Tag Archives: Covid

Blowing the dust off the last 16 months

The PolyBlog
June 23 2021

So, today was the day. I got my first vaccine shot, Astra Zeneca, back at the end of April. Two months later, today, I got my second shot, this time Moderna. I’m doubly vaccinated.

Quick overview of the process

My wife booked me in through the provincial system, and with lots of bookings coming available in the last week, she found me a spot in August, then July, then two in June. We adjusted the schedules slightly and I went in at 4:30 this afternoon. The site was a local sportsplex, and I know it pretty well. My wife has played curling there as well as taken some courses, my son has had multiple summer camps, we’ve done a few expos there, swimming lessons, even attended a friend’s wedding vow renewal ceremony. Best of all? Lots of free parking. But overall, my greatest “sense” of the place was volunteers out the wazoo.

I pulled into the lot, and there were three people near my entrance directing traffic, checking timing, etc. with another three on the other side managing another entrance. They directed me to the best place to park, someone directed me at the main door to the right hall (a curling rink area in normal times that I’ve been in lots of times previously for various functions), someone at the main door directed me to another greeter, and the greeter directed me to a specific registrar in a long line of registration booths with nobody at them at the time I arrived. I spoke to six different volunteers before I even spoke to the person who registered me.

They checked my health card and did my symptom screening, all simple, and then directed me to follow a series of dots that took me down a long line only to double back and come back about half way to meet another greeter. It’s set up to deal with a lot of people at the same time, but there was only me. As I walked by the ultimate greeter spot, and she was directing me down this long unused corridor, I joked, “See you soon!”. Once I went down and back, I was like, “Long time no see!”. She directed me to another traffic director who took me down a corridor of booths lined with see-through vinyl/plastic, like a trade fair, except in each booth there was just two chairs. One for you, one for a guest. And you wait.

A nurse comes along eventually with a cart with her tablet on it, any supplies she needs, etc., and then she goes back and gets her ergo chair and wheels it along the corridor too. When she’s done a row, she goes back to the first booth and starts over. There were about 12 “corridors” / rows I would say, and all of them double-sided, so call it 24 rows of booths with about 6 kiosks per row, about 144 in total. But 24 nurses doing the shots.

I didn’t have to wait long, we chatted briefly while she got set up, and found out they’re doing about 1900 a day, and yes, it does feel like an assembly line to her. Not surprising.

Pfizer shots were what was booked, but we’re low on supply in the province right now, so everyone is getting Moderna. Fine with me, no real difference so far in outcome.

What did surprise me was the feeling as it went in. I know it goes into the muscle and I made sure I relaxed the arm in advance. But the whole time it was “in” the arm, I could feel the sting. I’ve had that with multiple things recently. Bloodwork that I did about a month ago was the same…normally you feel it going in, but once “in”, it kind of stops stinging until it comes out. I mean, you know it’s there, but it doesn’t “sting”, usually. However, for me, the bloodwork stung the whole time the needle was in. I thought it was something unique to the bloodwork but today was the same. The needle was in my arm maybe 15 seconds in total, but I felt it sting the entire 15 seconds. Nothing problematic, just made me nervous for Jacob. He hates needles and I’m hoping he doesn’t experience the same when he gets his second shot.

After it was over, I had to do the standard 15 minute wait, so over I go to the waiting area. Which is also an extra registration area? A little confusing, but whatever. Anyway, I finish my 15 minutes, walk up expecting to just show my form and leave, but no, I have to basically be “deregistered” and for them to complete the receipt process etc. Another two volunteers had pointed me to the waiting room, and then two more were directing “deregistration traffic”.

