Life Under Lockdown (VII)

Too late did I realise I should have titled these posts with parodies of the Star Trek movies. Oh well.

Is the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end ? Hard to say. As lockdown measures ease - or rather come screeching to a halt - it all feels very odd. Italy, for example, is still getting hundreds of new cases per day, yet has decided to declare itself open for business - including to the outside world in a couple of weeks time. I have honestly no idea how to feel about that. Do they now have some excellent track-and-trace system, or are they hoping it's going to go away on its own ?

Consider the Czech Republic. At its peak, it had 381 new cases per day. That's now down to ~50. Great !

But while that's nice and all, but that curve has only flattened. It doesn't seem to be dropping any further. And the R-number doesn't look at all encouraging either.

With the significant caveat that the final data point cannot be trusted as I'm
writing this early in the morning before any data has been released.

Also, the Czech restrictions are completely and utterly barking mad when it comes to masks. When pubs and restaurants re-open (admittedly with sensible rules closing them at 11pm, which basically rules out nightclubs to all but the terminally enthusiastic), people will have to continue to wear masks except while eating and drinking. Pools are going to re-open, including water slides (!), but you have to stay 1.5 m apart in the queue and... wear a mask. Right, cos that totally makes sense.

In some ways, life on the streets* feels like it's already back to normal. People are gathering outside pubs for a drink, and paying not the slightest bit of attention to social distancing. There's also a lot more casual disregard for mask wearing. Yet the number of cases shows little or no sign of rising.

* I mean when out and about, not sleeping rough.

But on the other hand, in some ways it's still not even remotely normal. Yesterday, for the first time in two months we met up with some friends to go for a walk in a park on the outskirts of Prague. Here's the extremely long escalator to the Náměstí Míru metro station, normally packed at all times :

This is still well in the realm of "sci fi dystopia" than "quaint European city". Trams are busier than they usually are, but the metro remains far below its usual capacity.

So what's going on ? Has the Czech Republic beaten the virus, or is the eye of the hurricane before the second wave hits* ? Unfortunately, the Google mobility report isn't very helpful as it currently only goes to 9th May :

* Hurricanes cause lots of waves, so this isn't mixing metaphors as much as I would like.

So it's really, really hard to get a feel what the current state is, or what's going to happen next. Czech colleagues tell me that the government does have a track and trace program, but it's not being promoted very much so it's unclear even to natives how much this is really being used.

Oddly, I'm not worried about the situation. Confused, certainly, concerned even, but curious more than anything else. Worried ? Not a bit - I think I spent all my reserves of worry on Brexit. But what the heck is going on ? Why is having 50 cases per day less dangerous now than it was two months ago, given that hardly any of the population has been infected ? Are we just being hugely premature, or is the danger really declining - either through testing/tracing, or some other effect like the weather (which is still a bit on the chill side) or hitherto unrecognised natural immunity ? It took a lot longer than I thought it would for the effects of the lockdown to have a measurable effect on the spread of the virus - will the same be true in reverse ?

I have no idea. We'll just have to continue to wait and watch the figures come in.


Today our institute re-opens as normal, which I'm a bit surprised by. During our weekly informal discussion last Friday, everyone agreed we could soon start to get back to the office. Hours later the director sent an email saying we'd resume from June 18th, which seemed a bit slow but sensibly cautious. This was quickly followed by a correction to May 18th, which to me feels too far in the other extreme. 1st June or thereabouts was what I expected, but oh well.

I'm writing this while doing some more early-morning remote observing from my flat. For my part, I'll go in to the office later today to take care of the necessary paperwork, but I'm not intending to go back as normal for the foreseeable future. Going in every once in a while, that's fine with me, the risk is minimal. Daily ? No. Not happening. Not only does it feel premature, but right now it's much easier for me to work from home. Switching back to the office would be a major disruption that I could really do without.

And more generally, I'd like to keep this going long-term, a la Twitter. For me, working from home is much more efficient than trudging to the distraction-ridden office : I have less travel time and get to choose when to divert my attention, which makes everything easier. By getting things out of my system, like checking social media feeds and what have you, without feeling guilty about it, I end up being a lot more focused throughout the day. Would I want to do permanent 100% home office ? I wouldn't say no.


As for life in general, this continues much as it has for the past two months. My daily routine is more-or-less as follows. We get up and watch the news for an hour or two, then I start observing for a while. Since observing is usually dull, I use this for some personal activity - typically, working on my interactive Arecibo model, which is coming along quite nicely. Still lots to do but a bit dent has been made in it already. Or I might write a blog post if I've got anything interesting to say, or just check social media. If I don't have observing, I sometimes indulge myself in a quick bout of Rome 2 Total War, which will get its own post and some point but suffice to say is hugely fun.

At around 9ish (later today since the observing is much longer than usual), I set to work proper. I've taken to writing myself micro to-do lists of tasks I want to get done for the week, which I re-arrange as things take more or less time than expected. This is a good way of forcing myself to get the little things done that need to be done (like sending boring but important emails to people who are becoming ever-more disembodied voices... email, admittedly, does not have anything like the impact factor that requests delivered in person do). It also means I allocate time to read papers, and I've made a respectable dent in the backlog of reading material I'd built up. And it stops me from focusing too much on any one thing, keeping some variety in day-to-day tasks.

Work at the moment consists mainly of recoding FRELLED. This is going really well. It's now much more robust to smaller data sets (good for hi-res ALMA observations) and can convert data between different velocity conventions (even between frequency and redshift) on the fly. It's also wayfaster to load and has the potential to do very different kinds of displays, making it more versatile and convenient. I think I've just about finished the axes-plotting code, which now uses the astropy module and is quite a lot simpler (and better) than it used to be. Pretty soon - this week, hopefully - I can start writing the GUI and make it into an actual useable product.

In other news... WE'RE GETTING A PUPPY. It will be another papillion, half-sister to Lulu, in October/November. Fluffy madness abounds. We've also trained Lulu to use an iFetch, which is a lot of fun.


So that's the current state of affairs. Will this be the last Life Under Lockdown post, or will we end up right back under quarantine in a few weeks ? No idea. I'll make a note to write something in two weeks regardless - by then, we should have at least an indication of which way things are going.