End-of-the-Year Blues

 

Winter chills by dbolan_wir

During the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the last full week of the year is when I struggle the most as I naturally reflect on what happened and what may be coming. In 2020, a survey of the American Nurses Association—the largest such association in the United States—provided demoralizing results in regards to their “nurses’ knowledge of and attitude toward COVID-19 vaccine development.” Only 34% of their nurses said they would voluntarily vaccinate themselves against COVID-19. Around that time, similar polls with disheartening results for long-term care facility workers were also being reported. A few articles had already been written about how we have never been able to gain durable immunity against a coronavirus. Then, on December 30, 2020, a then-record 125,220 hospitalizations and 3,903 COVID-19 deaths had been reported in the United States. Meanwhile, on my Instagram feed, many of my friends and family members were outwardly pumped and looking forward to getting past 2020 but I thought, for what? This coronavirus pandemic wouldn’t magically end at the turning of the calendar. Instead of optimism for the year to come, all these pandemic-related metrics just made me downright depressed.

My Pandemic Experience as a Lymphoma Survivor

11th chemotherapy infusion, November 2009

October 29, 2022

As I write this, my mother is far away in our homeland of Perú, visiting family for the first time since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began. I felt emotional when I hugged her goodbye before her trip. I wish I could’ve gone with her. Since 2020, I have ached to return to my ancestral homeland. I want to see my extended family before it might be too late.

Through social media and personal anecdotes, I can see that most of my family—my immediate family and the vast one in Perú—are exercising less precaution now from getting infected with this virus. I imagine many of them think I am excessive with my preventative behavior—if they knew about it. (i.e., not dining indoors; not hitting up the bars; avoiding air travel; avoiding elevators when possible; wearing high-quality respirator masks in any public indoor space; pissing outdoors to avoid public restrooms; utilizing a carbon dioxide monitor to assess indoor air quality.) I know my own mother thinks I am too extreme with my precaution—that I’m reading too much about SARS-CoV-2 and the multitude of effects it has caused in our societies.

Today's Distressful Thought - November 20, 2022

My wife and I bought a new microwave today. Previous one lasted us ten years. Not sure which one's gonna last longer: us, or the microwave.

That's where I'm at as this year comes to a close and our American society, by and large, has decided we liked the way of life we lived in 2019 so much that we are unwilling to adapt to this virus and we will accept all the consequences which we don't want to hear about because we want to pretend this pandemic is over.

Today’s Distressful Thought — July 7, 2022 edition

Went to Food Maxx today. On my way to the entrance, I walked past an employee: a tall, stocky, light-skinned Latino in his teens. Looked like he was going to fetch errant shopping carts in the parking lot. Figured it might be his first job, or definitely one of his first jobs. Made me think of my son and when he’d have his first job. For the life of me, I can’t imagine it. Simply can’t. Not sure if it’s because I can’t imagine him making it to that age or that I can’t imagine myself being alive to see him at that age. Or maybe both of us won’t make it to that year? I don’t know.

Perrito

I was asleep in my son’s bed when you started pawing at our gate. I heard the lock rattle and clang against the gate latch. At first, in my fuzzy-headed state, I thought it was a cat prowling along our fence, but the rattling was too loud, so I got out of bed and stumbled through our dark bedroom. It was two-thirty in the morning. Was someone trying to break into our backyard? I grabbed a flashlight, then tiptoed past our kitchen to the backdoor. A window by the door was cracked open and that’s when I heard you, panting on the other side of the door. Oh, shit, I said aloud as my eyes flung open like a pair of roller blinds. I immediately knew it was you. I knew you had snuck into our backyard.

Warriors-Celtics NBA Finals Preview (and Prediction)

Well, holy shit: my beloved Warriors are back in the Finals, four wins away from winning another chip. It’s wild. We’ve been so unbelievably spoiled: 6 Finals appearances in 8 seasons! We may never see an NBA team go on a run like this again.

