The Zen Leaf

It was a bad week. On Wednesday evening, my oldest son called to tell us he was positive for covid. Morrigan had been sick for a few days, but it took that long for the test results to come in. He had a lot of the classic symptoms – fever, nausea, cough – but as of that night, no difficulty breathing. To complicate matters, he was supposed to move from the dorms into a room rental on Airbnb (that he’d already paid for, someone else living in the main house) on the 10th, which clearly can’t happen now. So a flurry of phone calls followed on Thursday to housing, Airbnb, the health department, etc. Student housing suddenly decided that we needed to pick him up immediately – that day, they said, though we stressed that we live 800 miles away and simply can’t do that!

So Jason left this morning and will stay in a hotel tonight, then checking Morrigan out of his dorm tomorrow morning. They should be back by tomorrow evening. Then we’ll all be in quarantine in different parts of the house for the next few weeks. It means a lot of changes in plans – Morrigan can’t return to his job (they put him on a leave of absence), Jason and I had to cancel our anniversary weekend trip (supposed to be next weekend), I’ve handed off the hikes I was scheduled to host, etc. We did a big grocery run yesterday to make sure we’re stocked for the next few weeks, and we’ll manage as best as possible. It does seem really f–ed up that the housing department wants him to travel while he’s still contagious rather than let us pick him up in a week when he should be safer for everyone. It’s not like he has any roommates at the moment – he’s completely isolated in his dorm room! And his housing contract says he’s paid through the 10th. But it is what it is. Sigh.

(J and newborn M, Oct 2000)

Anyway. In the meantime, we got a care package to Morrigan on Wednesday night (ordered locally for delivery so it could get there right away): medicine, easy to eat foods, comfort items, etc. And when I talked to him yesterday, he was feeling a bit better. Not all the way better of course – and not happy about coming home – but improving. Hopefully he’ll be 100% better soon, and the rest of us can stay safe and covid-free. At least Morrigan will be able to return to his job at some point, and he got a full refund from Airbnb!

So many people I know are falling to covid now. I have multiple friends whose families were suddenly felled this week. My sister-in-law is still not doing well, having one of those late relapses into coughing. My brother-in-law and his wife got sick at the beginning of the week, but thankfully their tests came back negative yesterday. Morrigan’s roommate, who left for San Antonio a week before Morrigan got symptoms, had to be tested along with his whole family, and thankfully their tests came back negative, too. Everyone always gets sick around this time of year, and that’s obviously going to be worse during a pandemic. We’re all playing the “is it covid or is it something else” game. Things are getting really scary right now. It feels almost claustrophobic. Especially with my family going on full lockdown – can’t even leave for exercise after tomorrow evening – for the next two weeks.

(SA trends over the last couple weeks)

San Antonio’s numbers this week: 83,885 cases, 1,372 deaths, 795 seven-day rolling average, 9.2% positivity rate (down 0.8%). A few notes on these. First, the seven-day average includes several days of very low numbers because city-run testing sites were closed for holiday weekend. We’ve had some days with 1500 cases, so it’s likely that average will go way up next week. Second, the positivity rate did go down this week – however, city health leaders say this is likely because there were an exponentially high number of people (without symptoms or exposure) getting tested before Thanksgiving (trying to give themselves a “safe” marker for family gatherings). The rate will likely also increase next week. Hospital rates are still generally going up, but not nearly as exponentially as we saw with our spike this summer. This is attributed to people getting tested and treated earlier in the disease, as well as some better treatments we have now vs June/July.

Meanwhile, people are starting to protest again. There was a petition to impeach the mayor because of his (extremely minor) Thanksgiving weekend curfew. Then a group of men with Prump 2020 flags (give it up, it’s a lost cause, guys) went to the Alamo an hour after curfew and started yelling, “Fine me!” Okay, dudes. They had the audacity to declare this protest as equal to the Black Lives Matter protests. Rolling my eyes so hard here. The city didn’t respond to either of these things. I have to guess that the city leaders were privately rolling their eyes, too. After the holiday weekend, Metro Health put out a directive that strongly recommends not dining in (at all) or gathering indoors with people outside your household. Furthermore, they say to avoid any indoor activities that involve yelling, singing, or exercising with people not in your household. None of this is enforceable, but they strongly recommend it. The governor won’t let us enforce anything really – despite the fact that cases have gotten so bad in Texas (over 17,000 cases daily for the last two days!) that even the White House is urging aggressive testing and stronger mitigation efforts here! You know it’s bad if the Prumpster’s administration is actually saying something!