The first one told me to go to booth 1…I took about ten steps, passed volunteer 2 who told me to go to booth 4. Umm, okay, whatever. The guy at booth 4 heard both and was kind of shaking his head, and said, “No problem, I’ll take you here.” Except he couldn’t find me on his list. I gave him my health card thinking it might be a misheard name or something, but no, my file wasn’t “closed”. So he tells me to sit back down, and he’ll go check, but his question to me is, “Do you know where you got your vaccine?”. I swear to god, my first reaction was to say, “umm…here?”. But I over-rode it and told him which booth I had been in so off he want to find the nurse to get her to properly close my file, etc. He’s gone about 10 minutes. He comes back, I’m sitting about 10 feet in front of his desk, and he says in a pretty loud voice, “Okay, Paul, I’ve got you set up and you can come over now and we’ll finish this.”

I join him at the desk, and about 10 seconds later, one of the two traffic volunteers comes over and says in a big embarrassing voice, “You knowwwwww, we have a line here.” The registration volunteer helping me is like, “Umm, yeah, we know. He already went through it. Thanks.” Anyway, he is able to close the file, all good, I pick up my paperwork, about to leave, and he says kind of jokingly, “Don’t forget…we apparently have a line.” He thought the other guy was hilarious.

I pass four more volunteers to get out to the parking lot, and three more as I exit the lot. Wow, that is a LOT of volunteers.

My emotional reaction

When I had dose 1, I wrote about the fact that it seemed anti-climactic in some ways. I thought I might be super emotional, and then convinced myself it was more about dose 2. I also hoped that they would have one of those little kiosks set up where you could take a selfie to say, “I got dose 2!”.

There was nothing set up, and I had no overt emotional reaction at all. But as I walked out of the hall, I did have a physical one.

I got a bounce in my step. And I suddenly had a craving for something to “mark” the change. Something to blow the dust off the last 16 months, something memorable that I would recall in years to come. Something different, but not some ritual or anything. And then it hit me.

I wanted accompanying music. I wanted fanfare. I wanted a song that was not something cheesy like “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang or “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves, although the sentiment would work. I wanted something rarer. Something a bit more like “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. Something I wouldn’t necessarily hear on the radio very often but maybe in the future I’d hear it and think about this as a watershed moment. A turning of a corner, so to speak.

I wanted something that I could crank loud in the car, would get my toes tapping, and honestly, something with a bit of a harder rock feel, not pop. Out of the blue, I had a craving for a very specific song.

I like the song. I think somewhere in my old CD collection I even had the album it came on just for that song. But it is a song from ’73, from Scottish rock band Nazareth. It is not a song I came to myself, it is very much a product of having a much older brother who had all the 70s music there was in album and, yes, even 8-track. I think I even heard this for the first time on 8-track.

There was only one song that would suit my mood and meet my need. It’s Razamanaz.

Since 4:00 p.m. today, I’ve probably listened to the ’73 version over 20 times. Each time, it jazzes me up. It is my “end of COVID isolation” anthem. I know, I know, we’re not there yet, but I needed a song, and this one is mine. I will never hear it again in my life and not think of how I’m using it to blow the dust off my life.

Even my wife noticed, wondering where this upbeat, energetic, finger-snapping, shoulder and head-bobbing husband came from when we were running errands afterwards.

I’m fully vaccinated. Willingly stabbed twice. If that isn’t a reason to turn the stereo up to 11, I don’t know what is.

Simple medical appointment, complex reaction

The PolyBlog
May 22 2021

I have diabetic issues, which is a fancy way of saying that my bloodwork bounces around between not-diabetic, pre-diabetic, and diabetic. I have trouble saying I’m diabetic at times because I feel like a bit of an imposter saying it. Like I’m over-claiming my issues. But what it means is that I should be doing regular bloodwork to check my A1C numbers.

When COVID hit, I was a bit behind on my bloodwork and was due for a new “update”, partly as the resident doctor I was normally dealing with at the family centre was no longer available, and I’d be getting someone new. We postponed until her arrival, but by the time I was set to do an appointment, COVID had hit, and my bloodwork got pushed. I did basic stuff over the calendar year, but nothing for my bloodwork. TBH, I didn’t really want to … the idea of going to a lab when I didn’t “have” to seemed almost scary risky.

