Actually WE should be the do-not-travel list

Earlier this week the CDC added several more countries to its list of "Level 4: COVID-19 Very High" travel risk. Example coverage: CNN.com article 13 Sep 2021. This came two weeks after Canada and several European countries were moved from Level 2 to Level 3. CNN.com article 30 Aug 2021. The full, latest lists are available at Covid-19 Travel Recommendations by Destination (CDC.gov link). On social media people in these countries have fired back, saying (cheekily) that they're glad because it will keep highly infectious Americans away from them. Because that's the thing— by the standards the CDC uses for rating the risks of Americans traveling to other countries, Americans should not travel to America.

The main criteria for Level 4: Very High, the CDC's highest risk category, is a new case rate of 500+ per 100,000 population, cumulatively, over the past 28 days. Source: How CDC Determines the Level for Covid-19 Health Notices at CDC.gov. This is a different metric than the incidence rate most commonly used domestically and internationally, average daily new cases per 100k over the past 7 days. But with some estimation it's not hard to align them.

My favorite source for checking Covid-19 trends in the US is the New York Times's Covid in the US: Latest Map and Case Count. Per their state level figures it looks like only one state, Connecticut, would not receive a "Level 4: Very High" travel risk rating if the CDC were using the same ratings within the US that it uses for foreign countries. One state. The other 49 states and the District of Columbia would have the US government warning slapped on them, "Avoid travel to this destination".

Not Invited to Trade Show. Jealous or Not?

There's a big trade show in my industry coming up right after Thanksgiving, AWS Re:invent. It's in-person— the first major trade show I'm aware of that's been in-person since February 2020. I haven't been tapped by my company to support our presence there this year.

Part of me feels left out by that. I traveled to this show for my company in 2018 and 2019 and did a great job there IMO. Am I being snubbed for this year? I feel slightly jealous of the people who've been chosen to go.

But on the other hand I am not jealous. This is an in-person trade show that in the past has attracted tens of thousands of attendees. IMO it's not safe enough yet to get back to having huge, crowded indoor events! Just to be clear, it's unsafe because it's going to entail thousands of people, in close quarters indoors, with few of them wearing masks and probably 30% (overall US adult rate) unvaccinated.

Frankly if I were invited I think I'd have had to tell my company, "I don't think this is safe, please pick someone else." So why does part of me feel jealous? I guess maybe I wanted to be asked and turn it down. 🤷‍♂️ But that would have downsides, too. I need to keep reminding myself I wouldn't have gone anyway and it's better I haven't had to debate potentially skeptical colleagues why.

The Sopranos - Season 1 Ep. 2

I'm writing this blog to share a few thoughts from watching Season 1, Episode 2 of The Sopranos, "46 Long". After watching the pilot I wrote a "5 things" blog yesterday. Today I have just 3 things, and I don't think I'm going to keep up the pace of writing about every individual episode in the future.

This post contains minor spoilers for the episode.

1) Brendan is bad news. Christopher Moltisantii's best friend, Brendan, is a danger to everyone around him. I wrote yesterday about how I see Christopher is headed for a crisis of faith with boss Tony. Christopher will hit that crisis a lot faster keeping company with Brendan. He's a heavy drug user who encourages Christopher to use drugs more than he would otherwise. Brendan's also a risk-taking dipshit. While high on crank he talks Christopher into robbing a truck protected by a rival crime boss. After their hand in the robbery is discovered Christopher is in hot water with Tony and is forced to make restitution. Dipshit Brendan is outraged at the punishment and wants to go rob another truck from the same company. Christopher has the wits to opt out, but Brendan does it, and things go awry. Brendan's likely to get whacked— by his own gang if not the rival gang—and Christopher will be in jeopardy if he doesn't get away from Brendan, fast. I could even see a plot twist where Christopher is asked to whack his own friend to become a made man.

2) People are merely bemused by organized crime. One of the subplots in this episode is that a school teacher's car is stolen. Tony instructs his crew to recover it. I won't spoil details about how that happens except to note that the car "returned" to the teacher is actually not his car. "New keys," the teacher remarks, only half-surprised, as he unlocks it. "And it's a different color, too," one of his colleagues dead-pans. It's like people who live in places wracked with organized crime aren't too surprised by it— and know not to make a deal out of it when they see it.

3) Elders fear nursing homes. A running subplot across the episodes so far is that Tony wants his mother, Livia, to move into a retirement home, but she refuses. Tony emphasizes how a retirement home is different from a nursing home, but Livia won't have it. This is a familiar situation to me from experiences between my parents and their elderly mothers. Both grandmothers badly needed to leave their old family homes as they were unable to take care of them and even themselves, but fear of nursing homes kept them away. One grandmother moved in with my parents for her last year or so of life; the other did finally agree to enter a retirement home.

What helped my Grandma G change her mind was seeing that the retirement home was not a stereotypical old-people-warehouse.... You know, the kind of place with long corridors reeking of ammonia, old people shuffling up and down the halls wheeling their IV trees along, and bitter roommates who watch their TV on high volume 20 hours a day because they have nothing else to do. Instead she had her own private apartment, she moved her own, familiar furniture into it, and there was even space for her pull-out sofa for her family from distant locations to sleep on when visiting. (The fucking cheapskates who make a big deal out of this could easily afford a nice hotel, but that's a different issue.) Once at the care home her life improved immensely— not just through better diet and medical care, but her social life too. "I haven't had this many friends in 20 years!" she gushed a month after moving in.