Some end of year random pandemic thoughts: the third year

To be honest, I am not surprised one bit that I am writing a pandemic post for a third year in a row. I am sure one or two of my readers are going to whine that the pandemic is over, or that it is no big deal. If you ask pollsters, they are finding folks pretty much declaring the pandemic is over, see here for a Gallup poll back in May for example. More recently, Ipsos finds that most Americans are not worried about COVID going into the holiday season in 2022.  Not exactly encouraging, especially for some of us who are a bit more vulnerable in terms of health. 

Since last year, the Omicron variant has settled in, and there are other variants emerging. Yale Medicine has a look at variants of concern as of this post with some explanation of status for the prominent variants. If you want more details, the European Centers for Disease Control has a list of variants of concern (this list is up to date as of December 8, 2022). Last year, the U.S. was at about 800,000 COVID deaths at the end of the year. By now, the US has surpassed a million.

Now, we are not at 2020 levels, but we are far from being at a pre-pandemic condition. And we should be honest here, we most likely will never go back to a pre-pandemic condition. However, it should not mean just saying fuck it, not taking any precautions, and just letting the virus keep running rampant. One thing people should do is make sure they got all their vaccinations up to date. Not just the first shot, but the follow ups too. My family and I, as of this post, do have our shots up to date. 

One of the things that does irk me is the mostly blah attitude many people have about the virus. This often includes a certain small college where they just recently took out the mask mandates and decided to no longer keep the doors on lockdown, meaning all sorts of town strangers can now walk into buildings, unmasked and carrying who knows what virus. Because we need to note at this point that COVID is not the only virus in town. 2022 is the holiday season of the tripledemic. What is that you ask? It's basically like a perfect storm where three viruses are coming together: COVID, influenza a.k.a. the flu, and the RSV virus. They are coming just in time for the holidays, as school sessions end, students go home, families travel, get together in enclosed spaces like someone's house with no precautions, and you can get the idea. That right there is a good reason for my family and me to stay at home and stay safe. 

So, some more random thoughts, in no particular order: 

• The college, my workplace, pretty much said fuck it. No more mask mandate, and no more buildings lockdown as I noted already. To be honest, most of this year they sort of played a yo-yo game where if the county went red the masks were on, and as soon as the number inched slightly out of red, no masks, then red came back and masks on again. It was basically a back and forth that for some of us could be a bit nerve wracking. However, faculty and a good amount of students have been quite loud bitching about having to wear masks and taking precautions, so I am sure the college to appease them would just do the minimum and then remove restrictions minute the color turned. At any rate, I continue to wear my mask at work outside of my office. 
• On an update, it seems the college has been doing a bit better about allowing some people do work remotely, albeit a bit reluctantly to be honest. Having said that, as I  often say something is better than nothing. I am not one for remote work, but I think anyone able to do so productively should be allowed to work remotely without administrative grief. 
• My work situation. We got back to normal in terms of teaching library instruction and doing library consults. In fact, library operations are mostly normal. As I noted, I still wear my mask, and there are a few (very few) faculty who do so, and a few students doing it. I mean, despite the situation I am glad we are working as close to normal as possible. 
• The family. We are doing OK. We are still gainfully employed. The Better Half does keep wearing a mask at work, but from what I hear she may be the only one. Overall, so far, we have all avoided getting COVID, and we hope to keep it that way. We are all fully vaccinated for COVID and the flu. This is something I continue to be very grateful for: we have our health so far. I keep my faith for us to remain healthy and free of the viruses. By the way, our daughter managed to get to work again in a trading cards and collectibles job, plus doing some  limited art freelancing (this is a work in progress). 
• Travel. That has been LOL for the last two years, and it remains LOL for this year. We are not doing any major travel in the near future. We will stay home for the holidays. I start my holidays break in the afternoon of Wednesday, December 21 this year, and then my break runs until the first week of January. The Better Half is taking some time off between Christmas and New Year's Day, so we may do some very limited short travel to spots nearby. We'll see how it goes. 
• I am also hoping to get some good reading done over my holidays break. 
• 2022 was midterm elections year. That was tense. Yes, we voted. Overall, it seems like most of the status quo was preserved in terms of the election results. I am keeping as much as possibly my personal moratorium on reading and engaging with politics, social issues, and activist materials. Life is just too short to argue with others about such things. 
• In social media, of course, the big drama was Eli Cologne buying Twitter. To say that has been a clusterfuck is to be charitable. While I have not left Twitter, I did set up over on Mastodon back in April (around the time he first announced his intention to buy it). I was somewhat familiar with Mastodon, but the event of 2022 made me finally set up an account. I feel that I am settling very nicely over in Mastodon, and if Twitter finally implodes and goes, I am at peace with that. I am more than able to go over to Mastodon and stay there. For now, I got a foot in both places, and I admit part of staying on Twitter is the drama to see what stupid thing the new regime does next. If it does go bust, there will be people I will miss, but again, I am pretty much at peace about it. By the way, you can find a link to my Mastodon profile on the right side column of this blog. If you are on Mastodon, feel free to say hello. One thing I am trying to do there is keep my content and things I share much more relaxed than on Twitter. So I am as much as possible enforcing my moratorium, so mostly posting about things like cartomancy and divination, books and reading, some librarianship things, and a few other miscellaneous things.
  
