Tag Archives: pandemic

Pre and Post-Pandemic. . . What’s Different?

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Besides, obviously, a lot of people having died.

Many “experts” made bold predictions about how the world would never be the same, but looking back now, they were mostly wrong.

Most people who worked in offices still do. Most people still go to doctors’ offices. Most schools aren’t any more on-line than they were during “Before Times”.

People prefer working out in gyms and eating out at restaurants. More generally, people enjoy doing things outside their homes with others.

To a large extent, we’ve returned to our “Before Times” setpoints.

One noticeable difference in my small, upper left-hand corner of the world is that there are more cycling groups attracting more people. Peloton’s stock was down 60% last year. From my anecdotal vantage point, group rides are up about the same amount.

What else has changed for reals?

Paragraphs To Ponder

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“In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years.

The reduction has been particularly steep among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the National Center for Health Statistics reported. Average life expectancy in those groups was shortened by four years in 2020 alone.

The cumulative decline since the pandemic started, more than six and a half years on average, has brought life expectancy to 65 among Native Americans and Alaska Natives — on par with the figure for all Americans in 1944.”

US Life Expectancy Falls Again in ‘Historic’ Setback.

The Age Of ‘Anti-Ambition’

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A phrase for our times by The New York Times’ Noreen Malone. Subtitle, “When 25 million people leave their jobs, it’s about more than just burnout.”

Among the insights:

“. . . last month a Business Insider article declared that companies ‘are actively driving their white-collar workers away by presuming that employees are still thinking the way they did before the pandemic: that their jobs are the most important things in their lives. . .'”

“. . . a Gallup poll that showed that last year only a third of American workers said they were engaged in their jobs.”

Malone adds:

“Recently, I stumbled across the latest data on happiness from the General Social Survey, a gold-standard poll that has been tracking Americans’ attitudes since 1972. It’s shocking. Since the pandemic began, Americans’ happiness has cratered. The graph looks like the heart rate has plunged and they’re paging everyone on the floor to revive the patient. For the first time since the survey began, more people say they’re not too happy than say they’re very happy.”

Given the constant updating of statistics, the physical devastation caused by the pandemic is obvious. In contrast, the negative mental health effects lurk below the surface. If like me, you’re firmly on the ‘happy side’ of the ledger, keep in mind that we’re in the minority. Consequently, let’s strive to grant others more grace than normal.

Two Years In

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A doctor friend of mine has been a very careful, and I believe thoughtful, observer of all things ‘rona. This was today’s email message:
“The New York Times had information about the vaccine protection. This was October to November, so it was with Delta. Omicron death rates will be lower, but the vaccinated/unvaccinated difference is proportionally the same.
Screen Shot 2022-01-31 at 11.53.08 AM
The graph shows weekly deaths per 100,000, so annually, there are 5.2 deaths per 100,000 for boosted, 31.2 for vaccinated, and 405.6 for unvaccinated for the Delta variant.
Omicron is only 20% as lethal, so annually, there are 1.04 deaths per 100,000 for boosted, 6.24 for vaccinated, and 81.1 for unvaccinated.
By comparison, influenza causes 16.3 deaths per 100,000 annually. Except for the unvaccinated, covid is now less lethal than the flu.
There are also major studies from all of 2021, so it includes the various covid variants, and it also showed that covid was less lethal than the flu. They didn’t separate out the fully vaccinated from the boosted and boosting only was present for the last 3 months of the year, yet the flu was still more deadly.
The unvaccinated are 25 times more likely to die from Delta than the flu and 5 times more likely to die from Omicron than the flu.”
His take-away:
“I’m tired of all the restrictions that are basically in place to protect those that chose not to get vaccinated. They made their bed and now they can lie in it, but I don’t see why I need to lie in it with them.”
Me too.

Sometimes I Can Only Muster The Strength To . . .

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. . . read headlines. Recently, I’ve been diagnosed with “CEFS” or Current Events Fatigue Syndrome.

Some recent headlines are funny enough that I don’t even have to read the article. My spirit is already lifted.

I Became Extremely Hot In The Pandemic. My Husband Did Not.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t read it because I was afraid the Good Wife wrote it.

Some recent headlines are so cringe-worthy I can’t bring myself to read the article. This is CEFS in action. In increasing order of cringe:

Misinformation Is A Pandemic That Doesn’t Have A Headline

Tie for First. . .

Election Offices And School Board Meetings Could Become Weapons-free Zones In Washington

Report: World’s 10 Richest Men Doubled Their Wealth During COVID Pandemic

And sometimes since I know how the story is going to turn out, it’s unnecessary to read on.

Help! My Husband Throws Away My Things Without Asking In The Name of “Minimalism.”