Metro health has also said that if you got together with people over Thanksgiving, you should assume you’re positive and get tested. We had a tiny (mom, stepdad, sister) gathering in our garage (above), each household away from each other, garage door open, masks on except when eating. (You can’t tell from this pic, but it was pouring outside, hence not being on our deck.) We took all the precautions, and aren’t going to worry about getting tested at this point (except perhaps my sister, who traveled here and home via plane). In other home news, the local high school had 9 students and 2 teachers test positive just in the first four days back from break. The school district’s response to the uptick in the area? Kids are no longer allowed to use neck gaiters as masks. I mean, we’ve only known they are worse than wearing no masks for months now…

Last bit of news is actually a story of this week’s total covid-a$$hole: As Jason was leaving the grocery store on yesterday, a man approached the store. This man was wearing a confederate flag bandana around his neck (always a danger sign!). He spotted a hispanic woman with a baby, walked over to them, and fake-coughed loudly on them. Then he pulled his bandana over his mouth (but not his nose, of course!) and walked into the store. UGH. I’m not normally an advocate for violence, but frankly, I wish the woman had given that man a good knee to the privates. And then called the cops on him for assault. That man’s behavior was absolutely unacceptable!!

Well. Things are getting dire out there, aren’t they? We really need a national mask mandate, some stronger lockdowns, real financial help for both people and businesses, and a vaccine. Speaking of the latter, there seems to be several vaccines getting close to ready. We’re to the point here where a vaccine distribution committee has been created for SA and a plan begun for the eventual release, whenever it comes. I really hope there’s continued good news on that. Last I heard, general population looks to be receiving the vaccine closer to April next year, but even getting the vaccine out to healthcare workers and the vulnerable populations would vastly improve this situation!

Week 36 – Nov 13 to 19
71,377 cases, 1,309 deaths, 321 seven-day rolling average (up 38/day), 9.4% positivity rate (up 1%). As expected, hospital admissions, ICU patients, and patients on ventilators have all continued their steady increase. We’re at about a third of the level we were at back in July when we peaked.

It really hit home this week how badly things have been going in the more rural areas of the country, especially in the Midwest, which didn’t have as many covid cases over the summer as the metro areas. My in-laws’ county, where my boys and I stayed in July when things got really bad here, has had an astonishingly horrific surge. That month I was there, they went from 31 total cases when I arrived to 96 when I left. Even then, they were starting to creep up. But now, they’re at 3,023 cases, which doesn’t sound like much until you factor in the low population: 6.7% of the entire county’s population has contracted covid since the pandemic began. To put that in perspective, if that were the percentage here, our case total would be around 134,000 – almost twice as high as it actually is. It is now much, much worse up where they live and rapidly rising – a single week ago, that percentage was 4.4% of the county and under 2000 cases… (Hard to see, but in the photo below, the one really dark county in northwest WI is theirs.)

(Source: NYTimes)

At home in SA, cases are still going up here, but not to the extent of other locations. Nearby Kerrville had the virus rip through one of their nursing homes, killing seven already. A new study has found that one in six Texans are infected, and the governor is currently refusing to tighten restrictions (or let local governments tighten restrictions). HEB (the local grocery) has started to put product limits back on typical hoarding items like toilet paper, because yes, the hoarding has started again. Nine kids from Laurence’s high school tested positive for covid this week, which makes several dozen since limited in-person learning began. (We continue to school from home!) One bit of good news: Jason and I donated blood again, and our free covid antibody tests came back negative, so it’s likely we’ve not had any asymptomatic covid. Oh! And Jason’s employer is donating $3.5 million to local relief organizations like the food bank and Haven for Hope (helping the homeless), which is awesome.

Week 37 – Nov 20 to 26
76,750 cases, 1,343 deaths, 764 seven-day rolling average (!!!), 10% positivity rate (up 0.6%). Note: Other than the positivity rate (which always reports on Mondays), these numbers are as of Wednesday instead of the end of the week, due to the holiday yesterday. That rolling average – which only reflects six new days of cases – is up an average of 443 daily. It’s more than double what it was last week. If we’d gotten a number for the seventh day of the week, likely that daily case load would have been over 900. We’re seeing exponential increase, both in our numbers and in the hospitals. –>

So…shit. Very suddenly, our totals have gone insane after weeks of holding back the tide. It started on the 20th, with an emergency notice on our phones that our covid daily count was over 900 – more than we’ve seen in any single day since mid-July, and well over twice even our highest recent daily counts. Each day this week has continued to have high case numbers, including numbers higher than the alert, so it’s not an isolated reporting incident. I don’t know if the surge is related to Halloween, or Election Day, or just the trickling in from cases around the state (which is having record-breaking daily numbers – over 20k in one day on Nov 24th!!!). It’s certainly not what we wanted to see, especially in a holiday week! The city currently has a curfew in place starting last night through Monday morning, to try to prevent social gatherings over the holiday weekend. I doubt it’ll do much good, but good on them for trying!

