Scamperings

There's been some reporting recently of vaccines not protecting against severe infection as well as expected, based on looking at the number of hospitalized people who are vaccinated vs not. "60% of people with severe COVID-19 in the hospital had been vaccinated!" Here's an article explaining why this analysis is complete junk:

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated

If you're familiar with Simpson's paradox, it's another case of that. TL;DR: Vaccination status is highly correlated with age, and if you actually slice up the cases by age, you see that efficacy against severe disease is 80–100%, depending on age. And yes, this is in the context of the Delta variant (or other current strains).

(But also see the article for some additional confounding factors.)

I got my first COVID-19 vaccine today, which is a relief.

I woke up with a sore muscle on the left side of my neck, something I strained in my sleep. I didn't take anything for it because I didn't want to mess with the immune response. I found some paper showing that acetaminophen didn't interfere with an influenza vaccine, but I try not to keep much around in the house because it's fairly dangerous as far as OTC drugs go, so all we had was a heavy-duty extended-release one. Too much uncertainty, better not.

I put on my Sunday finest mask and walked to the doctor's office, rather than biking (due to the neck thing). I had had a plan to spend the 15 minute observation period outdoors, but my plans to bring an "observer" fell through, so I did the indoor wait. I guess the more important thing is that they did agree to it after some fuss, which means that they don't really have an excuse to say no to the next person who asks.

A few funny things though... when I mentioned the issue to the person giving me the shot, he offered to let me sit in an empty room. I'm not clear whether I would have otherwise been left in the exam room where I got the shot or whether I would have been in the waiting room, but either way I ended up without an observer! I don't think anyone checked in on me. So that was weird and pointless. Also, when I left, there was someone standing around outside with the same little plastic timer I had been given -- and he didn't have an observer either! So many eye-rolls.

It was disconcerting how as soon as I stepped out of the building, I had a sense of accomplishment crossed with invincibility. Immunity won't really start kicking in until at least a week from now, so I'll have to be on guard against a false sense of security.

A few hours later I started to get a sore area around in the injection site in my right deltoid (which is nicely complementing the neck thing). Seems about like my previous flu shot in terms of discomfort. Hopefully that's all it comes to for the first dose. (This one's Moderna, for reference.)

I think that after two weeks I'll start relaxing my precautions a little -- probably just to the extent of going into shops, although still wearing my N95.

It has now been about a year since SARS-CoV-2 started affecting my life, so I thought I'd do a retrospective post on the past year.

Overall... it has been an OK year for me.

I live in the lower apartment of a 2-unit house spouse with my spouse and young child. We didn't have any housemates with outside partners or who might go out and make bad decisions and bring COVID-19 back to the house. While in the past I've really appreciated living in community, our current situation did simplify negotiation of risk and procedures. We made some snap judgements and refined them as needed.

I've been working from home. I have my own bedroom, which meant I had my own workspace. It's not as isolated from the rest of the house as I would like sometimes, and I don't have the psychological separation of workspace/homespace, but it has been manageable. We have good internet connectivity. Some things have been harder at work than they would have been. Since I started in mid-January of 2020, I've missed out on some social interaction, and stayed stuck in some projects that wouldn't have been as troublesome if it were easier to chat over lunch or at the puzzle bar.

Financially, we've been fine, since we've both been able to continue work.

Food has been a little different, but surprisingly close to normal. I like browsing the aisles at grocery stores, and I like getting a variety of products and ingredients that aren't all available at the same place. I don't do online grocery stuff. So, I went without some things that would have been nice. I ramped up how much we purchased at the small neighborhood grocery, which was sometimes more expensive but had online ordering; I also ramped up how much I purchased through them in bulk (which is cheaper, if you can front the cash and have storage space.) Our existing practice of buying in bulk (e.g. 25 pound bag of lentils, 40 lb bag of chickpeas) meant that the food supply chain disruptions in the spring of 2020 were somewhat less concerning for us. Our usual CSA still ran, and while we had less choice of what produce we got than we would in other years, I'm OK with having to get creative with produce. That's already a risk we were taking in being members of a CSA.

