Pandemic diary: August

Last time I did one of these was in April, when we were coming down off the totally unnecessary March peak. We've since been suffering through an absolutely tortuous summer, with new heat records and everything, and also the second summer in a row where we pretend the pandemic is over.

At least we're learning something about stuff that went on earlier in the pandemic. There was a really good Twitter thread on masks that I thought really nailed some of the initial confusion on them. We also had so-called experts in this country suggesting that mask mandates could even be dangerous, and the thread I linked goes into this failure of thinking very well.

The Finnish Safety Investigation Authority found that the mixed messaging on masks confused people and delayed the adoption of facemasks, which you can argue led to people dying. It's really worth remembering how much of a shitshow our pandemic response was at times; the mask confusion was preceded by some of our chief health officials telling us the pandemic wouldn't affect us at all, which then led to people flipping out and buying all the toilet paper when they realized the truth.

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Speaking of shitshows, here's the pandemic situation from last Friday.

On July 20th, our health authority guys figured that this is effectively a fourth wave, so, y'know, yay. As you can see, we were well on our way to actually suppressing the damn disease - until some of our countrymen decided that they absolutely have to travel to Russia to see the Finnish men's football team play. You know, Russia, where the delta variant was running totally out of control at the time because they were taking basically no safety measures.

Once these idiots had seen their football game, the Kymenlaakso health authority decided it would be too much of a hassle to actually test all of them when they returned to the country, so they just let them all in. No testing, no quarantines, nothing at all. For some reason we have refused to implement any kind of quarantine measures for people traveling abroad, and now we're facing the consequences.

As a result of these, shall we say, decisions, we are now experiencing a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic. As cases exploded, the authorities banned most cultural and hobby activities, but, of course, the bars stayed open. Right now, it looks like the wave may have peaked, but schools have barely started, and hospitalizations (blue line below) are ticking upward.

What this amounts to is a colossal human experiment: if we let thousands of young people catch the virus, how long will the epidemic continue, and what will the long-term effect be? It's salutary to remember that we still don't know a whole lot about long Covid in young people. Well, we're going to. Also, I guess if you can't get the vaccine, or are at high risk even if vaccinated, then the current policy is apparently that it sucks to be you.

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As far as I know, adult education will be resuming with masks and distancing, like we did last fall until the situation got way too bad, so we'll be trying to finally deliver our heavy metal lectures this September. We'll see what happens. Personally, I'm quite concerned; it's not just that we have a lot of people acting like the pandemic is over, but also the authorities are asleep at the wheel, or have decided that we're just going to let this go and hope that the vaccines are enough to keep everyone safe.

I'm very much afraid this won't be my last pandemic diary.

Warhammer 40,000: Questor Mechanicus

Earlier, I made some Machine Cult robots. It was fun, so it got me thinking about making more robots. Bigger robots.

 - Divine Metaphysics

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Ages ago, when I taught my first proper lecture course at the Helsinki Adult Education Center, I wanted to use part of my salary to buy something really stupid to remember the occasion by. That something was the Imperial Knights: Renegade second edition box, which comes with two Knights and a big old terrain piece. Because building Knights is something of an undertaking, the box sat on my shelf for quite a while. But lately I've enjoyed building detachments of fairly elite Imperial forces, like the Adeptus Custodes and the Deathwatch. Elite troops are few in number, so they're vulnerable to enemy fire, and the Deathwatch especially suffer from a lack of anti-tank firepower. So they could really use an ally that will attract a lot of fire, and that can wreck enemy armor.

Like, say, a Knight.

Oddly, what gave me the spark to start building my first Knight was a Nuka-Cola machine. I ordered some to use in my new terrain project, and they're great little resin models.

Ordinarily, I don't like putting a lot of scenery on bases; I build wargaming models, not moving dioramas. Knight bases are so big, though, that they're going to be a bit boring if I don't put anything on them. So it occurred to me to put a Nuka-Cola machine on my Mechanicus Knight's base. That seemed like fun, so I sawed one in half. But in order to figure out exactly where to put it, I needed to assemble the Knight's legs. So before I knew it, I had half a Knight; I added some Perry Miniatures casualties, a Victoria Miniatures Bren gun and some Imperial Guard equipment to create a little diorama I call "archeotech secured".

I went with Carmine Red and Ivory for the Nuka-Cola machine, and it seemed to work all right.

Usually, I assemble my models and then paint them as a whole. The Knight is obviously big enough to be an exception; it would make no sense to stick on the leg armor plates, for instance, and then try to paint behind them. So I was painting the armor plates separately, with a base color of Burnt Cadmium Red to match my machine cultists. Since I happened to be working on them on the Transgender Day of Visibility, and I was a little bit inspired by Belzébée, I decided that my Mechanicus Knight says trans rights.

Since this is my first Knight, this is also my first attempt at magnetizing weapons. The carapace weapons seem very magnet-friendly: both the Icarus autocannon and the rocket pod have handy spaces inside where you can superglue a magnet, and it was very easy to fit one on the inside of the carapace as well. I secured it in place with a piece of sprue.

I used a pair of 1/8" × 1/16" magnets from Primal Horizons, and the Icarus autocannon is a bit wobbly but stays fast, and so does the missile pod.

I obviously also wanted to magnetize the arm weapons, and I kept it simple: I sawed off the projecting bit on the bottom of the arm, and stuck on a 1/4" × 1/16" magnet from Primal Horizon.

Meanwhile, the body was coming along nicely. I wanted to continue the hazard stripe motif onto the carapace as it feels nostalgically Oldhammer to me, so I decided to also paint the other side of the carapace in the trans colors, and I'm delighted by the result.

I also finished the base.

And painted up the shoulder pads.

So with that, I'm calling this done except for the weapons!

Since the idea of this Knight is to blow up tanks and other very armored things, obviously it needs a thermal cannon. As I've read many rhapsodies to twin thermal cannons on Chaos Knights, I wanted to make mine potentially fit both a loyalist and traitor Knight, so I painted the shield with hazard stripes.

The other job of the Knight will be to draw fire, so it needs to be going at the enemy rather than hanging back and shooting: to combine both these roles, I feel that the Thunderstrike Gauntlet is strongly indicated.

So here it is: my first Knight! By far the biggest model I've ever made, and just a lot of fun to work on.

I need to get more chonky boys!