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My First Blog News Post in Some Time

When looking at the page on my blog for “Relevant Blog News” it dawned on me that I had not written a post dedicated solely to blog news since February 2020. Goodness me! It just goes to show how much time flies, especially during a global pandemic.

Like with many other aspects of life, the pandemic resulted in a change of course for how I did things with my blog. Instead of a mix of republishing some old blog posts, blog news, announcing blog awards I received, sharing others’ blog posts, and giving some blog advice on select Thursday evenings, I instead dedicated myself to the weekly COVID updates every Thursday evening when the pandemic was bad in New York City (not having COVID updates for the portion of 2020 when COVID was not that bad where I was).

A global pandemic can have a weird way of making you reevaluate your so-called plans. Well, in my case, the pandemic helped me reevaluate whether all of the things I used to do on select Thursday evenings with my blog were things that: a) others wanted of my blog and/or b) I wanted of my blog.

Here is the result of my reevaluation:

Going forward, I do not plan on usually republishing old blog posts.

Even though there seemed to be some support of my republishing old blog posts when I contemplated starting the practice, the reality is that republished old blog posts don’t seem to be that popular or that well-read, even among some of my newer readers. While I’m not one who likes my content to be driven based on popularity, republishing old posts was, in part, a way to help newer readers connect with older content—something that just didn’t happen as I expected.

That being said, there may be some occasions when I realize that an old blog post needs significant revisions. In such circumstances, I may yet republish a significantly revised blog post. I don’t expect that to happen often, but it may happen.

I still see a place on this blog for blog news posts.

I am not a fan of suddenly making a significant change to the blog or its content without announcing it first. Such announcements tend to be made through blog news posts such as this one.

I am “semi-retiring” from doing blog award posts.

This is something that I have been thinking about for some time, and this is not a decision I take lightly.

I am flattered and honored that there are some bloggers who think that my content is good enough to merit a nomination for a blogging award. And, in recognition of the fact that I am flattered and honored with getting such awards, I still plan on mentioning who nominated me for which awards at the end of a calendar year.

However, these awards (and subsequent award posts) come to me every 2-6 months at this point, and it is honestly time-consuming to put together these posts (between the answering of questions, looking at which blogs I want to nominate, etc.)—posts that aren’t even read much if at all by readers more than a few days after I publish them. The bottom line is that I see more drawbacks than benefits of writing blog award posts at this stage of my blogging life. The one exception I will make is if I get a blog award that seems particularly prestigious.[1]

However, the one aspect of blog award posts that I still want to do is making my readers aware of other blogs that I think are worth reading. This brings me to my next announcement in this blog post full of announcements…

I am as enthusiastic as ever about sharing others’ posts, even though I haven’t been good as of late about documenting for myself which posts seem worthy of sharing.

I recognize the fact that my perspective has its significant limits, as I’m white, able-bodied, and middle class in the United States of America (to name a few of my identities). Yes, I try to educate myself as much as I can, and I try to share a lot of what I learn with others. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that my perspective on a lot of things, including when it comes to issues of injustice, has its limits due to my life experiences.

As such, I really want to amplify the voices of bloggers who have perspectives I may lack. That is where sharing others’ blog posts comes in.

While content from me tends to be more popular than the content I share from other bloggers, I still hope that sharing content from others will become an important part of my blog again.

I also hope to resume the posts offering blog advice.

I have now been blogging for over four years. While I’m not the biggest blogger on the planet, I have a decent-sized following for someone who’s not a celebrity, and therefore I feel that I have some wisdom to share with other bloggers about blogging as a whole. I look forward to sharing that wisdom once again through blog advice posts. While this blog is not focused on teaching others how to blog, I do see this being a piece of my blog going forward.

I know I went through a lot of assorted pieces in my blog news post today, so if anyone has any questions or comments about how my blog is going forward, feel free to reply in the comments section below!

[1] By the way, if you’re interested in reading about whether to accept blog awards or not, feel free to read my “Blog Advice” post on the subject.

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My (Hopefully) Final Coronavirus Update From New York City: May 27, 2021

Ever since I got my second COVID-19 vaccine dose, I’ve been thinking about if, when, and how to end my weekly updates.

Tonight’s post is the culmination of that thinking.

My thinking was that it would be time to end these weekly updates once everyone in my family was: a) vaccinated, b) at full immunity, and c) in a neighborhood where the COVID test positivity rate was low.

And now, all three things are the case.

