may 11
Jeff found great joy in watching Korean baseball on TV the other night. In spite of the empty stadium, it brought all the warm fuzzies of watching live sports. It sounds like we might get baseball rolling here, too! And in what baseball fans never imagined possible, the American League rules will prevail and all teams will use a designated hitter. The Debbie Downer in me is just bummed that with limited crowds for the foreseeable future, the MLB baseball stadium experience will be even more exclusively for rich people.
may 12
We are nine weeks at home now. Sometimes, I’m so worked up about the inequity of this lock down, and what each household is enduring, that I won’t allow myself to consider any goodness emerging from these strange days. It feels wrong to be glad about anything when so many are suffering. But I can force myself to acknowledge that sleeping in every morning, not making four lunches, and having two cups of coffee while it is mostly still hot has been pretty cool.
As ever, we are experiencing such conflicted messaging. Fauci is warning that we cannot be so “cavalier” about sending kids back to school in the fall. After relaxing distancing measures, a virus resurgence is underway in South Korea, Germany, and China. He says reopening prematurely could result in needless “suffering and death” and in fact, set us back even further in economic recovery. But the president says we must prioritize reopening in spite of the resulting deaths.
I have a pit in my stomach and I can’t decide if it’s anxiety about the marathon sheltering and distancing ahead or the reopening and its set of problems. Which team am I on? And why do both make me want to cry? And have a cocktail?
New guidelines are in place at the White House – everybody must wear masks when roaming the building. Except for the president and the vice president. Excellent leadership. Bravo.
And the president continues to say that we have the best testing, everybody can get a test yada yada. And it’s 100% false. We’ve had months to get our act together. Wtf.
may 13
In our quest to support every last local business, we walked to one our favorite dive bars last night for takeout cocktails. Then we enjoyed our roadies on the walk home. It was legal-ish.
California State Colleges announced they will not resume on-campus classes in the fall. The affects two of my nephews and is obviously a giant bummer. I know of several college students already taking leave from their fancy school and opting for classes at a local junior college in the meantime. Saving some coin! That’s a lot of lost revenue for these institutions with consequences that will reverberate for yeeeeeears.
diary of coronavirus 
First time reader but long time admirer of the writer! I balance my news intake with The Week, main stream media and the Wall Street Journal. Interesting commentary this week-end, May16-17, in the WSJ from Peggy Noonan. Always have liked her integrity and honesty in her observations. Echos some of the writer’s concern about the conundrum of protecting health and opening the economy. Also an interesting op-ed from a Silicon alley technologist who is a “lockdown skeptic” who does copious research and has a point of view that should be part of the discussion. Thanks for the very authentic and readable diary!! Very enjoyable!
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Thanks! Awareness of your sources of news consumption is a great start! Hmm, Peggy Noonan. Her overall sentiment about reopening and learning to live more carefully is sound. But I had trouble with her “overclass” as blue and “regular (working class) people” as red designation. I agree many people with “no skin in the game” have been making data-driven, science-based judgements with unintended economic consequences, but that’s their job. And they shouldn’t be asked to do it any other way. What would’ve made the most sense, was to have that factual information transparently provided to the American people along with structure and guidance and coordination from the federal government (and testing!!!). With accurate information, we could have evaluated our own risk/reward assessment. And the explosive polarization and distrust could have been mitigated. She goes on to give examples of democratic governors coming down hard on protesters with no dates as to when the protest occurred. There was definitely a period of time, when locking down for a minute was the right thing to do. Finally, she concludes with “this is no time to make our divisions worse.” Holy cow, we have the ‘king of dividing people’ leading the country right now. Anyway, other than that, she is sometimes admirably objective, yes! 🙂
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