Then I had all my leg issues in January, we agreed we should do some new labwork, but they wanted me to be off all my antibiotics and other related stuff so it would be clean, and my mental load was already high enough at the time. So I was going to go in March, just in time to have complications with my leg wound and another round of antibiotics. Fast-forward to April, and the doctor wanted me to do a totally different set of labs anyway, as she wanted to screen for mental health stuff too.

Enter the scheduling problem

I went online to book an appointment at a lab near me, and the first available date was almost 4w away. This was just after the most recent lockdown happened. I searched around, found another lab in the same group which has really good online results that I like, and I booked for about 2w later. All good. Way over in Gloucester somewhere, but whatever, it was the earliest available anywhere in the group of labs.

Fast-forward again to the day of the labwork and I woke up feeling a bit off, almost feverish. It didn’t seem like a great risk, and I was still having a bit of anxiety about going. Sure, I don’t like bloodwork normally, but this was more just about going for a health appointment to a general lab. I assumed, 14m into the pandemic and everything being appointment booking, that it would be relatively painless to go, but still.

I cancelled and rebooked, and my new appointment was this past week on Thursday. I prefer to do these types of appointment first thing in the morning if I can, but the available times were at 1:00 p.m. so would go over lunch. Great.

The appointment

I needed to head out about 12:30, and about 12:15, I grabbed the requisition that I had printed weeks ago, and my phone which had the address. I had never been to the lab before, so I wanted to look it up on my phone app to see the best route. Checked the address. Huh.

I mentioned above that the lab was in Gloucester, which is about 20m away. Well, the FIRST lab was there. Apparently when I rebooked, I had decided that going all the way to Gloucester was overkill, and I would have to wait longer in the booking system but I rebooked in my neighbourhood. I had absolutely no memory that I had done that.

Don’t get me wrong, once I saw where it was, I remembered thinking that I might as well go to the one close to me, but if you had asked me that morning on pain of death, I would have said I was booked in Gloucester. No doubt in my mind AT ALL. In fact, if I had known already where the lab was, I would have hopped in the car and driven straight there without checking anything. It was just that it was my first time going to that location, so I had to look at my phone to see what address I had saved in my calendar. If I had printed out the instructions the first time, I would have just grabbed them and drove. All that way for nothing. Huh.

Okay, moving on, I had a bit more time to kill, went over and entered the building. I was expecting some sort of “new procedure” to get registered but I wasn’t expecting chaos. There was a woman standing in the doorway, with her back foot kind of holding the door open while she took people’s forms and health cards. There was a pseudo line up of about 5 people waiting to hand her stuff, and another 10 people or so around the large hallway just hanging out, obviously waiting. I had thought, and I even thought I had read this on their site, that they weren’t doing “walk-ins”, only appointments. Nope, they were fully open for business. The only real difference from before to now was that they weren’t letting people wait in the same waiting room inside. They had to be “outside” the lab. Umm, okay.

I wasn’t really thrilled, I had expected extremely limited contact with people, and here was a 15-person queue with no indication where to sit/stand/wait, etc. Some were standing too close for my comfort, and I moved farther away. But that’s a lot of people hanging out in a hallway for extended periods of time.

Now, yes, I had an appointment, and after the woman went back in to register all these people and hand over the forms and health cards, I was the first person she called when she came back out. My appointment was at 1:10, I got there about 1:05, through the line about 1:11, and they called me into the waiting room (where about 3 other people were, all the other chairs removed) around 1:18, and then called me back to the cubicle about 1:25 or so.

One of the tests the doctor asked for is not covered by OHIP apparently, so I had to pay $13.00 for something, which is a bit unusual I guess, but whatever. When I got to the cubicle, there was nobody there, just me, and one person basically doing all the blood work. She was going from cubicle 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 back to 1. When I got there, she was doing blood with someone in cubicle 3, so I had to wait for her to do 4, 1 and 2 before she got to me. Not long, maybe another 15m or so, but the whole time I was thinking, “What the heck am I doing in a small enclosed space for 15 extra minutes when I don’t need to be here?”.