My parents their second vaccine doses in mid-March, I got my second vaccine dose in late April, and my younger brother got his second vaccine dose in early May. As all of us are not only fully vaccinated but to a point where we are all at maximum immunity, the risk of any of us getting COVID (let alone seriously getting ill from it) seems extremely low. It’s not impossible to get COVID even if you’re vaccinated (look at the outbreak that happened with the New York Yankees baseball team as an example), but the chances are very low.

Additionally, the test positivity rate for COVID in my neighborhood is now extremely low–at just over 1%. It is good news that the test positivity rate is as low as it is. The good news means that I am no longer reporting from a COVID hotspot, and it means that the concern that existed about all of us in New York when I started my first iteration of these posts (or even when I started my second iteration of these posts) does not exist to the same extent. If such concerns come back, I will resume these weekly update posts, but unless and until that happens, I think now is a good time to end these weekly update posts.

I should emphasize that just because I’m ending my COVID update posts doesn’t mean that COVID as a whole is over, either in the United States or around the world. Far from it. Hundreds are still dying from the pandemic every day in the United States, while worldwide we are at our highest death rate since January. If we think we’re done with this pandemic, we are very badly mistaken. To that end, those who aren’t vaccinated should get vaccinated, while at the same time practice the appropriate public health precautions until being fully vaccinated.

Last, but not least, I want to thank all of you, my readers, for being a part of this journey. It has been quite the journey, but I am thankful for the fact that many readers have joined me on it.

Please note that I will not write a post next Monday, since next Monday is Memorial Day.

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Coronavirus Update From New York City: May 20, 2021

This week, there is some big news within my family. My younger brother graduated from college! I am so incredibly proud of him and all the other students who overcame the challenges of education during COVID in order to graduate from college.

A major part of that graduation weekend involved doing some things that I had not done since before COVID, and as such was a little terrifying at first.

For example, the festivities surrounding the graduation itself made me a little nervous at first, I must admit. In particular, the large gathering of people out and about (with the graduates and their families) after the ceremony. I acknowledge that said nerves were not the most rational, for there were a combination of factors that made my catching COVID remote–not a single student present at the graduation festivities has tested positive for COVID symptoms (my brother’s college did COVID testing twice a week), not a single person present would be present if they had tested positive for COVID, the activities were all outdoors, I was wearing my mask, and I am fully vaccinated. However, sometimes nerves are not rational.

Walking through a rather busy diner after my brother’s ceremony in order to use a restroom also made me a little nervous. Between the number of people in the diner and the fact that I’m not sure the diner had good ventilation, my fears related to being in that diner (if even for a brief time) might be somewhat more rational than being at the graduation festivities. Still, between my mask-wearing, my being fully vaccinated, and the fact that I was only in the diner for a short time (only for a couple of minutes), I’m still one to think that my chances of catching COVID in that diner were extremely low.

I guess the moral of these two stories from last weekend is that it is not abnormal for us to struggle with fears, even fears that might not make the most sense, due to what we’ve been through with COVID-19 in the past year. It may feel freakish to struggle with some of those basic activities, especially if we have friends or family members who aren’t freaking out about similar activities. However, we are anything but freakish.

In other good news, COVID in my part of New York City continues to be on the decline–now down to under 3% in my zip code.[1] Most of all, a much smaller percentage of both hospital beds and ICU beds are being taken up by COVID patients in the hospital near where I live–15% of adult hospital beds and 31% of ICU beds.[2] Hopefully COVID will continue to go in the right direction where I am.

I hope others are well and safe!

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/944379919/new-data-reveal-which-hospitals-are-dangerously-full-is-yours

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Coronavirus Update From New York City: May 13, 2021

I start today’s post with another dose of good news: my younger brother is now fully vaccinated!

He got vaccinated last Friday. His side effects were in many ways similar to mine: chills, a headache, fatigue, a sore arm, and nausea (which was something I didn’t have much of, though I had little appetite). And, like me, he started getting those side effects about 12 hours or so after his second dose, and the side effects lasted for 24 hours or less (with him, it was under 24 hours, with the exception of the arm soreness that lasted longer). I share my brother’s side effects (with his permission by the way) to yet again highlight that for all the vaccine hesitancy over side effects, the side effects are very short-term (the very rare blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson notwithstanding) and are child’s play compared to getting the virus (some of whom still suffer certain symptoms for months or over a year after catching the virus).

What this means is that everyone in the household I am in is now fully vaccinated, even if one member of the household (my younger brother) is still off at college. It also means that the risk of any of us catching COVID-19, which we were already all trying to limit through wearing masks and practicing social distancing, is even lower now. It’s a relief to know that all four of us are now vaccinated.

