— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
Well, I suppose I don't want to bury the lede: I don't have Covid. I didn't think I did, but that didn't make me any less nervous. The test was at 5:15 or so Thursday evening, and I went the whole day on Friday without getting any notice of the results. They did say I'd get it in between 24 and 48 hours, so I knew to expect that. Also, that turnaround was still far better than the GS Labs test Shobhit and I had on January 5, but did not get the results for four business days—but because January 5 was a Wednesday, that meant we didn't get our results for six days. I didn't actually
see that result for seven days though, because although GS Labs emailed us directly with the first, rapid test results, I only learned later that you have to log into your account on their website to get the PCR test results. So, functionally, I got tested on January 5; got the rapid test results within an hour (85% accuracy, they said) but did not
know my PCR test results until a full week later, on January 12.
Last week's test and results were a similar scenario, just with only the PCR test and no rapid test, and with a far quicker turnaround. They told me I would receive both an email and a text, and that was indeed what happened. And, both came on Friday evening, actually; I just didn't see either one until Saturday morning. The email came through at 11:41 Friday night and the text came 21 minutes later, at 12:02 a.m. I went to bed at 10:51 Friday night, so I was deep asleep when they came through.
What this means is, on Saturday morning, I woke up to the text:
Please follow the link above to access your test results.
So, lying in bed at about 6:40 Saturday morning, I clicked the link with my heart in my throat. Honestly, I'm no longer sure it needs to be this dramatic, even if by chance I tested positive. Well, except for the logistics of my living situation, with two bedrooms and three people and no room in which one person can truly isolate. But, I have little reason to fear how it might affect
me, given my having had three doses of a vaccine. That said, and I've said this countless times now, I'll still be thrilled if I can get to the other side of this pandemic without ever having gotten infected. I'll be in a minority in that case, probably.
However unnecessary the intensity of my anxiousness for about thirty seconds might have been, when I opened the link and saw the green-highlighted, all-caps word NEGATIVE, my relief was palpable. One thing I really must keep in mind, as in literally keep reminding myself, is that in spite of the fact that current daily case counts in King County may be 76% declined from their peak on January 10, the category of "Level of Community Transmission" remains stuck at "High," which is where it stays as long as there are more than 100 cases per 100,000 people in a week (last week was 480.7, which is still nearly five times that minimum level—on January 10, that week's total was
four hundred fifty-two times that minimum level).
That said, when looking at King County's
COVID-19 Outcomes by Vaccination Status page, those numbers shift quite dramatically for people who are fully vaccinated. Now, this graph currently only ends at January 27, but at that time, the unvaccinated population was infected at a rate of 2,800 per 100,000 over the previous week (over seven times the minimum level to be considered "high" transmission), whereas in the fully vaccinated population was at 722 per 100,000. Now, yes, even the vaccinated number there is 7x the threshold for "high" transmission, but the unvaccinated number is 28x the threshold. And again, this is as of January 27. As of February 3, daily transmission rates were down 51% just since the 27th. If we assume the case per 100,000 rates are roughly down the same amount then vaccinated people would currently be at 354. Still three and a half times the threshold—but, quite steadily declining. At this rate we should be in incredibly good shape again by March.
Broadly speaking, what all this means is that just because things are kind of stunningly better currently than they were four weeks ago, transmission rates remain dangerously high, and thus there remains every reason to be vigilant. Daily case rates haven't been even this low since December 21, but even on that date, case rates were nearly five times higher than they had been on December 1. And that was
after the Delta variant "surge," which is almost quant to think about now: you look at any
all-time graph now, and all previous "surges" just look like minor bumps in comparison to the massive severity of case numbers with Omicron. So, even after a massive drop from the peak of Omicron still leaves us exponentially higher than we were at any previous point in the pandemic.
The key difference now is how many more of those cases are unvaccinated versus vaccinated, plus the lower severity of illness among the many breakthrough cases. The thing I still have no idea about is, am I one of the people who has been exposed but the vaccines still kept me protected? Would I have gotten sick in those scenarios had I not been vaccinated? Have I still managed to avoid infection due to protections, or just sheer luck? I suspect it's some balance of both.
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
I guess I can actually tell you about the rest of my weekend now. I wound up hanging out over at Alexia's on Friday night, watching
Mission: Impossible III with her. Shobhit and I burned through the whole series several years ago, and I didn't particularly find them all that good until the third one, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain. And even though it does feature a stunt involving skyscrapers in Shanghai, the sequence that I always found the most memorable was the helicopter chase through the field of wind turbines.
I was walking home and crossing the street on 12th Avenue long Pine when I saw Alexia passing me in the other direction. She had ear pods in and was clearly not paying attention; I thought maybe she saw me from across the street but she didn't. She didn't even register at first when I waved, but then I widely waved my arm in front of her face and she finally noticed me, then walked with me back to the corner. She told me then she planned to watch the movie and would text me when she was ready of I'd like to join her. She did just that when I had just sat down to eat my dinner, so I just brought that over with me.
