Doorknob Licking and Bubble Living

The way time passes will never cease to amaze me. I hit publish on my last newsletter (Thursday) just before I heard that President Trump tested positive for COVID-19. It feels like that was a long time ago.

Only 4 more months until the election is over.

• Life at the Extremes

• Go Do Things

• Disney Shorts: Canine Patrol

Life at The Extremes

I am a slow burn (unless I’m on twitter in which case I explode without warning) and something that I’ve been talking about for a long time is that people need to judge their decisions against a risk profile that they’re willing to accept for themselves and those around them.

I really do believe there is a careful and thoughtful policy line that we can take and that people are going to have to make their own decisions regarding how much risk they can accept for what kinds of activities have value. I wrote extensively about this and I genuinely believe it.

And then I see this kind of thing and I just feel like a dope.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn

What do you think when you see this? I think about the fact I won’t be at my parents 50th wedding anniversary this month because these people did not believe they had any real obligation to govern wisely

I want to start with the caveats. We don’t know if this event was the event that spread COVID among several of the attendees. All those people go to lots of events, have lots of meetings, interact with lots of people. It’s certainly *possible* that they didn’t contract COVID at that event.

Secondly, I understand that all the attendees tested negative for COVID before they attended this announcement which is supposed to be comforting but it actually much more worrying. I don’t believe it is plausible in the long term to isolate people for 2 weeks every time they’re in a room with someone who had COVID. We can’t live like that for the next 2 years. We need testing to be a component of this and that means we need to be able to rely on negative tests being a reliable indicator of contagion.

But we also need people to recognize that there does need to be some changes to their behavior. I’m absolutely stunned that no one in this video seems to be following any social distancing guidelines AT ALL. Standing in tight clusters, hugging everyone who comes near to them, this really is quite shocking to me. This isn’t how I’ve been hanging out with my friends and that’s a fairly tight circle of people, not at an event with hundreds of attendees.

I know people are going to live their lives with all the risks they’ve accepted, but I really do expect people in positions of power and authority to show more caution and sense than this.

Go Do Things

With all of that said… we should all still be doing things, just using our common sense. Unless Don is feeling sick, he should absolutely go to his parent’s 50th anniversary. He should wear a mask if it’s indoors and should be cautious with other attendees. I can’t believe we’re still in a place where people have hidden themselves away entirely from the world.

If you can’t bring yourself to do anything that is important to you for fear of contracting or spreading COVID, that’s not a failure of policy. If it’s important, isolate yourself a week or two before you go. Air travel seems to have a low risk of transmission, so use precautions. But make those decisions. Prioritize what is important to you and do it.

In terms of policy, my every inclination is to have the CDC and state health departments give recommendations but to allow people to do as they see best. The policies that force people apart when they need to be together might be safer in terms of risk of transmission, but they carry other weights.

Darren Grimes @darrengrimes_

A son moves his chair next to his mother to comfort her at the funeral of her late husband, a member of staff says they’ve “been told” and asked to separate. It really does highlight the cruel lack of humanity and decency in the way in which we’re forced to live our lives today.

There has to be something in between hugging everyone mask-less at an event with hundreds of people and not letting a son comfort his mother. But these extreme examples are happening and they both have consequences. I’m not living my life either of these ways.

Disney Short: Canine Patrol

This is one of those absurdly adorable shorts that is leans overwhelmingly on wordless cuteness to win over the audience. Pluto is part of the coast guard assigned to patrol the beach (during World War 2) and he finds a turtle egg. When it hatches, a baby turtle emerges and makes immediately for the water. Pluto does his duty but it quickly becomes clear that his work is an end in itself and not in service of any reasonable goal.

This short is entirely without speech but works pretty well as a slapstick that evolves into a bit of a melodrama by the end. The character animation is particularly fun. It’s particularly interesting to see the animators work with the turtle character. They anthropomorphize him just as much as the action demands, sometimes morphing his flat paws into fingers, giving him extra-turtle flexibility in order to make the jokes work. It’s interesting to watch.