allergist. To test whether the allergy shots I took for about five years, but hadn’t taken in for just as long, I had to stop taking Zyrtec for three days. So I was pretty miserable when I once again became a human pincushion.

It’s all in my nose

But surprise! I have rhinitis, which “is moderate to severe and not well controlled.” But I have “no evidence of remaining sensitivity to tree or grass pollens based upon negative skin tests to these allergens.” I AM still allergic to ragweed, but that’s a late summer thing. “A second course of immunotherapy is not recommended.” So I’m still using nasal sprays in the morning and evening.

Then am I ill? I went to the local urgent care place as a walk-in the following Saturday. The hour-long wait turned out to be 210 minutes. Did I want a COVID test? Sure, why not? And just as the rapid tests have shown, I still don’t have it.

It’s a strange thing having symptoms that COULD be COVID. Almost any bodily reaction COULD be COVID. And with the recent spread into the Mid-Atlantic and upper Midwest, I suppose I need to continue mask indoors. So far, so good.

Monkeypox

Oh, and it’s not monkeypox, people. Some people I know IRL are fretting, “First COVID, now this.” Not yet. Another person I know IRL believes that it’s a WHO plot to inject us again.

Dear COVID: I have tired of you

high transmissibility

Dear COVID:

Let me tell you what happened yesterday. After a quick dinner, I took out the trash. Then I walked a block to catch the #10 bus downtown. About two minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive, my wife drove her car up to my bus stop. I was puzzled; I didn’t need a ride.

No, she explained. A member of the choir called. The rehearsal was canceled because someone in the group had gotten COVID. That’s at least the third member of the choir who has contracted the disease this calendar year. This is getting kind of old, COVID. At least two choir members got in in 2020 or early 2021, but that was before the vaccines were widely available.

We try so hard!

And why, COVID, in upstate New York and northern New England? Our vaccine rate has been pretty robust. Yet of the 56 counties in the whole country that have high transmission rates, 37 are in MY state, north and/or west of Poughkeepsie.

For example, here’s a notice from the Albany City School District this week. “Due to the significant rise in new COVID-19 cases among City School District of Albany employees and students over the past week, the district is strongly encouraging everyone to wear masks inside all buildings.

“Mask-wearing indoors remains optional in New York. However, the Albany County Health Department issued a public health advisory earlier this week strongly recommending all residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces. The district is aligning with that recommendation during the current COVID-19 surge.”

Now “the district has reported 72 new COVID-19 cases in the past seven days, compared to 47 during the first 20 days of April and 48 through the entire month of March. The 72 cases in the district from April 21-27 are more than the district has experienced in 16 entire months since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.”

Knock wood

As I’ve noted, in 2020, my primary care physician said sternly, “Don’t get COVID!” I took the advice seriously. You know I was one of those people clamoring for the vaccine when it was still difficult to access. I got my two shots in March 2021. Then my first booster in September 2021 and my second in April 2022.

I never stopped wearing masks going to the CVS or the grocery store. The first time I ate out, in April 2021, the establishment had a rule. Masks can be off if you’re sitting, but if you’re standing or walking, your masks should be on. The Capital District Transportation Authority still requires masks on their buses. But the bus drivers, I’ve noted, are far less likely to enforce the requirement. And I get that.

It was exhausting for flight attendants, restaurant greeters, and mall cops to have to act as the mask police. I witnessed more than a few uncomfortable exchanges.

So far, no one in my household has contracted the disease. SO THERE, COVID. My wife and my daughter tested themselves before returning to school after spring break. I’ve been checking myself twice a week before choir rehearsal and church. Good thing I stocked up with those free test kits – well, free if you have insurance, at least.

Still, I’m feeling that it could still happen. COVID, you are a tricky SOB. But I won’t surrender easily.