Items

• 2021-01-25

  Statistics and Additional Thoughts

  Total Number of COVID Cases Worldwide - 99.3M Total Number of COVID Deaths Worldwide - 2.13M New Cases Reported 1/23/21 Worldwide - 600,790 New Deaths Reported 1/23/21 Worldwide - 15,846 Total Number of COVID Cases in LA County - 1,073,533 Total Number of COVID Deaths in LA County - 15,260 New Cases Reported 12/23/21 in LA County - 8,224 New Deaths Reported 12/23/21 in LA County - 98 These numbers are so big. Most of the time I am annoyed with the slowness of the reopening, but looking at the numbers makes me think that maybe we do need to be cautious when it comes to reopening everything. Pretty soon, the number of cases and deaths will start going down. I know this because now they are going to change the way that they count cases. It will be harder to get a positive test result, because instead of just looking at the results of the PCR test (you can get a positive test result but have a viral load so small that you aren't contagious) symptoms and contact tracing will be examined as well. If this change had been made before, then my high school friends would probably be attending school again. Small businesses would be reopening already. But I can't be bitter about that, because it doesn't lead anywhere productive.
• 2021-01-19

  The Rules That Did Make Sense and the Many That Didn't

  There were a lot of rules and regulations that we had to follow to stop the spread of COVID. Most of them were simple and made sense. Others, didn't... The rules that made sense were simple. Wear a mask; wash your hands often; stay six feet away from others; don't gather in large groups. The rules that had to do with which businesses were allowed to be open, seemed a bit arbitrary... For example, restaurants could open, but bars couldn't unless they served full meals. Retail stores could open with a limited number of customers allowed in at one time, but zoos couldn't. It was perfectly fine for you to wait with 10+ other people outside of a store, but to go to a zoo which was also outdoors apparently meant certain death. The rules that annoyed me the most were the ones regarding school closures. In California, it had been made practically impossible for schools to open. The worst part was that my school was in LA County, by 500 feet! I remember that in April, I went to Carpenteria with my dad and one of his friends. My friend was there too and we were standing about 4 feet apart without masks on. A lifeguard came up to us and started to get kind of mad. The strange thing was that the sign in the parking lot said, "No lifeguard on duty." Overall, the regulations weren't to bad for me, but I was to annoyed with our governor killing small businesses to remember that.
• 2021-01-14

  The Horrors (and Benefits) of Remote Learning

  When my school shut down in March, I welcomed remote learning. My life had become so busy and stressful and I never got enough sleep. I would be a nice two week break before I went back to school for the last two months of school. I had no idea how wrong I was. Within 4 days, the novelty had worn off. The long hours (5 1/2) on Zoom were horrible. English was the worst. We were reading Shakespeare (in 7th grade!) and it move so slowly. Being the fast reader that I was it was my worst nightmare reading at this slow, slow pace. We had 80 minutes of class. We spent all of those 80 minutes reading and only got through 5 pages. We had a block schedule. Four classes one day and three the next with chapel. For the last three months of seventh grade, I sat at a picnic table in my parent's room. I got one half and my brother got the other. During these three months I was miserable. Three days after the end of school I got a new bed for my room. It was a loft and it had a desk underneath. All summer I would do something educational at this desk for three hours, eat lunch, workout, and go outside to hang out. All that summer, all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to do was Nerf war. I was lucky that the summer before I had received a pink and purple strongarm with pink and white bullets. These six bullets were quickly lost in the grass and replaced with some of my friend's classic orange and blue ones. When summer was over I had to go back to my desk for those 5 1/2 hours a day, except this time I would have homework. The previous year the teacher had done their best to make sure that we didn't have to do work outside of class (my English teacher of course made no effort to do this). Now I was in 8th grade with one of the hardest possible course loads. I was taking Geometry, Conceptual Physics, Spanish 2, and all of the other required classes. I would regularly work for an hour and an half after school before working out. I would do yoga or a random HIIT or strength class I found on Peloton. During all of my breaks I would walk my dog (a yellow lab puppy). In October, we got a Peloton stationary bike and my brother got to go to school to do his Zoom classes (weird, I know). Now I would be home alone from 9am to 11:30am every day. My schedule looked like this. 6:45 - get up and get ready for school 8 - go to my first class 9 - walk my dog and practice piano 9:45 - go to my next 2 classes 12:35 - lunch 1:25 - my last class 4 - workout I was glad when it was over. Now that I think about it, I didn't actually list any benefits.
• 2021-01-11

