COVID Glossary of Terms (And Their Old Meanings)

So many words and terms in our lexicon have changed meaning because of COVID.  Here is a rundown of these words and terms, and what they mean and once meant:

contact tracing:

NEW MEANING: a method to find people you know, one of whom may have given you COVID

OLD MEANING: a method to find the source of a phone call made by someone wanted by the authorities 

droplet:

NEW MEANING: a speckle of saliva that may have the virus after it's breathed out

OLD MEANING: a speckle of water in a drizzling rain

"flatten the curve":

NEW MEANING: to get the rate of COVID infections down

OLD MEANING: to fix a warped piece of wood

herd immunity:

NEW MEANING: the point at which enough people are vaccinated or have antibodies against COVID that the virus can be controlled and stopped from continuing the pandemic

OLD MEANING: the point where your cows can't give each other foot-and-mouth disease 

lockdown:

NEW MEANING: a condition in which everyone is forced to stay home to avoid catching COVID

OLD MEANING: a critical condition in which every inmate in a prison is kept in a cell without access to the prison's various inmate facilities

mask: 

NEW MEANING: a cloth covering for the nose and mouth designed to prevent people with COVID, particularly those without symptoms, from giving the virus to someone else

OLD MEANING: something you wear to rob a bank or conceal your identity at a costume party

remote learning:

NEW MEANING: learning in school from another location via the Internet

OLD MEANING:  how to work a TV set

socially distant:

NEW MEANING: staying six feet apart from everyone else to prevent oneself from catching to infect with COVID

OLD MEANING: being in your own little world without talking to the people right next to you

spread:

NEW MEANING: the progress of the virus to increase infections

OLD MEANING: a buffet with a big selection 

test:

NEW MEANING: a procedure to see if you have COVID 

OLD MEANING: an exam in school

transmission:

NEW MEANING: How the virus is spread

OLD MEANING:  the gearbox in your car; also, a TV or radio broadcast

virtual attendance:

NEW MEANING: being there remotely

OLD MEANING:  being there, but not quite completely there

Zoom: 

NEW MEANING: an Internet service designed to allow you to attend a meeting virtually

OLD MEANING: a children's TV show from the 1970s

And:

variant:

NEW MEANING: an evolution of the COVID virus that is usually more contagious and more deadly than the original virus, which may be resistant to COVID vaccines and treatments and likely differs from the original by a positioning of a spike protein, usually originating in and associated with associated with geographic locations such as Britain, South Africa, Brazil and Manhattan 

OLD MEANING: a German station wagon

The new normal sucks. 😠 😩

Covidiots

 

Forty-seven percent of Trump supporters won't get the COVID vaccine, nor will forty-nine percent of male Republicans.

One in four members of Congress won't get the vaccine either.  Including U.S Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who said that since he had COVID, he has antibodies. Antibodies which, I'm sure will wear off by the time we may have a fourth wave, and then the noted white supremacist Johnson might get it again.

Tucker Carlson is calling the energy authorization of the vaccine a "guinea pig" experiment on Americans and is dissuading people from getting it - even though Trump and his wife did.

All of us are in danger from these folks who won't get a shot because, if they don't, the virus could spread and mutate into variants that could evade the vaccines available and force us to wait interminably for vaccines that will work against them.

And we'll have to walk around looking like bank robbers and ninja warriors longer than we should. 😠

Things That Won't Come Back After the Pandemic

It's been one year since the COVID-19 virus outbreak was declared a pandemic, and even though there is light at the end of the tunnel, as the media say, variants and difficulties in getting vaccinated make it feel more like an oncoming train.  Even if the pandemic ends soon (don't bet on it, sucka!) and life gets back to something resembling normal, there are some things from what we called normality that will never come back.  Here's a list:

Auto shows.  Auto shows were already going out of style before the pandemic, and COVID pretty much killed them.  Why go to a car show when you can check out a vehicle in multiple dimensions on a computer screen?  Besides, auto shows, thanks largely to the product, have gotten so boring that the beautiful women standing next to the cars are more interesting than the cars themselves - though, for some brands, that was always the case.

