CoViD-19 and I

As you will have guessed from the lower frequency of entries in this blog, the pandemic has become less exciting. It is certainly less novel. Not only that, I've stopped worrying about toilet paper and soap. California's death rate is not declining, but was never very high, and certainly this county's was not; the state's hospital cases are getting slightly fewer . The nursing home where my mother lives has had a few cases, but is now clean again. But ... few countries have eradicated the disease, so we have to decide what to do about it and when. Aside: should more countries have tried? A few, such as New Zealand , were able to clean it out without an authoritarian government. The country that failed the worst, namely the USA, suffered from a mentally defective president and an excessive reliance on the letter of the law. Even China, which locked down earliest, took some serious damage to its economy; to be sure, this might not have happened if the epidemic had been re

In case you missed it, the four of us still seem to be quite healthy. The political balance is clearly tilting in favour of giving people some hope, though the (detected) infection rates in both US and UK are roughly flat and the death rate, while declining quite convincingly in the UK, is going down slowly and somewhat ambiguously over here. About those death tolls, there is reason for doubt. Comparing mortality figures in March and April against previous years, the NYT finds  that New York (the state) has some 23k deaths unaccounted for, versus an official body count of 26k due to CoViD-19, and California slightly more than 1k.  China has also revised its numbers upward. The silver lining of this analysis, if one dare call it that, is that the real death rate probably peaked sooner than we realised. The lead lining is that the infection spread further, faster, and probably started even earlier than any of us knew. I'm now re-reading  The Mercy Men , a childhood favourite o

Daily life is much as it was last week, so I haven't been blogging about it. I sometimes forget to wipe the doorknobs and such in the morning. We do still have plenty of disinfectant (we don't drink the stuff), but some of our bottles of liquid soap are running out. A friend of my wife's has given us some colourful masks. The numbers are not as good as I'd like to see, given that restrictions on movement and activity are starting to ease in some places. Neither the US nor UK is reducing its infection rate or death rate; they are staying roughly stable, which presumably means that medical staff are still over-stressed ... except for (in the US) those who have been sent home because their specialties are not in demand at present. Seriously? I also read  that it is politically difficult to make sensible decisions about who has priority for the use of scarce equipment etc., and no, I do not think such difficulty is unique to the nation from which the article is written.

Yes, I've been lazy about this blog. On Thursday I got back on my bike for a short ride; that night I slept badly (which often happens when warm weather begins) and so took only a short walk on Friday. The rates of new infections and deaths seem quite stable in the UK and USA, but in California both are climbing; reverting to towards the nationwide mean, though I'm not sure by what mechanism. The increase in deaths is odd, because the hospital statistics are not growing. Perhaps deaths in care homes are being counted better? That will be a material change in the near future: elderly people will be much more afraid of living in such crowded conditions. However, I remind you who don't have an old demented mother that if you ever do, she will also be at considerable risk in any setting where she can't be constantly watched over. My aunt was once found wandering along the street where she lived, in quite cold weather and not warmly dressed, unable to remember which front

Let the record show that I did less exercise today than usual, but enough to feel barely respectable. California's numbers are growing two days running, with a considerable climb in new cases, and smaller increases in hospital cases. From the UK, the numbers are better, but the shortages of NHS staff seem to be severe. Keep those foreigners out, will we? I've begun thinking what my own return to work might look like. Does it, for example, make sense to go to the office one day a week? I suspect that is useful only if the team I'm on will all, or mostly, be there on that same day. Clearly a logical way to extend my contacts will be with a well defined group of people I've already been in contact with, and can trust to be truthful about whether they've got symptoms (one of the reasons I started WfH a week before the company said to was that I heard people coughing ... three of them). Someone I don't know might well be a spreader. How would I get there? I gat

