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.