Movie theaters.  My hometown lost its downtown movie theater due to COVID only two years after a major renovation following a flood.  The sign on the marquee read that it would reopen soon, once the pandemic was over; now the marquee says "FOR LEASE," and no, that's not the title of a rom-com.  The theater chain that ran it simply couldn't wait out the pandemic out any longer.  Thanks to new movies being streamed at home, I shouldn't expect my local movie theater to reopen under any circumstances.  Nor do I expect the two movie theaters in a town near where I live to be revived, and that town holds an annual film festival!  Its 2020 festival was held online, but can you imagine any town without a movie theater holding a film festival after the pandemic ends? It would be like holding a seafood festival in Wichita.

Festivals.  And could you imagine any town holding a festival for anything?  Even after the pandemic ends, the virus itself will still be out there.  No one will ever want to go to a festival again, and for food festivals, that goes double.

Dating.  Dinner and a movie?  Well, some restaurants may survive, but without movie theaters, what's the point in going out?  Best to invite your lady to dinner at your place and order in, unless your lady prefers not to be alone with you in your apartment, in which case dinner with your girlfriend will likely be replaced by breakfast in your kitchen with a cigarette and cold coffee with toast.  Good morning, heartache, sit down!  

Birthday parties.  And because the virus will always be there, and because kids aren't getting vaccinated any time soon, you'd better not expect your little friends to come to celebrate your birthday with you, kid.  And no clown, either.  Be happy your mother bought you a frozen Pepperidge Farm cake for your birthday, you ungrateful little snot! 

Business travel.  Why should a multinational corporation get the corporate officers of all its foreign subsidiaries in a conference room at headquarters if they can all take part in a meeting on Zoom?

Rock concerts.  That's only because most rock bands are made up of white guys over fifty, and the majority of them already have one foot in the grave.  By the time the pandemic ends, we may have lost so many rock and rollers that there won't be enough of them left to perform live.  We won't lose them to COVID, necessarily, but likely to natural causes brought about by advanced age.  Although, no matter what happens, Keith Richards and David Crosby will still be with us in some capacity.

Handshakes.  Admit it.  They're gross.  Especially when the other guy has sweaty palms.  They don't make sense as a greeting, and no one's ever sealed a deal with one since Brian Epstein signed the Beatles.  Most pop managers are a whole lot sharkier than that. And no elbow bumps, either; they're too awkward, plus they're dumb.  Best to greet each other with a tacit wave, because if we silly Westerners try bowing like the Japanese, we'll bump into each other's heads. 

Shopping malls.  Thanks to online shopping, no one really feels the need to hang out at the mall anymore - especially when, post-pandemic, people will feel afraid to go to an indoor public space.  And since downtown's have also been rendered completely obsolete by Amazon in the process, expect Main Streets to become more residential, with people living on Main Street watching new movies at home, eating food at home from restaurants, buying clothes on their laptops, buying laptops on their laptops - in short, everything that they used to go to Main Street for.  Oh, the irony!  

Broadway musicals.  If Broadway ever comes back, we'll have dramas and comedies again, but musicals will simply be too expensive and too labor-intensive in a post-pandemic leisure economy - or what's left of it - that will still be trying to get back on its feet. 

So we can forget about the musical based on the life of Princess Diana ever making it to the Great White Way, but thanks to the real-life soap opera going on in the Royal Family now - relax, I'll get to that later - we'll hardly miss it.

And this is just a partial list.  I could go on, but I'm not a masochist. 😏 😉 

Russian Roulette

It looked like we were finally getting out of the COVID crisis thanks to vaccinations.  Now it looks one leader could ruin everything.  And it's not the governor of Texas.  It's the president of Russia.

Vladimir Putin's latest slight-of-hand is to get Russian bots to place misinformation on social media about the vaccines the United States has approved up to now and how ineffective they are.  They trick is obvious - get fewer Americans to get vaccinated and make it more difficult for the United States to get more herd immunity. And if the Russians can use their bots to cause enough doubts in vaccines developed in the West - in other countries as well as the U.S. - they can create a bigger market for the Sputnik virus.  No prizes for guessing who developed that.  