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm back on the exercise routine. I didn't push quite as hard this morning as I had been doing, but felt better while walking than I had when I got up. I had also neglected my garden over the weekend, and spent half an hour out there after work, pulling weeds. I should have worn a mask, since there were pedestrians passing by. Most of them weren't wearing masks, but that does not excuse my laxity. Work was quite routine, but I've learned that Roche has publicly announced an antibody test for early May. Have I mentioned yet that I work for Roche? I'm not a scientist, though, so I can claim no credit for the tests manufactured by the group. We read now that a high proportion of the Diamond Princess  passengers were tested, and of the positives, 1.6% died. Given that cruise ship passengers tend to be even older than I am, this may mean that I have a better chance of survival than I had thought, should I become infected. It's still a ri

The exercise I skipped on Thursday and Friday probably would have helped me to a better mood on Saturday. I resolve, for some unknown length of time, to make sure I do get some. Today all I did was bike over to the Farmers' Market by way of an ATM, but I feel a bit better already. By the time I arrived at the Market, it was crowded in a Corona-esque way: difficult to stay six feet from other people, and queues at two of the three stalls I visited. Nearly everyone had masks, bandanas, or some facial covering. Oddly, at least one vendor did not. I hear rumours that another nearby market has closed. At all events, there seemed to be more vendors than last Sunday; perhaps word has got round that customers are still plentiful. In the late morning I went online to watch Sunday Assembly East Bay's first online assembly -- or was it their second? Probably first. That was fun, and I saw some faces I'm probably going to get to know better. In the afternoon, in the next room to me

Almost on cue (referring to yesterday's entry ), I see an article about protecting hospital staff with hoods rather than masks, refitting CPAP machines to filter out exhaled virus, and other useful makeshifts. On the downside, the NHS is just about out of protective gowns. Clearly, we shall need to develop reusable protectives, though I don't know how; there was also an article a few days back about trials of various techniques for decontaminating an N95, using either far UV light, hot humid air, or ... I forget whether the third was a chemical poison. The only statistical news since yesterday is that California's rise in deaths is continuing. The trends by nation and world are essentially the same as yesterday. From Stanford comes a sampling study suggesting that the county had 3% infected as of early April, rather than 0.05%. But the test they used to detect infections is itself untested. If you see what I mean. The conclusion is easy to believe, but that doesn't ma

I skipped exercising this morning, but don't worry, I'm not coughing. My belly felt a bit queasy, as it has on several previous days, and exercise would probably have made it worse. The rest of the day went much as usual. The numbers are much as they were yesterday, with the state showing about fifty more deaths than the trend -- that's a big bump! -- and some other upward blips that are hard to interpret, but small. The reading material is more pessimistic today, journalists being as they are. I've read about a company that ramped up production of protective equipment about a decade ago in response to an expected epidemic ... and nearly went broke. There's the usual stuff about price increases being both necessary to justify the financial risk, and politically untenable. There's the cautionary tale of the the UK paying 20M, in advance, for several batches of tests that turned out to not be good enough. Yes, but you have to take risks, with both money and li

I did go for a walk today (three walkers, one jogger with orange hand weights that I think I've seen before, no dogs). But that isn't what I want to write about. Not that anyone is reading this blog. The politicians, media, and experts (mostly the self-appointed ones) have swung over to talking about when to re-open. John Cochrane is grumpily pointing out that jobs which don't require close contact (less than 2 metres) can in fact be resumed without much danger. Everyone else is pointing to the need for more testing, and I don't think even Cochrane would disagree. What matters most is what the politicians are saying. Seriously; honest, guv.  Why do I think so? A politician's main talent is to understand what the people want. I could go on working from home indefinitely, but the lesson I take from what I'm reading today is that plenty of people have had enough of this and so politicians have decided to give them some hope. This lesson also echoes what one p

