In Which I Almost Disagree With a Blogger Whom I Admire

 Kevin Drum is at it again.  To wit:

And while we're on the topic, can we please, once and for all, give up on the "COVID has changed life forever" genre? It hasn't. It's already obvious that things will return almost completely to normal over the next few months and that the experience of living through a pandemic has neither enriched our lives nor taught us to cherish our friends and neighbors even more. All it's done is make us cranky.

Thanks again.  If Kevin's right, this whole blog has been a waste of time, sort of.  That's not his fault, of course, but... sheesh.

"And while we're on the topic..."  What topic?  This apocolyptic quote comes from a post describing the changes in traffic speed on the northbound 405 freeway which runs near his house in Irvine, Orange County, outside of Los Angeles, California.  Lower speeds are bad, because that indicates traffic jams.  Speeds improved during the pandemic which, I suppose, is over in California.  Now Kevin notes that they're back to normal:

Looks to me like the traffic jams are two hours shorter now than in June of 2019.  Maybe the pandemic isn't over in California?  Or maybe....  Nah.   Never mind.  It can't possibly be that even one person who was commuting to an office in 2019 might have found a way to work from home permanently - and therefore no longer contributes to traffic on the 405.  Couldn't be.

'Loss Of Grey Matter' Is Probably a Bad Thing

For some reason, an outfit called BioBank scanned over 40,000 brains in the three years previous to the outbreak of the pandemic.  There's a story there somewhere, but not that I could find, even though I looked hard.

At any rate, some clinicians in the UK recently reported on a study wherein they re-scanned 394 of those folks, all of whom had contracted and survived COVID-19, and compared the before and after.  They also compared the re-scans to 388 previously-scanned subjects who did not contract COVID-19.

Guess what?  Yep.  "We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter..."  Most of the brain cell loss was in the "gustatory and olfactory" regions - the parts of the brain that control the sense of smell and the sense of taste.  They also found "loss of grey matter" in other areas of the brain.

The neurologists found little difference between the effects of mild and severe cases of COVID.  So if I'm reading this correctly, a consequence of being infected with the virus is a loss of brain cells.  Not a cute inability to smell or taste for a couple of days, but permanently dead brain cells - which are famously unable to reproduce themselves, and so when you lose them, they stay lost.

Around the world, about 164 million people have gotten, and survived, COVID-19 up to this point.  If this study is accurate (and, of course, "more research needs to be done," etc., etc.), hundreds of millions of people will emerge from this pandemic with permanent brain injury.  The effects apparently range from severe to mild, and it's "only" in the taste and smell centers, but - permanent brain damage.

This is a blog about the new world - what it might be like - and so we need to acknowledge that this is one of the things that the new world might be like.  But I think we also have an opportunity to say, again, "Don't get it."  It's not a joke, a hoax, a mere inconvenience.  Stay safe.  Get vaccinated. 

Geez.

A Coupla Things

A couple of things that would not, on their own, merit a post.  Not because they're not interesting; I think if they were verifiable and included lots of data and numbers, they'd stand alone.  As it is, they're anecdotal.  So - grain of salt.

But more importantly, both stories suggest that the pandemic has nudged some of us a little bit toward what Maslow calls self-actualization - the fulfillment of our potential and our satisfaction with who we are.  But I'll let you be the judge.

First, to follow up on the previous post, regarding jobs and businesses.  Axios summarizes a survey by Prudential Financial that suggests that as many as one quarter of the workforce will be looking for a new job once the economy settles down and employment becomes less risky.  The World Economic Forum tells us that "up to 40% of employees are thinking of quitting their jobs."  Why?

• Some workers may believe they need to change jobs to get a better grip on work-life balance or find a place where they feel more connected.
• Nearly half of employees surveyed by Prudential said they feel disconnected to their companies after a year of working remotely, partly because they are missing the benefits of interacting with people outside their teams and getting "face time" with higher-ups in the office. This "culture decay" can lead people to be more likely to hop to a new employer.

A year or more away from the focused stress of the office has been revealing to many.  

"University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson tells Axios, "People have had a little more space to ask themselves, 'Is this really what I want to be doing?'" So some are deciding they want to work fewer hours or with more flexibility to create more time for family or hobbies."

Imagine that.  When people had no choice but to balance life, family and work, many of them kind of liked it.  Who could have predicted that?  Many don't want to work for a company which forbids WFH; over 80% in the Prudential study said they would prefer to be able to work from home at least one day a week.  For more reading, the World Economic Forum article goes down some interesting rabbit holes.

Secondly:  You may remember the post on hair.  At that point (oh, the innocence!), July 2020, we thought the pandemic was waning and things were opening up (very prematurely, as it turns out).  Men whose haircut-every-two-weeks-forever routine had been disrupted, were getting haircuts again, after months of not doing so.  And some were liking the long look, and deciding to keep it.

In a footnote at the end I noted, "I have no idea how this plays out for women in hair salons."  Well, now I do.

In a strangely moving, and beautifully photographed article in The New Yorker, we meet a dozen or so women who have been coloring their hair since the first grey appeared - and then, during the last year, with stylists and beauty parlors out of business, the grey grew in.  And they liked it.

I say it was moving because I have a sense of what grey hair can mean to a woman's self-concept, from conversations overheard during a long life.  These women have chosen to embrace it - to acknowledge greying and the aging it represents - many with a palpable sense of joy.  See that in the mirror?  That's me!  Me!  

An 80 year old woman who had never shown her grey says,

“When I did have a hairdresser to cut my hair, she said, ‘Don’t you want to do the color?’ I said, ‘Finished. No more.’ I’m very happy.”

