Because I was on vacation for most of Week 81, I didn’t hear a lot of news – I kinda avoided it on purpose, tbh – and have combined these two weeks together. And really, with things settling down again, and less news happening, I’ll probably go back to a couple weeks at a time in general, unless/until there’s another surge.

Week 81 – 9/24-9/30
The numbers this week:

• Cases: 310,957 (+4,188)
• Deaths: 4,426 (+112)
• Seven-day rolling average: 554 (-41/day) (595)
• Positivity rate: 5% (+0.1%)
• Cases per 100k: 30.1 (-11.7)
• Hospitalizations: 659 patients; 227 in ICU
• Vaccinations: 1,503,099 first dose (89% of eligible population, 75% total); 1,240,394 fully vaxxed (74% of eligible, 62% total)
• In L’s classes: none this week (cumulative: 5 students, 6 staff)
• Week 5 for our school: 7 students, 0 staff (cumulative: 63 students, 4 staff)

Literally the only piece of news I heard this week came from my brother-in-law, who works for American Airlines. The airline has announced that all employees must be vaccinated and can’t opt for a regular testing alternative like some other airlines have provided. People can still apply for an exemption, and I don’t know how many of those they’ll grant, but I’m glad at least AA isn’t accommodating anti-vaxxers. The more businesses that do this, the more people will get vaccinated. I’m not a fan of capitalism, but this is what capitalism is supposed to do – push people into doing what is best for businesses, and what’s best for businesses is to NOT have a raging pandemic!

This isn’t really news, but I’ll also say that while on vacation, 85% of the people J and I came across in indoor spaces were maskless. Gas stations, rest areas, stores, restaurants, etc. We stayed safe – wearing our masks indoors, choose hotels that required masks as much as possible, keeping our excursions outside, using doordash for meals, etc. Hopefully it was enough. In Texas in particular, everyone looked at us like we were aliens when we walked in gas stations and were literally the ONLY people wearing masks (not even the employees). Sigh. No wonder things are f-cking insane here.

Week 82 – 10/1 – 10/7
Mid-week, I went to the chiropractor for post-travel care, and there were two women sitting across from me in the lobby talking to each other about the vaccine. One woman had gotten her shots because otherwise she wasn’t allowed to see her grandchildren (yay to her son or daughter for enforcing that!). The other woman was refusing, and said she would be getting a fake vaccine card if they tried to force her to show one. She said the government was “encouraging” people to get fake vaccine cards by trying to force them to get vaccines. I mean, forget the fact that most people need other vaccines for school, certain kinds of employment, etc, and no one very few are complaining about that. Forget the fact that this woman is probably very angry about immigrants getting fake green cards (not that this is common, but she believes it is) because they aren’t allowed to enter the country legally. Forget that this woman probably couldn’t figure out a way to get a fake vaccine card anyway. It’s this kind of sentiment that pisses me off so badly, the hypocrisy of it, the ignorance, the sheer stupidity and selfishness! Ugh. Anyway, numbers:

• Cases: 314,185 (+3,228)
• Deaths: 4,559 (+133)
• Seven-day rolling average: 400 (-154/day)
• Positivity rate: 3.9% (-1.1%)
• Cases per 100k: 23.7 (-6.4)
• Hospitalizations: 496 patients; 184 in ICU
• Vaccinations: statistics not updated this week
• In L’s classes: none this week (cumulative: 5 students, 6 staff)
• Week 5 for our school: 9 students, 0 staff (cumulative: 72 students, 4 staff)

We hit a grim milestone in the US this week as we surpassed 700k deaths in this pandemic. It’s frustrating because this didn’t have to happen. Nearly all of these deaths could have been prevented if people would’ve just gotten vaccinated!! The entire period from 600k to 700k, the vaccine was available to EVERYONE ages 12+. And guess which states have suffered the worst? Florida (17k) and Texas (13k), as ANYONE could have predicted. Those two states have 15% of the US population and over 30% of the nation’s deaths. What a surprise. Unfortunately, up to 30k of that last 100k could be breakthrough cases – and the preliminary data shows that vaccinated folks dying from covid nearly entirely caught the disease from an unvaccinated person. UGH. As of October 1st, only 65% of Americans have had a single dose, and 56% are fully vaxxed. This is nuts.

I wish I could get my mom and her side of the family to look at this data and take it seriously, because they’re all still refusing to do the right thing! My mom’s been sick for the last two weeks. She took a home covid test early on and it came back negative, but this has just lingered, and she’s still going to work at the preschool my aunt runs, where multiple kids and their parents have been exposed to covid and yet are still coming to school, so they’re getting it from all sides. In a recent message from her, she said they’re getting covid from all sides and she’s just tired of dealing with it, and I want to scream THEN JUST GET THE DAMN VACCINE but I smile and nod instead. Sigh. It doesn’t help to hear numbers like this: Texas schools, in the first six weeks of the school year, saw 172k student cases state-wide, which is more than all of last year combined.

In better news, the city’s risk level has moved down to Mild now. And Pfizer has put in for emergency auth for the vaccine for ages 5-11 – hopefully soon, some of my nephews will be eligible. Also, I got my third covid dose this week, which makes me feel a lot better! (Plus, no side effects this time, barely even a sore arm. Bonus!)