The Mandelbear's Musings

Today the CDC released updated recommendations for what you can do When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated.

First, what does it mean to be fully vaccinated?

People are considered fully vaccinated:

• 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or
• 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, like Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine

Now the good stuff: if you’ve been fully vaccinated:

• You can gather indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask.
• You can gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household (for example, visiting with relatives who all live together) without masks, unless any of those people or anyone they live with has an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19.
• If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you do not need to stay away from others or get tested unless you have symptoms.
  • However, if you live in a group setting (like a correctional or detention facility or group home) and are around someone who has COVID-19, you should still stay away from others for 14 days and get tested, even if you don’t have symptoms.

Everything else stays the same. Except when you're with at most one unvaccinated person, continue wearing a mask, staying 6' away from other people, avoiding medium-to-large sized gatherings, and so on.

...And continue watching for symptoms, because the protection you get from being vaccinated is not 100%.

( Links )

If you live in Washington State, a new set of restrictions go into effect tonight at 11:55 pm (except for bars and restaurants, which have until 12:01 am Wednesday), running through December 14^th). The best place to start is probably This post on Medium from the governor's office; then hit this PDF for the full list.

There are links to the press release, proclamation, and a Seattle Times article (with more complete titles) under the cut.

( Links )

Also, there's a High Wind Warning in effect tomorrow from 10am to 6pm They're predicting 60mph gusts; I don't expect to have power tomorrow here at the North End, and I may have to cancel rescheduled our dentist appointments.

NaBloPoMo stats:
   8219 words in 17 posts this month (average 483/post)
    179 words in 1 post today
      1 day with no posts

(Note: this post was started Sunday the 3rd, and planned as Episode 11, but it got pre-empted Monday morning and again on Tuesday. It then got dropped on the floor while wrote Singing in the time of COVID-19.)

I have not been getting much done. I'd originally meant this to be a mix of planning, accountability (i.e. writing out those plans so everyone can see how little I'm accomplishing), and random wibbling. I have moved the random part into another post so you don't have to look at it. TL;DR: see mood.

Actually, looking at my patheticmodest set of goals from my New Year's Day post, I see that I can count at least partial success for #1 (mainly because I did get to the dentist once, but I'm going to count staying home during the lockdown under self-care), #5 total failure for #4, and infinitesimal but non-zero progress on #7 and #8.

(There will be a brief pause while the bear claws his way up out of an infinitesimally deep mathematical hole. This is complicated by the fact that any sum of infinitessimals is still less than any given positive real number...)

(If he were a real bear as opposed to a surreal bear, this would not be a problem, since the real numbers do not include infinitessimals.) Anyway...

There some obvious categories of things I can work on:

1. Paperwork. First my income tax; the deadline has been extended, but it still needs to be done. Then, the stuff aimed at the other certainty: advance directives, powers of attorney, a will for Colleen, and a comprehensive list of important documents, account numbers, and so on.
2. The electronic equivalent of the above probably deserves a separate category. If I don't leave some pointers, some important things will become inaccessible.
3. Music. I need to sing more often, and longer.
4. Writing. Not merely DW -- I need more computer-related (curmudgeon) posts.
5. Organizing and getting rid of STUFF. I'd say that this is a mammoth task, except that the STUFF almost certainly outweighs a mammoth and possibly even a medium-sized whale.

In the interest of making some kind of progress, I'm going to post this even though it feels incomplete. I could work on it for another month, add a sentence or two, and it would still feel incomplete. So...

It isn't often that I see the name of someone I've met, and respect, in the lede of a New York Times article, but here you go:

Tim Bray, an engineer who had been a vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, said the firings were “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”

A prominent engineer and vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm said on Monday that he had quit “in dismay” over the recent firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

But first go read his blog post - it's scathing. Here's a sample:

Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists.

Snap! · At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.

That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.

The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

Here are a couple more quotes:

at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.

[...]

Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.

The post links to other press coverage of Amazon's cavalier treatment of its warehouse workers during the pandemic.

Personal note: I met Tim at a Web conference twenty years or so ago, when I was working on an XML-based project at Ricoh -- Tim was one of the authors of the XML spec. Turns out he's also an environmental activist, and a signatory to an Open letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Board of Directors calling for Amazon to adopt "an immediate company-wide plan addressing climate change". That's well worth a read, too.

Blank list copied from marahmarie: Quarantine Meme's spreading like...the plague. I apparently started working on this Wednesday and got distracted before I could post it.

1. Are you an essential worker?

I'm retired, so not even a worker.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?

Maybe 0.5/day? Would be more, but I'm out of gin.

3. If you have kids... are they driving you nuts?

I have kids, but they're adults and living with their respective partners.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?

Refreshing news sites and maps way too often.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

One for curbside pickup, and a couple that were run for me.

6. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

Yes. More than one.

7. Are you keeping your housework done?

Yes.

8. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

Haven't watched any movies. I don't think streaming filk concerts count.

9. What are you streaming with?

YouTube.

10. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

No. For several reasons.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

Don't really have one; we're trying to get a decent variety.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

Not about the virus. And I'm not paranoid about my country's government; they really are out to get me.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

Thankfully, no.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

I don't even want to predict which year.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

Go out for dinner with as much of the family as I can collect on short notice.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

I'm an introvert. Right here is fine.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Somewhere between singing with my band and my weekly singing lessons.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

Not yet. And we have plenty of soap.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

Probably, but rice and beans gets old pretty quickly.

