Covid-19

Bloomington / Covid-19 / history / journalism / links / Thursday — Comments Off on Links of the day
29
Jul 21

Links of the day

We did it last week, and that went well, so let’s return to the simple link post in a good long while. So let’s do that. Here are a few items that have been in my browser(s) today.

This story is 1.3 million years in the making.

Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported on Wednesday.

The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.

[…]

Before the find, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years.

The dating is something there, isn’t it? It almost doubles the local timeline. If you aren’t paying attention to archeology news, that seems improbable, 1.3 million years. But not too long ago a team led by scholars from Stony Brook and Rutgers, pushed the timeline in Kenya back to 3.3 million years and Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops.

The use of the word “industry” in that Al Jazeera story, the first one, also stands out.

It’s one thing to use a rock, but to make it into something useful — something we’d later recognize — is another. And then! Then, to be able to teach that skill to others, so that they can make more axes or spears or knives, maybe in exchange for something else, I suppose that’s industry. That’s civilization. And this one is apparently 1.3 million years old.

I’m sure you saw the new CDC guidance, which is still somewhat muddled. Maybe before we’re through the second year of the pandemic they’ll get their health and crisis comms in order …

Anyway, they’re recommending masks, even for the vaccinated (yes, even for you) if you live in a place where the Covid case load is rated as “substantial” or “high.” Really this is an actuarial exercise, with an element of risk assessment to it. Let’s all assume we have some understanding of percentages and risk aversion and game theory — sorta the same way we decide whether we’re going to drive over the speed limit speed the next time we go somewhere. It’d probably just be safer to driver more carefully every time. Same with masks!

Anyway, substantial and high are what you’re concerned with in NPR’s handy little tool. Just type in your county and you’ll get a read on the local happenings.

The change to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s masking guidelines came after pressure from many outside experts. The CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said in a news briefing that new evidence showed delta was more transmissible than previously understood.

“This was not a decision that was taken lightly,” Walensky said. She noted that new data from outbreak investigations show that, rarely, vaccinated people can still get infected and spread the virus to others.

“On rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others,” she told reporters when announcing the new guidelines. “This new science is worrisome and, unfortunately, warrants an update to our recommendations.”

(Every county I’ve ever lived in, ever, is in one of those two categories right now.)

Wear a mask.

This is one of those local women dominates at Olympics stories.

They have trained together, raced together, wept together. Now they will swim together – in adjacent lanes – for an Olympic medal.

Bloomington workout partners Annie Lazor and Lilly King advanced Thursday morning to the final of the 200-meter breaststroke at Tokyo. They will be underdogs against South Africa’s Tatjana Schoenmaker, who challenged the world record in heats and semifinals.

[…]

“It’s going to be awesome, this is what we have been training for the whole time we’ve been training together,” King said. “So I’m really excited.”

[…]

Last month’s Olympic Trials was the first meet for Lazor since her father, David Lazor, died April 25. He was 61.

“The last couple of months I’ve been going through trying to achieve the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me while going through the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Lazor said in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Sometimes my heart, for the first few weeks, it felt like I was choosing grief that day or choosing swimming that day. There was no in-between.”

Update: How cool is this?

Used to be that the athletic performance was what I watched for. Now it’s just the reactions after the events, the culmination of all that work, and the joyous celebrations that come from people who’ve devoted themselves to something so difficult. I guess that means I’m getting older.

Just not 1.3 million years old. Yet.

Covid-19 / family / Monday / photo / swimming — Comments Off on What I’ve been doing with myself
17
May 21

What I’ve been doing with myself

Last week we were on the road. It was my first long trip in the car since the lockdown. I don’t think I’ve driven out of the county since then, but we left the state last week. A few weeks ago my happily vaccinated in-laws came to visit, and last week it was time to see my family — the vaccinated ones, anyway — so we drove down to Alabama.

We had some rained a few times on the drive, but mostly we saw dramatic clouds.

They add to the scenery in places where there isn’t much else to look at.

My mother gave me the biggest hug and said I owed her 17 days worth of hugs. I’m not sure how she arrived at that number, but I didn’t question the formula. I expected she would come up with a much higher number. Oddly, the number of days didn’t decrease over the duration of our visit. Canny as ever, my mother.

It was nice to see her, of course, and my grandfather. Both have gotten The Shot. They found a drive-up deal and are proud they didn’t even have to get out of their cars to get dosed. They’ve been quite careful and safe and kept themselves isolated. We’re the most people they’ve each seen outside of a few doctor visits.

So my grandfather came over and I got to give him a hug. What a lovely feeling. We also had hamburgers.

