We are officially 150 days into the pandemic here in San Antonio. August 9th was 150 days from our first diagnosed case on March 13th. We also hit five full months at the end of this week. Things are thankfully slowing down in San Antonio over the last few weeks – thank you, mask order! I hope we can continue the positive trend going forward.

Because things are slowing down here, I’m going to stop posting weekly. This was my plan way back in early June around week 14, but then we had a spike. With things getting under control again, I feel okay documenting this on an every-few-weeks basis. This feels like a really good sign, I’ll admit – a positive light going forward.

Things are mostly positive in this post, but: If your mental health is at a point where you cannot bear to hear more about quarantine stuff, skip to the bottom of this post for a list of positives and highlights and Nice Things. We all need some of that right now!

This week in numbers
We began the week at 41,939 cases, a 329-case daily average, and 406 deaths. The following numbers are misleading. Like the last few weeks, daily death numbers aren’t current and go back at least a month. Apparently, the state has reported several hundred extra deaths attributed to our county, but our local health authorities won’t count them toward our totals until they have been investigated (to make sure there are no duplicates, or that these are actually folks with residency in our county, etc). Each day includes current deaths as well as those confirmed during the verification process.

• Friday, August 7th: 42,299 (+360), 422 deaths
• Saturday, August 8th: 42,531 (+232), 432 deaths
• Sunday, August 9th: 42,873 (+252), 445 deaths
• Monday, August 10th: 42,959 (+176), 455 deaths
• Tuesday, August 11th: 43,164 (+205), 519 deaths
• Wednesday, August 12th: 43,455 (+291), 545 deaths
• Thursday, August 13th: 43,673 (+218), 560 deaths

We had a total of 1,734 cases this week – daily average 248 – which continues our downward trend. 154 deaths were reported this week, but again, I have no idea how many were actually from this week. Many were from July. Because of these skewed death numbers, and last week’s weird change in case numbers, my graphs are no longer even remotely accurate, so I’m not including them here anymore. Here instead is a graph of our cases from June to present, courtesy of local news station KSAT 12:

Weekly stats, updated each Monday, continue to show mostly positive trends as well. Doubling rate is up to 24 days and positivity rate is down to 12.7%. There has been a steady decline in hospital admissions as well. The only bad news, continuing the trend of the last few weeks, is the increase in pediatric cases, up to 16% this week. The city further broke down those numbers this week into 0-9 years (6%), and 10-19 years (10%).

This week in San Antonio
Very little news to report this week, which is always a good thing! We finally got the results of the asymptomatic tests in June, with nothing really to glean from the random testing. Oh well. The city announced it will close its parks during the Labor Day holiday weekend, a precautionary measure that I approve of wholeheartedly despite my annoyance at being unable to use the trails. Over the last week or two, the number of people requesting covid tests here has started declining – another good sign, if you remember just how impossible it was to get tests a month ago when my friend Natalie’s family was sick! Perhaps they’ll open to people with no symptoms again soon. The one bit of worrisome news is that some bars are being reclassified as restaurants, in order to reopen again – and we know that bars were a big contributor to the spike in June.

This week at home
School starts for Laurence on Monday, and so much is being done last-minute. He only got his schedule mid-week, and most of his classes were wrong, so we had to figure that out. Also, the school suddenly changed to an A/B schedule with some classes on MWF and others on TTh. It would have been nice to find this out more than a week before school started! I don’t blame the teachers, of course. And I know the district has been dealing with the flip-flopping TEA guidelines for the last month. But our district in particular has delayed releasing plans for MONTHS, which is frustrating. Beyond that, we also filled out a form stating our choice of virtual-only instruction for Laurence this semester.

Morrigan began working again this week, since the numbers have been getting progressively lower. He only has two weeks to work before going up to college again, but his employer was happy to have him back and has told him he can come work over all the summers. Ambrose wants to start working as well, but he needs to renew his license first. DPS is requiring appointments now, and he had his this week…but they said he had a temperature of over 100 degrees, so he couldn’t come in! It was faulty equipment, though – we checked when he got home, and he didn’t actually have a fever. But now we have to wait until late September to get him in again. Sigh.

Other things this week:

• Our quarantine was up on Tuesday, so Laurence and I were able to see the chiropractor on Wednesday. Thank goodness. My back really needed that! (Also, they took our temps, which is new for them, but thankfully they had non-faulty equipment!)
• Laurence buzz-cut his hair at home this week despite getting a new haircut a couple weeks back.
• One of my mom’s high school friends died of covid this week. Even still, she can’t get my grandparents to take this seriously. They continue to shop for themselves despite their vulnerability and the rising number of cases in their small-town area.
• I received word that NaNoWriMo is going full-on virtual this year. It’s unlikely I’ll be participating, so this won’t affect me directly, but I’m sad for my fellow InSANowrimos who will lose that wonderful IRL connection that is so great during NaNo.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
Ironically, most of the positive this week is in the covid-trend! But here are a few things from home, too.

• this awesome video about the “truth” about masks
• we finished our cat-scratch wall! –>
• I also finished my runner’s board (bibs, medals, etc)
• I applied to return to school this semester! First time going back since I had to leave when Morrigan was an infant!
• Back in March (pre-pandemic), I was fitted for shoes at Fleet Feet. There were two pairs that fit well, and I decided to go with Hoka One One as it was new to me. But I was smart and took a picture of the other pair, so now that I needed a second pair to rotate with, I was able to order the right size/fit/model without needing a full-on fitting during the pandemic. Woohoo!
• my hiking group decided to re-open hikes in September! Let’s not screw this up again, San Antonio!

How are all of you?