Head Tale

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Luther College 1991 “Midnight Breakfast” (and Happy 5000th Blog Post To Me!)

First off, it didn’t line up perfectly but earlier this week, I posted my 5000th post on this blog after nearly 14 years of daily posts from February 25, 2006 to April 30, 2020 (and fourteen years ago, I *never* would’ve guessed that my milestone 5000th post would be about my daughter, let alone my daughter getting a negative result after a test during a worldwide pandemic!!!)

(Oh, and speaking of daily posts, Shea is responsible for perhaps the funniest post ever on this blog – I went out for an end of semester pub night with classmates, leaving her at our apartment alone *and* pregnant. She posted on my behalf to keep my “streak” going then as classmates saw the post and clued in, they began posting comments knowing the time stamps would indicate how late I stayed out! The comments got lost in a blog transfer to a new host but I still remember one of my favourite classmates, who died too young last summer, being the ring leader of keeping the comments going!)

Anyhow, science tells me that’s this blog encompasses a span of 5179 days so I’m actually surprised how few days of posting I missed in that span (though there were probably days I had multiple posts – especially early on – that balance that out.)

It’s also true that most of my “Throwback Thursday” posts feature pictures from around same time I started this blog since that’s when we also bought our first digital camera – a Canon model we bought off Ebay from the States.

But today, a perfect Throwback Thursday post fell into my lap after the FB page of Luther College in Regina where I stayed in dorms for my first year and a half of undergrad in 1991-92 posted a pic from one of their “Midnight Breakfasts” which were done near the end of each semester. This is where faculty and kitchen staff joined together to feed a special meal to the students cramming for finals.

If you don’t recognize me, I’m the overly skinny kid in the red shirt with the mullet wearing what I think was a UNLV shirt!

¶ Posted 30 April 2020 § Blog § MemoryLane § Photo § ThrowbackThursday ‡ Comments (0) °

What’s The Worst That Could Happen In The World Due To Covid? (Revised)

Yesterday, I tried to do a post of all the worst-case scenarios for COVID-19 but I realised that I probably did too much commentary and I probably didn’t think through quite how bad this could get. (I mean, at one point, I went on a tangent about how this might end up resulting in *improvements* in the economy – *not* the point of the post!)

So not sure if I’ve ever done this before but let’s have a “do-over” with some ideas about how bad it could get. As I said yesterday, some are more likely than others but at the same time, there’s no way to predict if the absolute worst might happen (just like the dinosaurs didn’t predict the comet that ended them!)

1. COVID gets really bad through human backsliding on safety measures and/or no effective vaccine being developed and/or mutation and/or it being more widespread than we realise and/or confirmation that having it does *not* provide immunity (lots of conflicting info about that right now) so it ends up killing millions worldwide over a couple years like the Spanish Flu of 1918. Or there’s *never* a vaccine and we end up living with this for *years* until we reach some type of herd immunity.

2. Due to economic failures and lack of a social safety net or good government, the US has riots, unrest and uprisings. Maybe mass shootings. Maybe assassinations of prominent figures. Complete civic breakdown that police and government aren’t able to contain.

3. The United States has some sort of civil war/civil divorce and splits into regional blocs that are more aligned politically, culturally and economically, sort of like when the USSR separated.

4. The economy is permanently altered in a negative way – restaurants fail, destination travel is changed forever, people stop shopping as meaninglessly as they did before the virus, numerous major companies go bankrupt from casinos to clothes to car manufacturers.

5. Daily life is permanently altered in a negative way.

All this argues strongly that the current borrowing binge should turn out well – so long as things get back to normal in relatively short order.

The nightmare scenario is one where the virus continues to suffocate the global economy for a year or more.

6. The economy is destroyed. Government borrowing reaches a tipping point where the majority of people are on government programs so as to be unsustainable.

7. Conspiracy theories take hold and people refuse a vaccine even if one is ready. Or some other conspiracy theory takes hold that counters the ability of society to recover from Covid in some other way.

8. There is some sort of a war, conventional or cyber, between China and the United States.

9. Diplomatic relations between nations are permanently altered by the actions of various nations in response to Covid – claiming PPE, imposing sanctions, etc.

10. The developing world is decimated by the virus without some of the same health and government structures that help first-world countries to deal with the virus relatively well (so far.)

