The Zen Leaf

So. It’s Week 54, and there’s SO MUCH information this week that it needs its own weekly post. So here we go: Week 54, March 19 to 25.

This week, we’ve arrived at 203,191 cases, 3,076 deaths, a 179 seven-day rolling average, and a 2.3% positivity rate (down 3.3% to lowest rate ever!). The hospitals got down to 182 cases earlier this week, which is lower than we’ve seen since the beginning of our summer surge last year. Our school reported 1 staff member positive for covid this week, first report for our specific school in several weeks (fingers crossed it doesn’t start going up!).

We’re now two weeks out from the mask mandate and occupancy limits going away, and from when the majority of schools around here had spring break. Starting in a week or so, we’re going to see how the numbers play out. Already, we’ve seen a steadying, bottoming out, and slight increase of our daily rolling average and hospital level, and I hope that’s not an early sign of reversal!! The rest of the vaccine doses can’t come quick enough!

Speaking of vaccines, there’s big news on that this week. Jason had his second volunteer shift yesterday, and they’re supposed to schedule him for a vaccine now. Fingers crossed! Unfortunately, the city is now having trouble getting volunteers to come in for their shifts after an announcement this week: The state of TX said that starting Monday, all adults will be eligible for the vaccine. Really, it makes no sense that they’re going this fast – they literally opened up the 50+ category last week – but I guess it’s just going to be a free-for-all now. And you know what? I don’t care. It means that I can sign Ambrose up for a dose, and Laurence, too, because by “adults” they are including the 16-17 age group that can get the Pfizer shot. I mean, why not, right? The sooner I get my family sorted and vaccinated, the better!

Unfortunately, it’s not just first-dose appointments that seem to be a free-for-all. I have one sister who, as an educator, got her first dose ages ago, and whose second dose was canceled due to the ice storm. She’s been unable to get a second-slot appointment in the month since then. Then my other sister and her husband, who got their first shots because the pharmacy had extra doses thawed at the end of the day, have been unable to get their second shots because the pharmacy literally hasn’t received another shipment of Moderna since then. What a mess! Too many people, too few vaccines, and the city here says that incredibly, their no-show rate has quadrupled, with a full 20% of people missing their vaccine appointments last week! WTF?? I don’t know if those people found a way to get their shots elsewhere or what, but that’s crazy. It’s a mad scramble and frankly, whoever is the best at technology and has the most time to go trolling for appointments are the people who are going to get in first, not the people who need it the most. Though the state did make one good ruling with this “everyone qualifies” free-for-all: Anyone aged 80+ can go to any site and go immediately to the front of the line without an appointment, and must be prioritized over everyone else. So that’s something.

I was looking over the city’s data a few nights ago, and checked on a few things that I stopped looking at awhile back. I noticed, for instance, that our pediatric rate is up to over 18% of all total cases – the highest rate of any age group except those in their 20s. It’s really too bad we don’t have any vaccines approved for people under 16 yet, because it seems like kids are spreading the disease like wildfire if you go by the numbers. Yeah, their rate of death is a lot lower, but 1) longterm effects and 2) you can’t really get a herd immunity when 20% of the population can’t be immunized, even if you could get all the rest of them to accept the vaccine (not happening in the US). Of course, if they did have a vaccine for the under-16s, we’d be in an even madder scramble right now…

Other news for the week:

• Krispy Kreme is giving out one free donut per day to anyone who is vaccinated. This of course has become a fat-phobic joke around the internet, but f*ck the fat-phobic a$$holes!! I do wish it was Dunkin, though, because I’m not a fan of Krispy Kreme at all, heh.
• A reporter asked how many cases of the UK variant we’ve had here, and we were told that they know of only 6 cases, all mild cases that didn’t require hospitalization and all recovered from now.
• We had a few anniversaries this week, including the anniversary of our first (and only) shelter-at-home order on 3/23 (which had to be lifted by June due to state orders), and the anniversary of our first covid-death in Bexar County (3/22). With the ~3100 people who have died of covid over the last year in SA, covid has tied the two top causes of death we normally see, heart disease and cancer, which each take about 3000 people annually. Remember all that talk about how this was less deadly than the flu and so we’re overreacting? *eye roll*
• The CEO of Texas Roadhouse killed himself this week because he could no longer stand the longterm complications of covid. Apparently it caused him severe tinnitus. I know nothing about the guy personally, but this is sad, disheartening, and just horrible.

