COVID and climate crisis (depression, covid-19, anger)

[elainegrey]

I do appreciate the microcovid.org site. The surrounding counties* have reached the maximum level of risk on the New York Times risk map, while Chatham moved to the "very high risk" category in the past month. So, i double checked the risk for a grocery run and friend visiting this weekend and was gratified that i would have no worries.

What about the family gathering the following weekend?

The microcovid site lets you put in a number of people and then assign them all a risk factor. During the summer, i knew my extended family was trying very hard to minimize our collective risks, to the extend that my unvaccinated niece stayed masked around my mother.

But now my sister's kids are back in school in person. What do they look like as vectors? ....

And then at 8 am this morning the calculator increased the risk of the "average person in your area" by 3.5 times and....

I'm feeling anger (and just behind it lurks despair): if this is how humans react to a really obvious threat with comparatively clear cause and effect, the climate crisis is ....

I'm not willing to write a conclusion there. So i must still have some hope.

* except for Orange County, where Chapel Hill is located.

Comments

[tylik]

I'm so glad that I live alone, and don't have high risk people in my near contacts. I'm on campus, teaching in person. At least UNC has a much higher vax rate than NC State where Zodiac is... we've been doing a lot of outdoor social stuff, but with the heat this week, we had pedicures. Still fairly low, really? - they are serious about masking and distance. But I pretty much figure I'm going to be exposed to delta, for all that I'm trying not to be, and just hoping the vaccine holds up. (And we have a whole back up system in place in the lab for covering each other's classes, though I'm the only one teaching this semester.)

[elainegrey]

It is budgeting, isn't it? But by keeping most risks extremely low, the pedicure risk is affordable. The vaccine is marvelous in its reduction of risk: i hope the boosters get distributed before the efficacy drops too far.

I still have a calendar reminder of your monthly craft gathers. Did you keep those going via Zoom?

[tylik]

I haven't, but I was just thinking about restarting them this fall. Early on, the idea of doing them over zoom seemed pretty unsatisfactory, but since I've spent more low key social time on zoom.