Despite the notable success of my part of the country during the early months of the pandemic we're in the thick of it now. Some combination of luck running out and people getting careless through exhaustion with the continuous state of low level emergency, I guess.
My training as a physical scientists left me with an irresitable urge to put things into perspective in a particular numeric manner. I note that at this point the numbers in the news correspond to approximately 3% of the US population having been diagnosed with Covid19 at some point this year and a little less than one-tenth of a percent having died from it.
So it is very easy to not know anyone who has died from this thing and not particularly hard to not know anyone who has gotten it. Especially if you live in an area that had not been hard hit until recently.
On the other hand this means we can expect Covid19 to be the third largest cause of death among Americans in 2020, outstipping all causes of violent death.
Anyway, with the virus surging in our community we've been affected in two ways this week. First, my daughter's preschool (which had re-opened in mid summer) has closed again after two cases in a month (but apparently no transmission in the building). They won't be re-opening until after the new year. Secondly two members of the team who care for our honorary Grandma are quaratining after a relative of theirs was diagnosed with the virus. The contact tracers have not called us so *we* may be in the clear, but there are three adults and four kids who are in our immediate circle at risk. Scary times.
We're trying to tighen up our practices again, and we had also started wearing masks in the common areas of the house last week (though neither thte toddler nor Grandma pay much mind to that). The medicos have learned a lot about how to treat this thing in the last eight months, but our hospitals are running just about at capacity right now which is not promising.
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