The good news is that we have a President and a Secretary of State who will tell Putin to cut it out. The bad news is that enough gullible, unsuspecting stupid Americans who believe the misinformation that's already gotten out.

Family Secret

After denying and downplaying COVID-19 and after insinuating that vaccines were okay, if you were in to that sort of thing, but not necessary ("Vaccine or not, America is back!" he said this past spring), Donald Trump, having had COVID, quietly got vaccinated without telling anyone .  His trophy wife Melania got vaccinated too.

They could have had their vaccines administered in public, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had done, to instill confidence in the vaccine.  But no, that would have helped President Biden, and so they chose to keep it secret.  Until the secret got out.  And many Trump supporters still think the vaccine is part of a plot to give Bill Gates control of their bodies with microchips, or something like that.  Many of them don't believe COVID is real - or at least it's no big deal, if Trump survived it.

I don't think I need to say any more about this.

Half a Million Less Strong

The United States reached the grim milestone of 500,000 deaths from COVID-19.

To give you an idea of how many people that is, that would be like if every person who had been at Woodstock in the summer of 1969 had died by the summer of 1970.

In the meantime, many esteemed doctors and virologists are continuing to push for strict mitigation measures (you know what they are; I won't repeat them) and are also encouraging people ot get vaccinated with the promise of hope and an end to the pandemic.  But for every person who offers hope, there are two people who prophesize despair and worse days to come with no end in sight.

And those two people are Michael Osterholm and Laurie Garrett.

Lay down your candles in the rain.  😓

Mother Nature Hates Your Guts

Mother Nature hates you.

How could she not?  I mean, she just shut down the entire state of Texas.  She brought record cold as far south as Brownsville and just enough snow and ice to cause blackouts and water problems all across the state, from El Paso to Texarkana.

And even though it's imperative that Americans get vaccinated against COVID before the virus spins off more deadly mutations (more meaning in increased quantity and in the degree of deadliness), Mother Nature has been sending snowstorms all across the country, shutting down COVID vaccine distribution hubs and causing postponements of vaccination appointments even in places where there are enough doses.  I mean, first she gives us the virus, then she does everything in her limitless power to ensure that we can't get immunized against it.

And before the pandemic, we had wildfires, tropical storms and severe thunderstorms wrecking havoc everywhere. Then, during the pandemic, she ramped up all of that!

You don't supposed she's pissed off at us for wrecking her beautiful planet, and with Americans, that goes double?

I won't insult your intelligence with the answer.

Auto Show Blues - 2021 Edition

In New York City, Easter usually signals the arrival of the annual international auto show, as it has since 1987, when its organizers began holding it at the then-new Jacob Javits Convention Center on the west side of Manhattan.  But it was postponed, then canceled, for 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, and now it's being held in late August this year with the understanding that the pandemic won't end soon enough for staging it during Easter Week.  Heck, late August may be too soon.

At least there's a chance that the New York International Auto Show may be held this summer.  The Geneva show, usually held in March and canceled at the last minute for 2020, was canceled for 2021 as far back as this past June.  Going to a European auto show - nay, just going to Europe, period - has been on my bucket list, but it's become difficult if not impossible to hold an auto show anywhere on the planet when to do so would cause a lot of people to kick the bucket prematurely.  And I don't even expect to go to the auto show in New York this summer, either - mainly because the bus line to Manhattan that serves my town (which has no rail service) has shut down indefinitely and does not appear to have a plan to restart any time soon.     

It's gotten to the point where I don't really miss the auto show anymore.  Many of the brands that pulled out of the 2020 New York show even before the pandemic began will likely skip the 2021 event, assuming it takes place, and most of the cars I would see there are likely to be sport utility vehicles, so predominant are they in the U.S. motor vehicle market.  If I want to see the upcoming eighth-generation Golf GTI so badly, I can always see it at my VW dealer when I go back for maintenance on my Mark 6 Golf after the Mark 8 GTI's U.S. introduction.  The reasons for going to an auto show are few for me now, and those few reasons aren't worth it.  There is no reason for me to hang out at the Ford display at the auto show, for example, as there won't be a single sedan or hatchback to check out there.