My anxiety level went up the whole time I was waiting. The initial COVID screening amounted to the equivalent of “Do you feel sick or have you travelled?” and that was about it, so it’s not like I was feeling “safe” or that someone else might not have been sick and in the same airspace before me.

Literally, my skin was crawling. I wanted to just leave. I need the bloodwork, and my brain was likely over-reacting, but I kept thinking, “And this is what it is like when I made an APPOINTMENT?”. I noted when I was leaving that the waiting list (a digital one nobody in the queue can see because it’s in the old waiting room, not the hall) showed intake waiting period of 72 minutes, which was definitely NOT shared with anyone registering anew. If I had waited 72 minutes + another 20-25 to get through the bloodwork, I would have been unhinged.

Plus, there was something odd with my regular bloodletting. Because of my size and fatty arms, they can’t do blood in the crook of my arm, it’s just easier to do it on the back of my hand. Lots of people can’t do that, it hurts, but it’s minor compared to multiple stabbings in the arm. So we do the right hand, she needs 5 vials, and normally after the initial needle is inserted, it doesn’t hurt. This time, it hurt the entire time the needle was in. At the end of vial 3, my vein said “Okay, I’m done”, and closed up. It clotted fast. It’s never done that before.

She switched to my left hand, started in, got another vial, and that vein closed up too. She was puzzled, I could tell.

And it makes me wonder if it could somehow be related to the AZ vaccine…there are risks of people having blood clotting problems. Is it possible that even without bigger issues it causes faster clotting generally? I have felt more sluggish since I got the vaccine too, 3w ago. Who knows? I’ll mention it to the doctor when we review my bloodwork results. I have my results, my A1C is a bit higher than I would like, back a little in the actual diabetes range, but still lower than my highest and I’m surprised considering my eating and exercise habits of the last year.

When I was leaving, I thought about taking a picture of the waiting list and then letting people outside in the hall know their status, a “nice” shared group experience and instead I just bolted. I just wanted to go. We had all bonded briefly in the hallway when new people showed up and wondered “what do I do? where do I stand?” when the greeter wasn’t actually there. But nobody was looking to make friends, we were just helping out because there was no signage and nobody wanted others being stressed as we compensated for the poor setup.

Understanding my reaction

I’ve been thinking about my reaction since I left. I was in such a rush getting out, I paid for my parking and then tried to throw the stub to get out of the lot into the garbage can and just take the receipt. I wasn’t in a fog so much as I just felt “icky”. Like I needed to go home and take a shower.

But as I reviewed the experience, it wasn’t simply the chaos. Or the waiting. Or the blood-letting. Or the time.

I think what bothered me most was that after 14m of a pandemic, THIS is what they have in place? Really?

I was expecting streamlined, organized, something resembling intelligent delivery design.

Instead, I had a greeter holding the door open with her foot while she took forms from whoever happened to step up next. Every other medical thing I have done in the last 14m was handled better for COVID. This was a shit-show.

Joining the herd

The PolyBlog
April 25 2021

As of today, we have completed 1/6 of our household steps towards vaccinated immunity. With the recent drop in age for the AZ vaccine, my GP’s office had sent out a broadcast email to patients over 40 to say “Come and get it!”, like ringing a dinner bell. But my profile isn’t completely typical, so after reading a bunch of stuff online, I reached out to my GP to check on whether the AZ vaccine was right for me and that my curation had been correct.

Efficacy concerns

Generally speaking, of course, the recommendation is to go with availability over efficacy rates. Currently, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about rated to 90-95% efficacy, while AZ was down at 70%. Those are the initial efficacy rates against contraction, but all three of course are almost 100% effective against serious illness leading to hospitalization or death. In other words, even if you get sick after that initial efficacy number, your second number is generally 100%.

So what’s the issue?

I’m on the cusp of pre-diabetic / diabetic. When the three available vaccines were tested, they had very few people in the sample group with diabetes, and when they did, they usually weren’t separated out between Type 2 (controlled with lifestyle or medication) or Type 1 (requiring insulin shots). I would be near to the Type 2 category.

