It was a really nice Day, very "us" paced. Although damn, I was hungry by the end, since we left for the park just around lunchtime. We brought home a bird feeder full of whole shell seeds. What we are actually going to do with this, considering we have a feeder and I've found the shelled seeds are significantly tidier? I have no idea. But, it was a cute little freebie anyhow.
And, having been holidayed out, I will now hang out at home while Andrew celebrates Mother's Day by going on a climbing excursion. If i have any energy left, there will be cleaning.
The crows are in mid-nesting season, but their presence fluctuates significantly from day to day. Recently the younger crows - probably the helpers who help raise their younger siblings - have been out and about again. They play a lot of games with each other, mostly in the vein of "crow tag" and other swooping and chasing games.
Song sparrows are in mid courtship and having several song battles a day between each other in adjacent territories.
Juncos are just everywhere doing their junco thing. There were plenty of them in the forest as well. I figured all the juncos had moved into the burbs, but apparently, they like forests as well!
It's a nice little neighborhood ecosystem we've got, and I look forward to visiting my buddies later on in the day.
Recently the hantavirus is grabbing a lot of attention. I definitely am looking at those rats in the alley a little side-eyed since being reminded of what their droppings can leave. I clean up bird dropping in my half-assed version of PPE but remind me to get the hazmat suit if we ever get rats in the house (please please knock on wood we don't).
There's been some freaking out and a lot of people yelling at other people not to freak out and I think where I am is...kind of a hyperfixated shrug.
There are scads of reasons to think this is not going to turn into another COVID type pandemic
1. The virus is well known/studied and does not appear to have mutated in a long time. That's a biggie. COVID was a huge ass fucking mystery and it infected a sufficiently large enough population to have excellent breeding grounds for mutation.
2. So far, it has mostly been behaving as expected.
3. What we know about it is that it's much harder to contract but also much more deadly.
4. It also does not seem to be contagious until somebody is experiencing symptoms.
5. Being more deadly actually makes it less likely to spread at pandemic levels, as people are contagious for a short period of time, during which they are less likely to be out and about spreading things.
6. The longer incubation period plus contagiousness being limited to symptomatic periods also means the spread is slower and contact tracing has more time
The bitch about COVID - and there were/are many - was that it was sneaky as fuck and highly contagious. The fact that it did not kill the majority of hosts allowed it to spread, as did the fact that a large percentage of people were completely asymptomatic. It was easy for a decent chunk of the population to write it off as "just a cold" while still infecting enough people to kill and disable a shitton of others.
I don't think we fully remember how scary that exponential curve looked when they started figuring this out. I don't think we remember our R infection rates as well this far out. But it was fucking scary. This is not that.
So... that's something.
But also, when somebody yells at everyone not to panic, what are they envisioning? Are they afraid people are going to riot in the streets? Is there an issue with more people wearing masks in public or cancelling some summer trips? The more I'm told not to panic, the more I kinda think there's a reason for me to do so?
And also, there are very legit reasons for people to feel uneasy
1. Public health messaging during the early days of COVID was an abysmal failure. Although I understand some of this was due to it being a novel virus, It was more than that. China covered the seriousness up for months. We were told it wasn't in the country when it was and that it wouldn't be a problem when it was. We were told -somewhat like now - that we should put all our concern into already present viruses like the flu. Then, suddenly here it was. You can't erase that feeling or what came after...
We were told not to wear masks rather aggressively. The surgeon generally literally tweeted "STOP BUYING MASKS!" And several reputable experts explained why they weren't helpful with some science even peppered in to feel very convincing.
From what we've read in the aftermath, this was pushed largely due to a fear that there would be a run on masks and medical professionals wouldn't have enough. A valid concern, but one that should never have existed (PPE should have been sufficiently built up long before COVID) and saying that masks weren't useful was super tenous. If masks prevent a common cold or flu why on earth wouldn't they at least somewhat help with COVID? But they were so damned confident that we all laughed, and side eyed the folks who did wear them and this undermined the case for masking for literally ever going forward.
The WHO, meanwhile, thought people would get overly confident if they had masks and would fail to take other measures (like washing their hands to avoid fomite infection, which turns out to have way less actual science behind it as a source of infection than breathing near an infected person). The WHOs refusal to reconsider aerosol transmission long after it had been well established is another lapse of trust.
Meanwhile, when the US finally recommended masking, they left it at voluntary, and the cloth masks they first started putting out had very little actual science behind them. It became the pandemic equivalent of pink pussy hats - symbolic of care, but not particularly effective beyond blocking respiratory droplets from already sick people.
The lock-downs were equally poorly orchestrated, starting with promises that two weeks would solve the problem, and spiraling into indefinite cloistering.
Vaccine development was brilliant. A shocking feat of science. No shade to that. But all the weak messaging and support earlier on undermined these as well. And highlighted a new problem...
2. People in the United States acted irrationally, selfishly, and straight up dickishly. Even the people who were all about "stopping the curve" for a few months of sourdough starter started to get bored and were so anxious to get back to their lives that they gave fuck all about the people who would never get to. "COVID cautious" people are typically written off as having mental health issues, and disabled people are literally told that they can wear a mask/stay at home and are then harassed for doing so.
3. Due to all that, we collectively have a tremendous amount of unprocessed trauma due to COVID.
4. The US CDC has been utterly gutted so even if it doesn't rise to the level of a pandemic, it's not implausible that a few selfish people who've been exposed decide to try travelling while feverish. Case in point the Dutch lady was in mid-flight when they deemed her too ill to fly. Even if she had no reason to suspect hantavirus, her symptoms were in line with several contagious diseases and yet she continued to attempt flying, seemingly without even a mask. And this could lead to a much lower but persistent community spread. People could die at random all through the country and it could be a huge mysterious crapshoot without ever having to rise to the level of a grand scale pandemic.
5. We don't know what we don't know. Things changed with COVID. We know thing about hantavirus, but not everything. And there are questions about how easily it actually does transmit.
And of course, for anyone who felt left behind by society's collective decision to call COVID "over" and move on like the last several years never happened, I think it's valid to feel really angry at all the people now getting anxious about the new shiny thing.
And we're still watching bird flu, which only needs to mutate a certain small way to be on par with COVID. So...
So... it's complicated.
But it goes both ways. We don't know what we don't know, so we just have to keep operating best we can with what we do know. And working with what we do have. Today I will work with some binoculars and a little birdsong. And we'll just go from there.
Happy Mother's Day to those who like brunch! And happy Migratory Bird Weekend to all!! Tweet tweet!
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