My Summer Vacation: Foiled by the Internet!

I had good intentions of getting a lot more done today than I did, but I was on the Internet again. I found an article on tests that were done on different materials for home made masks by Smart Air, a company based in Asia that, "is a social enterprise and B-corp that combats air pollution by delivering cost-effective air purifiers and providing open-source data on air pollution." Because their focus is on indoor air pollution (they're based in Beijing) they have a section that talks about the use of masks; within their mask page is information relating to coronavirus. Although the data has not been peer-reviewed like the articles reviewed by Examine.com, they provide all that data so others can review their findings (& refute, if needed). Their section on home made masks says, "Data shows that DIY masks made with a single layer of cotton clothing or a tea towel can remove around 50-60% of virus-sized particles. This means they perform worse than surgical masks and N95 masks. Wearing the homemade masks for 3 hours had no significant effect on the filtration efficiency. ... DIY masks also work for children, but they are less effective on kids than they are on adults.

I had been setting my alarm 5 minutes earlier each day to get me used to getting up earlier. Today I checked and found that on May 1st, when I can leave the house and start walking again for my exercise, sunrise will be at 6 am. Which means I need to get out of bed at 5 am in order to leave the house by 5:30; my usual schedule. My alarm went off at 6:15 this morning, I will need to be up 75 minutes earlier when I start walking again; which means I need to set my alarm 11 minutes earlier each day to reach my goal. Done!

Seven minutes after sunrise.

Speaking of goals, when I weighed myself this morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had lost 0.6 pounds over the last week in spite of falling of the ketogenic wagon and having that piece of Otto Cake cheesecake! Since my goal is 0.5 pounds per week I reached it even with a little cheating. And that was without any exercise. But I still want to do my walking, it is better overall for my body and my mental health. So I will be getting up 11 minutes earlier each day for the next few days.

I got out of bed today at around 8:40; it's all CJ's fault! Actually, it's not; besides CJ, I was also texting with 3 other people while lying in bed. I think I tend to do a lot more texting now while I am lying in bed in the morning since I am not doing anything else. I mean besides sleeping. If I am in the middle of something else I frequently don't hear or feel the alert my phone gives me so I find the text later when I am using my phone for something else.

When I went to throw out the kitchen rubbish today I noticed that the pakalana was blooming! While I was taking photos of the flowers a Mejiro flew up to perch on the fence; I think it was coming to check for little bugs. It flew off as soon as it saw me. I picked a bunch of flowers, there were more on the other side of the fence.

Can you find the mejiro? Answer in tomorrow's blog!

While picking flowers, I also noticed a fire truck and ambulance a few houses up on the opposite side of the street. The fire truck left before I finished picking the flowers; I did not stay out to watch the ambulance leave. There is a kupuna that lives there with younger ʻohana but I did not see who, if anyone, left in the ambulance.

I watched Keala eating this morning. Her Wireless Whiskers feeder is not working properly; it closes even when she is standing there eating. I'm not sure what is wrong with it but I changed the detection period to 3 seconds so it responds quicker to keep the doors open. Fortunately, Keala is not as skittish as S'mores, she kept eating even with the door closing around her head! Luna has learned not to try to pry the doors of the feeders open, now she mainly lies around waiting until the next feeding time becomes available.

Keala kept eating even though the doors closed on her head.

Luna waited patiently for her next feeding period.

The Potential Most Favorite Roommate made dinner tonight, Mitsu-Ken's Garlic Chicken. It was very good! He tends to be the other one who cooks the most from scratch in this household.

Mitsu-Ken's Garlic Chicken.

Yesterday I found the Farm to Car online store; but I got shut out before I could order, when they reach 300 orders it automatically closes. (Thursday orders are picked up the following Wednesday.) It looked pretty good; The Potential Most Favorite Roommate and I are going to try to get an order in this Sunday, for pick up the following Saturday. When you are ordering, your items go in to your 'fridge'; you pay on line and get an e-receipt which you can also print. On your pick up day you drive up to the pick up point between 9 am & noon, show your receipt, and they bring your order out to the car; in fact, you are asked not to leave your car. If you don't come to pick up your order by noon you have just made a donation to the food bank! There are no refunds if you forgot & missed the pick up window.

It seemed like it was glitching; when I refreshed I got this window. Aue!

I also spent time reading The Sober Math Everyone Must Understand About the Pandemic regarding the rate of spread of COVID-19; I also did the math. The article was originally published on 03/16/20 so I am a little late in finding it; but I think it is very important for people to read in order to understand why the stay-at-home orders and physical distancing are critical for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Because of the date it was written on, he has you start the math with the number of confirmed cases in your area, then multiply by 10 to account for the cases of COVID-19 that are present but untested; I did not do that since our test rate is higher than all except New York & California and the percent of positive cases has remained consistent even when there was a significant increase in testing. You then multiply that number by 2 for ten cycles to estimate the 3-day doubling rate over a 1 month period of time. The first doubling would have given us 190 cases if there was no stay-at-home order, physical distancing, and mandatory 14-day quarantine for incoming visitors; in actuality we had 175 known cases (92% of the projected). The second doubling would have given us 380 cases; we had 258 (68%). I went through all the math and compared it against actual numbers except for Day 30, which will be tomorrow. On Day 27 (Wednesday), if nothing had been done, the calculation estimates we would have had 48,640 cases, we actually had 592 known cases (1.2%) with 63 people requiring hospitalization (instead of the calculated 7296). I think we have done a good job 'flattening the curve'. But we're not out of the woods yet since there are still so many people in the nation that have it and could easily bring it in to us.

There were 5 new cases today for 601 known COVID-19 cases; there was also 1 new death bringing that total to 13. Four more people needed hospitalization for a total of 67 people needing hospitalization, while 463 people (77%) have now been released from isolation. Testing has continued and 2% of the population has now been tested.