• Speaking of social media, I just went ahead and closed down my NewTumbl account. As much as I liked the concept, some parts of it just got a bit too disgusting over time. Basically, if you are big on porn (lots of it), it can be good for you. If you want just a regular microblog, well, not so much unless you pretty much block anything above an F (family) rating, which means you would be severely limited. If I find some other option, I may give a microblog another go, but since that was just for fun, I am not too concerned. 
• I still have my YouTube channel, but I admit it is very underdeveloped. Finding time to work on it has been my main challenge. It remains very much a work in progress. 
• Academic conferences. What I have been saying for the last two years still applies: I do what little professional development I can do online. One thing I will add is that by now I do not really miss in person conferences. If they disappeared tomorrow, and they all went online, I would be OK with that, but I know some people need the in person meetings (even if some are spreader events). They can do that. I am not going anywhere anytime soon in terms of academic conferences. Plus I do save those travel costs. 
• Oh, I have continued participating in the Couch25K program at the college, and I ran my third 5K event on December 4, 2022. My finish time was a bit slower than my previous race, but in my defense so to speak, the town had a few hills, and it was a bit on the cold side that day. I still did pretty well for myself. I do continue running, or rather jogging, three days a week, and I walk the other two. It is one thing I do for self care, and I am enjoying it. The program starts up again in the spring, around February, and I do plan to sign up again. 
• Finally, as I have done in previous years, here is a list of some things I am grateful for as the year ends: 
• We are all at this point still healthy overall, and so far free from COVID (*knock on wood*). 
• We are all still gainfully employed. We have food on the table and roof over our heads. 
• I am grateful my family and me will be together for the holidays. 
  
• I continue with my cartomancy and esoterica studies. I do enjoy doing my daily card draws and a spread now and then. By the way, I do share my daily card draws (Monday through Thursday) on Twitter and Mastodon. And for more cartomancy writing, you can visit my blog Alchemical Thoughts (link on the right side of the blog).
• Still grateful I am able to read and find solace in books. 
• Grateful that overall we keep things simple. This means we do not need much, so as long as we have some basics, a little indulgence here or there, and we are together, then things are good. 
• I am grateful I am able to continue my work as an instruction librarian and my work with students. 

If you read this far, thank you for stopping by and checking this post out. I am grateful you took the time to visit and read a bit of what I wrote. Wherever you all may be, I hope you are healthy and doing well, and I hope the new year brings you many good things. Feel free to comment if so moved, maybe share some of your thoughts on the past year or just things you may be grateful for as 2022 ends, or things you hope for in the new year. I wish you all, in the words of Walter Mercado, "mucha paz y mucho amor" (much peace and much love). Stay safe.

Note: if interested in tracking COVID data, here is the CDC's tracker. Johns Hopkins also has a COVID Resource Center.

Note: Links to my previous COVID random thoughts posts. Year One and Year Two, in case anyone is interested.