sistawendy | not gambling on post-COVID (Reply)

You may recall that I was planning on going to London when all hell broke loose. I have a voucher from British Airways that's good until April of next year. It's burning a hole in my pocket.

Here's the catch: the US is still on the UK's "amber list". If you fly to the UK from there, you have to quarantine for ten days. Do I really want to make travel plans while that requirement is still in effect? No, because I'm just not that big a gambler. I've put my name on the email list for updates to the amber list. That's right: I've asked her majesty's government to spam me.

I took a look at recent US COVID stats on Worldometer. New cases started declining more or less linearly around a month ago. The slope of the decline in deaths is much flatter: that speaks of a lot of people who've been on ventilators for a long time. Never have I hoped more fervently for a linear extrapolation to hold true.

Separately but related, Taller Woman invited me to a big Pride event on Capitol Hill that's being organized by a group different from Seattle's usual suspects. As much as I love the Hill and as much as I'm nostalgic for the days before the ~~parade~~ march moved downtown, I don't think we're ready. So it was with some relief that I discovered two beautification appointments that day.