CoViD-19 and I

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...

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...