At the beginning of the season, I was cautiously optimistic about my Warriors. I thought our ceiling was nabbing a #3 to #6 seed in the depleted Western Conference with the Nuggets and Clippers both mired with injuries to a few of their star players. After we beat the Lakers in the season opener, I was all smiles because it never ever gets old beating the fucking Lakers or LeBron. At the time, most of us thought the Lakers would be title contenders, so I thought, one freaking game into the season, that finishing with a #3 to #6 seed was totally plausible. Back then, I thought a Western Conference Finals run, if lots of things went right, was in play, but I realistically didn’t think we’d be back in the Finals this season. I guess I wasn’t sure if we’d ever make it back to the Finals with Steph and Draymond aging and Klay coming back from two catastrophic injuries on the wrong side of thirty.

So making it back is unbelievably sweet. Reminds me of that charmed feeling I felt when this championship core made their first Finals appearance back in 2015.

The Warriors are a different team now. Back then, Steph, Klay, and Draymond were the youngsters trying to prove to themselves that they could be champions. Now we’re like the last Spurs title teams: the cagey, veteran team with abundant experience and championship poise you can’t fake. Now we’re trying to reclaim title glory, perhaps for a final time, while desperately trying to fend off a young, hungry, battle-tested, and supremely talented team.

What a matchup.

A Fan’s Notes: Two Games into the Warriors 2022 Playoff Run

This season has been such a wild ride with exalted highs and depressing lows and it feels like this team might be cresting to its peak, good lord. After cruising to a dominant 126-106 win in Game 2 of our series against the depleted Nuggets, us Warriors fans are riding high again. The 2022 iteration of our hallowed Death Lineup is running the hapless Nuggets off the court. Before this series began, I, like many others, cautiously but pragmatically picked the Dubs to win in 6, but right now it’s looking like a gentleman’s sweep at most. There’s no reason we can’t whip out the brooms on the Nuggets. When Steph, Poole, Klay, Wiggins, and Draymond hit the court and go Voltron against Denver, poor Nikola Jokić—probable two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić!—looks like Timofey Mozgov in the 2015 NBA Finals.

The Nuggets are done. They have no counter. With injuries to their second and third-best players, they lack the personnel to make a move to stymie these 2022 Warriors. Our path to a fourth championship with our aging core is to play the least number of playoff games possible so we’re not putting any additional and unnecessary mileage on Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Iggy so we need to not fuck around and finish these Nuggets off.

After a 33-32 first quarter against the Timberwolves, the Memphis Grizzlies took command and responded in Game 2 after stunningly losing their home opener. The Grizzlies are still the only team in the Western Conference I fear. I’ve seen Steph, Poole, Klay, Wiggins, and Draymond lay waste to the undermanned Nuggets, but I badly want to see that lineup pitted against stronger opposition, like the Grizz and the Suns. In 11 minutes of action, they have a preposterous offensive rating of 204.3 (meaning they would score 204 points in 100 possessions) with a defensive rating of 75.0:

With Klay’s shooting basically back to classic Klay form, Steph already looking like himself in his second game back from injury (32 points in just 23 minutes in Game 2!), Draymond being Draymond, Jordan Poole looking like Monta Ellis if Steph had mentored him, and Wiggins—a former #1 overall pick—capably filling into the last spot, any team in the league is gonna have big problems trying to stop this five-man lineup. Memphis and Phoenix have the depth and talent to try to counter, but no team has had the unenviable task of trying to cover Steph, a Steph-like clone (in Poole), and one of the greatest NBA shooters of all time. Yeah, good fucking luck with that.

The 64-win Suns just dropped Game 2 to the Pelicans, who squeaked into the playoffs courtesy of the NBA’s still-new play-in format, and a realistic path back to the Finals is looking better and better for the Dubs. I think the Grizz will prevail against the Wolves, and I think there’s no way the Warriors lose to the Suns if we get past the Grizzlies. Before the playoffs started, I had no fear of the Suns; less so now. If we’re mostly healthy, I think we can knock them off in a gentleman’s sweep. No disrespect meant to the Suns, but we’re a bad matchup for them. And man, it would be outrageously sweet to send CP3 packing so deep into the playoffs! Might very well be the last time he comes so close to winning a chip.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself and look east to see how the playoff action might turn out there. We’ve still got a lot of games to play.

But we’ve got 14 more wins to go.