Early this morning there were more weeds in the front than I felt like ignoring, so my walk was shortened a bit. I saw three joggers. Work was quite uneventful. The fun part was looking for security holes in our code. This is an area in which I don't shine, but we can't afford loopholes ... and I remember the scathing things I used to think (and even say) about the developers of other pieces of software that turned out to have exploits of the kind that your mother warned you against thirty years ago. Will there be weaknesses? Almost certainly, but none caused by my laziness or foolishness. The county is slightly below 200 hospital cases, the state slightly above 5k, so not much change. The UK and US both show slight, perhaps ephemeral, declines in the numbers of new cases and of deaths; the doubling times grow, slowly; Spain and Italy show sustained declines in active cases according to [site that crashed my browser]. Their R-zero is below 1.0, and Spain is trying cautiousl

At the Farmers' Market, nearly everybody wore masks, and more vendors --  though far from all -- had instituted one-way traffic, moved their cash registers six feet apart, chalked markings on the asphalt, and so on. Some of the markings on which customers were to stand while waiting were clearly closer to each other than six feet, but customers mostly took care to stand at least that far from each other. I bought a generous quantity of snap peas and made sure to thank that vendor for coming to feed us. So what did I do yesterday? Nothing; if possible, less than nothing.  Today? Not much either, but since two of us in this household celebrate Easter, we had a slightly festive meal, and I took my turn cooking it. Next Easter, I'll allow more time for the potatoes. This morning fifty non- or less-religious people attended our first online Sunday Assembly. Well, fifty of their computers (or other devices) attended. It resembled the offline one quite closely, apart from one glit

Yesterday I did a very local walk, to the primary school and back. The tally was three joggers, one walker, no dogs. Today I rode west, a block or two past the mall. Google calls it six miles. In case anyone from a hilly place is reading this, the terrain is very flat hereabouts. The weather is a good deal milder than last week. The good news from work is that everyone stays on full pay. There is also some kind of extra reimbursement for employees who find themselves in need of child care, and extra matching funds for gifts to a few very select charities that are helping people who have lost their income (or something). I hear that production of test kits has been increased yet again, though I don't have hard numbers. The county sees only a very few new cases. The state's hospitals, as of yesterday, reported a decline of about 15% in the number of suspected patients and a much smaller rise in number of confirmed cases. Total reported cases for the state are only rising at a

I was going to go for a walk but changed my mind. Bicycling definitely works my heart and lungs harder. So I rode almost as far as the next town (and yes, I do know that in some parts of the US that would take hours, not 13 minutes) and back. I'm not terribly fit! but I was able to do the usual stretches and push-ups when I got back. We're still sharing the cooking, so today my elder soon made some chicken. It was excellent. At work, I'm having to "thrive on ambiguity", which is American for "figure out what to do". We've also done laundry, washing the masks that people had worn. In case you were wondering, we continue the routines of washing, disinfecting, and so on. Now for the numbers. Yesterday the slow improvement continued, though I was too lazy to blog about it. Today, the county has about the same number of confirmed cases in hospital, and roughly 8% increase in both total cases (I'm not sure how those are counted) and deaths. Statewi

I overslept a little, so did less exercise than usual. Grrr. OTOH my wife's shopping trip was quite successful. She was able to buy flour and toilet paper, plus the usual meat and vegetables. Dried lentils remain scarce. My younger son officially started his spring term today, and asked us not to bug him until his classes were over for the day. The numbers still show progress, even if some are too optimistic for me to find credible. In this county, the number of cases has taken eight days to double. Statewide, the numbers from the hospitals seem stable, but a significant percentage have not reported in as of 21:00 PDT, so in reality there may have been something like 10% growth. Even New York is doing a little better. Nationally, the US has doubled its death toll in five days and its case load (with a grain of salt) in eight. The UK has an implausibly low death toll for today, but the total number of cases have doubled in six days. Oh, and Boris is in intensive care. There have

Today I biked to the Farmers' Market, wearing my new mask, plus a cotton puff each side of my nose where the fabric leaves a gap.  I went by way of an ATM: the emergency has lasted long enough that I've used up most of the cash I had. There are slightly fewer stalls again, perhaps 70% of normal. The number of customers seemed further reduced; while a lot of people were still bare-faced, distancing was fairly carefully observed, making it hard to fit the usual number of customers into the space available. I saw one vendor chalking the word "ENTER" in front of her stall, and reminding the guy at the cash register to direct people the other way for exit. I think I spent a bit more than usual. We had a video get-together with about a dozen Assemblers, purely social, except we discussed the mechanics of our new Google Group a bit. It is already seeing traffic, which heartens me. In the afternoon I used up some of our dwindling stock of groceries to make half a pot of sou