So, it looks like my auto show going is over, and that will be the case even after the pandemic is over. 

Unless, of course, I make it to Geneva in 2022 or Munich in 2023.  Those exhibitions are still on for now, and I might make it overseas - at last - by then. But if all I'd see in New York are SUVs, then who cares about that?  

COVID On Ice - The Sequel

I thought New Jersey would be spared.

It's been a tough winter owing to the weather as much as the pandemic, but when forecast projections backed off on widespread icing for the northern part of the state, I felt a little more confident about the next winter storm taking aim at us tomorrow night into Tuesday.  Not so much now.  The northwestern part of New Jersey is under an ice storm warning, and even though the I live in a county that is merely under a winter weather advisory, the extent of the zone under a storm warning isn't too far from my exact location on the map.

So now I'm back to worrying about the power going out for the first time this year and maybe for 65th or 66th time (I lost the exact count long ago) since November 2009.  I may get off easy this time, since the worst ice will be farther north and west, but I don't expect my house to have power for a full twelve-month period (the last time the power went off was for a few moments in August due to Tropical l Storm Isaias).  I haven't had an outage free-year since this rash of outages started.  In fact, the power in my house flickered three times one night last week, despite the absence of inclement weather.   

However, I do expect to get my COVID vaccine by some time this summer, about the same time a hurricane hits this area.

I may be back soon . . ..

COVID On Ice

It's the worst possible forecast you can have at this time - a threat of significant (you never want to hear that word in a weather forecast!) icing in the middle of a pandemic.

The current forecast for my area hints at sleet with some light freezing rain for tonight into early tomorrow, which could produce a light glaze on bare outdoor surfaces - like streets and highways.  A more potent wintry mix delivering even more icing - possibly icing of catastrophic proportions - for Tuesday - has been in the forecast, but more recent reports seem to be backing away from this idea and suggesting plain rain that doesn't freeze on contact.  (Kentucky and Virginia haven't been so lucky, having both gotten sever ice storms already.)

So, even as the COVID virus is killing all of us, we have to deal with a winter Armageddon.  The endless cycle of storms should last another week and shut down after that, but the many rounds of bad winter weather we've been having these past couple of weeks only remind me why February has always been my least favorite month.

The Endless COVID Winter

Another cold day in the East, another week of problems getting COVID under control.  As more variants of the original virus put the effectiveness of some vaccines in doubt, the weather is conspiring to keep a lot of Americans from getting the vaccine - too many snowstorms keeping us at home!  Mass vaccination centers like this one (below) in Amarillo, Texas have enough problems without all that getting in the way of attempts to get everyone inoculated (and remember, Texas has nasty ice storms!).

In the Northeast, this winter was expected to be a repeat of the the Northeastern winter of 2019-20 - cold snaps here and there with mild weather during spells of precipitation, hence, no snow.  Nothing could have prepared me for what a relentless winter this would be in the Northeast, with one snowstorm after another.  To add insult to injury, the Arctic cold has kept us indoors more often, facilitating the spread of the original COVID virus and all of its various spinoffs.  The mild weather expected this winter in the Northeast was supposed to allow us to spend more time outside, where there is less chance of spreading the COVID bug.

Oh yeah, I ought to remind you that the Old Farmer's Almanac is predicting a hurricane threat for my area six months from now, right at about the time we should finally be getting this virus under control. But then this same almanac predicted a dry, quiet February for this area, so I hope it's as right about this August as it was about this February.  Meanwhile, as I watch everything that makes life worth living slip away, it's amazing that, with all of these words I have to keep typing - "virus," "vaccine," "vaccination," "variant" - the letter "v" on my keyboard isn't completely worn out.

COVID Winter

And it's a winter full of discontent.

