Let me out!!!

He thoughtfully stayed in the window long enough for me to get a shot. I got to have another tonight when I saw him and his mom. 

The extra is a derelict from the drive yesterday. Thank you for hosting 
Marlieske. 

I got to talk to people! About ideas! New people! We had the beginning of a discussion about economic empowerment. The plan is we'll meet once a month for six months on zoom. 

I also had a hopeful conversation with my mother-in-law. 
- The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 95% effective. 
- The 5% who catch it get mild cases. 
- The 5% infection rate reflects everyone, including people who go to crowded bars, maskless, and sit in front of people singing karaoke as loud as they can, breathing all their droplets. This means that some modest care and your personal risk is less than 5%. 
- The vaccines are not as effective against the mutants, but they greatly reduce the severity even if you catch one of them.
- We don't know how long the vaccines last, but we know the people who had them during the testing phase still have antibodies, so they last at least seven months and counting.
- If you get it, despite the vaccine, your viral load will be low, so you are less contagious than if your viral load were high. 
- Every day more people are vaccinated so every day the chances of catching it, from a public health perspective, are less. 
- We will still have mutations but we are working on new "booster" vaccines for them. So while we might have Covid forever, at some point it might be on the order of the flu, for which we get vaccines every year. 

She hugs her grandson. She shops in the grocery store. Her husband can get physical therapy now. They do all these things masked, because even though the chances of getting it are less, and she'd get a mild version, getting it would still suck. Even mild cases often have long-term consequences. Plus, you don't want people to see you and not know if you are vaccinated or a covidiot. But the stress and the danger are substantially reduced. 

Once I have my vaccine I can
- go to NJ and take a headshot of that woman
- go inside a hair salon and get my hair cut
- travel to NY and go to the bathroom inside the service center

And one day I will have conversations with people, indoors, and give real hugs. Some day after that I will see the aurora borealis and Victoria Falls and and and and and