Two are Better than One

For the last few weeks, I've been very impressed to see that almost everyone I pass on my neighborhood walks has been wearing a mask, even if they're just by themselves. As much of a mask fan as I am, I even think it's a little silly to have one on if you're by yourself outdoors, with plenty of room to get away if you do encounter someone. However, to keep up with my neighbors, I've also been wearing a mask on my recent walks.

There have been a lot of articles recently about double masking. In addition (or as an alternative) to wearing higher quality masks, many experts are now recommending wearing two masks. Dr. Fauci said, “If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective." Doubling up increases the number of layers of protection and makes the masks fit more snugly. (USA Today article, NBC video)

I've seen a lot of people wearing double masks recently, both in the public eye and in my day-to-day life. I've decided to double mask when going indoors. I did all those errands I'd been saving up earlier this week (plus got a new car battery 🙌🏻), and wore double-masks for all of them. It's not super comfortable, but if nothing else, that might encourage spending less time in public!

Jump Start

I have a bunch of errands I was putting off because of the new variant out there - even though there's only been a few cases recorded in a handful of states, it's got to be more prevalent than we realize (just like when the virus initially started cropping up..). I'd been operating under the assumption that whatever things we were doing relatively safely before, like quickly running into a store to pick something up, we should stop doing. But now I'm thinking I should take care of this stuff ASAP - including renewing my library card (which they refuse to let me do online or over the phone, in a pandemic), having blood drawn, and a couple other things.

In preparation for these trips out, I figured I should go run my car yesterday and... the battery was dead again. Luckily I was just at home, and my husband was able to give me a jump 😂 Guess I will have to go for a couple more drives per week. I also just ordered a portable jump starter, in case this happens while I'm away from home!

They expect the new variant to become the dominant strain by March - hopefully we can keep ahead of it with vaccines and other precautions that will be encouraged from the top down, as they should be 😕 I really don't want to get this disease. Even asymptomatic people who "recover just fine" have major lasting lung damage. I wonder what long-term effects this will have on the overall health of the population - will we see a ton of people on oxygen tanks just as a normal part of life in the coming years?

400,000

We have now passed the milestone of 400,000 COVID deaths in the US. Over 4,000 people are dying each day. On the eve of his inauguration, our president-elect honored the dead at a memorial in Washington, DC. Many other cities held their own memorials as well (I know my town had one). 

Looking forward to a fresh start based on science and facts, with an organized and compassionate plan to prevent, treat, and vaccinate against this disease...

Mutations and Masks

According to this article, thanks to the much-discussed "new variants," it's time to clamp down even further on activities and interactions, including those basic, "life-sustaining" things like going to the grocery store. They make it sound so easy: "We simply need to do what we’ve been doing all along to prevent infections, just much, much better." Too bad there has been so much opposition to those basic preventative measures, I can't imagine asking people to do them even more! But the most concerning part, to me, is that "More cases will also give the virus more opportunities to mutate further and potentially escape our vaccines, perpetuating the cycle of doom."

August de Richelieu for Pexels

The article above also echoes another one that got a lot of publicity this week - why aren't we wearing better masks? I love my cloth masks and have quite the collection of them now, but even though they're still what the CDC is recommending, they were only ever meant to be a stopgap until the supply of surgical and N95 masks was able to keep up with demand. Other countries have been distributing supplies of surgical or N95 equivalent masks to their populations, and now that there's more contagious variants of the virus, it's even more urgent to get everyone properly masked.

Our president elect has been naming more people to the COVID-19 task force, and has proposed delivering 100 million doses of vaccine in his first 100 days (to make up for the very slow rollout thus far), as well as having people wear masks faithfully for his first 100 days. (I still feel like the people who want to wear masks are already wearing masks, and the people who didn't vote for him will probably avoid masks and hold parties to lick each other out of protest 🤷🏼‍♀️)

A Coup

You know I don't usually discuss politics here, because I like to keep it focused on the virus topic and its effect on daily life, but once again something historic has happened that is impacting daily life, so it feels important to record it here.

