moderately desparing
I've been experiencing an uncomfortable mix of emotions over the past couple of days. I don't know if this is ironic per se, but it isn't about the death of Bill, my stepdad—although that's sure as shit connected to it. This Delta variant shit has been genuinely scaring me since at least June, and now we're finally back to recommending masks for everyone in indoor public spaces, due to daily case counts on a renewed uptick. I learned on one of Shobbhit's news programs last night that the viral load of the Delta variant is a thousand times greater than that of the original virus, and that's really the reason for this new mask guidance: its far higher transmissibility, including from vaccinated people (although we still remain protected from serious illness or death, an important distinction).
It's not the end of the world. It's something we can do, and won't functionally change my day to day life very much at all. I've already been back to masking up voluntarily in stores and movie theaters for a while anyway. And, for now at least, as of yesterday I have official confirmation that office spaces are exempt:
This DIRECTIVE applies to indoor spaces that are open to the public, including retail, grocery stores, government buildings, and other businesses and places where members of the public can enter freely; it does not apply to indoor non-public spaces, including businesses, offices, and other places of employment with limited access. [underlining emphasis mine]
Now. I am fully aware that even this can change if things continue to get worse at an accelerated rate. For now, I'm good: I feel comfortable continuing to work at the office without a mask, where not only is a large majority of us vaccinated, but most office staff is continuing to work from home anyway. That said, there does continue to be a risk that makes me nervous: at least once or twice a week, I am sitting in a cluster of four staff who are in desks all neighboring each other: with Scott to my left; Noah behind him and to Tracy's right; and Tracy behind me. Tracy said once last week, "If I get it, it's going to be from one of you all." I said, "Same." But, then I noted that Shobhit also works retail. He's been wearing a mask at work mostly all along though, and by definition in that job all interactions are brief, which doesn't bring the risk to zero by any stretch, but does lower the risk considerably.
It did occur to me yesterday that if someone comes into the office with a breakthrough infection, it's basically a guarantee that others will get sick as a result. Assuming all are vaccinated, they won't get seriously ill, but someone will still get sick. What I am wondering now is: if I continue working at the office, is that an inevitability?
I just so, so don't want to go back to having to work from home. I also don't want to have to work all day at the office with a mask on. I know I am in a massive position of privilege here; everyone at stores is required to wear one for their entire shift every day, and I have options. All that aside, feeling like we are backtracking in the middle of what had been feeling like a positive transitional period is so deeply disappointing, it's giving me unusual feelings of despair. I haven't had these kinds of swings in emotion since the very start of the pandemic, which kind of fucked me up at the time. To be clear, said "swings" right now are truly minor in comparison to what I went through in March and April of last year, but it's also a new experience to be feeling like we're coming out of the quicksand, only to find ourselves getting sucked under again.
And it's so infuriating to think about how much of this has to do with vaccine hesitancy. Even now, only 57.6% of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated. Had we gotten to, like, 85% a month, or even better two months ago, we absolutely would not be in this position right now—even with the Delta variant in the mix. And sadly, there's also the fact that the U.S. is far more ahead of the curve than most of the rest of the world, and variants are occurring as the virus spreads between the unvaccinated.
Yesterday I Googled "when will the pandemic end" just to see what came up, because forecasts vary and have been mixed and changing from the start. I found this article from May, and it makes a lot of interesting points, perhaps most notably that vaccines have never reliably shortened the duration of a pandemic, but rather simply saved a lot of lives in the meantime. It also discusses how coronavirus and influenza are different things, and pandemics from recent decades and centuries that we have for comparison could be considered apples and oranges, as all those pandemics were influenza. The working assumption seems to be that many factors are creating the expectation that although pandemics tend to just burn out on their own over time once it moves from pandemic to endemic (basically, it moves from global to local and seasonal), and the same expectation holds true for COVID, certain differences with a coronavirus mean that process may be more prolonged than it tends to be for influenza pandemics.
In other words, the way I see it, this means it could be a year or two, maybe even more, before local restrictions of varying severity brought on by this virus truly wane for good. Masks are required in certain instances for a given amount of time; cases go down; restrictions are eased; the process repeats. Will we even be able to have a Pride Parade in 2022, I wonder? It's just so fucking depressing.
I did also look up data on India yesterday as well, knowing that was where the Delta variant came from: I found it at least moderately reassuring, actually. Their spike from April through June was jaw droppingly massive, but it did drop steeply after a couple of months. Granted, daily case numbers have remained steadily in the 40,000 range since then, but that number was over ten times that in May. My hope is that we see a similar pattern in the U.S. Granted, India got numbers down by reinstating their own restrictions, but on the flip side, that massive spike was fueled by having a far lower vaccination rate than the U.S. Granted, India is now down to under 23,000 cases per million, and right now that per-capita rate in the U.S. is far higher, at over 106,000. That's scary, as is the fact that in the per-capita rate, the U.S. is ranked 16th in the world right now. (India is 114th.)
