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Not as down about my work situation as I felt on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.  I talked with the other manager in my workgroup about it and he felt my Boss had overreacted to things by turning an opportunity for constructive feedback into a lowering of my grades.  And I do realize there's no practical effect of these lower grades, except that I'm not getting a bonus this year either.  I'm probably not getting a bonus again until I get a new Boss.  But these bonuses were never that big, up to 1% of our salary.  Not like executive bonuses in the private sector.

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Also vigorous exercise is usually good for my mood, and I did some of that yesterday morning.

Also, two of the younger online buddies I've made recently have made a point to stay in contact with me, I'm not doing all the work of keeping our communications going.  Mark from Reddit and MG from Twitter.  They give me hope that After the Vaccine I will be able to rustle up some in-person fun.

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The rain/snow line is hovering near our house for tomorrow's winter storm.  This happens a lot in the DC area, we're often on the edge of snow storms and it is difficult for the meteorologists to predict exactly what will happen.  Will we get 6 inches of snow, or only rain?  The drama quotient is lower than usual though, because we're all working from home anyway, the federal government can't close due to inclement weather.

But will people still crowd the grocery stores?

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Google announced that it will now keep its employees home until September 30, 2021.  That seems like a safe bet -- it's going to take at least six months to get everybody vaccinated, and then a few months to reboot mass transit, day care, and commuting patterns.  I expect schools will go back to normal next fall.

Will we be a lot more flexible in granting sick leave and letting people work or attend class from home After the Vaccine?  If somebody has a cold or a flu-like illness, will we be less tolerant of them showing up in person anyway?  Will we resume packing large groups of people into conference rooms for meetings?  I wonder how much of our social distancing will stick around.  Or will everybody just go back to not caring whether they infect their family, friends, and coworkers with whatever viruses are floating around?  Some of us have appreciated not having a cold or flu infection since March 2020 -- I've accumulated a higher sick leave balance than ever!

I was talking with K about this on Saturday.  I think roughly half the population doesn't give a fuck and only follows social distancing rules if they are enforced by others -- they'd happily go to the bars and gyms if they were open, for example.  The other half the population is genuinely concerned and may have learned some permanent lessons from the Pandemic about social and personal hygiene.  We'll see this in how well the vaccines are accepted -- roughly half of the population will voluntarily get vaccinated, the other half will avoid it unless compelled by work or school.

Which means COVID-19 will not disappear during 2021 -- as a nation we'll decide the acceptable level of remaining illnesses and deaths as we aim to return to normal.  Some states and cities may still have restrictions on crowd size and mask requirements a year from now.  Imagine if wearing masks on trains and planes never stops?  We're already hearing stuff about international flights or cruise ships requiring proof of vaccination for passengers -- a year from now we could have vaccination passports.

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My Public Health friend believes there will be more pandemics in the near future, because human population keeps growing, global warming continues to accelerate, and international travel makes it so easy for viruses to hitch rides to other countries.

This may feel like "too soon!"  Don't make us think about the next pandemic yet!

But COVID-19 is not a one-off, there are countless other diseases constantly evolving.  Just as HIV is not the only STD -- though you wouldn't know it from how affluent young gay men on PREP behave.

Hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections were already a problem, with tens of thousands of deaths per year in the US caused by illnesses that people caught while in the hospital for other reasons.  The proportion of nursing home residents dying from preventable infections was already huge, because of the lack of proper funding and oversight.

My Public Health friend hopes that one result of COVID-19 will be a permanently larger budget for public health in this country.  But I look at the present level of pandemic fatigue, and the current stalemate over additional COVID-19 funding in Congress, and I think -- nope, no way, too many people don't even want to take basic precautions during the worst pandemic in 100 years, why would they want to continue taking precautions after this?  Our country is more divided than it has been since the Civil War and Reconstruction.  People will just choose a reality in which they don't have to worry about germs.

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K told me about a recently released film in which COVID-23 ... that's all I needed to hear, I said, "Noooooo, now I cannot unhear that!"

But my favorite history podcaster published a book on October 29, 2019 -- his book contained a chapter about the history of pandemics.  When I read that chapter now ... he talks about how during past pandemics, "Entire cities would shut down."  And before that sounded fantastic, so hard to imagine.  Now I've lived through it, I'm still living through it.  This wasn't the first pandemic in human history, and it won't be the last.  But humans can't live as though a new pandemic is always about to happen.  We'll go back to the behaviors that allow disease to spread.  That's what we do.  We went back to fucking without condoms, we'll go back to the holiday parties and buffets, the weddings and funerals, the comic-cons and business conventions, the crowded theaters and concerts, the loud bars and dance clubs, the church choirs and teen slumber parties.

I think once there's no line to get the vaccine anymore, we'll go back to normal pretty quickly.  I think probably the only lasting change will be that office work will stay more virtual than it was before.  So there will be a reduction in business real estate, and an increase in residential real estate, as people's offices migrate from the business tower to the family home.  This is already underway, and I expect it will be partially permanent.  That's the only long-term change I expect from this.  Otherwise we'll snap back to normal pretty darn quickly.  By November 2024, the pandemic will be a distant nightmare, and we'll be fighting over something completely different and currently unexpected as once again we go to the polls to vote for either Biden or Trump.

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