For the results they DO have, the numbers drop for efficacy — anywhere from 15-25% lower than that of the general population. Again, though, that’s the efficacy rate against contraction. Very few of the studies reported had reliable reporting on the secondary efficacy, but it LOOKED like 100%.

Yet you can only get one vaccine type, and I was reasonably sure I was good to go with the AZ one, but as I said, I wanted to be sure. I booked my appointment and then reached out to the GP for a quick consult before getting it.

My questions broke down into three steps:

a. As a near type 2 patient, was there anything that suggested I should wait for Pfizer over AZ? Was there anything with my health that said “wait”? As expected, and as hoped, she confirmed that the second efficacy number is close to 100% still for AZ for diabetics, and thus, yes, availability is more important than initial efficacy.

b. My household has an atypical profile with all three of us in the house having higher-risk profiles individually. Did that change anything in the calculation? I was mostly worried that I could still contract it with the lower rate and transmit it to them. But “some” immunity faster is still better than efficacy rates, as expected and hoped. It might even strengthen the rationale, although it is a double-edged sword, of course.

c. The last question was one I found no information about anywhere…some disease profiles suggest that the person should NOT wait 4m for the second dose but should get it sooner rather than later. Certain auto-immune diseases for example are being recommended to get Dose #2 as soon as possible. While AZ is being rolled out for dose #1 now, and the second in 4m, I wanted to know if anything in my personal or household profile changed that calculation. Put bluntly, if I could get Dose #1 of AZ now but Dose #2 wasn’t available for 4m, but I could wait a month for Pfizer but get 2 doses a couple of weeks apart, then waiting might get me “completed” for dose #2 faster. Diabetes didn’t seem an obvious candidate to avoid the waiting period, but as I said, you can only get one dose. I didn’t want to find out after the fact that I should have gone another route.

In the end, I was all clear. I was expecting to be, sure, but I did want to be sure. It’s too important to rely on Dr. Google for this one.

The shot

I confess, I don’t often think of it as a shot. Sure, I say “flu shot” like everyone else, and my “COVID shot”, but I would never use it as a verb. A couple of friends posted about being shot and I was like, “Huh?”. Because for me, it is very clearly a stabbing. 🙂

I booked the appointment through my GP’s online site and was relatively shocked to see that they had Sunday appointments available. I didn’t click as soon as I got the first notice, I wanted to check a few things, but I was able to book on Thursday for Sunday’s schedule. Pretty quick overall.

I arrived, parked in the lot next door (free on weekends!), and entered the hospital (the clinic is in the first floor of a LT care facility). A security person directed me to a COVID screening form, a receptionist checked me in and gave me a new mask, a nice escort took me to an available nurse in one of the examining rooms, and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Cathy, the nurse, did a simple run-through of who I was, checked my contact info so I could get receipts and follow-up notifications, screened me for a bunch of Qs again about reactions or likely reactions to a vaccine, confirmed a few details about the vaccine itself (where I was like, huh? Oh right, yes, she should tell me what she’s injecting, I suppose). Small needle, go to the waiting room for 15 minutes.

While I was in the waiting room, I got the notification from the scheduling portal for my second dose. They also told me orally that it was assuming they got the vaccine then, and nothing changes to either move it up or back. It’s an administrative booking, basically, more of a reservation than any guarantee that they’ll have a dose available then or that it will take that long.

I killed my 15m and left. About 30m after I got my shot, the Ministry of Health sent me a confirmation email as my immunization record.

My mental / emotional reaction

I said to Andrea and Jacob that I might cry when I got it. So much stress, and here’s a small light at the end of the tunnel. And as I walked towards the hospital, I did feel quite emotional. All the way through it? Nada. Just process.

When I left the building, I let the experience flow into me, and while I felt like I *could* react more for a release, I wasn’t feeling like I needed it. I was fine. Ho hum even.

I found it a bit odd, actually. I wanted to ring a bell, smash a pinata, get doused in confetti, have someone solemnly say, “I now pronounce you vaccinated”.

