Welcome to the 16th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month, now with 166% more disease!

A year ago, I looked upon the approaching college football season with trepidation and wrote

I get that the players want to play. As a fan, I want to watch. But just because we *want* football doesn't mean we're in a position to have it. If you're old enough and smart enough to go to college, you're old enough not to let your wants hurt you. If getting this pandemic under control, if ensuring that we break the chain of infections to protect ourselves, our families, and our neighbors means we have to stay in our homes (or dorms) and forego one football season, we should do that, even if we don't want to. Any other behavior is just irresponsible.

Oh, how naive I was in my youth. Let me show you how much things have changed in the state of Georgia in one year. This is August 2020:

And this is where we are in August 2021:

source: worldometers.info

A year-to-year gain of +7,000 cases on a graph that is still climbing! To get numbers like that, you have to be actively trying!

Just like in 2020, I bought UGA football season tickets in the early spring under the assumption that this whole pandemic thing might be under control by fall. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Granted, some things have changed in a year. In theory, the players have all been vaccinated (right?), so they should be safe enough (from COVID if not brain damage). But can the same be said for the fans? There's a non-zero overlap between the group of people who love to watch live football and the group of people who would rather kill children than wear a strip of cloth over their faces.

I'm fully vaccinated and have been since May, but vaccination is no guarantee that I can't get the virus. (If you like to be depressed, Google "breakthrough cases" and "vaccine efficacy decline".) Since we have yet to see any sign that this latest pandemic surge is ready to turn any corners, it looks like I'll be missing out on another season.

I guess I should have spent that ticket money on a new, larger television. I may be in my bunker for a long time yet to come.

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My father was supposed to have surgery this past Tuesday to finally address complications resulting from his diverticulosis in October 2018. It didn't happen.

We've spent most of the past three years dealing with his heart issues, which made doctors uneasy about intestinal surgery. First an artificial valve, then a pacemaker, then another pacemaker.... Now that those are resolved, Dad was all set to finally put (most of ) his abdominal issues to rest. Unfortunately, things continue to work out not as planned. This time, the hospital had to cancel. It seems they ran out of room.

Late this week, Piedmont Hospital Newnan was forced to call in the National Guard for help against the latest surge against COVID-19. They didn't need that help back in January, so that tells you how bad this wave is. According to one report, they are booked to 125% of capacity, with the Emergency Room waiting room converted to temporary overflow COVID-patient holding.

(Side note: They say that most of those currently ill with the Delta variant weren't vaccinated. I wonder what the overlap is in Georgia between those who chose not to vaccinate and those who have no health insurance? I'd ask a high school student to draw that Venn diagram, but masks are optional in Coweta County schools, and I don't want to end up in the hospital myself.)

Both Dad and I like to think that one day he'll finally be fixed enough to avoid his current monthly visits to a urologist and surgeon. Maybe so. But the way things are going, it doesn't look like it's going to be any day soon.

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I am now fully vaccinated (2 shots + 2 weeks), which, according to the CDC, means that I can resume my life as "normal" before COVID-19 reached American shores. But what if I don't want to?

I *could* drive to my friends' houses, assuming that I can find gasoline (which is not in short supply but is suffering distribution issues after too many of my fellow Americans succumbed to panic following news reports of possible problems and bought up all the available toilet paper gasoline). But I've never been enthusiastic about leaving the house, and I find I am even less so now, even to spend time with people who I theoretically enjoy spending time with.

I *could* attend a movie, as I used to do before the entertainment world ground to a halt. But my favorite theater couldn't survive the economic downturn and is now boarded up. Besides, what's playing? The number one movie in America is Wrath of Man, and I get to see plenty of that on the evening news for free.

I *could* go to a sporting event, such as a minor league baseball game. But the thought of being surrounded by a crowd of people has always made me anxious, and that was back when the odds were low that the people sitting on either side of me could kill me with their breath. Football season doesn't start for months yet. I've paid for season tickets; will I be comfortable enough to venture forth by then?

Or I *could* stay under the covers in my bed in my basement, where the world can't reach me. I think I like that option best.

POSTSCRIPT: I just waded through many, many, many websites worth of evidence supporting — but, as they are quick to point out, not conclusively proving (because the Chinese government has been so thoroughly opposed to any investigation) — the theory that COVID-19 is a human creation that escaped a lab in true Michael Crichton-fashion. All the more reason to stay indoors, I think, where those mad scientists can't reach me.

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Good news for the NFL draft tomorrow night. From NFL.com:

But more importantly, do they want to hug him? No means no, Roger.

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I have received my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Update March 25: side effects have been limited to a very mild case of tenderness at the injection site (comparable to a bruise) and a moderate case of general ennui (though that might be standard operating procedure these days).

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I'll be spending Valentine's Day with the person I love most.

(Yes, that's the cutout of me that took my place at Georgia football home games during the unusual, COVID-abbreviated 2020 season. Well, for one game of it, anyway. UGA Athletics allowed FanCutouts only for the last two season games, the second of which was ultimately canceled when Vanderbilt could no longer field a healthy team. So even at only one game — a 31-24 win over Mississippi State on November 21 — that $55 piece of corrugated plastic spent more time in Sanford Stadium in 2020 than I did. Lucky guy.)

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The 2020 NFL playoffs: a perfect confluence of football, Covid personal protective equipment, and Star Wars.

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The year 2020 has been horrible in so many ways, but Christmas was not one of them.

Because the family was minimizing the amount of time we were spending with one another outside our households, I woke up at 1:30PM and opened presents — provided by friends and relatives who were much too generous — at 3 with just my Mother. When we were done we delivered pound cake and key lime pie to family elsewhere in town, and then came home to a ravioli dinner and a rerun of Jeopardy!. I finished the day watching a silent Hitchcock film and a spaghetti Western staring Toshiro Mifune.

I recognize that most people would disagree, but as someone who generally finds the holiday chafing, I think it was the best Christmas of my life.

Thank you, COVID-19.

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