Saturday is my rest day, but I felt energetic enough to walk downtown and back, once I had actually got up (not a quick process). Since it was later in the morning, I saw far more people than usual. I carried a disinfectant wipe with me, and used it on the exit door at the Post Office after checking the contents of a PO box. Returning home, I did perhaps the riskiest thing I have yet done during this epidemic: I invited my son to cut my hair. Yes, I needed it. No, he wasn't enthusiastic, but given my simple needs (short sides, short back, and there isn't enough on top to matter), he did well enough. I wonder when I'll see  a real hairdresser again. We' are close to running out of fresh vegetables, but I'm fairly sure we have some frozen ones, and the Farmers' Market is tomorrow morning. I'll play it safe and use the plastic bags the vendors provide -- normally I bring my own, but that is deemed risky. Given the improvement in growth rates (see below), and

Yes, today I put my wool socks on (it's chilly for April), got the old Specialized down off the wall, and pedal out, for the first time in almost four weeks. It felt a bit unfamiliar. I don't think I've been entirely off a bike that long in decades. The roads were indeed quiet, and I covered five miles. I used two main roads, which were not so quiet, but had plenty of gaps between the traffic. At work, there was a newsletter with photos of interesting work-at-home rigs, one using an ironing board! Yes, we have one of those too, but I'm not planning to use it; all of these photos showed a laptop only, with no large monitor. These days, I find the latter indispensable. We are now being advised to wear cloth masks outside (but not the medical-grade equipment). I have an old ear warmer that will be better than nothing. Better news is that the country reports only 90% week-on-week growth in both cases and deaths; I've not yet found a graph of hospital cases, but numb

The streets were quiet this morning, as before. I forget the exact count, but something like two cyclists, one dog, and two or three walkers. I saw many cars, but only because I crossed a main road. Somebody actually honked at me for jaywalking. I should seriously consider getting the bicycle out this weekend, or perhaps tomorrow. Lack of car traffic should make an early ride much more pleasant. The charts make dispiriting reading. Both the US and UK are doubling their caseloads every three days, even now. Spain is doing better than this and Italy much better. In this county, after two and half weeks locked down, cases continue to rise at the rate of perhaps 10% each day, though the counts are certainly inaccurate. Locally, I see more complaints about shortages of basic supplies, violations of social distancing, and so on. On the Web, cudgels and daggers are being raised against politicians who refused to see this coming. I too am past being kind, past mincing words about such a pr

Today on my walk I met one of the people who used to be at the Caltrain station every morning when I caught my train. She is still commuting that way. I hope she is a medic or otherwise doing truly essential work. I also saw two dogs being walked -- one by a couple, who very kindly stepped into an entryway so I could pass them at a social distance -- and perhaps two other walkers; I remember only one vehicle. At work, the higher-ups are continuing their efforts to provide us some degree of contact and information, by scheduling small group chats. There is also some thought of reallocating under-utilised people -- do we really have any of those? The numbers mostly show more small steps in the right direction. I am alarmed that I now regard a one-week doubling time as a good  thing. But if we can reduce R-zero by that much again (from one third, to one seventh, to, <thinks> minus one twenty-first), the pandemic will disappear eventually. Except that restrictions on movement wil