But ten minutes after I left, I was back in my ongoing mindset. The NY Times had a great article this past week about the new term for those who are stuck between normalcy and not-quite-depression — it’s called languishing. And it almost precisely captures what I have been feeling for the last two months as I recovered from my leg wound and rebuilding my website.

Now that I’m done the rebuild, I feel almost out of sorts. There’s no fanfare for finishing THAT either. I feel like there should be a reward for myself, some milestone to celebrate somehow, and yet here is perhaps one of the biggest milestones of the last 14m, and I was already past it and thinking, “Hmm, what’s for dinner?”.

Right up until Andrea hugged me at home. Then I lost it. I could probably lose it again right now, while I am writing this, if I let myself. The built-up energy, the tension in my heart and mind. Yet it isn’t honestly about me, not really. Sure, I’m scared like everyone else, and with my health, there’s a good chance that long-term ventilator use would not end well if I was hospitalized.

But my biggest worry is about Jacob and Andrea. I am their biggest vector. Jacob has almost no other vectors BESIDES me, actually. And the thought of my getting sick and exposing them, or leaving them without my support, is scary AF.

The journey isn’t over

Earlier today, I received my feed from GoComics.com and I loved the post by Tim Campbell (here). In the comic, it shows a person running a race and crossing under a banner held up by two vaccine needles. The caption reads, “Keep Going. This is not a finish line.”.

And it’s not, in oh so many ways. But let’s cut it to two.

First, the obvious one, just because I have a single dose, or even if I had a double dose, I still have to keep social distancing and wearing a mask. It doesn’t change my life until we get closer to herd immunity.

Second, the bigger issue? It’s one dose of six that my household needs. I need another dose of course. Plus Andrea is consulting with one of her doctors on her best way forward, similar to my discussion above. In the meantime, she’ll take whoever offers her an appointment first, and she’s registered multiple places. With 2 doses needed for her.

But Jacob is turning 12 in May, and probably by the fall / early winter, there will be options for people down to the age of 12. I chatted with him recently about how he feels about it, and while he has no strong views about the vaccine or not, the abstract doesn’t really resonate with him vs. the practical issues of going to school or being virtual. The bigger issue for him is that he doesn’t like needles. I told him he needs to get comfortable with the idea because I don’t know of too many reasons we wouldn’t do the vaccine for him if it’s generally available. 🙂 Maybe he can race his cousins although a couple of them might have a leg up, having a doc for a mom. 🙂

So where does that leave me? A tad bit more hopeful than I was this morning. I’m still languishing.

But I’m at least languishing with a small hole in my left arm. I’ve taken my step towards joining the herd.

Articles I Like: It’s 2022. What Does Life Look Like?

The PolyBlog
July 13 2020

The New York Times has a great article from David Leonhart where he tries to predict what life in 2022, a scant 18 months from now, will look like in America. He assumes no vaccine arrives this year, and that we continue to see waves of outbreaks and lockdowns.

From a business perspective, he talks about which business models will likely prove less than resilient in weathering the storm. Some likely casualties are those who were already vulnerable businesses…newspapers losing advertisers, traditional department stores (Eatons, Zellers, K-Mart, WoolCo, Target have all bit the dust in Canada long ago) losing out to Walmart and Amazon, and malls closing when they lose their department store anchors.

While universities in Canada are unlikely to fail, the same budget pressures are hitting them as they are in the U.S. — enrolment stability, cancelled summer programs, residence and food service fees gone, parking revenue gone, and provincial and federal budgets are taking huge beatings. I follow Alex Usher on Twitter, and he has been actively watching which universities are planning for full virtual classes in September and which ones were hoping for some sort of mid-semester return.

I was a bit surprised Leonhart uses such pedantic examples and doesn’t spend more time on the hardest-hit sectors like health in general, agriculture and food processing, aviation and tourism, and restaurants. He notes in the intro that they may disappear, but there are entire sectors that present far more disruption to human life than the loss of paper newspapers, loss of department stores and malls, or disruption in higher education options.

