Day 146

Today is Tuesday August 4, 2020

This is the first week of school. I have a few remote meetings today.  Wednesday and Thursday free. Thursday we report...remotely.

The next two weeks will be planning for rigorous online education as we prepare to for students to re-enter the virtual world of education on August 18th.  After teaching for 26 years it will be the strangest first day ever. Researchers in Austin Texas "have new estimates that provide a rough gauge of the risk that students and teachers could encounter in each county in the United States."

Especially these days it is wise to take everything you read and be careful to analyze it or just realize some of it is meant to grab headlines and your attention.  Still it is nice to see a sprinkling of hope every now and then. According to Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert, who everyone knows by name there is a good possibility the United States will have a vaccine by either the end of 2020 or early in 2021.  He did say a "safe and effective vaccine" so he is being specific and my guess is if anyone would be able to predict the timeline it would be him.

The question still remains what will a vaccine mean and how will it actually affect the virus outbreak.  There are indeed many mysteries and situations upcoming that may keep this virus lingering for quite some time.  For example even though over thirty states and many cities have issued mask requirements when outside your home, enforcing it is still a reoccurring problem in some regions.  

In order to really crush this virus and slow the spread we must be united on all the measures it takes to do the job.  If not then we will just continue to allow the virus to move among us and put us all at risk.  But telling the people who are fighting mask mandates and social distance advice is like talking to the wall.   It just seems to me that common sense is lost on some people.  

I also suppose there is the other side of the coin. People want to be independent and so much so that they do not want to conform any more than they already must (taxes, rent, laws, etc)

They find individualizing themselves and standing out gives them power to be different.

The great poet E.E. Cummings wrote, "Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."  

Just some thoughts to consider as continually fight this invisible virus beast called COVID-19.