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Wash Your Hands and Cancel Your Plans
Mar. 13th, 2020 10:36 pmThings have gotten a bit crazy and I haven't gotten around to writing for a particularly long time.
So about that global pandemic! I'm working from home as of this week until at least mid-April. Stocking up to spend minimal time elsewhere for at least a few weeks. (Walks outside, probably fine, actually going anywhere, keep to a minimum. Transit, much less good than usual. At least the weather has been nice.) I'm stressed out about that, in part for the super-irrational reason that I don't like having extra stuff.
My business/conference travel plans for this spring are now ex-plans. No European Lisp Symposium (if that even happens), no visit to the Zurich office (though that's closed), no PyCon (if that even happens, and that's really sad, this was a special year for that, celebrating the EOL for Python 2 (the PY2neral?)), no team offsite in Toronto (which was finalized only a few days before being abruptly cancelled, oops). Nearby schools are closed for the next two weeks (at least). Daycare for Eris is not closed yet, but maybe it should be. (She was home sick yesterday and today, but probably (hopefully!) not with anything so serious.)
I realize I'm really lucky that I can manage to stay home. The economic divide is about to become even more of a health outcomes divide than it already is. Perfect time, I suppose, for McConnell to send the Senate packing, since any solution to those issues will be by definition the sort of left-wing thing he refuses to allow the Senate to even consider. Just perfect. :-/
The COVID-19 epidemic is serious stuff, what people feared the first SARS outbreak would be. It seems tricky to deal with things at this middle level of dire, where any individual will quite likely be fine, but just YOLOing business as usual into catastrophe would result in a lot (order of millions) of people dying unnecessarily (and not just from this one thing). Maybe this one is just dire enough for a lot of people to be spurred to action. The odds of serious complications from this disease are relatively high, but those complications can often be successfully treated. And it's very contagious. So it matters a lot when tons of people get sick, i.e. whether or not it happens all at once. It's somewhat surprising to me that people are managing to take it seriously. Though it would be probably also be useful at this moment to have a President who's capable of taking things seriously, ever. (I would not have predicted that Trump would in a "calm everyone down" speech create a continent-wide panic among American travelers in Europe; I might have thought that Trump would start a trade war with Europe, but not by accident).
My dad is here this week, to help out while Julie is away on business travel. Or that was the plan, Julie's travel was last-minute cancelled. I told my dad I was leaning towards advising him to cancel his plans as well, but he decided not to. At least it's better now than a little later. I'm glad to see him, and actually very glad to have some extra hands for a bit, the stress level the last few weeks has been unsustainable and I need to get some extra rest. But I sure hope everything goes fine on the trip home.
The primary elections have been a source of stress as well. I don't at all regret my vote for Warren, I think she would be a great President. I don't think she was in the wrong to wait for Super Tuesday voters to have their say. In fact, the vote was not all in the polls, but the surprise good news that Warren hoped for was not for Warren. Instead, it was for Biden. And at this point things look really bad for the "big structural change" faction. It galls me to see Warren be made a scapegoat by the Sanders camp, apparently on some theory that Warren is way more capable of convincing voters to vote for Sanders than she was at convincing voters to vote for herself.
Sanders now is in the awkward position of trying to win a primary while doing worse in states where he felt he had the strongest claim to electability than he did in 2016, a primary election that he lost by quite a bit. And also in the awkward position of trying to convince people that he'll inspire the sort of turnout in the general election that he didn't in the primary. And without the reasons for low primary turnout that he had in 2016 (e.g. people didn't know who he was or that he'd be running, he didn't have an early lead in the delegate count). Still, there's time in the race, and still the next debate. (I do wish Warren had gotten enough good news to hang on and set her debate sights on Biden, ready to have him join Bloomberg above her mantel.)
Unlike a lot of Sanders supporters, I'm not totally confident Sanders is not McGovern 2.0 or that Biden is Kerry 2.0. Personally, I think Biden is probably a lot more popular than Hillary Clinton, that 2020 Trump is not that much more popular than 2016 Trump even with the economy relatively good. 2018 did not look good for the Republicans, and 2020 does not look much better. It's possible that any Democrat would trounce Trump. If I had to bet, I'd say that if Biden is the nominee, he'd win, and (probably less confidently) if Sanders is the nominee, he'd also win. Biden with the Senate is probably a better outcome than Sanders without the Senate, too. But there is some risk of failing to seize the moment, and having Biden be another Obama (but probably not as good), to be followed by another Trump (but probably quite a lot worse).
