Thanksgiving is ON

What Gov. Newsom & top doctors really think of California's COVID restrictions.

Thanksgiving alone is too much even for someone like me. I'm secular, I'm a loner, I don't keep in touch with many family members. But a family holiday alone (alone together is nonsense) is too strange even for me. A month and a half in quarantine last spring was tolerable because I was ill and too tired to do much after work. Summer and fall, I rehabbed my garage. Now? I ruminate over the sort of things that get worse when they're picked at. 

I spent my first Thanksgiving in Indiana with a friend and her family and subsequent ones with a few members from my meetup group. This year, I'll be at a cousin's house. The weather in Cleveland, where she lives, is supposed to dry--something of a Thanksgiving miracle. 

Risks? I'm about as likely to die of COVID as I am to get shot in Indianapolis: a few chances in ten thousand, at most. I don't have risk factors like diabetes or heart disease. I'm prone to respiratory illnesses, but COVID seems to be more of a cardiovascular disease. The Undoctored program I follow is run by a cardiologist. My cousin seems low-risk and probably her husband is, too, or she wouldn't have invited me. Hospitals in Indianapolis and Cleveland have capacity if we do get very ill. Oh--and we're not 80 years old. 

Indiana's statewide data makes it look like we're all in a second wave, but the source is mostly areas far away from Indianapolis, Chicago and the spring outbreak in Decatur County (where I went for my test), where they're in their first wave. Indiana's first COVID death was someone who lived a mile from my house, and the ensuing wave here ended in June. Cleveland wasn't hit as hard but their flatter wave ended in September. My cousin lives in an adjoining county that's seen fewer than 100 deaths, and she's been working from home for months. 

So I don't think our little three-person dinner poses enough risk to take Google's advice for every man, woman and child to stay home--advice proferred by someone who has a family under her roof and friends across the country she'll Zoom in with. Speaking of friends for dinner, California Gov. Newsom was caught partying like it was 2019: over 20 people, indoors, with no masks or social distancing. The guests included top doctors and medical association lobbyists. Let that sink in: top doctors and medical association lobbyists don't think the rules are worth following. Newsom joins Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's husband, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, and Professor/Doomer Neil Ferguson as coronavirus hypocrites. Actions speak louder than words, and quite a few people with facts at hand clearly don't think current rules are worth following. I'm still waiting for the howls of privilege from the usual sources over a governor having a big party at a fancy restaurant while the rest of California is under a curfew.