Easter

Today I made us a delicious meal for brunch, then we had an Easter Zoom call with my family - the majority of the call was everyone figuring out how Zoom works, but it was still fun. Someone suggested we do it once a month!

Speaking of once a month, today was the president's original goal for reopening the country. He's now saying May, predicting that we are already at the peak of infections and numbers will be going down over the next couple weeks. Won't he be surprised if things are even worse in May? All the models I've seen predict a peak more like in June or July (and that's just in my area - some areas of the country started later and therefore will peak later). Covid Act Now is projecting mid-May here actually, with the curves for my county and my state looking pretty flat in the past week!

There was lots of promising news this week about progress in the development of treatments and vaccines. I read that some vaccines are in Phase 3 trials, which I find hard to believe, since last I saw most were in Pre-Clinical or Phase 1 studies. But the makers of a treatment I am tangentially related to released a statement saying it may be available in 6 months, rather than the 12 months they originally planned.

Saturday Night Live aired a special "SNL at Home" episode last night. It was actually pretty good - the sketches were either a single actor at home, multiple people on screen separately like a video chat, or animations. They even had a host (Tom Hanks, America's first celebrity infection), and a musical guest performance (Chris Martin). However, the end of the show, showing the credits rolling in front of an empty stage, instead of the usual scene of the cast all hugging each other and celebrating, kind of got me choked up.

I also ordered us some reusable masks. My homemade ones are ok for now, but they're not really comfortable or well made. And I have the feeling we'll be expected to wear masks in public for a long time to come...