11. There is never a vaccine, the virus never mutates to be less deadly and humans must learn to live with Covid as a constant presence like the common cold for an undetermined amount of time.

12. In the midst of battling Corona, something else major happens – a major earthquake in California, a hurricane in the southern United States, hell, another virus – and society gets completely overwhelmed.

13. I don’t want to even mention this because it’s personal for me. But it’s already happened in Italy, the US and other hardhit countries and that’s the fact that the virus is particularly hard on healthcare workers which makes a death spiral – you lose trained doctors and nurses who get sick or even die after working on the front lines which means less people on the front lines which leads to more illness and down we go.

Have a great day! 🙁

¶ Posted 29 April 2020 § List § News ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: Covid, economics, health, history

What’s The Worst That Could Happen In The World Due To COVID?

Early on and throughout the pandemic, there have been lots of nice “We’re in this together“, “Humans have survived worse“-type messages of positivity mixed with advice to not watch too much news, not to think too darkly, not to worry about things beyond your control.

These mostly came from sincere places – trying to protect a sense that the world will eventually return to normal, trying to protect people’s mental health, trying to avoid mass panic which can escalate quickly.

But I also think some of these messages come from a place of naivety.

I always think of the coworker Shea had who said “I don’t like going downtown with my kids because they might see a homeless person.”

So instead of facing reality and possibly having some difficult or uncomfortable thoughts and conversations, some people would rather pretend bad things can’t happen or deny reality completely.

We do it constantly in our personal and professional lives where we analyze risk and danger – “should I get this rash looked at or wait to if goes away?”, “How much house insurance should I buy?”, “Do I hire someone to clean my gutters or climb a ladder to do it myself?”, “Should I ask that person with the face tattoo swearing loudly in the corner of the library to quiet down or call security to do it?” – so I don’t know why people wouldn’t also try to think about some of the potential negative long-term impacts of COVID-19 on our world (while also recognizing that some are more likely than others.)

For that reason, I present…

COVID-19 – WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

(They’re numbered but in no way am I making an attempt to rank these as some may seem more or less likely to happen but if you ask the dinosaurs, I bet none of them predicted a world-ending comet hitting either!) 😉

1. Covid-19 Becomes like Influenza-1918
The world appears to (mostly) be trending in the right direction in terms of spread and deaths. Unlike 1918’s pandemic which killed millions around the world, we have better healthcare, better science, better communication technology, better social programs and many other factors that are helping keep Covid under control in a way that simply wasn’t possible in 1918. But there is the possibility that Covid could still get worse – if it mutates, if we don’t find a vaccine, if we get through the first outbreak and it comes back again as strong or stronger at some future point.

2. The United States Has Riots and Uprisings
Where I listed all the advantages that our modern society has, it’s troubling that the US lacks so many of the things the rest of the world takes for granted – free quality healthcare, strong social safety, trusted government. In a country that’s had riots for single acts of racial injustice, I’m actually sort of surprised there hasn’t been some sort of uprising from Americans who have lost so many jobs and have so few supports. (I’m not surprised that the only “uprising” is from people wanting to not be quarantined and instead, be sent back to work, whether it is safe or not. But there could easily be some cross-over between those two groups depending on how long this lasts.)

3. The United States Has a Civil War (or a Civil Divorce?)
There was already a division between blue and red states in the US that’s only gotten worse in our current hyper-partisan world. But seeing various states band together with others to form regional coalitions to coordinate their COVID responses makes me wonder if some of this could lay the groundwork for disintegration of the United States since there is already tension between blue states (who send a lot of tax money to red states) and red states (who have very different cultural values than blue states.) A related note is that states that band together could actually end up being unhelpful if say, six states decide to take steps that are ineffective rather than one state acting alone.

4. The Economy Is Permanently Altered (Destroyed or Improved Though?)
For over a century, our entire society has based on a capitalistic model of ever-increasing growth, ever-increasing wealth (especially for those at the top), and ever-increasing exploitation of our natural world to fuel all of that (which may have played a part in releasing the coronavirus on us in the first place!)

With the amount of job loss, government spending, changing tax bases, it’s impossible to see if our economy will go back to “normal” or if it will be permanently altered, either to the good or bad.