Dude’s wife divorces him. He moves into an apartment a few steps below the one he lived in during college. Can’t afford any real furniture to speak of, any art, anything. Shortly thereafter, dies from loneliness in his minimalist “paradise”.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t read that because I was afraid the Gal Pal may have authored it as well.

The Covid Ball Is In The NBA’s Court

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From “The NBA’s Big Covid Choice” by Ethan Strauss.

“The NBA actually has an opportunity here to end the precautionary moment, or at least signal its ebb. If commissioner Adam Silver steps forward and announces that his league is ending test protocols and treating this admittedly terrible disease in much the same way we deal with some other respiratory illnesses, that’s a potential cultural shift. The basic plan would be to test players and team officials only if they’re obviously sick (and sit said players if they test positive). And no more of the contact tracing that’s gummed up work behind the scenes of a highly mobile industry. The message could be simple: Look, we can’t functionally operate like it’s 2020; now that the disease is endemic, and vaccines are widely available, we must move into 2022.

This could be an influential move for all the reasons the NBA lockdown was important back in 2020, but now with one new one: The NBA is the archetypal blue state sport. The Covid question has broken along partisan lines, with Democrat-voting spaces far more likely to embrace interventionist measures. If the NBA announces a relaxation, there’s an element of “Nixon goes to China,” a credibility inherent to going against the grain. Such a proclamation grants space if not permission for other non-red world institutions to follow suit and open up despite the surge.”

Do read the whole thing. As thoughtful a rumination on our predicament with the “invisible enemy” as I’ve read. Granted, I might feel that way because I agree with Strauss.

How The Center For Disease Control And Prevention Failed Us

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From Alex Taborrok’s review of Scott Gottlieb’s new book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why Covid-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic.

“If there’s one overarching theme of “Uncontrolled Spread,” it’s that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed utterly. It’s now well known that the CDC didn’t follow standard operating procedures in its own labs, resulting in contamination and a complete botch of its original SARS-CoV-2 test. The agency’s failure put us weeks behind and took the South Korea option of suppressing the virus off the table. But the blunder was much deeper and more systematic than a botched test. The CDC never had a plan for widespread testing, which in any scenario could only be achieved by bringing in the big, private labs.

Instead of working with the commercial labs, the CDC went out of its way to impede them from developing and deploying their own tests. The CDC wouldn’t share its virus samples with commercial labs, slowing down test development. ‘The agency didn’t view it as a part of its mission to assist these labs.’ Dr. Gottlieb writes. As a result, ‘It would be weeks before commercial manufacturers could get access to the samples they needed, and they’d mostly have to go around the CDC. One large commercial lab would obtain samples from a subsidiary in South Korea.’

In the early months of the pandemic the CDC impeded private firms from developing their own tests and demanded that all testing be run through its labs even as its own test failed miserably and its own labs had no hope of scaling up to deal with the levels of testing needed. Moreover, the author notes, because its own labs couldn’t scale, the CDC played down the necessity of widespread testing and took ‘deliberate steps to enforce guidelines that would make sure it didn’t receive more samples than its single lab could handle.'”

The solution has to be a more decentralized public health apparatus, doesn’t it?

Sentence To Ponder

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“. . . the former president has not only managed to squelch any dissent within his party but has persuaded most of the G.O.P. to make a gigantic bet: that the surest way to regain power is to embrace his pugilistic style, racial divisiveness and beyond-the-pale conspiracy theories rather than to court the suburban swing voters who cost the party the White House and who might be looking for substantive policies on the pandemic, the economy and other issues.”

Lisa Lerer in the New York Times.

The ‘Rona Reflex

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Yesterday, I began my day with one of my favorite runs to PriestPoint Park and back. I went in the back door, meaning I climbed up 26th and then hung a right on the wide, paved connector road that drops down before dead ending into a single track trail on the park’s edge.

At least ten feet away, a young hipster (meaning he sported a beard) and his cute dog were walking up the 12-foot wide connector on the opposite shoulder of me. While exchanging silent “good morning” smiles, I couldn’t help but notice he edged off of the car-less road’s shoulder to create one or two more feet of distance between us.

Because he was youngish, seemingly healthy, not wearing a mask, and smiled at me, I doubt he was a grunt in the Mask Wars. And yet, even though everyone now knows the CDC guidelines—six feet away from one another when indoors while masked—I predict many will continue going a lot further given the ‘rona reflex which is the now deeply engrained idea that if some distance and masks and safety precautions are good, more are better.

I am not advocating for Texas Governor-like “Neanderthal thinking” about masks and mitigation. I’m advocating for proportionality. Specifically, a return to more relaxed interpersonal interactions as we chip away at the virus. Trusting that 12 feet is more than sufficient when outside.

If, in return, the Neanderthals are more patient with our neighbors for whom the reflex is deeply engrained, maybe the YouTube videos of people losing their minds while fighting the Mask War will abate and a post-‘pan peace will descend upon the land.