I walked to downtown again today, from 7 to 7:30. Three guys were walking dogs, one woman running (not jogging), a pair jogging, a pair walking. Three cars and two pickup trucks that seemed to be landscapers. Pretty normal day, really. Each of us went out for a walk; each of us spent much of our time online, with activities ranging from software development to D&D. Our connection went down for two or three minutes in mid-afternoon, but came back up. The graph of total cases in the county looks a bit jerky, but yesterday's 200 new cases may have been a blip. Doubling time again looks to be between 5 and 6 days. California as a whole is slightly quicker; New York, Michigan, and Louisiana are on fire. Why Michigan? There is a well-reasoned  claim that NYC is starting to flatten out, which will be very good news, if borne out. At the national scale, both US and UK seem to be doubling deaths in 3 days and cases in 4, so we can hope that they are truly declerating. Spain has c

My wife went shopping this morning and was able to get most of her list, including oats for my breakfast and cans of tomatoes. There were even a few packages of toilet paper, all of which she left on the shelf for those who may need them. My morning routine went normally except for oversleeping by half an hour, but it was hard to do a day's work. My legs ached and I occasionally felt sleepy. Perhaps I let myself go soft over the weekend; certainly I spent too long reading Reddit. I felt that my brain needed some online junk food, but could not keep it from over-indulging. Concerning the county, I spoke too soon: today there are roughly 200 more cases, and 3 more deaths. But the NYT shows more signs of improvement in Spain and Italy; maybe France too, and still too early to tell for the UK. What made more impression on me was this article  by John Cochrane, which proposes that restricting all the people and all the things they do is foolish: costly and not very effective, compar

I've been to the Farmers' Market again.  While I've not done a careful count, I think there were slightly fewer vendors than a week ago; I forgot, this time, to say thank you to those who are still selling. Most of them had home-made masks, some in bright floral prints. Three customers had white masks that looked more serious than the usual fabric-plus-elastic. At least one customer apologised to me, not for bumping into me, but for accidentally getting within six feet. I held my monthly discussion group over Google Hangouts. I'm glad I started early, because I had not used it on that tablet before and messed up the app. After that, the discussion went well, Unlike the hangouts we hold work, it was not just comforting, but important, to see faces, so that I could tell how people were reacting to each other's words, as one can at a physical meeting. Of the newcomers who had signed up on Meetup, only one actually appeared, which is roughly typical, but may have been

This morning I slept in an hour or more, and went for my walk late, so I met a few more people. There were two old ladies who had solved the problem of staying 2 metres apart on a 1.5 metre sidewalk by not using the sidewalk. Since there are effectively no cars about, it becomes safe to walk down the roadway, and they were doing so, side by side but well separated. "Good distancing, I see!" But my lungs must be getting old: they begin to ache even when walking at full speed. Possibly jogging would be a more efficient  gait at that speed, but I want to preserve my joints. You've heard of what the medics call "benign tumours", right? They're not actually beneficial, but neither are they malignant: they don't grow much and don't do significant harm. You've also heard that we have huge populations of bacteria in our guts, on our skins, and probably in other parts of our bodies, some of which are beneficial, and many more of which are benign in the

Light frost this morning; if it had been warmer, I might have got the bike out. As things were, I walked across El Camino -- jaywalking in perfect safety at about 07:10! -- and failed to talk myself out of a quick swing through the supermarket. Eggs: none. Flour: none made from wheat, though there was almond flour. Cooking oil: hardly any. Cans of soup: some, but huge gaps on the shelves. Come on, people. Someone I know took her three small children out for a walk and was stopped by a cop who told her they formed too large a group. Gaaah. I'm told the National Guard has  been mobilised, including some to our area, but have seen no sign of them at all. More constructively, the supermarket had marked spots six feet apart so people who queue up can keep their distance. I still see very few masks. Good. Keep those for the medics. At work, they're starting to think about making our lives easier, such as by shipping us the monitors we left at the office, where nearly nobody needs

This morning I walked to downtown and back. On my own street I saw two cars, then one bike (I think the same one as yesterday), and passed three walkers on the way to downtown; I was passed by a Parks truck towing a lawnmower. Not very essential, but probably harmless. Downtown I saw at least half a dozen cars, a VTA bus, a garbage truck, and more. On the way back, I passed two dog-walkers. I had thought about biking, but the road was wet from last night's rain. That wouldn't have stopped me from commuting. My work, since you don't ask, continues at normal pace, or very close indeed, and perhaps more smoothly than before. Meeting rooms were a scarce resource at our office, so that meetings had to be scheduled at odd times that broke the working day into many pieces. But working at home, we have as many meeting rooms as we have people, so all the co-ordination is crammed into two or three hours in the middle of the day, leaving me plenty of room to concentrate on a piece o