Also a relief is the fact that the test positivity rate for COVID has plummeted both in New York City and in my part of New York City. The test positivity rate citywide is now under 2% and it is just over 3% in my zip code.[2] The days of test positivity well over 10% in my area seem so long ago and yet so short ago at the same time. I am hoping that we continue trending in that direction, and that we can get to a point with this awful pandemic that we can at least have this thing well under control.

The one piece of not-so-good news is that New York City, like many other parts of the United States, are starting to experience slowdowns in the number of people getting vaccinated. In early April, there were over 100,000 people per day getting vaccinated–that number has slowed down significantly since then.[3] My guess as to what is happening here is that many of the people who were enthusiastic about getting vaccines have now been vaccinated (me being among them, as I got my first dose around the time that daily vaccine doses distributed in New York City was about to hit its peak). Now, in many cases, I think we are to the populations that were waiting for the right time to get vaccinated (in terms of work obligations) as well as the vaccine-hesitant.

I will be interested to hear how readers are doing!

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-goals.page#viz1607355501127

[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

[3] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.page

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Nursing Homes and the Coronavirus

As my readers know by now, the death toll from the Coronavirus in the United States has been astronomical—heading towards 600,000. Also astronomical is the fact that 182,000 of those deaths, as of April 15th, have happened in nursing homes, whether it be residents or staff.[1] What this means is that over 30% of total deaths reported from COVID-19 in the United States have been related to nursing homes, in spite of the fact that nursing home residents and staff combine for about one half of one percent of the total population in the United States.[2]

But how did we get here, and where do we go from here?

Yes, a high percentage of the population who died from this virus were over the age of 65, and yes, nursing homes have high concentrations of older persons. However, simply attributing what happened during COVID-19 in nursing homes to their having lots of older persons is a copout to me. It is a copout because people involved with nursing homes are dying at a much higher rate than seniors as a whole.[3]

Instead, what we’re dealing with is that too many nursing homes and too many policy decisions related to nursing homes during COVID were/are broken on so many levels. Here are some of the ways in which many nursing homes, as well as many policy decisions around nursing homes, are broken:

  • Understaffed nursing homes
  • Poor quality of care at many nursing homes
  • Nursing home neglect, which stems from the aforementioned two issues
  • Deprioritizing of nursing homes by many government officials
  • Outdated laws
  • Inadequate government oversight (and oversight in general) with nursing homes[4]

The fact that so many deaths happened, and that so many of the deaths could have been avoided with better care from nursing homes and better government oversight of them, is a point of grief, I think. These deaths needn’t have happened. If it is a point of grief for you as it is for me, you might be interested in attending an event on May 20th that will be focusing on honoring nursing home lives.[5]

However, beyond grief there will be a need for significant reforms of our nursing homes—from the way we do (or don’t prioritize) them to the oversight they are given, there is significant need for wholesale changes. They are needed before the next pandemic, because yes, I believe there will be another one at some point. And they are needed so that we can extend and improve the lives of people in our nursing homes.

It’s time to value the lives of people in our nursing homes.

[1] https://www.aarp.org/ppi/issues/caregiving/info-2020/nursing-home-covid-dashboard.html

[2] The total population in the country is just over 330 million people: https://www.census.gov/popclock/. When adding the 1.25 million or so who live in nursing homes (https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-nursing-facility-residents/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D) and the over 600,000 people who work in a nursing home (https://phinational.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/phi-nursing-assistants-key-facts.pdf), what we’re left with is a group of less than 2 million people that only takes up approximately half a percent of the total United States population.

[3] As of May 4, out of a total senior population of 52.4 million in the United States (https://acl.gov/sites/default/files/Aging%20and%20Disability%20in%20America/2019ProfileOlderAmericans508.pdf), about 447,000 people over 65 have died (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge); this amounts to .8% of the total senior population. On the other hand, there are 180,000 deaths out of 1.85 million (or so) people involved in nursing homes, which means that nearly 10% the total population related to nursing homes have died from COVID. Truly shocking.

[4] Many of these points come from an AARP report on the number of deaths in long-term care due to COVID. Note that the number back in early December, when this piece was written, was “only” just over 100,000: https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/health/info-2020/covid-19-nursing-homes-who-is-to-blame.html 

[5] Disclaimer: I volunteer for the organization that is facilitating the event. Still, since we’re talking about nursing home lives, I think it is worthwhile to note this event. By the way, the event is the inspiration for this post.