He brought his dominoes and proved how bad we are at math. We are bad at math. Of course he plays all the time — that’s their Sunday thing, they have church via Facebook or television and then he breaks out the bones. Of course he’s played his whole life. The stories he could tell you about his parents counting the domino dots … while I’m over here pointing and mumbling to myself.

They really wore us down in the third round.

When we weren’t losing at dominoes The Yankee got in a few swims. She had a race coming up and has been in the water only once since the weather turned last fall. So we went Rocky IV last week. She donned her wetsuit, tied a rope around her waist and swam while I held her in place.

She had a great race Saturday, finishing just off the podium.

We also made sure to get a few Publix subs during our visit. Around here you have to drive several hundred miles to get a good sandwich.

And then we returned on Thursday evening, with much better weather around us.

That’s such a long drive. But it was a lovely and long overdue visit.

Everyone is doing pretty well, considering. It’s a “not ideal, but we’re still fortunate in a great many ways” sort of circumstance. Normal enough, I guess, or maybe that’s the catching up. It was nice to stare at other walls, to sit at the pool and see and be seen. Fortunate in a great many ways, indeed.

Covid-19 / ICR / IU / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Results: Still happily negative
5
May 21

Results: Still happily negative

Here’s a new thing. I’m running a new campaign that aspires to highlight our scholars in the building. We’ve been mulling this over for a while, but we’re here now. I’m basically in a soft launch, because everything feels like a soft launch right now. So it’s a little social media showing off the thoughtful and important work of people. The idea is that they’ve done the hard part, let us help show it off just a smidge more.

So here’s Jess Tompkins, who has just completed her doctoral work, talking about the research. Kinda neat.

All summer I’ll tinker with settings and styles and, one day, I’ll get it just right. Perhaps, by the time the fall rolls around and we’re back to the new normal — har, har — this will be a part of something larger that really brags on people.

It’s a thing to do.

Walked over to the IU Auditorium for a mitigation test today. They’ve been running spit tests on campus all year, and since November or so, they’ve been doing the lab work here, too. All a part of the work the university has put into keeping students and employees safe. It hasn’t been perfect, what could be? But it has been beyond substantial. It has been thoughtful. It has been effective. It’s gratifying to know that the people that are making the really big decisions are handling things like this conscientiously, and are taking the best advice of the science — from their own experts and points beyond — and applying it as best they can. It’s been the best part of the year.

They did all of this testing with some thought, and some randomization. So it might be that you lived in a place where it would have been difficult to control spread, so maybe you got called in a lot. You might have had some exposure, so you got called in. Or it could be, like me, you got something akin to a jury duty lottery. Sometimes it is just your turn. But, soon after the vaccines rolled out — get your shot — the university decided that once you were fully vaccinated you didn’t need to do mitigation testing anymore.

But you can still schedule your own, even if you’re vaccinated. Looking after people. Anyway, on the walk over:

Anyway, that was one bit of the walk. I enjoy that little stand of trees. Usually a photograph is about timing, but if there’s any sun in the sky it’s the right time to take some kind of picture right there.

Walk in, scan your ID card, get a little vial, spit in it a bunch, and then wipe it down and put it in a little tray. Later they’ll send you an email letting you know how it went. The turnaround today was just over six hours.

Still happily negative.

This is the week where I begin to rediscover free time. During the regular school year I am on campus until all hours of the evening on two or three nights a week, getting done just in time for a late dinner and dishes and trying to stay awake so it feels like I have some free time to read or watch TV or maybe accomplish some minor task around the house. (I usually don’t.) The other days of the week I get to the house just in time to go ride a bike or do something like that. It fills the schedule six days a week, somehow.

But now I can go back to being done at 5 p.m., or thereabouts, and have full, consecutive, evenings to myself. There’s still bikes to be ridden and stuff to do around the house from time-to-time, but it feels different. It’s a part of it, rather than an obstacle to it, somehow.

Monday we went for a bike ride. Yesterday I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I mostly did nothing. Today we were supposed to go for a bike ride, but I got a late start back and so we postponed it and the timing was such that I couldn’t start in on something before dinner. So, again, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

But we had dinner earlier, and at a reasonable hour. A nice change of pace.

Some nights during the school year it’s 9 or later before dinnertime.

All of that wears on you a bit, is all, and when the summer comes I am happy to finally work my way toward something a little less clock-driven.

It’s always nice to see how the other half live.

Covid-19 / cycling / IU / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The in between
3
May 21

The in between

It is finals week. I have no finals. Not taking any. Not delivering any. Only one major studio production this week, and one minor one.

It is the interregnum! The inbox will be cleansed! The office will be returned to its minimalist purpose! Other content will be scheduled, arranged, prepared and produced! Much will get done!

