Today, I had my first digital class. My film class has moved to Zoom. My professor still has a few bugs to work out with that, but it seems like it's going to work. The program lets you put on a digital background, so I got to take my class from the bridge of a starship. My advising meetings for my Senior Project have gone online along with everything else. My advisor video called me all the way from Canada. At one point during our meeting, he paused to pick up his computer and show me the snow falling outside his window. That was certainly a spark of positivity in the midst of everything.
The scientific nature of my Senior Project has given my advisor entirely too much confidence in my scientific knowledge. I know an awful lot about coral reefs and oceanography now, but I've never studied anything related to pandemics, unless you count a slightly unhealthy relationship with the phone game Plague Inc. in high school. Still, I found the following graph that I thought explained it well:
If I understand it correctly, this edited graph from Vox explains the difference in an outbreak with and without precautionary measures. When we don't take measures like following the CDC guidelines for hand washing (which we should all be doing anyway, you gremlins....) and practicing social distancing to the best of our abilities, we get the "Alert Kitty". The Alert Kitty is bad because the number of cases people have at once can overwhelm the medical system. The "Lazy Kitty" is what happens when we do take precautions, and at the peak of infection in a Lazy Kitty outbreak, the medical system should still be able to cope. Of course, this sort of assumes a functioning medical system in the first place... Issues with equitable access to medical care in the U.S. is one of the problems we face that could potentially lead to an Alert Kitty situation.
Last night, my crew established light Away Mission Protocols, something highly debated even in actual Star Trek if the amount of times I've heard my dad shout at buff security dudes to use the buddy system is anything to go by. To be fair to my dad, the buff security dudes usually get murdered by a monster of the week style alien very soon after he yells at them. Obviously, on a college campus, sometimes we still have to go to semi-public places like the dining hall for food, or the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, but we're doing our best to contribute to a Lazy Kitty model. We've managed to avoid the dining hall a fair amount, because our First Officer and our Chief Engineer have been doing a fair amount of cooking, but last night we had to cave and go to Kline, so our Pilot and I went to get rations.
Normally, you are not allowed to take food from Kline for your friends. Sort of. It's an example of the bureaucratic breakdowns Bard sometimes has. Kline says not to take food to your friends, but Health Services advises you to bring food to sick friends so they can isolate even when we're not in the middle of a pandemic. It doesn't usually matter that much, because you are allowed to take food for yourself from Kline, and technically the school can't prove who you're taking the food for. Yesterday we were pretty blatant about it. Our Pilot and I both took enough food for two people. We both used hand sanitizer before and after entering the kitchen area. The most important Away Mission Protocols are to take the smallest groups possible and take every possible precaution to avoid infection.
I'm getting better with the alone time. For obvious reasons, Bard's gym is closed. Machines that people sweat all over are probably not ideal right now, even if they are fastidiously wiped down before and after use. Since Spring Break plans are also cancelled, I decided I could use some of the money I had set aside for that on things to do at home. Just Dance made that list. It's probably not as good as the workout I was getting going to the gym regularly, but it's definitely fun. The newest version has a story mode that takes you through Just Dance classics. I also got the version of Plague Inc. for the Switch because, y'know, it's important for a Starfleet crew to run emergency scenarios.
The scientific nature of my Senior Project has given my advisor entirely too much confidence in my scientific knowledge. I know an awful lot about coral reefs and oceanography now, but I've never studied anything related to pandemics, unless you count a slightly unhealthy relationship with the phone game Plague Inc. in high school. Still, I found the following graph that I thought explained it well:
If I understand it correctly, this edited graph from Vox explains the difference in an outbreak with and without precautionary measures. When we don't take measures like following the CDC guidelines for hand washing (which we should all be doing anyway, you gremlins....) and practicing social distancing to the best of our abilities, we get the "Alert Kitty". The Alert Kitty is bad because the number of cases people have at once can overwhelm the medical system. The "Lazy Kitty" is what happens when we do take precautions, and at the peak of infection in a Lazy Kitty outbreak, the medical system should still be able to cope. Of course, this sort of assumes a functioning medical system in the first place... Issues with equitable access to medical care in the U.S. is one of the problems we face that could potentially lead to an Alert Kitty situation.
Last night, my crew established light Away Mission Protocols, something highly debated even in actual Star Trek if the amount of times I've heard my dad shout at buff security dudes to use the buddy system is anything to go by. To be fair to my dad, the buff security dudes usually get murdered by a monster of the week style alien very soon after he yells at them. Obviously, on a college campus, sometimes we still have to go to semi-public places like the dining hall for food, or the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, but we're doing our best to contribute to a Lazy Kitty model. We've managed to avoid the dining hall a fair amount, because our First Officer and our Chief Engineer have been doing a fair amount of cooking, but last night we had to cave and go to Kline, so our Pilot and I went to get rations.
Normally, you are not allowed to take food from Kline for your friends. Sort of. It's an example of the bureaucratic breakdowns Bard sometimes has. Kline says not to take food to your friends, but Health Services advises you to bring food to sick friends so they can isolate even when we're not in the middle of a pandemic. It doesn't usually matter that much, because you are allowed to take food for yourself from Kline, and technically the school can't prove who you're taking the food for. Yesterday we were pretty blatant about it. Our Pilot and I both took enough food for two people. We both used hand sanitizer before and after entering the kitchen area. The most important Away Mission Protocols are to take the smallest groups possible and take every possible precaution to avoid infection.
I'm getting better with the alone time. For obvious reasons, Bard's gym is closed. Machines that people sweat all over are probably not ideal right now, even if they are fastidiously wiped down before and after use. Since Spring Break plans are also cancelled, I decided I could use some of the money I had set aside for that on things to do at home. Just Dance made that list. It's probably not as good as the workout I was getting going to the gym regularly, but it's definitely fun. The newest version has a story mode that takes you through Just Dance classics. I also got the version of Plague Inc. for the Switch because, y'know, it's important for a Starfleet crew to run emergency scenarios.
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