COVID Diaries Pt. 25

A few months have passed again.  The current news is that last week Russia invaded Ukraine.  The war is still ongoing, but the world united against Putin in ways I think a lot of us were shocked by.  The response has had crippling economic sanctions, but has even included things such as FIFA kicking Russia out of the World Cup, pretty much every tech company refusing to do business with Russia, and even Switzerland standing against them and freezing bank accounts.

Ukraine still has a long way to go to win this thing, but the entire world is on their side. 

During this crisis, I’ve come to realize how much Ukrainian software I use on a regular basis.   Mac staples like Clean My Max X, PDF Expert, the Spark email client, Grammarly and many more.  These people are still maintaining infrastructure while in the middle of bombardment.  It’s insane.  I hope all of them and the rest of the Ukrainian population can remain safe from Putin.

Outside of the current war, the Omicron variant spiked to its highest levels at the beginning of the year.  We surpassed 900,000 deaths in the US and over 1.5 million positive cases in one day, which are hard numbers to get your head around.  And one that could have been much lower if we didn’t have nutbags who were not masking or getting vaccinated in the name of “freedom.”

Because numbers have come way down after the latest spike, and there are no variants of concern right now, nearly everywhere has repealed guidelines.  No more mask mandate in Illinois or pretty much anywhere.  We’ve basically been told we can go back to normal.  Masks are still required on things like planes and such, but for the most part, everyone can go maskless when shopping or dining or whatever.

While I’m glad it’s happening, I do feel it’s a little premature.  There are still a lot of people who aren’t vaccinated who can get sick out there which could lead to another variant.   There are also still a lot of immunocompromised people too.  Since they are such high risk, everything going back to standard screws them more than anyone. 

For me, I’ll still wear a mask on a plane and may do so for the rest of my life.  The next time I go to a tech conference, I might be tempted to wear one as well.   Both of those activities would often get me sick.  A cold from the plane or “con crud” from the conference.  I may even keep it up for local shopping, but we’ll see.

Due to the newfound optimism in the US, the wife and I finally decided to book a trip.  Soon we will be enjoying Vegas once again.  It’s been too long.   We are both vaccinated and boosted and hopefully that is enough going forward.

I have been careful and paranoid and pretty much a hermit for two years.  It’s time to get back to some of the things we missed out on. 

This year I’ve started a daily journal.  Just jotting down what happened that day, what I did etc.  I’ve been enjoying it, but it makes me even less likely to post here.  We’ll see what happens going forward with the blog, but it might slow down even more.

But looking at the journal, there are some things that happened since the last post.  First, Betty White died right before her 100^th birthday which is some cosmic bullshit.    The racist assholes that killed Ahmaud Arbery were convicted in Georgia and then convicted again by federal prosecutors for hate crimes as well.  Those men will be locked up for the rest of their lives as they should be.

Bob Saget died, so shortly after his friend Norm MacDonald.  Meat Loaf and Louie Anderson also died.  Q people started drinking their own piss and taking Viagra to treat COVID.   There were massive snowstorms that crippled the country several times.  Oh and Texas decided to outdo itself in shittiness by also passing an anti-trans bill and labeling parents supporting their children as child abuse.  In case I’ve ever been unclear, Fuck Texas and their asshole governor. 

So that’s the catch up.  Hopefully, at least on the COVID front, we are truly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel this time.