Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

Everyone has a different Day 1 of all this, mine is March 13th. I’d been quite aware of what was happening – stocked up on paper products, going to the market in off hours when it wasn’t crowded, and very pissed off at the complete lack of response from the government.

And since then, over a half million people have died – and I will never forget or forgive those that made it that way, because it never, ever had to be like this. May 45 and every last one of his enablers never know a moment of peace or joy for the rest of their lives.

At that point, we had 8 cases in the county, and 25 statewide. The state closed schools for a month, and my community responded by BUYING EVERY LAST DAMN THING IN THE GROCERY STORE.

Not like blizzard prep shopping, like absolute blind panic shopping. Produce section utterly wiped out (except grapefruit – which I like, so at least I had that) – which just killed me, cause we all know damn well at least 2/3 of what was bought was binned by the end of the week. Meat case, empty, frozen shelves, empty. Everything just gone in the space of a single day.

I think that evening shook me worse than anything all this past year. We’d seen some of the lockdowns in Europe – markets and pharmacies stayed open in every case – but everyone seemed to just forget that and think we wouldn’t be able to get food. And then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the panic shopping. I was so angry at people basically going feral.

March 13th was also the last day I hugged another human being. Kinda miss that.

I remember the kick in the teeth of “we’re staying in Phase 1 until June 10th”… HAHAHAHAHAHA. Then being pissed that we lifted restrictions, and then pissed again when they took way too long to re-implement when things went to shit again in the fall.

In October, when they were saying the path to full vaccination would take another year and thinking, “Fuck, how am I gonna deal with that?” – now, I could do it on my head.

The things I hoped we could get out of this? UBI, Medicare for All, a new administration, and a 4 day work week? Well, 1 out of 4 is…better than zero. Even with this latest rescue package, it’s not enough, far too late, and we’re still dealing with “oohhh noooo, people may get help they don’t need” and fuck me, let’s not. (I’m not saying the package is *bad*, I’m saying we could do better, and we should keep trying.)

I’m still jealous of the folks who managed to learn a new skill this past year or really threw themselves into their hobbies. I’ve baked one loaf of bread, gotten through 1/3 of a cross-stitch project, and forgotten how to read. I don’t even have kids, and the exhaustion and lack of focus is REAL.

Work…well, I’ve managed to keep my job, and my company has tried to be conscious about what’s going on and well meaning, but it has highlighted that c-suiters live in a totally different reality.

I’ve been ridiculously lucky through all this. I already worked remotely, so no adjustment there. No kids to try and keep alive and educated and entertained. My big changes have been just…not eating out and wearing a mask. Not really difficult. And yet, I’m still so very ready for this to be done.

What a shitty year it’s been. But, hopefully this time next year, I’ll just be hungover and eating a great breakfast at my diner.

If we can actually get to the point where we have enough vaccines available that everyone over 18 can be eligible by May 1 – my lord, that would be HUGE.

Mind you, it will take a hella effort to get those into arms, but we might be able to have a semi-normal summer. Wouldn’t that be something?

Right now, the best vax day we’ve had in my county is getting 5,320 second doses administered in a day. If we could consistently be at that rate (and I know it’s dependent on having the vaccines to give out) – the current waitlist would be cleared by the beginning of April and everyone over 18 could be done by the first week of August. (Though I’m hoping we can improve on those numbers.)

Gotta say, I’m liking these shifting goalposts of “Oh, we can do better? Then let’s do that.” There is something to be said for competence and care at the top.

The mind boggles with all the stuff we might be able to do sooner. Haircuts. Saturday breakfast at my diner. Have my pato tacos *at* the taco bar at the beach instead of 30+ feet away from all other forms of life. Short rib ragu at Trattoria Villagio sooner rather than later. (It was the last dinner before the pandemic – little bro & I have decided it needs to be the first when we can eat in again.) Our little fall festival. The 4H fair.

I’m realizing my post-pandemic to-do list is very food oriented.

Note to IT folks in all the health departments across the country: Time to get another server or something so everything doesn’t crash May 1.

But my god, there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.

So, I did more digging through the vaccine datasets from the state. First, let me say how much I love that they put these out here – they’re broken down to locality & health district, vaccine manufacturer, *and* the number of first & second doses.

In my county, the first second dose was administered on 1/2. Since then, we’ve gotten 89K fully vaccinated. That is definitely not nothing, but it’s also only 10% of our over-18 population. (I really thought we’d sped things up more.)

The county waitlist that was 105K yesterday is 107K today.

We’re getting an average of 1,392 a day to a fully vaccinated status. At that rate, we’ll get through the waitlist by nearly the end of May.

If we can’t increase the vax rate, we don’t hit herd immunity until 2022. (70-95% of the over 18s will take until between March to August of next year at the current rate.)

Our cases *are* dropping in the county – we’re back to early November numbers with a 7 day average of 160 cases a day. (Our peak was a 7 day average of 696 cases a day on 1/17.) So, that looks good.

But – our testing is dropping, too – we’ve never had true full bore surveillance testing here – they’ve gone into some nursing homes and very specific communities, but on the whole, testing has been self-selecting – and that’s how you end up with the mess of massive asymptomatic transmission.

The county is talking up the fact that a) our vax supply should be increasing significantly soon, and they expect J&J vaccines over the next few months, so that’s good, too, cause we need to get more shots in arms to be sure.

But, I’m thinking the J&J vax is going to be a harder sell – public health officials seems to be mainly focused on keeping people out of hospitals (which I totally get – that *is* really important) – but not so much on “how sick can you still get and are we still looking at more long haul cases.” I know the potential for being a long hauler scares the shit out of me. (I’m still pissed at how last year they kept saying, “Oh, the vast majority of cases are “mild” and it took forever for them to admit that mild = no hospitalization, but can still put you flat on your back for two weeks and have unending consequences.)

For people who are very concerned with not getting sick at all, J&J’s efficacy of 70-85% (depending on which article you read) vs. Moderna & Pfizers 90+% efficacy – well, you can tell people “take whatever vaccine you can get” until you’re blue in the face – but people are going to make decisions based on those numbers, because it’s more than just staying out of the hospital.