In the worst sense, you could say that bats (or pigs or ticks or gorillas) aren’t responsible for any of the viruses that plague our world – ultimately humans are and in some ways, capitalism may have brought this on us. So, there may be a positive change in the form of a permanent alteration of our economy to be less focused on accumulating wealth, appreciating workers at all levels, providing basic levels of support as a human right – wouldn’t necessarily be a bad outcome which is supposedly the theme of this list. Yes, it could be a stressful and disruptive if humanity begins to transition to a new economic model after so long in a (mostly) capitalist framework. Ultimately that would likely be a good thing but we could also go the other way with an economy that *can’t* rebound, either to the way things were or to a model of continual growth and who knows what that would end up looking like?

5. The Conspiracy Theories Take Hold
There are numerous conspiracy theories about COVID out there of varying levels of plausibility – from the idea that the virus was man-made and/or purposely released to it being spread by 5G to it being a way for elites to force us all to have implanted chips that control all of our movements (not too far from the situation in Wuhan right now actually.) I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any measure but I do find it fascinating to read about how conspiracy theories develop and what it may say about how some people process information or deal with shocking, world-altering events. To this day, there are an incredible number of people who believe that the moon landing was faked or that 9/11 was an inside job so I wonder what will happen if some of the Covid “truther” theories took hold and what impact that would have on our ability to deal with the virus going forward (as just one example, the idea of something like mandatory vaccination for Covid will be extremely controversial in a world where anti-vaxxers are plentiful.)

¶ Posted 28 April 2020 § List § Wisdom ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: Covid, history, language, science

Music Monday – “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me/I am going to make it through this year if it kills me”

“This Year” – The Mountain Goats

¶ Posted 27 April 2020 § MusicMonday ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: Covid, music

COVID Immunity Compared to Six Other Diseases

Some more unknowables…

¶ Posted 26 April 2020 § News § Wisdom ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: Covid, health

Saturday Snap – Spoiler Alert: The Test Was Negative

A few people we’ve told about our experience going for a COVID test said they appreciated having some information about what the process was like. So we thought it might be worth posting for anyone else who is curious or ends up having to go for a test themselves.

Now, because Shea works in healthcare and still going into the hospital every day, we always knew we had a greater than average chance that we’d likely end up getting a COVID test at some point. She isn’t working directly with COVID patients but still has a greater risk of exposure compared to someone quarantining at home for instance.

What we did not expect was that our seven year old daughter would be the first in the family referred for a COVID test!

But after her “virtual” birthday late last week, Sasha spiked a high fever the next day.

Normally a kid with a fever wouldn’t be a concern and we’d wait it out for a few days before even worrying too much.

But given the world we live in, the symptoms she was mentioning (no dry cough for her. Fever was main one but she vomited a couple times, had diarrhea and complained of a sore neck), and knowing Shea is going into the hospital each day, we called 811 who referred us to the COVID hotline who asked some questions then said yes, worth a test. They referred us to the COVID test centre if the symptoms didn’t let up within 48 hours (if they did, they said we could keep her at home for another 48 hours to monitor then call back if they recurred or anything else worried us.)

She still had a fever after a couple days so we went for the test last Sunday.

In terms of process, we went to a designated COVID testing site in a building behind Pioneer Village on Dewdney Ave (makes me wonder if this is the best location – near a seniors care home as I suspect some people who aren’t paying attention to the signage might end up going into the care home instead of finding their way to the proper location *behind* the building.)

You pull up to a white truck where a masked security guard radios your name inside directs you to a numbered parking spot (picked to ensure at least one spot between you and any other vehicle *even* though you are told to remain in the vehicle until a nurse comes out). The parking lot wasn’t too busy – only one other car in our entire row.

Soon after, a masked nurse comes out and gives a disposable mask to the patient and one other caregiver (no surprise but we both couldn’t go in with Sasha so Shea drew the short straw on that one!)

The nurse leaves then comes back again soon after to accompany the testee and caregiver (if needed) into the test site.

Shea didn’t give me the exact blow-by-blow of what happened *in* the testing area but I do know that her and another nurse had to put some sort of a wrestling hold on Sasha to hold her still since the test is *not* fun, especially if you’re seven. 😮

(I accidentally described the test as a “nasal swap” instead of a “nasal swab” in an email to someone. But I’m sure Sasha wanted a “nasal swap” after it was done!)

As I said, at least from my perspective in the parking lot, it didn’t seem that busy early on a Sunday afternoon in terms of cars waiting or people being escorted in. There was one other car when we arrived, they left and Shea and Sasha went in then another car arrived while they were inside.

