Phase 2

Love this photo that Kenny took this morning

Back on the bike after two days of sitting around looking at the rain and wind, and feeling at least a little bit recovered but also a little bit fatter. We were missing a couple of people this morning for the 6 am ride, but then Kenny Bell showed up, and down by the turnaround so did Steve J. Stepping out the door at 5:45 am was like opening the door to a sauna. When I went to turn on my tail light, nothing happened. As it turned out, water had gotten into it on Saturday and discharged the battery. At least that's what I hope happened. I have it drying out today and hopefully it will be able to be recharged tonight. The tropical storm had left us with a steady and fully saturated southeast wind. Fortunately it was blowing at something under 10 mph, so didn't cause any undue pain and suffering. It also seemed that nobody wanted to go very hard today, either. For some reason I felt better riding back into the wind than I had going the other direction. Apparently I need a 45-minute warm-up nowadays.

New Orleans, Jefferson, etc. are in Region 1

So the Mayor is set to announce that the city will move to Phase 2 on Friday. Frankly, it probably won't matter much because the people seem to have moved to Phase 2 psychologically a couple of weeks ago. It remains to be seen whether there will be a surge in COVID-19 cases. From what I have seen, it is impossible to see any significant increase that might have resulted from Memorial Day gatherings, so that's good I guess. Tulane's football team is supposed to be returning to campus next week, followed a week later by some of the other athletics teams. Candy's been working at her office downtown a few times a week, and I think they're supposed to all get tested for SARS-CoV-2 pretty soon. The school wants to test everybody who comes onto the main campus, and just got a $1 million gift to help pay for that. They are getting some additional equipment for the molecular pathology lab that should, I think, more than double the number of daily tests they can process. So for the record, here's what Phase 2 restrictions look like:

• Businesses reopened at 25% can move to 50% capacity with social distancing/face coverings. That includes restaurants, bars with food permits and museums.
• Bars can reopen at 25% capacity
• Outdoor pools will be also be allowed to reopen with proper social distancing.
• Houses of worship can operate at 50% capacity or 250 people (whichever is less)
• Movie Theaters can reopen at 50% capacity or 250 people (whichever is less)
• Gaming establishments (casinos, video poker) operate at 25% capacity. This is for Harrah’s, fair grounds, etc.
• Weddings, funerals, other gatherings limited to 100 people with one crowd control officer per 50 people (mandated by state fire marshal)
• All indoor live entertainment, festivals, fairs, amusement parks, concert halls and music venues will remain closed.

I've been tracking the 5-day rolling average of the ratio of positive tests to total tests in Orleans Parish, and it's been steady or declining for a couple of weeks. Of course, the problem there is that the populations that are being tested are changing. Initially, when there were lots of people getting really sick and dying, they weren't testing anyone who didn't show symptoms. Now I think they're testing pretty much anybody who shows up, so that would tend to decrease the proportion of positive tests to total tests, even if the level of virus circulating in the population wasn't decreasing. Still, throughout all of this there have been only a handful of people I know personally who have gotten sick with this virus. Of course I don't know a whole lot of people, so there's that. There is still no great therapeutic solution for people with this virus, although a few are in trials now, so I'd still rather not get it. Practically all of my social interaction has been on training rides, where I hope the risk is relatively low since we're generally outside in turbulent air, and sick people don't show up for group training rides. At any rate, should someone turn up sick it will be easy to do contact tracing with Strava's Flyby function!  We are starting to narrow down the possible dates for the Tour de La, and I guess it's down to either the last weekend in August or an early weekend in October if we want to avoid conflicts with other events that people are planning/hoping to attend.