We even talked for several minutes after the movie was over, a lot about her history with both her parents and her now-grown son Bram.
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
Shobhit had a work shift on Saturday, but he left only a couple of hours into his shift. He constantly thinks he can tell when his blood pressure is high just based on how he's feeling, which I always find suspect. He came home and took his blood pressure and it was somewhat high. He also had a headache and just wasn't feeling great, and wound up lying in the bed and reading a novel for much of the afternoon.
In the meantime, I took myself to the one movie I saw in a theater over the weekend, taking Light Rail and then the Monorail to Seattle Center to see it at the SIFF Film Center theater:
Last and First Men, truly a movie unlike any other, to a degree that I just thought it was . . . fine. Solid B. I came home and really thought I wouldn't have that much to say about it, then wound up with a review in excess of 800 words.
Then Shobhit and I went to the Central District PCC to do some grocery shopping.
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
Shobhit had another shift yesterday, and that one he worked all of. The only time I went anywhere was to walk to the library and return the book I'm only about 25% of the way through, and I've renewed twice and it was late. I'll just reserve it again. I went to the Capitol Hill branch library because I got a notification of a DVD ready for pickup—only to be reminded when I got there that it's currently closed on Sundays. Shit. Oh well, it was a very nice walk anyway, as yesterday was
a beautiful sunny day. And my kind of sunny day, too: not hot at all, just sunny. It was 48°.
Ivan was home through the weekend, having had the last two nights off of work. He suggested we watch something yesterday evening, and he suggested
Harold and Maude, which he and I watched together before as well,
nearly five years ago. (Side note: last night I had first suggested
Thelma & Louise which I have been thinking about re-watching. Ivan said, "I've seen that." Uh, so have I, and we've both already seen
Harold and Maude so whatever! Anyway, I only just discovered, after finding that link, that when we watched
Harold and Maude in 2017 it was also after I suggested
Thelma & Louise and the idea was shot down then too. What a weird coincidence.)
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
Aside from all that, I spent the weekend continuing to reconstruct my fucked up playlists in Apple Music. I'm now finally through reconstructing all of my playlists based on calendar years, at least two each: one as a countdown based on how many times I listened to the album that year; one based on optimal sequencing. As of 2014, I started adding a new, third version, where it only includes tracks from albums actually released that year. And for both 2020 and 2021, I only made one version: a "sequencing" version which, for the first time, includes multiple tracks from single albums—because, anymore, I listen to music so less often, in favor of podcasts, that I don't ever have enough new music to fill a playlist of 20 tracks like I used to, without it going into albums I only listened to once or twice and which I've had for years. So, for 2020 on, I stick just to tracks from albums purchased (or acquired) that year. With two tracks from most of the 9 albums I got in 2020, and mostly three tracks from the 7 albums I got in 2021, both of those playlists easily were expanded out again to 20 tracks.
Apple Music has made even more frivolous playlists a lot easier to make, though. Over the weekend I also made a 14-track playlist of songs about
cake (most of them are metaphorical; a couple are literal), and a 16-track "Pandemic" playlist. Beyond that, with the year playlists finally done, I am able to move into the artist/singer/band favorites playlists, in alphabetical order. I've updated ABBA (now with two tracks from the new album they released last year) and Ace of Base. Next up: "Acoustic," my playlist of favorite tracks with acoustic guitar.
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
Oh, and just one last thing, I nearly forgot to mention: Sara W, the former PCC office staffer who moved back to Denver a few years ago and who Shobhit and I
visited in August 2019, called me on the phone last night. We talked for a pretty good while, 43 minutes. We hadn't talked in quite a long time; I'm not sure if we ever even spoke in 2021.
But, she and I easily just pick up where we left off, and she was clearly looking for some updates regarding staff and leadership changes at PCC. Also, she's looking for a current contact for someone she wants to use as a reference. I guess she's feeling overworked at her grocery store management job there and is ready to move on and back into something administrative.
It was kind of convenient, too, for her to call though, because I've been talking to Shobhit about returning for a visit to see Sara in Denver this summer. When we visited in 2019, I said I hoped to come back again in two years—but, that took us to summer 2021, and that just wasn't a good time. Now I'm more open to more trips of this nature, and I may do both Denver this summer, and a visit to Barbara in Louisville sometime this year. I was thinking late spring or summer for that as well, but now I am seriously considering next month, while Shobhit is in India. We'll see.
In any case, it was great to catch up with Sara, and now she's been appraised of the possibility of another visit, and she's totally open to it and seems to look forward to the idea. Assuming Covid numbers steadily improve through the year—and god only knows whether that will truly pan out or not—I'm looking at a fairly busy year of travels and vacations: Louisville, maybe as soon as next month; Birth Week in late April; anniversary trip in June, hopefully to Calgary and Edmonton; Denver, maybe in the summer; and then the four nights in Leavenworth in September for the second Family Vacation.
— पांच हजार एक सौ तीस —
[posted 12:40 pm]