Our total time at the site was probably half an hour max.

Oh, and the most important detail was that we went through the DQ drive-thru for ice cream after (which probably deserves a post of its own – also some unique processes in place including a pylon at the drive-thru window so you can’t pull up too close then your order being handed to you on a large flat tray to minimize hand-to-hand close contact!)

We were told that we’d get results in 1-3 days but we heard first thing this morning. I suspected they were prioritizing tests for family members of healthcare workers because Shea was told to continue going to work since she didn’t have symptoms but obviously, that’s a potential disaster if the family member then the healthcare worker both end up testing positive.

We later heard from someone else who got their results within a day but someone else, also in healthcare, who didn’t hear for a few days. So maybe it’s just sort of luck of the draw?

We have no idea how Sasha picked up a flu bug as she basically hasn’t left the house in a month. But we’re just *really* glad it wasn’t COVID, her temp’s back to normal now, no one else in the family has been sick (yet) and she’s her usual self after a few quiet days.

¶ Posted 25 April 2020 § Family § MemoryLane § News § Sasha § Saskatchewan § Wisdom ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: Covid, education, health

Friday Fun Link – Honest Trailers: Tiger King

The perfect show at the perfect time…

¶ Posted 24 April 2020 § FridayFunLink § PopCulture § United States § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: television, unitedstates

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – What Will I Remember About COVID When It’s Over?

It may or may not work but now that Scott Moe has released his plan for reopening the province, one benefit is that it makes it feel a bit more “real” that there will an end to this and the endless day of quarantine might come to an end.

That got me thinking about some of the moments that will likely stay stuck in mind when I think back on this time…

¶ Posted 23 April 2020 § List § MemoryLane § Saskatchewan § ThrowbackThursday ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: Covid, health, saskatchewan

Five Lists of Five Things I’m Thinking About As Scott Moe Prepares To Release His Five Phase Plan for Reopening Saskatchewan

Premier Scott Moe had a press conference tonight to announce that…he will be having a press conference tomorrow night to talk about how his government has a five point plan for reopening the province now that we’ve flattened the curve…maybe.

There’s no doubt that Saskatchewan has done very well during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to most other provinces and many other parts of the world as well.

Some of that is credit to the government but a lot is also due to circumstance and luck. For example, Saskatchewan has the advantage of being a geographically spread out, thinly populated province with no real international airport and only two large cities (which is also relative – by Ontario standards, Regina would be somewhere around the ninth or tenth largest city instead of the second.)

If we had a chance to predict what two events in Saskatchewan were going to fuck us with the Coronavirus I would’ve guessed a snowmobile rally and curling bonspeil 100 times out of 100.

— Krista (@Krista_B_85) March 29, 2020

Beyond our natural advantages, we were lucky too – we didn’t have any major outbreaks in care homes or food plants. The government was actually slow to limit larger gatherings (getting pushback from cities in the process). And up until a month ago, the government was pushing for a snap election that likely would’ve taken place sometime in mid to late April right when quarantine measures were at their highest.

No, I’m not convinced the government deserves too much credit for where we’re at considering they actually *laughed* at the opposition leader (a doctor who specializes in community health and epidemiology) when he tried to raise concerns about the coming pandemic about, oh, four days before they ended up announcing there wouldn’t be a snap election after all:

Anyhow, all of this has me thinking about the last month which has been the weirdest mix of anxiety and banality, uncertainty and dark humour that I’ve ever experienced in my life.

But as I try to wrap my head around the past month – the worldwide impacts, the economic impacts, the human impacts, the climate impacts – on and on, it’s like trying to wrap your head around what a billion actually is. I mean, we all know of it conceptually but the reality of experiencing it feels beyond comprehension. COVID was like that – something so large and overpowering that you have nothing to compare it to.

It remains to be seen but COVID will likely be this generation’s World War, this generation’s Great Depression, this generation’s ice age.

So, since I can’t really wrap my head around what I’ve experienced for the past month, why not try to do a few funny lists instead? 😉

MY PERSONAL HOPE FOR PREMIER MOE’S FIVE PHASE PLAN

Phase 1. Hair salons – if this lasted much longer, I was going to let the kids loose with my beard trimmer to give me their best boot camp brush cut!

