No News is Good News

If this were a normal year, we’d be looking forward to this weekend. In past years, we’ve always spent the fourth listening to our symphony at an outdoor event followed by fireworks. Actually, since they do multiple shows, we’ve typically gone more than once. This weekend is setting up to be a very hot and humid one which always made it more of a challenge since you had to arrive hours before things started to get the best places to spread out.

Of course, 2020 is not a normal year and this is not going to happen. There are other displays around but, to be honest, I’m not really in a mood to be in a wall to wall people crowd right now. So this weekend will pass pretty much like every other weekend has passed this spring and summer.

My older brother was in town briefly and he flew my niece and nephew in as well. I managed to meet up with them at my younger brother’s place last night for a bit. It was good to see everyone again. In past years, the two of them would rent a home near my parents and we’d usually have sort of a mini family reunion as my sister and her partner would come in as well. We haven’t really done that since Mom died and this year there was no way it was going to happen. But it is what it is – things change over time.

Having a dog (or really any pet for that matter) is, on balance, a good thing. But it is so hard to watch them get old. Rocco is having some issues with his back legs – we think it is mostly stiffness from the arthritis but it makes him unsteady going up and down stairs. And he has to go down three little stairs to get out of the house. I’m looking into a ramp or something to make it easier for him.

In my adult life, we’ve had four dogs. Two had illnesses and it was an easy decision when to let them go. Dolly was the toughest one because the mind was willing but her body just wasn’t anymore. The saddest thing was her trying to get up as they were getting ready to inject the stuff that would end her life. They tell you that you’ll know but that’s kind of a lie because dogs can do a great job of hiding how much pain they are in. There eyes always still seem to say that they don’t want to go.

Sorry, I’m being kind of a downer today. You always know that dogs have a limited time to be with you. It is just hard to start to see signs that the time is coming to an end.

I’ve told you before that I don’t watch the news. I just feel like we’ve reached an age where news is about informing. It is about keeping people scared and amped up so they have to keep tuning in. I’ve tried to find a few sources that I think are more balanced – there aren’t many and it is more individual people than big networks.

So I know there is a second round of continuing panic going on right now. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. Factually, it is true that the number of cases is rapidly increasing in a few places. Beyond that, I’m convinced nobody really knows why or what it means.

From what little raw data you can find, the biggest increases are in younger people who are at less risk. There is an uptick in hospitalization but you get conflicting information on how critical it is. It is also a fact that the daily number of new deaths is not rising at the same rate as the number of new cases but what that means is open for all kinds of interpretation.

Saw a second person mention air conditioning as a possible vector. Which is maybe something we should have already know since there was an example from a restaurant in China way back in the beginning. But I think we are so busy fighting among ourselves and not really open to really discussing things that we just have to keep learning things the hard way. Maybe we just deserve all this because just aren’t capable of having a open discussion of what we know and what we don’t know. Yes, I’m a cynic but, given the crappy record of our so called “experts”, I’m just not going to accept what they say at face value. Which likely makes me a “science denier” but so be it.

I mean you kind of see that in the world right now. Places that missed out on the initial rush and had time to see it coming are now fighting their own rising number of cases. But in many places, we see cases increasing but the death rates are not what they were in the hardest hit places. Why? I don’t think anyone knows for sure. It just kind of feels like you have to hit a critical mass and then it backs off. Our first outbreak was very limited in scope so maybe other places are just now catching up.

Well I don’t want to be too much of a downer so I should probably just end this here.