Not gonna lie – there’s not much going on in terms of quarantine any longer. Vaccinations are keeping things relatively under control. Which is awesome.

Numbers
Early in the month, we crossed the 50% line of fully vaccinated residents in SA. At this point, we are up to a total of 959,040 full vaccinations in SA (58% of eligible folks), and 1,207,058 folks (73%) with at least one dose. Here’s how the rest of our numbers have fared over the last four weeks:

• Week 64 (5/28 – 6/3): 224,084 cases, 3,486 deaths, 106 seven-day average, 1.4% positivity rate
• Week 65 (6/4 – 6/10): 224,660 cases, 3,520 deaths, 80 seven-day average, 1.2% positivity rate
• Week 66 (6/11 – 6/17): 225,547 cases, 3,533 deaths, 105 seven-day average, 1.5% positivity rate
• Week 67 (6/18 – 6/24): 226,404 cases, 3,547 deaths, 105 seven-day average, 1.3% positivity rate

As you can see, things remain steady without much change – a positivity rate between 1 and 1.5%, and just over 100 for an average daily infection rate. It would be wonderful to see continued downward progress, but you can see that only 58% of eligible folks are fully vaccinated, and only 73% have gotten their first dose. That’s pretty low considering we have plenty to go around, and I’ve heard that there’s a problem with people not coming back for their second doses…sigh. But holding steady this low is better than spiking upwards again. I guess we’ll see how things progress in the future.

Local news
We reached a major milestone this month: our last nightly covid briefing was on 6/3. All the numbers above come from the city’s website, which is now updating every Wednesday. Vaccinations have been mostly sent out into pop-up clinics all over the city, including ones at Fiesta, which is going on this month. Many businesses are starting to move into post-covid mode. HEB, for instance, stopped requiring fully vaccinated workers or customers to wear masks. I’ve been there a few times since, and some folks (both customers and employees) are wearing them, but many aren’t, and it doesn’t feel as weird or scary as I expected it to. All the barriers and floor markers are still in place, but more and more, we’re seeing signs of “after,” and that’s honestly a relief!

On the home-front
At home, life also moves more toward normal. We attended virtual graduation for my sister, and were thankful for that option, but also went maskless to her graduation party that same evening. We had a birthday party for my nephew at Chuck E Cheese, and half the folks wore masks (thankfully, my whole family did!). I’ve now been to several outdoor events and hikes and didn’t even bring a mask along with me (thank goodness, because the heat is unreal this year!). Our school district has let us know that next year, online school will not be offered at all because the state won’t fund it, so everyone will be back in person. Jason’s work, which previously said no one would be back in the office until 2022, might be sending him back in 2x/week in the very near future (possibly next week). My family actually went to see a movie in theatre for the first time since Feb 2020! My in-laws came to visit this last week, and we went around a lot of places, and actually didn’t wear masks at many, just like in ye olden days, and it felt strange and normal and new all at once.

On the other side of things, the hospital still required me to get a covid test the day before my surgery (that wasn’t pleasant – they did the all-the-way-up-your-nose test!), and most medical facilities are still requiring it. There was a funny conversation I overheard at the imaging center:

Receptionist to older man: Sir, do you have a mask?
Older man: A what?
R: A mask.
OM: The governor said we were 100% safe from all that and we didn’t need to wear those now.
R: Well, we still do at our facility, it’s our policy.
OM: (putting on mask they’ve given him) Gol-LY!
OM: (pulls mask below nose the second R looks away)

(And no, our governor may be stupid and horrible, but he never did say that people were 100% safe from covid. *eye roll*)

Moving forward
This will be my last time posting my quarantine diaries. (Unless, of course, something really crazy happens!) This series has really helped me a lot over the last 15 months, but as you can see, the last four weeks has really just been “starting to get back to normal” with a few other minor things sprinkled in. I might include a section in my normal monthly wrap-ups if anything larger happens, but as it is, I feel like locally at least, the pandemic is winding up. Sure, it would be great if the rest of the population would get vaccinated so we could keep variants from forming and spreading, and it would be great if we could NOT politicize medicine, etc etc, but that won’t happen any time soon, so there’s no need for me to be posting about it on a more regular basis here. Thank you all for reading!