There’s also been quite a bit of home news this week. Laurence went to the high school for the first time since before spring break last year. He had to go in to take his SAT, and the experience was a bit surreal for all of us after a year of him being home. My stepmom, Lauren, had her first covid shot, on the same day that my dad got his second. Their daughter, my half-sister who is 17, was able to get an end-of-the-day shot at the same time, with an appointment for her second in April. Woohoo! In less happy news, I had my first experience with a doctor’s office not taking covid seriously. I mean, it was an office in a hospital and it said masks required, but half the folks in the lobby (and a few employees!) were either not wearing masks or not wearing them properly. I was stuck in the office for frickin 2.5 hours after my appointment time, and so angry the whole time. I definitely don’t want to go back to that doctor again!

Lastly, I got a call from my sister on Wednesday evening to tell me that my grandfather was being rushed to the hospital for the third time since this weekend. He’s in horrible condition and deteriorating. I mean, he’s been in horrible condition for the last few years, and everyone is surprised just how long he’s made it, but it just keeps getting worse, and now it looks like he might be transferred to hospice today. I haven’t been able to visit him since New Years Eve 2019, and we aren’t allowed to go into the hospital, and I have no idea if there’s going to be any way to say goodbye. I hate this so much.

I feel like we’re currently in the calm before the storm. We’re hitting all sorts of record lows, or lowest-lows-in-months at least, and we’re getting people vaccinated as quickly as possible. But of course, all covid safety measures were removed by the state on March 10th, so by the end of the month, we’ll see increasing numbers again. These are the weeks that are still benefitting from the work that came before – like I said: calm before the storm. I’m trying to enjoy them while I can!

Week 52 – March 5 to 11
199,431 cases, 2,861 deaths, 186 seven-day rolling average, 2.6% positivity rate (down 3%, and now the lowest its been since this started being calculated!!). Hospital patients and admissions continue to decline as well. With things going so well, SA has moved down to a “low” risk level, woohoo! At our local high school, it’s spring break, so there have obviously been no reports.

Of course, it won’t last. Not only is it spring break this week – and people do stupid things on spring break – the state-wide mask mandate was rescinded on Wednesday as promised, and all occupancy limits on all businesses were lifted. In the next month, we’ll see what comes of bars opening up to full capacity with no masks, given that bars have historically been one of the biggest spreaders of covid nationwide. Many businesses have drawn their lines in the sand, and (thankfully) most are requiring masks, but for the most part, bars are treating this as a reason to party. Tons of stuff related to the new policy happened this week:

• Before the order even went into effect, the governor preemptively began to blame immigrants for the upcoming covid surge. He keeps talking about how the Biden administration is letting “hundreds and hundreds” of covid-positive illegal immigrants into the state and that those immigrants are then spreading the disease. None of this is true in any way, of course, but the rhetoric is working on people who already believe the crap Faux News shoves down their throats. (I know people who genuinely believe this fiction.)
• Across the state, people started planning mask-burning and “un-masking” parties.
• The city and county put out a new emergency order that says businesses must post visible signage stating their health/mask policies at entrances, so that no one can claim they don’t know the policy. Then, if someone refuses to follow the private business’s policy, they can call the police, and the troublemaker will be escorted off-premises and/or arrested for criminal trespass.
• Other cities, like Austin, have said that despite the governor’s order, businesses must continue to require masks due to a local order from the health authority, which supersedes governmental authority. This directive is already being challenged in court, and depending on how that legal action goes, we may consider doing something similar here in SA.
• Many school districts are continuing to require masks and not changing their current policies, like ours. Unfortunately, there are others that have said it’s now up to each individual parent. In one case, the decision was made without input from the school board or anything. Ugh.
• Originally, HEB said it would require masks for employees and “strongly recommend” them for customers because it would be too tough/dangerous to try to force a mandate on people contrary to government orders. However, the thousands of HEB employees fought back and demanded that the chain require masks in their stores, and hurrah, HEB reversed course and is doing just that!

In other news, the state announced that starting March 15th, people who qualify under Phase 1c (aged 50+) will now qualify for vaccines. Our local leaders are exasperated, because literally 75% of our population falls under Phases 1a-c, and we’re not getting nearly enough doses to vaccinate the over 2 million folks who qualify. They did get another 40K doses in for the next four weeks. Jason spent last Friday volunteering at the vaccination site and is waiting for another slot to open up – if he spends two shifts as a volunteer, he’ll be able to get his vaccine even though he doesn’t yet qualify. One of the perks of being a volunteer! Fingers crossed a slot opens soon! I was also really excited by the updated CDC guidelines for vaccinated folks, saying that those who have been fully vaccinated may now safely get together in small groups indoors and without masks. Hurrah!