I've missed some social stuff. I was never much of one to go to parties or even to visit with friends all that often, but even against that background I did feel some isolation. We've gone on a number of walks with friends, which has been quite pleasant. I think that our kid has actually gotten to know her grandparents *better* than she would have otherwise, having a 2 hour video chat with one set or the other every weekday (partly a way to give my spouse and I some time for work or unwinding). The grandparents are pretty much vaccinated now (3 have 2 doses, 1 has 1) and will be able to visit soon, which will be exciting.

The kiddo's Kindergarten classes have gone surprisingly well. She has a space set up for school and knows how to do some basics on the old Thinkpad I set up for her, including joining class and playing some educational games the school has directed her to. There's not much opportunity for same-age social, but we've managed some outdoor playdates.

Healthwise, I could be better, could be worse. Around March 2020 my spouse and I started the 5BX exercise program to stay in shape given the loss of our bicycle commutes, and I really started to notice some positive changes in my body. (We've also been biking to the CSA farm a couple times per month, which helps as well.) Unfortunately, some time in the autumn of 2020 I developed frozen shoulder in my left arm, and it has been a slow process of physical therapy to get back to something like normal. I still can't wash part of my back properly, but I'm no longer getting horrible jolts of pain when I move my arm the wrong way. This threw a wrench into my exercising, but I think I'm ready to restart that now. On the up side, it has been a year almost entirely free of colds! Exceptions: I got one in late summer when we dropped most of our fomite precautions, and just this week I had a day of cough and fever (tested negative for COVID-19, but still wearing a mask around the house). I think I'll be wearing a mask in some situations in the future, and working from home a bit longer when I have a cold.

For mental health... hard to say. I think there's been some gradual, slow improvement in my irritability. Some bouts of depression, but none of the anxiety some people have been hit so hard with. (Some of that's financial stability, household autonomy, and being low risk for COVID-19 hospitalization. Some is likely personality.) I've been extremely distractible and prone to the donwannas, which isn't great for work.

Spiritually, I've also lost a lot of faith in people in the past year. A good deal of it has to do with politicians, all the way from federal down to local, but I'm also astonished at how badly the medical community has handled things. In spring of 2020 I was strongly focused on community resilience and making sure my own household and neighborhood were protected, not trusting the government to do the right thing. In retrospect I do wish that I had done more to speak up, asking our local and state government to do more, to do the right thing, to act quickly. But also in retrospect, I have a hard time feeling that it would have helped. Part of that is because I've also lost a good deal of faith in people in *general*. So many people acting against their own best interests, failing to contain the pandemic, failing to support each other. Not even isolated troublemakers, but large swathes of the population who either didn't understand or didn't care that their discretionary travel, indoor dining, and loud indoor parties were immiserating and killing people. My heart has been hardened to some extent; I'm just that much less likely to try to do good on the behalf of unknown others, rather than looking inward to protecting myself, protecting my family.

My spouse was hit harder in some ways; given the way childcare breaks down in our household, and the lack of in-person school, she's had a much harder time getting the time she needs for work and unwinding. And as I mentioned, my daughter is missing out on a lot of same-age social (while at the same time getting a ton of make-believe and other play time with grandparents). I don't know how difficult it has been for her, or to what extent she thinks of it as normal.

So, just as our household fared relatively better than others in the pandemic, I suppose I've fared a bit better than some others in my family. It's easy to feel guilty about that, even though that doesn't really help anything; more important to meditate on it and figure out how to improve things. I can also take some time to feel grateful, and take stock of what really matters to me. I can think about how I want to live in the future, what I'm willing to give up and what I'm not, and what changes will be coming our way no matter what. The present crisis isn't over. It will be eventually, but there will be other crises, many entangled with or derived from the rising climate crisis. The disparities in society will grow, and we have some hard decisions to make about where we situate ourselves, and what work we do that is inward vs. outward focused. I have a lot of thinking to do about that.