Halloween Update

It's Halloween - in the middle of a pandemic. I remember at the start of the year a meme going around talking about how great this year would be. Halloween on a Saturday, Christmas and New Year's on Friday... 

It's now cliche because it's true. We were so sweet and naive back then. Halloween, and my Little and I haven't even talked about going out to trick-or-treat. (Granted, she's getting older now and is less likely to do it anyway, but there's no point even discussing it.)

Halloween, and the election is Tuesday and we'll have to deal with whatever the fallout is from that. And we'll already be in November, with Thanksgiving and Christmas peaking around the corner...

And if we didn't hit 100,000 new cases yesterday we were awfully close. 

The Dakotas and Idaho are climbing fast, and have some of the most people who aren't willing to take the virus seriously. Part of me wants to think it'll be fine, because of course I do. We know a lot more about the virus now, treatments are better, it was never that deadly in the first place.

However.

I also remember what happened in Italy. And Iran. And New York. I know that the real challenge comes when the hospitals are overwhelmed, and I see no reason to believe any of that has changed.

I also know that the Dakotas, Idaho, all the rural places getting hit right now - they're rural. That is, they tend to be very far away from the nearest hospital. Even if the hospitals weren't overwhelmed, they're less likely to seek treatment or even get it in time, and you'd probably see an uptick in the death rate from that alone. 

We probably won't know the full effect until the pandemic is long over, but the excess mortality rate will probably be telling. It's not a perfect metric, none of them are. Not every excess death will come from covid (though people who can't get treatment for a heart attack in time because all the ICU beds are full with covid patients is still an excess death because of the pandemic, if not directly because of covid.)

It's also going to be somewhat inaccurate in that more people working from home means less driving, means less traffic accidents, means less deaths from traffic, etc. There's also the possibility that more people committed suicide (due to job loss, financial insecurity, mental stress, etc) than they otherwise would have. Doing the excess mortality rate doesn't really tell us how many people died because of the pandemic....

But it at least gives us some sense of which way the error falls. That is, if excess mortality is greater than the average in all the preceding years then we know that something is different, and it's most likely related to the pandemic. We can also estimate how much of that excess mortality is accounted for in our coronavirus numbers, and can see whether there are even more unaccounted for deaths on top of that. (or not). 

Every time I've seen someone do that sort of comparison it's pretty obvious that we're undercounting coronavirus deaths. Every. Single. Time. our current year has had more deaths than in the preceding years, and more than are accounted for by the coronavirus count. It's probably some mix of factors - people dying and having it called pneumonia or stroke instead of covid, people not seeking treatment in time because of the pandemic, the mental health concerns I mentioned above... not every single one of those unaccounted for deaths is going to be covid. But some portion of them are.

So anyways, it's here and it's hitting the rural areas... and maybe we'll get a vaccine or treatment in time, and maybe we won't. If things continue like this we'll probably reach a tipping point in public perception, I just have no idea when it will hit. 

In other news. Well. I don't remember if I mentioned a conditional job offer I got, well over a year ago before I started my current job?

Turns out I can't pass a polygraph to save my life. 

You'll have to take my word for it that I was telling the truth, because the polygraph indicated I wasn't. I am... unsure how to feel. Like, I know the truth, and I know I was telling it. I'm not sure why I didn't pass... I've heard people talk about 'Catholic guilt' before, and I had never really thought we were raised to feel especially guilty, but maybe there's some truth to it? I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day if we could sit and go through different variations of questions and really dig into why I was giving a false positive. (Or is it a false negative? Whatever.)

I suppose it's somewhat soothing, the first time I failed, when my friend said that most of the people she knows who have failed (she works with people who've had polygraphs before) are generally the more honest ones. I mean, it makes me feel better, but it also then raises concerns about what the heck the polygraph test is actually selecting for. 

It seems highly unlikely that I will wind up taking that job, which... is kind of a shame. I wanted to go after APTs, and I wanted to know more about the hidden cyber war we've all got going on. But there are other routes to go in infosec, computer security, etc... many of which don't require a polygraph. Probably most, tbh.

I will probably take a break for at least a week just to let things settle, then I'll start figuring out my next steps. Maybe a lateral move within my current company?