  My Early Ideas on the Origin of COVID

  This virus, known in early March simply as "the coronavirus", was shrouded in mystery. We were told that it originated in China, which inspired many jokes. A parody of the song "Break my Stride" was the most memorable. In the earliest days of the pandemic, not much was known about COVID besides it's symptoms and things that we were being told could prevent it. That and that it was impossible to find paper products, cleaning products, and eggs. We knew that the symptoms were similar to the flu and that we were supposed to stay six feet away from other people and not high five. We were also told to sanitize everything frequently (hence the shortage of cleaning products) and wear masks. Not much of that has changed since then. We still do all the same things to prevent it, but somehow, it feels that my knowledge has filled out. There is less fear now (the teacher's unions are certainly using that fear to their advantage). Though I know that there is much that I did not understand in March and April, I feel that my opinions and knowledge of COVID have not changed much.
• 2021-01-06

  COVID Christmas

  On December 23, I received an email from my youth group leader, saying that her daughter had just tested positive for COVID-19. I had been displaying no symptoms, but my mom and twelve-year-old brother had been feeling a little sick, so they were tested the next day. A man came to our house with full protective gear and used a mouth swab instead of the more common one in the nose. Since we were trying to be responsible, when we went to Christmas Eve mass, we sat in our car in the church parking lot and listened to the sound using the radio. My youngest brother, at age five, was quickly bored. When we went home we had dinner. It was Mexican food. My mom had set out all of our nice silverware and china. Over dinner we received the results of the tests taken earlier that day, which were positive. My mom began calling people and friends we had been in contact with and later went to bed. My brother tried to wake me up several times in the early morning, but I was actually sleeping well for the first time on Christmas Eve and told him to go away. When I finally did get up we went into our living room and I saw that I had gotten a new bike. It was a really nice one too! Later we picked up gifts from our grandparents. It was a sad sort of Christmas; our Christmas dinner was eaten in the living room in front of the movie Soul. It had just come out on Disney+.
• 2020-12-11

  When I Figured Out That Life Might Not Be Normal Soon

  Before COVID I didn't really like my life. That was mostly due to lack of sleep and the fact that I had been spending way too much time analyzing the social hierarchy of my seventh grade class. I felt alone at that point in February. Now I laugh at that feeling, because I didn't know the true meaning of alone. In early February I had started practicing for the track season and I was acing all of my classes. The closure of everything and the cancellation of sports was made worse by the fact that my high jump coach had told me that could potentially jump 5' 5" this year (that easily qualifies you to go to state championships in high school). Right before Kobe Bryant's death I first heard the word coronavirus. I dismissed it knowing that I never knew anything about current events and that it would pass. The week after the basketball legend died in a helicopter crash, I heard that unfamiliar word again. This time I asked what it was, and nobody could tell me much. All I got out of my friends was that it was a flu-like virus that was tearing through China and soon after that, Italy. My first inkling that this virus was going to be a big deal was when my best friend's mom went to 3 different stores to get 20 bottles of hand sanitizer. Of course it was a joke at that point, but after that the 'jokes' came fast and furious. First, panic over a group of students that went on an art history trip to Italy. Next, one of my classmate's parodies to the song "Break My Stride" based on the coronavirus (he sang it during English class and our teacher seem rather unnerved by it). After that, the first documented cases in the US and the beginning of the toilet paper shortages. Then, a joke about the coronavirus solving the problem of overpopulation in Asia. All of this leading up to a phone call in which my family was informed by a doctor that our school would be closed down within the next two weeks.