"I'm very happy."  And that's your good news for the day.

Good News, of a Sort

Blogger, which cradles this blog in its digital bosom, has a pretty good search function, as long as you use just one word - no phrases.  Last I looked, there have been 185 "The New World" posts, and no, I am not going to read each one.  I use the search bar (upper left - try it!  It's fun!).  I've been able to find what I needed - up until today.  

I recently came across an article about the number of businesses that have closed permanently because of the pandemic.  I know I wrote a post on that very topic last year.  There were numbers.  But I can't find it, so I can't do any comparison.  You're free to search for it yourself, and if you find it, could you let me know?

Anyway, the Business Insider tells us that in a normal year (i.e.: not 2020) about 600,000 businesses close permanently in the US (and I had to look elsewhere to find that about the same number of business are created in the same time period).  However, in this non-normal year-and-change, an extra 200,000 businesses - above and beyond the normal 600,000 - have closed, never to open again.

This is actually a good thing, according to the Federal Reserve, who provided the numbers.  Projections had actually been much higher, but government aid, including the PPP, has apparently made a big difference.  

Two hundred thousand is a big number, and represents many more jobs.  More math, more turmoil in people's lives.  But overall, not a huge effect on the economy, especially if we can stop dithering on the infrastructure bill and just pass it already.

I'm not going to wander into politics; economics is close enough.  I'm starting to think that the mice are right - by the end of the year (that long?) we'll all be back to normal, and the pandemic will begin to slide into memory and myth.

Back Again

Those of you who follow this blog religiously, and find themselves wasting away to nothing when days and weeks go by without a post*, are owed an explanation.  It is new world related!

We have a rental house on Cape Cod, and so does my wife's sister, about a mile down the road.  May and June are the crunch months, in terms of getting the houses ready for summer renters.  We have the harder job, as we live in the house much or most of the winter, whereas the house down the road is shut down.  We work during the weeks and visit on the weekends; my wife's sister comes down on the weekends, enjoys the good weather, welcomes her extended family, and visits.  This year, in addition to all that, my wife's other sister and spouse, and her cousin and two adult children, also came to visit.  Our two sons, one daughter-in-law, and The World's Cutest Grandbaby also enjoyed an extended visit.

Everyone was vaccinated**, but we met outside anyway.  Both houses have big decks.  We spent a lot of time visiting, largely because we had a lot of visiting to make up for.  We got together nearly every day the last couple of weeks, and had a grand time.  There was a lot of catching up to do.  For us, at least in our artificial bubble, the pandemic was over; we were living in the new world.

So between the visiting, and the long lists of jobs and projects (including building a split rail fence and painting three decks), there has been no time for much else.  Thus the hiatus.  However, we're back, here at "The New World."  Aren't you thrilled?

 * - This is a joke.

 ** - Actually, this is not true.  The World's Cutest Grandbaby, almost 2 years old, was not vaccinated, of course.  So it turns out that our "bubble" was a great example of herd immunity - she was protected because enough of us (in our case, all of us) were immune.

Malls, or Not

Those who know me may be surprised to discover that I almost finished a PhD program, if by "almost" we mean most of the coursework and none of the thesis except the topic.  It was at the University of Texas at Austin, and to keep body and soul together, I also had a full-time job at Northcross Mall in northwest Austin; I started there by pulling weeds and mopping floors, and eventually found myself supervising the maintenance and custodial crew.  Imagine that!  

I remember being fascinated by the structure of a mall - this was in the mid-70s, when malls were, if not brand new, at least newish enough to engender some awe.  Self-contained, without real connection to the outside - I felt like I might as well be on a spaceship heading for Alpha Centuri.  I was in and out of its systems and passageways and ductwork and mechanics all the time - it was my mall.*

But enough about me.  We're going to talk a little today about the demise of malls in America.  Normally, the demise of anything exhibiting such an obsessive focus on commercial capitalism would normally make me ecstatic; however, I do have a soft spot for malls.

But they're on their way out.  Although this was true pre-COVID, the economic upheaval of the last year and a half has greatly accelerated the process.  CNN reports today that the Washington Prime Group, which owns and operates over 100 malls across America, has filed for bankruptcy - and that  CBL Properties and PREIT, organizations which own another 130 malls, did the same last year.  All three indicated that it was unpaid rent, rent forgiveness, and the bankruptcies of major tenants that led to their decision to declare bankruptcy.

All three groups will attempt to keep their 230+ malls open (which I don't understand), and the article is full of phrases that make me think that no wealthy owners will be left behind.  But still, brick and mortar stores seem to be on their way out, and the pandemic has, it seems, accelerated a troubling trend into a certainty.

More on that soon.

* - It also had a skating rink.  If you've ever seen a forgettable movie called "Honeysuckle Rose" with Willie Nelson (Texas state law requires everyone within state borders to attend anything involving Willie Nelson), the mall skating rink they dropped the ice cream cone on was my skating rink, in my mall.  

Back to Normal?

 

“It appears that the vaccines are effective and the humans are returning to work. If things go as planned, we’ll have the run of the house by the end of the year.”

                                                                                                    from The New Yorker - 6/14/21

Back to normal?  Yep.  Even for the mice.

I remember when I was struck by the horrible thought:  "What if everything just returns to normal?"  Without any really significant exceptions (except "endemic"), we seem to be drifting slowly back to 2019.  

I guess that, quoting from the heading of this blog, we have "glimpsed possibilities of other worlds," paused a moment, and said, "Nah."