Self-Isolation Day #36

Easter Saturday, Self-Isolation Day #36

Happy Birthday to D. today! We appreciate continued prayers for my husband's mother D. who was on a ventilator in ICU with confirmed COVID-19 for 16 days and is now starting what is a serious and challenging rehabilitation. 

Today was a fairly wide-open day! I did some gardening, further battling the poison ivy, white flies, and red mites that are currently plaguing me. One bright area is this rose bush, so much happier since we transplanted it from where the previous owners planted it to inside the pool fence where the local deer population cannot eat it down to a nub every few months.

The girls were invited to a Easter season tea party via Zoom. They got dressed up and had tea brewed and at the ready: there were games and prizes!

The kids played Ticket to Ride and chess throughout the day, but mostly spent hours upon hours outdoors, mostly playing an imaginative game they've been playing all week. 

Tonight I noticed my handsome firstborn looking suspiciously tall so I had us measure each other against the wall and we're now exactly equal. I told him I'm cutting his rations.

Bonus Reading for Posterity:

• A highly anticipated antibodies study based out of Santa Clara, California, was released yesterday. The researchers found that 2.5 to 4.2% of the 3330 subjects tested were found to have COVID-19 antibodies, which represents 50 to 85 times more than confirmed cases: this is very good news. COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California
• I noted that even the typically liberal United Nations is warning about the starvation deaths and loss of education that are resulting from this lockdown. U.N. warns economic downturn could kill hundreds of thousands of children in 2020
• Of course, the U.N. above is using modeling, which is an unreliable method. Just today, a major coronavirus model was yet again greatly reduced--and keep in mind that all the model projections were already counting on the fact that we were all self-isolating. I wasn't even going to post about yet one more model being reduced, since it has happened so many times, but I was sent this article about the history of epidemic modeling and it really is worth exploring. After Repeated Failures, It’s Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models.
• I have a fondness for polite but plain-speaking folks--actually, even if I don't agree with them! Maybe it is the Midwestern background of my mother's side of the family! Mayor of Las Vegas Carolyn Goodman calls business shutdown 'total insanity'
• On a distantly related note, I found this article on the history of indoor bathrooms quite interesting and worth the few minutes' read. How Infectious Disease Defined the American Bathroom. I truly think there are no uninteresting subjects, only uninteresting minds. One day a month ago or so, YouTube suggested to me this TED Talk on open defecation in India. How weird is that? I listened while I was getting dressed and ready one morning and the (very respectful, not at all vulgar) 15-minute academic talk provided such fascinating insight into how culture is ingrained and on the depth of religious beliefs that I rushed downstairs and gushed to my husband about poop while he tried to drink his coffee. The surprising truth of open defecation in India.