Last but definitely not least, do y’all remember me talking about the strip club that kept getting citations for refusing to follow covid guidelines? Back in November or so, the city yanked their certificate of occupancy to shut them down, and they sued the city, and the city sued them back. I have no idea how those court cases came out, but the strip club is back in the news. Apparently, they began opening again in January without a license to operate. They received five citations for operating without an occupancy certificate. The city shut electricity off to the building. The strip club brought in a generator and opened up that way. The city cut off the water supply to the building. That was the last thing I heard, but MAN I’m so frickin’ amused by this ridiculous story and will continue to look for the strip club’s next zany move. Ha!

PS – It’s spring break this week in most of TX. Let’s just pray that no one does anything too stupid over spring break and causes even more outbreak/spread than removing the mask order…

Week 53 – March 12 to 18
201,273 cases, 2,295 deaths, 146 seven-day rolling average, 5.6% positivity rate (3% increase). Notably, there was a drastic decrease in testing for the week this rate was calculated (from ~60k to ~20k) due to spring break, as several of the school districts have been working with an independent lab to administer daily tests. The rise in rate could possibly be contributed to the decrease solely because many of the absent tests are proactive rather than symptomatic. I guess we’ll see what happens next week. No reports from the school this week. Hospitals are down to 202 patients which is marvelous!

So the virus has been in our community for a year now, and we hit a few milestones this week. We passed the 200k mark for cases over the weekend. At the same time, the number of vaccinated folks in our community surpassed our total case number for the first time, which is really awesome even if it’s only about 10% of the total community vaccinated. Hopefully vaccinations will continue to go smoothly – we did hear that some doctors’ offices have been reallocating designated second-dose shipments as first-dose vaccines, so that they run out and folks can’t get their second doses, which is eek.

Unfortunately, the removal of the mask order has led to another consequence that was easily foreseeable: mask-related conflict. While I’ve yet to hear about folks getting shot over masks like in the early days of the pandemic, one of my friends was attacked for wearing a mask. She kept walking away, and the (not-masked) offender kept pursuing her, shouting and getting up close in her face. Ugh!

We celebrated Laurence’s second covid birthday this week, the first of us to have a second birthday under a pandemic. What a milestone.

Moving forward
Hoping that vaccinations can keep up with the potential increases coming from bad government leadership and people being stupid over spring break…

It’s been one year today since covid officially came to San Antonio. Friday the 13th, my son’s 16th birthday, the “last” day of spring break, and the start of an entirely new world. Today, I look back on the weeks that led up to this anniversary.

March 1, 2020: My 41st birthday. That day, I walked a crowded 5K with Jason and Stephanie in the morning, and spent the afternoon with several dozen of my hiking friends at an anniversary potluck. We’d all heard of covid, of course, but other than the evacuees at a local air force base – a situation we were told would be entirely contained and kept away from the SA public – it was a far-away thing that wasn’t really affecting much of daily life at that point.

March 2: You know that whole “it would be contained and kept away from the SA public” thing? An evacuee from Wuhan had been let out of quarantine after two negative tests, though several others were still pending. You know, back when we didn’t know enough about incubation periods and how to test for covid correctly. Further tests came back positive after this woman spent time in SA. North Star Mall shut down for a day to deep clean the entire building. Thankfully, no spread came from this situation, but it was the first real scare in SA.

March 6: The boys left in-person school that afternoon for a week of spring break, not knowing they wouldn’t return to this day. Or ever, in Ambrose’s case, as it was his senior year.

March 8: I went on a six-mile hike with eight other women. At the halfway point, where we stopped at the dinosaur tracks before turning around for the return hike, a couple folks began talking about covid and offering around hand sanitizer. Some people took a squirt. Others, like me, didn’t bother. I think I even remember saying something like “I’m not worried about it.” Little did we know that it would be our last hike for months (or for almost a year, in Stephanie’s case). After the hike, Stephanie and I had an amazing breakfast at Eggspectation, which was so crowded that we had to wait outside for nearly an hour for a table. We really weren’t worried at all yet.

Note: March 8th was my “last good day,” or what my brain internalized as such. When the one-year-pandemic-anniversary posts started going up, it was on this day that I began to grieve. It wasn’t even a day when I was worried about covid yet, but my brain solidified this as The Day. (That link leads to the instagram post where I discussed said grief.)

March 11: The NBA canceled the rest of its season. This is the moment when I realized the enormity of what was coming toward us. Between the 8th and the 11th, we’d had a flurry of news stories and calls and such. Morrigan called from Kansas and was freaked out about the terrible situation in Italy. His school announced that they’d be going online only after spring break (which later turned into “online and no one is allowed to be on campus at all”). Jason was sent to work from home for the rest of the week. But it was the NBA actually canceling the season – not delaying, but canceling – that hit home. That’s when I got nervous. I still didn’t understand just how serious the situation would eventually be, or how long it would last. There have been pandemic/epidemic outbreaks quite often over the last decade or two, and none had touched us directly. As of March 11, we’d had no real problems here in SA. Maybe it would blow over, I thought.