Phase 2. Off-leash dog parks – so I can stop trying to avoid all the bombs that terrible dog owners are leaving in the green space behind our house

Phase 3. Seasonal Campgrounds – selfishly, the thought of losing our entire camping season was one of our biggest #FirstWorldProblem worries through this pandemic.

Phase 4. Liquor Stores – What? They were deemed essential in the first week of shutdown? Just kidding – I knew they were open. In fact, there was one week where our liquor bill was literally higher than our grocery bill (to be fair, we were stocking up for a quarantine of unknown duration and liquor stores don’t have established delivery systems like many grocery stores do so we were buying for a month instead of a week!)

Phase 5. Libraries – what can I say, I’ve gotten used to working from home! 😉 But seriously, I think places that are less reliant on the bottom line like most private, for-profit businesses but also where large groups traditionally gather – whether that’s schools or libraries or swimming pools – should proceed with great caution as they plan to re-open.

FIVE THINGS I DID ACCOMPLISH DURING THE PANDEMIC

1. Managed to pull off a virtual birthday party for Sasha and though I didn’t manage to arrange a drive-by from the fire department *or* an appearance by a magician like I hoped to do, I think we still made it pretty memorable with a few other ideas and treats.

2. Shea tends to do most of the cooking in our family but with me being at home, I took on that role more and had a few pretty damn good meals if I do say so myself!

3. I did get a lot of reading done, mostly because TV was wall-to-wall COVID coverage and it got pretty repetitive and/or depressing after awhile.

4. Flattened the curve on my personal spending! (Those two alarms were probably the times I bought booze!) 😉

5. Picking up the dog shit in our backyard (long story but the people we bought from had a dog and, well, we didn’t want to piss them off by making it a condition of the house sale for them to clean the yard expecting they would do that. They didn’t and so I was able to do it during the past month which had less to do with quarantine and more to do with weather turning nice enough that shit wasn’t frozen solid in the ground! And now you can see why I’m so mad at people letting their dogs shit in the green space behind our house!)

FIVE THINGS I DIDN’T ACCOMPLISH DURING MY MONTH AT HOME
(The past month seemed like it would be a bit of a paid vacation…for the first couple days. But then you realise you’re still trying to work PLUS you have kids at home PLUS your wife is still going out of the house to work so more household chores fall to you and suddenly you *really* want to go back to work to get away from it all!)

1. Teaching myself a new language

2. Writing a novel.

3. Learning to Travis pick on the guitar

4. Unpacking some of the still packed boxes from our move (if it hasn’t happened by now, what made me think being at home during a pandemic would prompt me to finish unpacking?)

5. Get truly settled in my “home office” since Sasha and I battled it out for the space which also doubled as her art/craft room.

FIVE TRASHY REALITY SHOWS THAT SHEA AND I BINGED ON
1. Tiger King
2. Too Hot To Handle
3. Dark Side of the Ring (me only)
4. Love Is Blind (mostly Shea, I only caught parts of it)
5. Donald Trump Press Briefings (and really, anything on CNN is borderline trashy reality TV. Sensationalistic anyhow – does the reporter in the shot below *really* need to be wearing a mask outdoors with no one around?)

FIVE THINGS I’M WORRIED ABOUT AS THE WORLD GOES BACK TO “NORMAL”
1. What is going to happen in the US where they definitely have *not* flattened their curve.

2. What fall elections in the US (and hopefully Sask though I wouldn’t put it past Moe to still call a snap election) look like and how COVID impacts everything from campaigning to fundraising to turnout.

3. I’m honestly nervous to go back to work and start reconnecting with many of my patrons who I know had a much rougher go of this than I did. I suspect there will be a bit of “survivor’s guilt” to know I weathered this whole thing relatively easily and unscathed when some of our patrons were not so lucky and will have had their lives and jobs and families upturned completely.

4. I’m worried about the ramifications for the future of pandemics – will COVID come back in the fall? When will there be a vaccine? Will it mutate in a way that we can’t keep up with? Will a different pandemic hit us or is this a once-in-a-hundred years event? If another pandemic hits, when?

5. Obviously the short term adjustments of daily life (including at the library) but more importantly, what the long term impacts and changes will be for everything from how we interact to how we are taxed to how we prioritize what is important in life. Early on, I saw a great quote from a former RPL coworker – “I’m not worried that the world won’t go back to normal, I’m worried that it will.” Exactly!