A year and three months

 244 new cases yesterday.  That is the lowest it has been since March 21, 2020.  Nine days before that. Friday 13th, I had left the Ten Cat full or my usual good cheer after a session of drinking beer and telling lies, without a care in the world, north on Ashland and west on Irving Park Road.  Oh that covid thing had been in the news, think I was calling it The Corona at the time, and I was vaguely aware that the state of Ohio had gone into complete shut down which struck me as pretty extreme.  

But I think it was the next morning that the state of Illinois did the exact same thing.  Holy shit.  It wouldn't take effect until Tuesday, so I made an agreement with a friend to meet in a bar just north of downtown on Monday for final beers.  That morning I had a routine appointment with my doctor and after a little poking around, I casually asked her how she thought I would fare with this here Corona thing that was going around.  And she read me the riot act. I didn't meet my friend after all.  I did not have a beer until months later when you could have a beer if it also was a place that had food and that had outdoor serving.

Early on this was a topic at The Institute about where to find a good website to track the disease and Old Dog came up with this one:  

http://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/covid19-statistics

I've been going to it every morning since maybe a week after the shutdown.  If you scroll all the way to the bottom there is the relevant graph labelled: Tested Change Last 15 days.  You can click on the top boxes to choose between tests, cases, and deaths.  On the bottom the boxes are for 15 days, 30 days, 90 days. and All time.  Kind of a nifty thing to fool with.

My sister sewed me some masks.  I remember at the time thinking what will I do with these when this is all over next month,  That's the way it was.  It'll be over next month, well maybe the month after that, well maybe, maybe this will just take as long as it takes and there is no point in even thinking about it ending.  At first I was hyper vigilant, wearing gloves sometimes, carefully following the arrows in the grocery store, gettingin and gettingout as fast as I could.  Well that was okay if it was only going to be for a month or so, but if it was going to go on indefinitely, well you have to live a little.

By early summer it seemed to be fading.  The beer garden at the Ten Cat was open, and then for a brief while the bar was open, but nobody could sit at the bar, you had to sit at a table and the bartender would come up to your table and bring your drink to you.  And then when the rate started soaring again only the beer garden was open and then when winter came on full force that was closed too because don't be ridiculous.

And then the vaccine like fireworks over the horizon.  I got my first vac at the end of January, and then everybody I knew was getting them.  And then a slow descent, then another bump and now it seems to trailing off to a zero asymptote. though of course you never know.