In a week or two it will all start again.

I spent two hours today dealing with an audio production I am working on.

See, it all began when I received an email in February with an intriguing subject line. Someone wants to produce a program, and can we help produce it. Well, I have studios and students. And so we began the process. And now they are to the point where they are almost ready to publish their first episode. (Hence the minor studio production later this week. We have to get their credits put in the can.) The host has been interviewing his guests most enthusiastically. The producer is closing in on a nice mental image for how the show will work. I have a bright young student who is working on editing the shows.

We’ve had technical difficulties. We’ve had laughs. I’ve tried my best to come off looking like a wizard. They are very pleased with my wizard-like skills. And, now, we are almost ready to let this thing run under its own power.

But two hours, right in the middle of your Monday, that really fills up the day, somehow.

Also today, I was able to say goodbye-for-now and congratulations to some of our graduating seniors. As is my tradition I wished them the best, gave them the parting advice they needed and reminded them I might one day be hitching a wagon to their star.

I don’t do that, but it could be. It’s a small industry. You wind up working with everyone some day.

Here are the last two shows of the semester. This is the late night show, which has been a lot of fun to watch come to life this year. The studio where they produce this is a giant soundstage, but they’ve built sets on it this year for some of the cinema classes, which crimped the previous style of this show. No matter, the creative-types said, we can work with that. I made them jump through a lot of hoops because of various studio rules and Covid-19 rules and they did it all with good cheer and determination and this show has been evolving all year long. It’s been neat to see.

They shot that last Thursday night in Studio 5. And on Friday morning another group — though there is some crossover in the crew — produced this in Studio 7. The shows where they talk about themselves always run the longest. Weird.

That episode also had a surprise-on-video appearance by Gabrielle, one of the people that started the show, and Patrick, who was a producer that really helped round it into something nice. Award winning, even.

He’s an award-winning producer, then. Met his wife doing these shows. (Or in a class. Or just on campus. Or maybe they grew up next-door to one another. I’m not really sure, but my version sounds better. They met on one of our shows.) He works in finance and does freelance production today. Just a super, super nice guy. I think he was the first person I had a conversation with in masks last spring. He had to return a key to me. I watched him hold it up and drench the thing in sanitizer and then hand it to me, and we stayed well apart in a parking lot because everyone was afraid of everything. I told him one thing I wasn’t afraid of was what he’d do next because, to know him is to know one of those people who you just know is going to work hard and do right and things in the world around him would line up.

How was that only a year ago?

It was probably more like 13 months. And change.

Oh, well, yeah, sure. That’s right. That makes a lot more sense, then.

At some point this month I’ll consider doing some back-to-normalish things. Just visit a store for the heck of it, sort of things. We’re vaccinated. Our families have all gotten the shots. The local population will be reduced a bit when the students return home. Hopefully community vaccination will get a nice surge. (It’s slowing here, same as everywhere, unfortunately, but I’m hoping for renewed interest.) So all of those things together might make the time right. Plus it will a nice bit of punctuation between that time last year and this time this year, a good reminder of the time spent laying low, rather than creating a misperception of a foggy dream.

Maybe this sort of timing is important in ways we haven’t yet really wrapped our arms around. Everyone is eager and in a rush to put this behind them, and I understand that. Maybe that it hasn’t been one symmetrical year is a good thing. There’s a lot, still, to understand about what’s just passed us, too.

Went for a bike ride this evening. There’s this one road on one of our usual routes that has three little rolling hills and, for some reason, that third hill always hurts. So my tactic this time was to ride the first two casually, spinning out the easiest gear I could. (My rear derailleur needs adjusting and I can’t shift from the big to the little right now, too, so that’s a thing.) And then, on the third hill, I hoped, I would still have some feeling left and be able to get over the thing.

So that’s when I jumped ahead of my lovely bride.

The next five miles offer a handful of turns and curves and sticky little rollers before the turnaround spot. And right after that is when I passed her going the other way.

She was far too close, which meant she was far too close. Which meant I hadn’t created the separation I’d hoped for. Which meant she was going to chase me down. Which meant I had to ride harder to keep in front.

It’s more difficult to get ahead to give her something to chase than to catch up to her when you’re behind.

It is six-and-a-half miles from where that photo is taken to the house. And all of that was in my head the whole way. There are a few places on that part of the route where the terrain and the road and, on days like today, a lack of traffic can give you a good long view behind you. I never did see her. But once, on the last little leg of this course, she was nowhere to be seen and I sat up to catch my breath and soft-pedaled for 17 seconds. I did it for only 17 seconds because in the 17th she whooooosed right by me.

So there was going to be none of that this evening. I had two one-mile splits that were on the low end of fast. And she never caught me.