The Northeast is getting another snowstorm that almost missed us - unnnhhhh!  - which is going to dump about eight inches of the white stuff in my area, and we could get something at least as big as last week's nor'easter later this week.  All of which has happening in a time of a pandemic, where we increasingly have to cover our faces, wash our hands, and stay six feet away from each other if we want to live something as close to a normal life as possible.  Despite the vaccines, we seem to be sinking deeper into a period of misery.

Things have a way of coming out even, and boy, they sure did here.  This time last winter, we had benign weather and the COVID crisis was just something happening in eastern Asia.  Them just before spring, the virus slammed down on us and closed everything.  I've seen a couple of auto parts stores and two movie theaters (more about the latter) close permanently, and several other businesses and establishments have gone under never to come back.  Build back better? Build back what?

This winter only reminds us that April will be a crueler month, more so than last April.  We seem to be in the winter of civilization, what with climate change and everything.  I keep hearing about how life might be like when the pandemic is over, but I'm not convinced that there's going to be any life left on the planet by then. 😞 

I'm Dreaming of a White COVID - The Sequel

 Swell.

We have another major snowstorm bearing down on the American Northeast, where I live, at the same time we're being warned that the COVID crisis could last right into 2022 and get even worse before it gets worse still.  As for the snow . . . up to two feet, gusty winds, blackout threat  - all of the stuff we had to go through in the storm we had back in December 2020.  Except that, unlike that storm, this one could live up to the hype.

I'll back - I don't know when, obviously - to talk more about the COVID crisis, but after hearing everything Michael Osterholm and Laurie Garrett have said about what to expect, between COVID and the heavy snow, I prefer the heavy snow.  At least I know the snow is going to melt away.

And I'm convinced that if Osterholm and Garrett were husband and wife, they'd probably celebrate their wedding anniversary with cups of hemlock.

Getting To Work

President Biden hit the ground running as soon as he took office.  I can imagine him sitting behind the Resolute desk for the first time, exhaling contentedly,  and saying to the staff assembled in his presence, "Okay, let's get to work!" 

That he did.  In advance of presenting a plan for getting out of the pandemic and rebuilding the economy - at a cost of nearly two trillion dollars - he signed numerous executive orders that set policies on COVID (including a face-covering mandate for federal properties), expanded food assistance and expedited stimulus checks to very low-income Americans, and raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for the federal workforce.  He also signed executive orders putting the United States back in the Paris Agreement on climate change and also putting the country back in the World Health Organization.

The latter order has provided immediate results.  Dr. Anthony Fauci took part in the World Health Organization's conference meeting virtually this past week and provided invaluable counsel to the gathering on how the world can combat the pandemic.  At his first White House press conference since President Biden's inauguration, Dr. Fauci said he felt liberated in being able to speak the truth directly to the press.  Gee, I wonder what liberated him?

President Biden knows it's gong to take more than executive orders to make lasting change, and he's going big and aiming high, hoping to appeal more on patriotism than on partisanship to get his very expensive domestic program passed in an evenly divided Congress.  He gets it.  He knows that we don't need another New Deal.  He knows that we need another Great Society.  The pandemic exposed a lot of inequities that have to be addressed so we don't merely go back to where we were on March 10, 2020, the day before COVID was declared a global pandemic.

We need to . . . build back better.    

Azar AWOL

Since James Mattis resigned as Secretary of Defense, I couldn't imagine a Democratic successor to Donald Trump asking any of his Cabinet members to stay on, but I did not think it was out of the question that Health Human Services Secretary Alex Azar - whose biggest redeeming quality was that he isn't Tom Price - would at least be asked to run the show at HHS a little while longer until President-elect Joe Biden's choice for Azar's successor, Xavier Becerra, is confirmed.  Azar (below) seemed to be an upstanding sort of guy, having already served as a deputy HHS secretary in the George W. Bush administration and thus knowing a thing or two about his job.  And that's important in a pandemic.