So much has happened this week, after months with little news. The San Antonio Symphony announced that they’ll reopen for (limited-seating) performances starting in February, after they closed last March. This is particularly important for my family as that’s my stepmom’s full time job, so she’s been essentially unemployed for almost a year now except for side gigs. Someone here in SA had a double lung transplant after covid destroyed their lungs. I didn’t even know that was possible! The blood bank has grown critically low on blood, with less than a two-day total supply and less than a one-day supply of Type 0 blood (used in trauma/ER situations). Makes me glad Jason and I both gave last week (we’re Type 0), even if we can only contribute a trickle compared to what’s needed.

Let’s see. More stuff: Doctors are starting to speak out about local patients who refuse to believe they have covid even while unable to get out of their hospital beds, like we’ve heard from reports in other parts of the country. One business here – after having 18 citations since March – finally had their occupancy certificate revoked by the city. A strip club, no surprise there! It’s only the third business that the city has forcefully closed since March. Then there are the updates from the various school districts, which all show exponential growth in cases. Our district, as of November 15th, reported 136 students and 81 staff infected, a jump of 53 students and 28 staff in two weeks. That doesn’t even begin to count what might have happened during the more recent surge in cases. Over half the student cases are from grades 7-12, as one might expect. Teens are not always the most responsible about things like mask-wearing!

On a more personal note: That county percentage up in WI that I mentioned last week? It has continued to grow, and is now at 7.7% of the total county population. Other parts of Wisconsin and nearby Minnesota – where all of Jason’s family live – are similarly effected. And it has finally touched home. Jason’s younger sister, Chelsea, tested positive this week. So far, she just has mild symptoms, and hopefully all stays well. But two days before the test – pre-symptomatic – she had a surprise visit from my mother-in-law, my other sis-in-law, and my niece. They stayed outside and hopefully they were all careful, but both my MIL and SIL are particularly vulnerable with multiple autoimmune disorders, so this is really scary. And on top of that, the vulnerable SIL (Tenille, Jason’s older sister) has a double whammy, because her husband Jesse had close contact with someone who tested positive. Tenille and my niece got tested (negative for now, but early post-exposure), and both are currently staying with my in-laws while Jesse quarantines at home. It’s very scary times for the family right now, but as of last night, everyone was well.

(Chelsea, Tenille, Chris, me – Christmas 2016)

Returning back to San Antonio, my family went into stricter home lockdown after the big alert came through. We were already heading that direction as numbers increased, but this accelerated it. It was the first week in a few months that Jason and the boys reverted to virtual for their Sunday D&D game. Ambrose’s friend Tyler had been coming over, masks worn and distance kept, since SA got things under control, because we knew his family was taking the same precautions as us. Even though that last part hasn’t changed, we can’t risk in-person visits anymore. So that’s Ambrose’s support bubble basically gone again (Tyler’s family is like his second home). I’m putting stricter mask precautions on the hikes that I host, and might stop hosting and attending altogether depending on how things go. I’d hate to give up that social support and outdoor exercise, and our group has done a wonderful job of keeping safe, but it’s still scary to contemplate.

Week 37 ended with a lonely little immediate-family-only Thanksgiving. As I said in my Sunday Coffee post, we didn’t do any of the big gatherings we normally do for the holiday. However, my sister did decide to come down for a couple days, and collectively we decided that she and my mom (and possibly my stepdad, we’re not sure what he’ll choose yet) would come to our house for an outdoor, safe, masked, distant visit. Either we’ll be outside on the newly built deck, or if it’s raining (something like 70% chance), we’ve cleared out the garage and will be able to sit far enough apart in there with the garage door open. Everyone is bringing their own food so no sharing of utensils etc will be needed, and other than when we’re eating, we’ll be wearing masks. It’s the safest thing we can do while still seeing each other. This is a calculated risk that I’m willing to take. Family is important, so we’re trying to balance being with family vs keeping family safe by staying away.

Moving forward
Hunkering down, making decisions about things like hosting hikes, avoiding businesses more than usual, hoping things aren’t going to get exponentially worse by Christmas (but pretty sure that they will, especially given the record numbers of flights in the US from this past weekend…).