She was about 15 seconds behind at the end, though.

Covid-19 / IU / memories / podcast / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Here’s a backward way toward hope
11
Mar 21

Here’s a backward way toward hope

A year ago, today, was the day our university began it’s multi-campus shut down. That’s nine campuses, more than 100,000 students and at least two or three professionals, besides, spread out across an entire big state. It was a Wednesday, the Wednesday before spring break and they said everyone was going home and spring break would be two weeks and the situation would be re-assessed along the way.

And, look, a lot of us aren’t ready for retrospectives. I know I’m not interested in it just now, but I just want to say this one piece. A year ago, tomorrow, was my last day on campus for a while. I went in that evening to watch the sports guys wrap it up. Their sports director did a little monologue and he held his last meeting and there were tears. Students were graduating and realizing that it was very likely going to be not at all how they imagined. Well, what has been since, right?

Last March, right away, the entire IU system went to work on handling the most immediate tasks and planning a safer future. I had the opportunity to be a very, very small part of some of listening in to a slice of a portion of some of those plans as they pertained to my corner of things. It was fascinating. It was informative. It was frustrating. And, taken as a whole, there’s no mistaking it: Indiana University put every single one of their experts and their hardest working people on the job of doing this right.

Still, not everyone is back on campus, but we’re headed the right direction. I’ve been back full time since February and three and four days a week in the fall. The campus generally has a slow summer feel to it, and that’s been by design. Meanwhile, statewide, cases and hospitalizations are down. Vaccine uptake is increasing. IU is scheduling an in-person graduation for students in May and a fall term that’s more familiar than unusual.

Did her experts and staff work tirelessly to make the best of this? You’ve no idea. Did some of the top minds in their infectious disease and public safety fields go above and beyond for a full year? They won’t sing songs about those people, but they should. Did the university step up in ways big and small? The university distributed 290,000 masks at no cost. They built two labs to process their own Covid tests, up to 50,000 a week. We did everything but socially distance the storied buildings.

There were hiccups, I’m sure. Universities don’t pivot on a dime, and maybe no one realized until this past year how much that happens in giant operations is attributed to inertial motion. But what IU did is singularly impressive. This isn’t a retrospective, but it’s worth acknowledging that one thing. The university took care of her own.

And, somehow, they let me do programs like this …

I’m pushing 70 of those now. And it’s getting a tiny bit cheerier. Oh! Sweet hope!

And this speech from the president came out today, too. So petty of the White House trying to steal my thunder. But that’s OK. We’ll let them in this instance.

I also saw the saddest, sweetest note today. One of our former students, who is now on air in west Texas, got her first vaccine shot today, a year, almost to the day that her father passed away from Covid. What must that have been like for her? (She already had super powers, though.)

But this is what I’m really excited about.

We are one year into this and we are finally talking about the underprivileged and the rural communities. This state is sending out mobile vaccine units. Companies that are in the smallest towns you’ve never heard of are talking about getting in this fight. It took a year, but on the other hand, it only took a year. (It took less time. It took those places watching the big cities burn and then seeing the embers coming into their neighborhoods, and they started thinking about where their sleeves were in relation to their wrists and elbows.) In under a year, and we’re getting to the far flung places.

When I was in the third grade I developed chicken pox at my grandparents’ house in north Alabama. My grandmother, having raised tiny human beings before, suspected that’s what it was, anyway. And she took me to the pharmacy, the only medical concern in easy reach. The pharmacist there, non-plussed as he was by being asked to diagnose people who walked into his store, confirmed it and gave us the lotion, told us to stay away from anyone else and sent us on our way. That was three-plus decades ago. Last year an aunt and uncle got a Covid diagnosis at that same pharmacy. The closest hospital, where my aunt spent several days, is a 45-minute drive away on a good day. And that’s easy, compared to some of these places. Their little part of the world is hardly detached from the rest of us, but it can sure feel like it if you needed to see someone for health care, to say nothing of a specialist.

That we are already talking about these rural places at all, that medical experts and businesses are trying to figure this out, is a good thing. That different sectors of the economy are searching for a way to add more distribution points so that the people thought about the least can be addressed just like anyone else is a good development. Hope is where you place it. And don’t you agree we could use as much of that as we could get?

There’s a reason Shandy Dearth talked in our podcast about getting a vaccine so grandparents can safely hug their grandchildren again. Hope is where you place it.

In the studio for sports shows tonight. Tried a little something different for the gif. Who knows how this will end up.

The shows will end up just fine. They’re under good direction and I enjoy getting to watch them all work. And you can enjoy these particular episodes online tomorrow. I’ll share them here, I’m sure.

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