So about that global pandemic! I'm working from home as of this week until at least mid-April. Stocking up to spend minimal time elsewhere for at least a few weeks. (Walks outside, probably fine, actually going anywhere, keep to a minimum. Transit, much less good than usual. At least the weather has been nice.) I'm stressed out about that, in part for the super-irrational reason that I don't like having extra stuff.
My business/conference travel plans for this spring are now ex-plans. No European Lisp Symposium (if that even happens), no visit to the Zurich office (though that's closed), no PyCon (if that even happens, and that's really sad, this was a special year for that, celebrating the EOL for Python 2 (the PY2neral?)), no team offsite in Toronto (which was finalized only a few days before being abruptly cancelled, oops). Nearby schools are closed for the next two weeks (at least). Daycare for Eris is not closed yet, but maybe it should be. (She was home sick yesterday and today, but probably (hopefully!) not with anything so serious.)
I realize I'm really lucky that I can manage to stay home. The economic divide is about to become even more of a health outcomes divide than it already is. Perfect time, I suppose, for McConnell to send the Senate packing, since any solution to those issues will be by definition the sort of left-wing thing he refuses to allow the Senate to even consider. Just perfect. :-/
The COVID-19 epidemic is serious stuff, what people feared the first SARS outbreak would be. It seems tricky to deal with things at this middle level of dire, where any individual will quite likely be fine, but just YOLOing business as usual into catastrophe would result in a lot (order of millions) of people dying unnecessarily (and not just from this one thing). Maybe this one is just dire enough for a lot of people to be spurred to action. The odds of serious complications from this disease are relatively high, but those complications can often be successfully treated. And it's very contagious. So it matters a lot when tons of people get sick, i.e. whether or not it happens all at once. It's somewhat surprising to me that people are managing to take it seriously. Though it would be probably also be useful at this moment to have a President who's capable of taking things seriously, ever. (I would not have predicted that Trump would in a "calm everyone down" speech create a continent-wide panic among American travelers in Europe; I might have thought that Trump would start a trade war with Europe, but not by accident).
My dad is here this week, to help out while Julie is away on business travel. Or that was the plan, Julie's travel was last-minute cancelled. I told my dad I was leaning towards advising him to cancel his plans as well, but he decided not to. At least it's better now than a little later. I'm glad to see him, and actually very glad to have some extra hands for a bit, the stress level the last few weeks has been unsustainable and I need to get some extra rest. But I sure hope everything goes fine on the trip home.
The primary elections have been a source of stress as well. I don't at all regret my vote for Warren, I think she would be a great President. I don't think she was in the wrong to wait for Super Tuesday voters to have their say. In fact, the vote was not all in the polls, but the surprise good news that Warren hoped for was not for Warren. Instead, it was for Biden. And at this point things look really bad for the "big structural change" faction. It galls me to see Warren be made a scapegoat by the Sanders camp, apparently on some theory that Warren is way more capable of convincing voters to vote for Sanders than she was at convincing voters to vote for herself.
Sanders now is in the awkward position of trying to win a primary while doing worse in states where he felt he had the strongest claim to electability than he did in 2016, a primary election that he lost by quite a bit. And also in the awkward position of trying to convince people that he'll inspire the sort of turnout in the general election that he didn't in the primary. And without the reasons for low primary turnout that he had in 2016 (e.g. people didn't know who he was or that he'd be running, he didn't have an early lead in the delegate count). Still, there's time in the race, and still the next debate. (I do wish Warren had gotten enough good news to hang on and set her debate sights on Biden, ready to have him join Bloomberg above her mantel.)
Unlike a lot of Sanders supporters, I'm not totally confident Sanders is not McGovern 2.0 or that Biden is Kerry 2.0. Personally, I think Biden is probably a lot more popular than Hillary Clinton, that 2020 Trump is not that much more popular than 2016 Trump even with the economy relatively good. 2018 did not look good for the Republicans, and 2020 does not look much better. It's possible that any Democrat would trounce Trump. If I had to bet, I'd say that if Biden is the nominee, he'd win, and (probably less confidently) if Sanders is the nominee, he'd also win. Biden with the Senate is probably a better outcome than Sanders without the Senate, too. But there is some risk of failing to seize the moment, and having Biden be another Obama (but probably not as good), to be followed by another Trump (but probably quite a lot worse).