So . . . that just makes me despair again. I'm just so tired of it all. I'm especially tired of people refusing to do even the most basic things. First people resisted masks and insisted they made no difference. Vaccines came along and literally gave them a pass for not wearing a mask, and the same fucking morons are refusing those now. And it doesn't help to know that, no matter what, vaccines are our best defense—even as variants get worse. We literally have nothing else to combat the spread of this disease anywhere near as effectively. I see a lot of idiots on TikTok posting comments about the government "lying" about effective treatments, but that completely misses the point. We actually barely have treatments for this; prevention does far more for everyone, for the entire community, as it keeps people from getting sick and it keeps people from spreading it. The fear now is having time tell us that mutating viruses render these vaccines steadily less effective. And then what? Then were the fuck are we?
Waiting for that moment the pandemic burns itself out, I guess, evolving into yet another form of less serious, flu-like sickness that few people continue to die from. (As we all know, certain people still die of the flu.) I just find myself struggling with an outlook that possibly includes years of getting us from here to there.
Anyway, what can I tell you about last night? I watched and reviewed a movie, this time streaming at home, which I had not done since reviewing the Disney+ documentary Wolfgang on July 6—that was five reviewed movies ago; the last four movies I reviewed, I saw in a theater. And, I'd still go to see one now; I only haven't because the options sucked or I already saw them. So, I finally got around to the VOD film I've been moving on my calendar for a few weeks: Sublet, an intergenerational gay romance set in Tel Aviv, Israel. And I quite liked it. $4.99 was quite the easy price, totally worth it.
Shobhit had his Project Management class last night, so that gave me the opportunity to watch a movie in the bedroom. Shobhit won't have any late shifts again for the foreseeable future; his hours were expanded somewhat at Total Wine, but not a whole lot, and all his shifts so far are just five-hour shifts from morning through the afternoon. None are scheduled for any weekends. This means he's going to be home a hell of a lot more of the time for a while, at least until he finds another job. I fairly regularly tell him he should be aggressively applying at places, he agrees with me, and then I don't see him really doing it.
He's suddenly very concerned, though, about disturbing Ivan. Ivan just had his first regular, overnight shift at his new job last night, and Shobhit reassured him, unsolicited, that he would keep the volume down on the TV so he can sleep through the day after he gets home. Shobhit seems afraid that Ivan will get tired of him being around and too noisy and then change his mind and move. I feel like I know Ivan too well now, though, and understand his patterns. I truly don't think Ivan will move again until he inevitably tires of this job—not of Shobhit—and decides he needs another "change of scenery." And I give that about a year at minimum, and maybe even longer.
For now, Ivan seems to like his new coworkers a lot. Granted, the job only just started. He has gone back to school twice now with two separate goals in mind to get out of the nursing industry, and inevitably he winds up right back at nursing again, as he's doing now. It's still what he has by far the most training and experience for, and it sure as shit pays better than any other option he might have. So, again, he also inevitably winds up back in nursing again as well. He gets sick of it, tries to leave it, winds up returning to it. He just can't stick with one thing for a particularly long time.
Except for his friendship with me, I suppose? I think I can largely take responsibility for that, as he and I were never especially close the first time he lived with me, in 2014, but after he moved out that first time, I insisted on keeping in touch. I think it even made an impression on him when I drove all his belongings to him in Olympia back in April 2015. Once he moved back to Seattle after his year at school at Evergeen State College, he would regularly suggest we go out to dinner, which we were doing about once a month before he wound up moving back in after Tommy moved out in November 2016. Ivan and I did a lot more together that second time he lived with me, though all of 2017. Things like going out to eat or seeing movies, none of which we had ever done the first time he lived with me. Now, between movie-outs and movie-ins and his globe-spanning travels (Eastern Europe and New Zealand for the most part), and my insistence that he send me photos of places he went, which he never stopped doing, quite consistently—we've had a steady friendship for a good seven years. So that's one thing, at least, that Ivan has not abandoned. I want to be one of the few things in his life he knows he can count on, and I kind of feel like, so far so good.
I only saw him briefly last night, as he spent some time sleeping before leaving for his shift. He did message me asking when we would watch the next episode of The Leftovers. I said it was unlikely but possible we could after Shobhit's class, but then he said "not tonight" because he has his first shift. So, we likely will tonight.
I'm only posting about half an hour later than usual today because Tracy had a work call at noon and I told her I would wait until 12:30 to take my lunch break so she could join me as usual. She didn't have anything for lunch today but she still sat on a table out on the patio with me. It was quite nice, as always. I love having regular lunch access to that patio again. And I want to continue having it, goddammit!
[posted 1:04 pm]