Just one link today: Sigma Xi's COVID-19 Preparedness Kit. It's a huge collection of links -- over 200 of them if my quick-and-dirty count is anywhere near correct. I was tempted to just cut-and-paste, but that wouldn't be fair. (And would be rather tedious.) Go ahead, click the link.

Here's the introduction:

Sigma Xi members and staff have compiled a list of useful links to free or low-cost resources to use during the COVID-19 outbreak. Members can access personal and professional development courses, tips for homeschooling children, or entertainment websit es, including free online concerts, museum tours, and interactive experiences.

The Preparedness Kit also includes key scientific information about the outbreak as well as the latest research on COVID-19.

(See yesterday's s4s for a quick guide to online filk events.) I spent most of yesterday chasing down the mic stand accessories I'll need to join in the online fun, but didn't actually do any singing.

We now have the cookbooks back on the newly-reinstalled and -reinforced shelves. 2" deck screws into four studs ought to do it. So there's that.

Apart from our housekeeper, L' and Colleen's caregiver, V, we've been well-isolated here; we've decided to make tomorrow V's last day until the peak has passed, and L' will be doing yard work until then. Hate to do it, especially V because her presence means so much to Colleen, but Colleen decided she didn't want the additional risk. Purely her call, not mine, but I'm relieved that she decided to go that way.

Too many links.

( Notes & links, as usual )

In other news, another antarctic glacier is retreating.

Today I am grateful for...

• The fact that nobody in my family has developed COVID-19 symptoms. So far. To my knowledge.
• Spring. Well, except for the weeds. I can do without weeds.
• Restaurants that deliver. Assuming they do, of course; haven't tested it. Yet.
• The internet, streaming multimedia, video conferencing, and other ways of staying connected while staying home.
• A retirement income stream that does not require me to work.
• Amazon. Although gloves and tissues are out of stock. Of course.
• I'll be grateful for the surgical masks I ordered, if they arrive. I have doubts.

This is going to be rather disconnected. Not stream-of-consciousness; I think a live stream costs extra.

Social distancing here at the North End isn't a whole lot different from business as usual. Not that I'm getting a whole lot done. And I have been out of the house, most recently for a trip to the pharmacy. And Colleen has a MAC clinic appointment Thursday. But we're pretty well set to at least avoid trips to the grocery store for a couple of weeks, and more if we have to. I don't think Colleen will notice any difference at all, unless her caregiver has to stop coming, which would only happen if her household or ours needs to be quarantined. Although we probably ought to discuss that.

Things aren't as eerie here as they are in Seattle (I've seen pictures), but even on the island the streets are more deserted than usual. One unexpected advantage of having an electric car is never having to touch a possibly-contaminated gas-pump handle. Another is that you can wait in it listening to the radio for a loooooooooong time without running the battery down.

Regretting having procrastinated paperwork, e.g. durable powers of attorney. I need to face the possibility that one or both of us may need it. Nothing settles the mind etc... I know most of the forms are online.

I'm going to (try to) cut down on the time I spend chasing COVID-19 links and refreshing news updates; I think we're all either pretty well informed or pretty fed up on that front. The first couple of links are things to keep yourself amused with. The third is, arguably, also in that category. Look around -- there is a lot of free stuff out there. Not to mentiongutenberg.org. And many entertainment venues are streaming performances for free.

( Notes & links )

I'm 73 years old today. In the middle of a pandemic that disproportionally kills older people, in a country with a totally broken public health system.

We'd been planning a family birthday party for this weekend; if it happens at all it'll be via Zoom or Hangouts.

Doom destruction and despair People dying everywhere Happy birthday! Happy birthday! -- sing two verses while washing your hands

Going to stop here before I make myself more depressed.

So I've been doing a lot of reading, about COVID-19 among other things. Here's a household status report, and the current collection of linkspam.

The household has been making some prepararations. At this point we can, I think, handle being isolated at least two weeks easily, just on what's in the fridge, and four weeks without too much trouble. We haven't gone into full prepper mode, and hopefully we won't have to. We can handle more than that as long as we can get dry goods from Amazon and the power doesn't go out.

Things will get difficult if one of us gets sick. Everyone here at the North End is "At Higher Risk" except maybe S; L and Colleen both have underlying health problems that put them at risk, and Colleen and I are both over 65 -- 12 years over in my case. It says something that the healthiest person in the house is a 73-year-old with a bad back. I do what I can.

It's looking unlikely that I'll be able to go to Consonance. That's in just two weeks, and involves two shuttle rides and a plane ride each way and a hotel at the other end of it. If it was just me I'd be tempted to miss it, but I really don't want to bring con crud home to Colleen.

Santa Clara County Public Health Department is recommending that persons at higher risk of severe illness should stay home and away from crowded social gatherings of people as much as possible such as parades, conferences, sporting events, and concerts where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another.

-- note that other sources define "large numbers" as 10 or more.

Here are the links -- they're all either from last week's Done Since post or will be in this week's, but I wanted to get them all in one place. I don't guarantee that they're in any order that makes sense.

TL;DR: if you read nothing else, take a look at @siderea's series of posts tagged coronavirus2020, the CDC's Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pages, and for comic relief, this Joy of Tech comic.

( Notes & links )

I resisted the temptation to call this series A Journal of the Plague Year, but it was hard. The fact that I don't like long tags helped. It would work as a blog subtitle, but I'm hoping that I won't need it.