Nothing could have prepared me for what was just reported about the vaccines, which blew my take on Azar out of the water and into the stratosphere.  President-elect Biden said he would release doses of the COVID-19 vaccines from the reserve supply rather than save them for second doses in order to get as many people first-dose vaccines as possible and count on continued vaccine production for second doses.  Then Trump announced that he'd go ahead and do that, which took some of the decision-making on COVID out of Biden's hands.  And then came the big bombshell.

There is no reserve supply of vaccines!  They made it up!

That's it.  There was clearly no one in the Trump White House not given the surname Mattis by their fathers who was 100% qualified for their positions.  Even Rex Tillerson, whom I liked, remember, wasn't skilled in running the State Department despite his clear and sensible positions on foreign policy.  But at least Uncle Rex wasn't privy to a lie that may cost lives like Azar was.

Trump and his HHS department screwed up COVID testing and COVID tracing, and the vaccine was our last hope at getting the virus under control.  Then came this news.  Three strikes and you're out.

Azar has already made official his resignation effective January 20, but it's obvious that he should have left months earlier.

Although, I have to give some sort of prize to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for serving the full time of Trump's term.  How about a candy bar or a lollipop? 😛

No Max Vax

Maximum COVID-19 vaccination - "max vax" - is the key to ending this pandemic.  When the first two vaccines to go through trials were made available last month, their arrival was greeted with fanfare and hope, hope that it was the beginning of the end.  

Nothing could have prepared us for what may be the the greatest disappointment in medical history.  After all but promising twenty million vaccinations by the end of the December, the federal government fell seventeen million vaccinations short of its goal.  And given the current rate of vaccination, it could take a decade - ten years! - for enough vaccinations to achieve herd immunity.

Trump is too busy trying to stage a coup, and so he can't be bothered with ironing out the bugs in the vaccine system.  Things look really depressing now.  But there are encouraging signs.  First of all, Joe Biden will become President two weeks from tomorrow. Second of all, in the first few days of 2021, an additional 1,500,000 have been vaccinated - meaning, half as many people have been vaccinated in three or four days as had been in the previous two weeks.  So the pace is beginning to quicken.  And as soon as Biden takes over, we should have a focus on implementing a national vaccine distribution system, which the Biden transition team is probably looking at right now.

Hold on . . .

Oh yeah, I am not posting anything tomorrow, because I think I'd rather step back as Congress devolves into total disarray.  Meanwhile, I'll be following today's Senate runoffs in Georgia. I'll see you on the other side of tomorrow.

England's Dreaming

In automotive terms, a variant is a station wagon derived from a sedan design - like a sedan, only larger and a bigger deal.  In medical terms, a variant of a virus is like the original virus . . . only larger and a bigger deal. 

That's what the United Kingdom is dealing with now - a variant strain of COVID that is no more deadly than the original virus but spreads faster and is easier to catch.  It's shown up in southeastern England - including London - and may have already shown up elsewhere on the planet.  Most countries are barring travel from the U.K. for at least two days.

This is happening as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is trying to finalize Britain's withdrawal from the European Union even as he tries to quell a COVID outbreak he originally downplayed before he caught the COVID bug himself.  Oh yeah, and he's had to ban public Christmas celebrations. 

The irony in all this is the Britain, which once ruled an empire with colonies, territories, dominions and dependencies in every time zone on earth and always took pride in being an island separate from the rest of Europe, is no isolated and separated from the rest of the world.  Which means that the British people are pretty much . . . stranded on their island.

And Gilligan is in charge.

Trump was the first nationalist-populist leader to go down.  If there is a God up in heaven  - or at least a mechanism available to get a no-confidence vote in Parliament - Johnson will be the second.

I'm Dreaming of a White COVID

Allow me to get personal here.

Recent events in the outside world and my personal life have caused me to sink into a deep depression.  I have had to battle with anent-mindedness and inattentiveness all my life, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has robbed, like everyone else of a normal life and has caused me - again, like everyone else - to spend most of my time at home have taken a toll on my psychological well-being.  And now, having already endured the worst year of my life, it's going to get even worse with tomorrow's weather - a snowstorm that threatens to become a full-blown blizzard.   

