Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, August 23

Another month when I don’t have all the bills I need to pay. I mail bills on or before the 25th if they are due on the 1st. When I was in the post office on Monday, one medical insurance bill hadn’t arrived 13 days before it’s due date.

I have two choices. Drive into the post office every day to see if it’s arrived, or take my checkbook with me and write a check in the car tomorrow. With the pandemic, I’ve cut my trips to the post office to one a week to minimize risks, so it’ll be in the car tomorrow.

In case the bill isn’t there, I’ll take an envelope and stamp with a copy of a previous bill to mail.

The pandemic and changes in the management of the Post Office may be making it difficult to pay in a timely fashion, but the insurance company’s computer systems haven’t been reprogrammed. Paying late, especially if I have develop a record of paying late, means I risk having my insurance cancelled.

I discovered a similar scheme earlier this week with my bank. It was sold to an out-of-state company last year, and things have been getting worse. My last savings account statement showed it was now paying the same token interest it was paying on the checking account.

I got a call from someone this week because the bank hasn’t been able to send me my next order of blank checks. While we were talking, I discovered the bank had changed the rules on activity. It used to be one had to make one transaction a year to avoid an account going dormant. This was apparently some government rule instituted after 9/11. If it was dormant, you had to file paperwork to get access.

This time she said accounts go inactive in six months and dormant in a year. The reactivation paperwork is required for inactive accounts. It now charges fees on dormant accounts.

In the past I did my yearly transaction at the time when I did the government required annual withdrawal from my IRA. Well, the lobby is still closed, and that transaction is too complicated to do in the drive through.

So, the bank is closed for activity, but if I don’t act I get penalized by both it and the federal government. And, the bank makes additional money off me.

Fortunately, the woman I talked to sent me an email address, and told me to send her requests for these transactions. That’s more than another bank I used to use offered when it changed hands.

I don’t need news stories to tell me the post office service has gotten worse. I track the books I order which come through media mail. That used to take two weeks. Now it averages three.

The last time I checked the tracking, the truck with the package arrived in Española from Albuquerque around 11:30 am. The truck used to arrive before the post office opened. That adds a day’s delay.

At the beginning of the year I noticed that packages that arrived in Denver were being sent to Las Vegas instead of Albuquerque. Las Vegas, of course, has had some of the most serious problems with the Coronavirus. That rerouting adds at least two days, plus an extra set of handling.

Delays are being added everywhere, even though we’ve had six months to adjust to doing things remotely.

About two weeks ago, Wikipedia stopped updated the Coronavirus page for New Mexico by 7:30 pm. Now, I find the update the next day. When that is added to the days when the totals are the same or go down, one loses all confidence in the timeliness of the information.

In the past two weeks we’ve had 26 active cases, down from the highs in late July. However, the number of deaths increased to 10, although only three occurred in the past two weeks.

The local website on wildfires maintained by the Forest Service was really useful when some employee got the idea of using blogging software to keep people informed. That was years ago. Management became involved. Updates became official releases. And now, they come out a day late.

I don’t have to tell anyone we’re having serious problems with smoke right now from a fire near Nambé, plus a huge fire near Grand Junction, Colorado, and all those fires in California. The weather bureau Air Quality forecast is still making predictions that let me know in advance I should wear a mask.

The Forest Service updates are a day late and only confirm what I suspect. Confirmation is necessary. One can’t just go on assumptions about conditions based on problems with breathing. That creates the possibility that I might dismiss something important.

Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.

Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, August 17

I finally got a new pair of glasses. Instead, of the usual place, I went to one of the cheap chains in Santa Fé.

It served my purpose. I wanted something that required as little human contact as possible, and that meant no measurements and no fittings.

Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars and waiting a week, I got a pair the same day for $40. I could actually have gotten two pairs for that price, but I didn’t want to spend more time looking for a second frame.

I know I’m getting what I paid for. There’s probably a quarter of the amount of plastic in the frames than there are in the more expensive ones. That means one really can’t have the ear pieces bent to fit.

There’s no scratch protection or light reduction coating. Those are luxuries.

The plastic lenses may not even be absolutely correct. They have a stock of standard lenses, and take them out of inventory.

But, when you’ve needed something for nine months, close is an improvement on inadequate.

I noticed while I was there the usual pattern of following rules without understanding. I asked if the woman who let me in the door if she would be taking my temperature. No, that’s only done at the optometrist’s office next door. They erected a low barrier between the two sections to maintain the safety of the one area.

Other than the mask and limited number of people allowed inside at a time, no other precautions were being taken. The set up was the usual one, a desk about 18" wide and three feet long with the technician on one side at one end and the customer on the other side at the other end. Not six feet apart, and no plexiglass barrier.

I think our local places have done a better job of implementing safe procedures. About three weeks back, all the restaurants put out picnic tables and installed canopy tops to make it easier to serve people outside. One even built a fence around its perimeter to give customers’ some privacy.

I don’t know how well they enforce small groups and distancing. I suspect much depends on peer pressure.

That doesn’t exist in Santa Fé. A friend told me he had a customer who works in one of the better restaurants. It constantly get parties from Texas who refuse to wear masks or respect the rules. All the waiter can do is wear a mask and hope.

I can only hope that waiter didn’t buy a pair of glasses this morning.

Journal of a Plague Year, Saturday, August 8

I came across a pamphlet from Alpena, Michigan, that said more than 1,000 cases of small pox had been reported in an 1873 epidemic. The census for 1880, showed 6,153 lived in the city and 8,789 in the county.

Alpena then was a new logging town on the eastern side of Michigan’s lower peninsula. The 52 who died represented .8% of the 1880 population. The totals for the county may have been higher, simply because people were isolated, much like they are in Rio Arriba county.

Small pox differs from our current Coronavirus pandemic because it is highly visible. No one needed a special test to know they were among the 16% who had been infected.

Unfortunately, we have made our problem less visible. Because of the national increase in cases, the commercial testing systems have broken down. On July 26, our governor decreed only those with obvious symptoms could be tested.

Almost immediately, the number of reported cases dropped, but a grimmer manifestation appeared that could not be denied. The number who died started increasing. The total deaths in Rio Arriba County on July 27 was 3; now it’s 7. Thus, while the number of known active cases in the county has dropped by 70%, the number who died has more than doubled.

When I was in town Friday, I saw a headline that said the governor was thinking about letting more businesses open because the number of reported cases had dropped.

Anyone who’s been around LANL, or any other institution that has implemented metrics as an impersonal way to evaluate projects and individuals, knows managers try to game the metrics rather than solve their problems.

Without anyone taking a deliberate action, that’s what’s happened here. Something failed, and the metrics showed progress. That illusionary progress now is being used to justify advancing to the next stage.

Alpena knew when it’s epidemic had passed. We are in the dark.

 Sources:
Alpena Dates of Events 1862–1902. Alpena, Michigan: Argus, 1915.
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.