In the area of habits, Leonhart identifies the importance for white-collar workers that working from home, working remotely in general, has been successful, and I couldn’t agree more. Education from home is less successful, but I love the quote from Microsoft:

As Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said this spring, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

Where I work in government, we have accelerated our IT plans by 2-3 years for some major projects. Things that would normally have started in 2022 or 2023 and likely would have taken 1-2 years? They’re already 50% implemented or more. Doubling bandwidth, new platforms for collaboration, massive increase in mobile infrastructure for workers with huge increases in laptop deployments. We’re one department, in one government, in one country, and we literally have bought thousands of new laptops to get people connected from home. How are manufacturers keeping up with IT demand? The short answer in some cases is that they are not keeping up. If you were looking for video cameras in the first few weeks of WFH, they were scarcer than bread yeast. Months later, stocks are returning but only because everyone already has a webcam somewhere in their digital ecosystem. Many are just using their phones. I stopped by one of the computer stores last week, and some of their shelves are looking pretty empty, particularly for larger monitors. Not enough to declare a shortage, although again, that’s partly as they’ve restocked.

I’m less enamored of Leonhart’s predictions for the US political realm, not with a fall election hanging in the balance. Trying to do similar predictions for Canada without a set election date is probably equally useless. The Liberals are in a minority situation, and will likely to continue to be, as long as the NDP keeps getting what they want on various files. But they can only go to that well so many times before the Liberals can’t afford it, and the alliance / coalition / politician’s agreement falls apart. Just as with Leonhart’s opening question — how long does this last? — the political outcomes will be shaped by the health outcomes. Where I find Leonhart’s rationale lacking when he argues for sweeping roles for government in the U.S. if Biden wins is in the reality he talked about for higher education. Government budgets are taking a sh**-kicking and while they can literally print money, at some point, the bill comes due. Spending at current levels is not even remotely sustainable. And if you want to spend your way out of a recession / depression, eventually you also have to make serious cuts to government either during or afterwards.

Nevertheless, I hope there are more prediction articles I like these. If we crowd-source a couple of thousand of them, we might even approximate a forecast or come up with a to do list for contingency planners.

Articles I Like: The Waves Of COVID-19 Insurance Claims

The PolyBlog
May 20 2020

Since I once loved the law enough to do my first year of law school, there are occasionally articles that attract my interest that most people would skip over. One I saw this past week on Above The Law was about insurance claims in the wake of Covid-19. The author noted that the topic isn’t interesting to everyone, but a factoid at the beginning caught my attention:

But I heard something interesting about insurance last week that I just had to share with you: Some European insurance companies are now seeing fewer automobile insurance claims than at any time since World War II. (On second thought, maybe my definition of  “interesting” and yours don’t match up precisely.) That gives you an idea of what the pandemic has done to travel across a big swath of the world.

The Waves Of COVID-19 Insurance Claims | Above the Law

But the rest of his article is pretty interesting too, as he noted what he sees as three likely waves of insurance claims:

  1. Travel — in the OP, it argues this one has already passed with people filing claims related to cancelled trips, etc. in the wake of the shut-down. I’m not sure about that, as lots of claims were denied, and now lots of people are fighting about it still.
  2. Property and business interruption claims — the OP notes that most insurance of this sort is geared towards catastrophes that cause property damage and therefore the business has to shut-down. It isn’t clear if insurance policies will cover a non-physical shut-down and the fighting is just beginning. What’s really cool is how it will play out because some of the shut down was legislative so they may order insurance companies to cover the losses!
  3. Working from home claims — cyber insurance for future losses from unsecured operations, employment insurance offered by companies if the shutdowns result in closures, workers’ compensation if employees become ill at work or injured at home, and if companies do shut down, then do they have options for bankruptcy or trade credits beyond the original business disruption insurance?

Looks like a fascinating area for the future…but for me, I think they are missing a huge area that is going to show up fast. Are any of the insurance companies going to try and balk at paying life insurance claims if someone didn’t practice social distancing i.e., they contributed to their own demise?