Very quiet streets this morning. I walked for close to half an hour and saw two or three people walking dogs, a car warming up in a drive, a cyclist dressed in bright yellow, and not much else. I should go for a ride myself, y'know. I don't like running, and walking isn't enough of a workout to keep me strong for the long term. Quite what the traffic lights will do is anybody's guess, with almost no cars to trip their sensors. But by that same token, with almost no cars, it won't feel bad to just press the pedestrian button and block the cross traffic for 20 or 30 seconds. I could even ride by a few stores and see what they've got on their shelves, but that adds risk for very little gain. We are well supplied. I'm starting to relax about the risk of my sons having brought a virus home. It has been a week for number 1 and six days for his brother, with no symptoms. We shall be just as careful as before when coming home from outside, and I wiped the kitchen

My wife went to the supermarket good and early, and came home home with plenty of fruit, vegetables, even beer, and another bag of flour to make bread. A small victory, but a real confidence boost. Panic buying was never necessary; the system is working. Oh, and the loaf I made using pastry flour has turned out quite well, but I'll be glad to save it for pastries.  Today we ate leftovers mostly. This resulted in part from nobody making a plan to cook, but also from making generous portions during the past week. I am looking for a TED talk for the Sunday Assembly. This evening I've already found one that I think will do very well -- going to keep it a secret for a while -- and others that are interesting in themselves. My discussion group has four RSVP already, so I cannot doubt that people want some kind of contact. One of the talks I found bore the title "You are not alone in your loneliness." How better to describe the present situation? From the news, one lit

I combined my morning walk with visiting the Farmers' Market, which counts as buying food. There were 10% to 20% fewer vendors than last Sunday, so I made a point of thanking the ones I bought from. It's hard to know how many are staying home because they want to stay safe and how many are simply getting fewer customers than before and so no longer find it worthwhile to come. Conceivably, some are running out of stock due to panic buying, but most of what they sell is too perishable to tempt panic buyers. I did see a line at a stall that sells bread, with people well spaced out. Some vendors wore gloves when handling money, but not all. It would be easy for a coin to spread virus; as it happened, I bought in whole numbers of dollars (and some vendors have long preferred to round the final amount pretty ruthlessly rather than hand out, or ask for, coins). It's three weeks to the next scheduled Sunday Assembly, so we held a meeting to plan what online platforms we would con

Saturday is the day when I rest as much as I want to after a hard week's work. We even eat out -- or, these days, get take-out food, which today was pizza. I've done a few fun things and feel pretty cheerful. Cheerful enough, in fact, to dig out the folder from that talk I went to last year, at my wife's encouragement, on setting your affairs in order well before you die, which can save your spouse and/or children a good deal of trouble and expense. Not to mention making it easier for them to convince doctors to heed their recommendations. A patient who has a breathing tube down his throat is not going to be able to tell the doctors anything, and he (that is, I) may well be drugged enough that what he might say would have no legal force. The money is not a big problem: nearly everything we own is covered under "community property", so my wife won't even have to inherit it: it is already hers. No, I'm not showing symptoms, nor have I been exposed to any

I've missed two days, and have an excuse for one of them. On Wednesday afternoon my second son came home, and I realised that I had been a little bit anxious. I hadn't seriously doubted that he would be all right in the end, but the way home might have been difficult. In the end it was easy; the aircraft had plenty of empty seats and even the baggage claim was not crowded. His suitcases were also heavy, especially as his roommate had departed in a great hurry and left some things behind. There was some hand sanitiser and a box of disinfectant wipes left in his room (?), and he had the sense to bring them home. First son cooked a celebratory salmon for us while I finished work. We stayed up some time after that, while his brother related what a stressful week it had been. The numbers from China aren't final (nothing is), but they report no new infections, a total of nearly 81,000, and over 3,200 deaths, with 70,000 recoveries. That ratio is not reassuring, especially f

