My Post-Covid Post

 I had been meaning to write a post-COVID post for a while, but

a) Are we finally post COVID? (I think so)

b) Are the long term affects of  COVID (society not health) known yet?

However, Lance wrote a post-COVID post (see here) which inspired me to do the same. 

Random Thoughts on COVID

1) COVID probably helped Biden win the 2020 election. If Harris  had won in 2024 then Biden winning in 2020 would have been a bigger change. 

2)  VAX-skepticism is now mainstream. This had not been a partisan issue before COVID though there were some people against vaccines. Oddly enough I think mostly on the far left: a back-to-nature thing. And VAX-skepticism has gone beyond COVID- some states are letting people NOT get vaccinated which has already caused a measles epidemic.

3)  I used to get more work done at school. Now I get more work done at home. COVID forced me to enter the 21st century.

4) People come into school less often.  There are faculty whose tenure cases I will vote on who I never met. To be fair, we do have a big department so (a general theme) COVID accelerated some trends that were already there.

5) Office buildings are less full as more people work from home. I've read that this may cause an economic crisis with people who borrowed money to build NEW office buildings. There are some plans to convert office building into residential, but that seems harder than it sounds.

6) My favorite place to have lunch, THE FOOD FACTORY closed down!

7) I used to mentor around 10 HS students a year (some of the Magnet schools in the area have a research requirement-though the students mostly ARE good and ARE NOT just there for the requirement).  It was a logistical issue to get them or their parents parking passes (also an issue of what their parents DO while I am teaching their kids Ramsey Theory). Now I do most of my mentoring on zoom. I mentored 32 in 2024 (in groups- so it was not 32 projects).

8) I can now hold extra office hours at night on zoom. 

9) Before COVID I was slowly switching from whiteboard to slides since I was recording lectures and my handwriting is not very good. Now MY ENTIRE COURSE is on slides. Clyde Kruskal points out:

 If your entire course is on slides then either  your slides are too dense or your course is too shallow.

He may have a point there. However,  in a small class I sometimes DO go to the whiteboard. I did it this semester in my Ramsey Theory course when I taught the Kruskal Tree Theorem (the set of trees under minor ordering is a well quasi order-by Joe Kruskal, Clyde's Uncle).

10) This is a bigger issue- is technology driving what topics we cover? 

11) COVID --> classes recorded and  slides that are available --> student attendance is down. Is this bad? Depends. If the students who don't show up actually keep up, its fine. If they hunt and peck through the slides so they can do the HW, that's bad. COVID might not have caused this problem,but it  accelerated it. The question of Post/Record or Not is an issue for a later blog. Pesonally,  I post and record.

12) School children who had to learn at home, probably bad for their future education.

13) Chem labs and Physics labs---do we have a class of chemists who did less lab work?

14) Some couples had to spend more time with each other than usual. This could be good or bad (for me it was good).

15) Some scenes on the TV show Monk (about an OCD Detective) now seem normal- like wiping off doors for germs.

16) Wearing masks in public is not considered weird.  It has gone back to being unusual, but it has not gone back to being weird. I know someone who found that by wearing one he does not get ordinary colds so he keeps wearing it.

17) By around May of 2020 there were about 100 or more novelty songs about COVID. I compiled a website of what I considered the best ones. Its part of my website of novelty songs, here. The three best IMHO are here, here, here.  OH- while getting those linked I found another awesome one: here

18) Some of the working-at-home or meetings-on-zoom was because of COVID. And some is technology (zoom). But some is sociological. Here is an example:

DARLING (on a Sunday in 2018): Bill, my back hurts and I don't think I should drive today, but I want to go to church. So... what  can we do?

BILL: Uh-OH, I think our church streams its service.

DARLING: Well pierce my ears and call me drafty! You're right! I remember that now. Great! You are my brilliant Bill!

BILL: And you are my darling Darling!

(We watched the service online and it was fine.)

 Suffice to say, thinking of going to church online would not take a brilliant Bill now. 

19) There is a down side: Meetings online, church on line, classes on line, one can get more distracted.

20) Faculty meetings are hybrid and I usually go on zoom. The Math dept has said that you HAVE TO GO in order to vote. They are NOT being Luddites- they see the value of in-person meetings. I do not know who is right.

If the meeting is on zoom more people are at the meeting.

If the meeting is in person then less people come but they are paying more attention. Or are they? People can be in person and still tune out, see here.

In the past someone could say I'll be out of town so I can't go to that meeting. That may be less of an excuse in the future. Maybe even now.

21) One of my wife's relatives died of COVID (before vaccines were available) and one of my friends lost his sense of smell because of COVID (before vaccines)

22) Some TV shows incorporated COVID into their story lines. For some the order a show is shot is different than the order they are shown, so you could have one with people wearing masks and COVID being in the background, and the next week nothing about COVID.  

23) I managed to still run my REU program - virtually- in summer 2020 and summer 2021. The research was as good as normal, and I could admit more students since I was not paying for housing, but the students had a much worse time because of the lack of social activities-- we did have some online but its really not the same.  (As for my REU program in Summer 2025-- there are other issues that I will discuss in a later blog post.) 

24) I used to see Lance about once a year when he came to Washington DC either on chairman-business or Dean-business, or NSF-business. I have not seen him in person since... hmm, I do not know. Might be since before COVID. I do see him on zoom once in a while. And whenever a theorist dies he gives me a call to discuss the blog-obit.

25) I am a homebody- I can stay at home for many days in a row. I watch TV, go on treadmill,  and watch TV  while on treadmill. I also  surf the web, read papers, think brilliant thoughts, and  make up slides. Other people feel a  need to GET OUTSIDE THE HOUSE. 

 26) My book club and my game night have both moved online and have not resumed being in person.

book club: Two of the people in it moved to Georgia so we thought we would not see them anymore. But then COVID hit and it's just so much easier for them and everyone else to have book club on zoom.This works pretty well. 

game night: One person is still COVID-shy (this may be reasonable in her case) hence does not want to go to gatherings. And during COVID 2 people from OUT OF STATE joined the game night.  So now it is always on line. This does LIMIT which games we can play, and some games are not as good online. 

27) Since Darling and I stayed at home so much we got out of the habit of putting our wedding rings on before leaving the house. We still have not gotten back in the habit. This may be the least important long-term effect of COVID.

28) (ADDED LATER INSPIRED BY A COMMENT) One of the comments asked (though assumed yes) that I am back to living a normal live. Thats mostly true except for the following:

I am VERY CAREFUL to not injure myself (e.g., no more jogging outside where a crack in the sidewalk could make your break a bone) because of wait times in hospitals during COVID- but it seemed like a good idea even post-COVID (if we are indeed post-COVID- the commenter challenges that). 

I do mask when I go shopping.

I test if I have symptoms (I had a mild case once.)

I get the flu vaccine- I didn't use to- but I got it since I didn't want to get the flu and THINK it was COVID.

Some of my friends and relatives don't eat in resturants anymore, or insiste I test before coming over, or... and I HAPPILY accomodate them.

The COMMENT is very good and I recommend everyone read it.