AP Photo

Today was the day that the results of November's presidential election were to be certified. It's basically a formality (the current VP oversees it in just a ceremonial role) - he was elected president and he will become president on January 20. There have been lawsuits and challenges and baseless calls of illegitimacy for the last couple months, but so far every attempt to overturn the election results has fallen through.

Getty Images

So it felt like a last ditch thing that the president "invited" his supporters to DC today... And they came. And stormed the Senate. Senators were evacuated to undisclosed locations, told to wear gas masks in case of tear gas use, etc. There were guns pointed and a standoff at the Senate chamber doors, but rioters eventually got inside, wandered the floor, sat at the podium, went into private offices and riffled through people's belongings. The DC police (who are much better armed than an average city's police department) and Virginia National Guard were called in. There were calls for peace from all sides. Some of the pictures from today are just wild.

AFP via Getty Images

The president elect gave a press conference, calling for the president to make a public statement on national television calling for rioters to go home. The president posted a 1 minute video on Twitter bemoaning how the election had been stolen from him and everyone knew it and it was a great injustice, but to please "go home in peace." (One of my friends put it well: "Screams 'Stolen election,' whispers 'Go home.'")

I had to get on a call for work, so I missed the de-escalation(?) of the situation, but jumping back in now, I heard hundreds of protestors are "milling around" outside, and the police and National Guard are clearing out the area ahead of the 6 PM curfew imposed by the mayor.

Getty Images

So before the Senate was invaded, they got through counting/certifying like 12 of over 500 votes. They will eventually get done, and in a couple weeks, we'll have a new president. In the meantime, there are calls to impeach the current one (a process he already went through a year ago!), and expel the members of Congress who incited this attack.

And in breaking news that interrupts the breaking news, the Senate runoff race that concluded yesterday in Georgia has assured a Democratic majority in Senate (in addition to the House and of course the incoming president). I look forward to the many improvements our government will now be empowered to implement!

Logic?

If you aren't wearing a mask because there's no proof they work:

There's no proof masks cause harm, so until there is, I'm going to keep covering my face to prevent the government and corporations from monitoring me. Most people don't even realize how heavily monitored we are. The fact that you're reading this here on the internet means there's probably already piles of very specific data about you collected somewhere. Do you really want your face to be part of that? I'm covering mine for as long as it's socially acceptable 😷

If you think that the virus was an intentionally released biological weapon:

If you ignore warnings to protect yourself, isn't that like running into a bomb? Assuming this is something done to intentionally harm people, the best route would be to avoid harm (in this case by staying out of the chain of infections), to thwart its purpose. Wouldn't whoever's behind this be mad when nobody gets sick as they had intended?!

The New Variant

The new variant of the virus, being called the "UK variant" (much to the UK's chagrin), is already pretty widespread, appearing in over 30 countries and several US states. It's more infectious (possibly because it infects people with a higher viral load, which means they have more virus to spread to others), but no more dangerous. However, it actually is more dangerous, because if more people are getting infected at one time, and there's already so many people infected that hospitals are having to ration care and turn people away who normally would have gotten treatment, then this will make that situation much worse.

The UK actually implemented a new nationwide lockdown starting today to try to get this under control, but considering there's already community spread in the US (i.e. people are getting it who haven't traveled or had contact with someone who has), it feels like too little, too late.

Now there's also a South Africa variant, which they're saying is "more problematic," though I can't figure out why from this article. It's more infectious? They also imply that the vaccines might be less effective against it, but why?

I'm not surprised by any of this, though. Viruses mutate, that's what they do. The cool thing about the RNA vaccines that have rolled out first is that it's easy to make a little tweak here and there and pump out updated vaccines quickly, rather than having to wait to regrow things in a lab.