This morning I went southwards, rather than northwards, for my morning walk. I saw about five other people, most of whom were walking without dogs, and a few cars. Then came stretching exercises, which I think are important at my age, and best done with muscles that have warmed up. I also do some push-ups; not very many, because I can't do very many, but working on that. Even with exercise, I don't have a colossal appetite for breakfast. So get down to work. New guidance from my employer on working at home suggests dressing as if to go the office --- nonsense, say I -- and actually turning the video feed on during meetings so that we can see each other's ugly faces, which I agree with. Much though I'd rather see beautiful or handsome faces, it does me good to see and hear that the people I've spent so much time with are still there and still human; to gossip a bit. The one who was the undisputed clown of the team has, unfortunately, been shifted to another project

I've heard back from my other neighbour that they are doing all right. This has been a relatively normal (by recent standards) working day. The announcement of the the Bay Area's "shelter in place" reached me about 15:00. It seems fairly sensible, or perhaps just bows to reality. People can still go jogging, just not in groups. The boys have moved their flight dates up. Let's be glad that there are so many vacant seats! Discussed with my wife whether we should ask the boys to take extra precautions when they get here. They've been widely exposed over the past week, to a population that has a low rate of infection so far. Read some proposals that seem to make sense. Since people are going to have to stay at home, make some great entertainment available online or even (gasp) on TV. Stage some NBA games or something, using players who have tested negative. I hear that the Berlin Phil has made its catalog available, no paywall. Guarantee treatment to medic

Last night I read several more chapters of World War Z  and it was none too easy to fall asleep. This morning I went to the Farmers' Market, arriving shortly after it opened, and found roughly the normal crowd of both vendors and customers. Most wore no protective gear; the vendors, in any case, come largely from less affected parts of the state. I wore gloves while making purchases, but not for any reason I had thought through. I was careful to buy no more than I expected to eat over the coming week. If other people were hoarding, I didn't see it. Most of what is sold here is perishable, but can last weeks in the fridge. The Sunday Assembly held a team meeting by video, for the first time. That part went smoothly after the first ten minutes or so of people getting used to the app. No-one had trouble installing it -- ten years ago would have been different. We took it for granted that an indoor Assembly for next month was off the table, and mulled whether to hold an outdoor

It's now a full week since I stopped commuting. I have no cough. We are short on thermometers, and certainly not desperate enough to try and buy one (imagine how many are left!), but I expect I was not infected at work. Yesterday my wife and I discussed the tactics we'll use once the boys get home. The main thing is to wash hands carefully when re-entering the house. Within the house, we'll use ordinary hygiene, plus washing hands for every meal (which was our routine when the boys were young), until or unless someone shows symptoms. I've contacted my neighbours, who are elderly, and asked them to get in touch if they need anything brought to them. Speaking of which, we have a tradition of eating out on Saturday afternoon; today, we shall bring food home from a local restaurant. I assume that they go to some lengths to keep the food safe anyway, but it is much harder to keep tables and counters free of virus. I've found out the  reasoning  behind the UK governme

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a Bad Move. - Douglas Adams The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly. - Madeleine L'Engle (or earlier The first kick I was given towards treating CoViD-19 as deadly serious came from  Liz Specht , to whom I was referred by  Marginal Revolution . (If you're at all like me, you will love MR.) People who work with me at RSS also posted links to some articles, including epidemiology and information about how long the virus survives on various surfaces. A key fact caught my eye: one of the most effective means China found to slow the epidemic was to shut public transport down. (They can do that in China, just by saying so.) Since I was commuting by train and bicycle, this made it clear that simply getting to work was putting me at risk. Being at work wasn't great, but it seemed bearable. There are surfaces everyone