March 12: Laurence and I went to HEB for some mid-week shopping. We knew there wouldn’t be any toilet paper – that insanity had already started – but mostly the store was well-stocked. For the last time in months. Additionally, my cousin remarked that she hoped this “would all blow over” before Jason’s and my planned cruise in May.

March 13th: This was the day that all hell broke loose in San Antonio. Friday the 13th. Our first case of covid in the city, excluding the evacuees at the base. So much changed on this day. The 5K Jason and I were supposed to run on the 14th went from “this is still happening” emails on the 12th to “this has to be canceled” emails on the 13th, due to the gathering limit that was put in place. Siclovia was canceled. Fiesta was moved to November. UIL was delayed. Libraries closed and haven’t been open to the public again since. Symphony cancelled til late April (and eventually beyond). The school announced it would extend spring break for another week while they figured out what to do. Panic-buying (other than toilet paper) began, and Jason ran out to the grocery store to see if he could get anything for our weekly trip before it was all gone (photo of the shelves that day above). He was also told to work from home “for the foreseeable future,” which eventually became “indefinitely.” He has not been in the office again since.

It’s funny to look back on that day now. The last-minute attempt to grocery shop before nothing was left. The fact that we literally went to lunch at Magnolia Pancake Haus for Laurence’s birthday ( <– ), knowing that pretty soon the city was going to shut down restaurants. (It was our last time in a restaurant in months. In the year since, Jason has been in one restaurant while traveling to Kansas to take Morrigan to school, and I’ve been inside three in rural areas after long-distance hikes. And that’s it.) The sudden change at Morrigan’s university that sent all the kids home. All the emails I started getting from companies about reduced hours, or closing stores to go online only, etc. The canceling and postponing of doctor appointments, including the dental crown Jason was supposed to get at the end of March and had to wait until May for. My hands-down most naive statement of 2020? “I canceled my upcoming chiropractor appointment – that can wait until this blows over!” Within a week, I was posting my Quarantine Diaries series, never thinking that here I’d be, still posting it a year later.

The situation had become real, but silly me still thought we’d all lock down and get things under control in a couple weeks, or at worst, months. I didn’t foresee the insanity that is mask-politicizing and covid-is-a-hoax crap, or the lackadaisical, nonexistent, and/or actively harmful response from the government at federal and state levels. Stephanie told me that she thought we’d have to go on rolling lockdowns for the next 18 months to two years until a vaccine could be developed, tested, and distributed, and I was just dumbfounded by the idea. She was right, though – well, she didn’t figure on all the stupidity either, and so thought we’d have periods outside of lockdown rather than just different levels of it. Sigh.

So that was a year ago. Today is my son’s 17th birthday – his second birthday under a global pandemic. (Pic: three-frame dance from a few days ago that we put into a color app, heh.) My middle son, Ambrose, is starting his first job today. The oldest, Morrigan, is up at school in Kansas. I’m grateful that we are all okay. I’ve known friends and family with various severities of covid, and so far, everyone is still here with us. Others have not been so fortunate, and everyone has had to adapt in one way or another. On a personal level, there are a few things that I miss so much that it gives me physical pain to think of them: my local library; in-person 5K events; having my days alone and silent; extended family gatherings; HUGS.

But it wouldn’t be an anniversary post without giving a brief shoutout to those things that have kept me sane over the last year: my hiking group (of course!!); the Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast and the corresponding facebook group, which floods my timeline with all the fun and spooky paranormal memes and gives each day some lighthearted moments; apps like Marco Polo that helped me to stay in (visible) contact with friends and family; the massive increase in digital downloads (both audio and ebook) from the library; the friends who made better masks than we could buy and who provided food and supplies the times when our family had to suddenly lock down completely; running, which gave me purpose for a long part of this year; the local government’s attempts to counteract the horrible state and federal leadership; and the incredible efforts to get vaccines engineered for us all so quickly.

I hope that by this time next year, the world is in better shape, despite the insanity that is “multiple states removing covid precautions way too early right now.” One day I’d love to eat in restaurants without fear again, and to travel, and to go on larger-group hikes, and have potlucks with my friends, and hang out at the cafe, and see movies in theatre, and browse books at the library, and see my extended family for the first time in over a year. I want to hug people, and see smiles from a closer distance than six feet, and take photos with people all clumped together instead of spread out, and never have to rely on Zoom-like programs again. None of us have gone unaffected, but it’s my fervent hope that we all make it through safely to the other side.