I don't have to clear the snow - we have someone who does that for us - but the idea of having a winter storm forecasters have been calling "major," "powerful" and "significant" - again, adjectives you never want to see in any weather forecast - this early in the season at a time when we're in the worst of the worst pandemic in a century depresses me even more.  (I may even have to worry about the possibility of an electrical outage!)  Somehow, despite the COVID vaccines, the sentence "We will get through this" has come to sound empty and meaningless.  And to think this year started with a benign winter and nothing but better times that I - and I'm sure, you as well - was looking forward to.

The good news is that 2020 will end. The bad news is that 2021 isn't really going to be all that much better.  I'll have more to say about this outgoing year when it's all but over. 😞 😧

No Record Reviews For 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic pretty much made it impossible for me to compile a list of winners and losers for this year because, as I explained back in October, everyone's a loser in a pandemic.  (That includes Joe Biden, who won the Presidency but who now bears the unenviable task of getting us out of the pandemic at a time of political polarization.)  Now the pandemic has led me to cancel something else for 2020 - my reviews of classic record albums, which I'm sure you all love and look forward to.  I just haven't found the time this year to listen to any classic albums often enough to find the time to formulate opinions of them that I can express in in clear, coherent sentences, because of this damn virus.   

Back in 2019, I had a rough time for personal reasons, which distracted me from writing about classic records for most of the year, but I managed to conjure up some reviews for December 2019.  This December, I won't even attempt to do that because so much is going on with all of us.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back to writing about classic record albums in 2021, and I may even write about records from current bands.  Review Greta Van Fleet? That would be nice!  But not now.  Now is definitely not the time. 

Although, I will be commenting on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees for 2020, in full.  The induction ceremony took place the day the presidential election was called for Biden, so no one noticed it.  (To respond to the inevitable insistence that no one cares about rock and roll anymore - so why even talk about Greta Van Fleet? - the Hall of Fame's Class of 2020 does include a rapper and a pop diva.)  So stay tuned for that.

The Bad Side of Good COVID News

Two more COVID vaccines - one from Moderna (below), the other from AstraZeneca - are on the way, joining the Pfizer vaccine in the fight against the deadliest respiratory diseases known to humankind.  Swell.  Wonderful.  But why get excited over that when the news about the pandemic is so spectacularly bad that there's no bright side to it?

Here's the deal.  None of these vaccines will be widely available to the general public for several months, and even as more people get vaccinated, restrictions and regulations designed to stop or slow the spread of COVID will remain in place for a good deal of time after.  This is a roundabout way of saying that we'll have to continue for a long time to come walking into banks looking like we're about to rob them, regardless of vaccination progress.  Furthermore, the AstraZeneca vaccine test results have come under question, and skeptics are calling for more data on that matter.

But, with 267,000 deaths out of 13.4 million cases, the COVID mortality rate is 2 percent - much less than the 5.6 percent rate this past April, so that has to count for something, right?  No, it doesn't have to - and it doesn't.  A 2 percent COVID mortality rate should not be taken to mean a 98 percent COVID recovery rate.  While many COVID patients have completely recovered, to be sure, there are many more who either haven't recovered or are still suffering aftereffects or continued severe symptoms.  It's not accurate to say that 98 percent of COVID patients have recovered; it's more accurate, and appropriate, to say that 98 percent of COVID patients haven't died.  Many locales don't even report a recovery rate; it's that irrelevant.  (One site estimates the recovery rate at a mere 59 percent.)  

But at least the pandemic could be worse than what is now, right?  It probably is.  While 13.4 million people in the U.S. are confirmed to have caught the COVID bug, some statisticians fear that the real infection rate is likely eight times that, meaning that over a third of the nation's population of 335 million have been infected.  If we get to herd immunity soon, it'll only be because of all of the cases out there that haven't been confirmed yet.

President-elect Biden says we're almost to the end of the pandemic, but it may turn out that we're only at the beginning of the end, or even the beginning of the beginning of the end.  There may be a light at the end of the tunnel.  But for many, that light could be an oncoming train.