Summer is finally over. It is the evening before elections and it's raining. We are electing the local leaders -- the various city mayors. There is no school for the first two days next week because the schools are voting centers here, and they need to be cleaned to allow people to vote safely. Voting by mail is not trusted here.
Our county -- the Timis -- falls in the yellow scenario, which splits school children in two groups. One group goes to school each week and the other stays at home and attempts to connect to class via the internet. Then they switch. The children and the teachers wear masks, and the school hours range from 8:30 to 13:30 with some extra time online. The class size does not matter. David has 15 colleagues, and Edward has almost 30. Yet each group of kids is split in half as if they were the same size. It takes me a long time to get Edward to do his homework, but I hope we will enter into a routine at some point. Each week a new schedule is assigned, and both the children and the teachers are confused. They have no books because they used to be passed on from the previous generation and now the books are in quarantine for two weeks until they will become safe to use. The parents try to be supportive. My goal is to get Edward to do his homework, and to keep him off the computer and off the internet as much as possible.
The children bet on when schools will close again. We could go from the yellow scenario to the red scenario soon after elections or from the yellow scenario to the green scenario if the number of cases drop. Red means all classes would be online, and green means all students would go to school in person if there is room for them to obey the social distancing rules, and parents are willing to buy new seats and refurnish classrooms to make kids fit. Given that fall is coming, a switch from yellow to red is more likely than the switch to green, but they say it will depend on the number of positive tests. Most universities in Timisoara are already offering only online classes this semester.
Everyone is angry and afraid. The anger stems from the measures taken against COVID-19. It's not the mask wearing that disturbs. It is the fear that our freedom is slowly being taken away again, and that it's happening world-wide with no place to escape to. The number of deaths are still largely at noise level - well under 10% of the usual daily number. In Romania, about 800 people die every day, and COVID-19 has taken somewhere between 30 and 60 lives a day. This means between 1 and 2 people die daily in every county -- if one averages over the number of counties in Romania. So, the numbers are not large, but they are espected to increase this fall. Personally, those we know who tested positive to COVID-19 were either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms. My mother is a doctor, and many of her friends and colleages must have been exposed to the virus. Yet, luckily, we know nobody who suffers from side effects. The number of positive cases still largely depends on the number of tests, and has large error bars that do not seem to be well estimated.
The borders are still open and some planes fly. Andy went back to the UK last week, and David wanted to go to Germany to see his dad. They had not seen each other in a year, and Mihai repeatedly mentioned a visit of a few weeks. So, Andy extended his travel with a day and increased the price of his ticket to take David along. While life is still really hard with my father being paralyzed and the children and the animals and so many other things to manage, it became slightly easier without a moody teenager around. Although, we do miss David, we know he is having a good time and hopefully improving his German while doing his homework and participating in classes online. They've been watching the protests in Germany from a safe distance. I hope they will not escalate. Andy is in quarantine at his apartment -- busily writing a propsal. I sometimes wish my life was that simple again or that I had the time and energy to write about science, but I am also glad to be useful and to try to make my children feel happy and safe in spite of what's going on in the world. I, however, feel so alone, and so much not the responsible adult I should be.
I no longer read the news daily. I am tired of being afraid. Most protests don't seem to be in the international news -- I wonder if it's because there is a plan to impose more restrictions soon. Hospitals are dysfunctional and I pray that my children won't get sick any time soon. We are lucky to have my mom at home who is a doctor, but I would still prefer to not have any accidents. James spends most of his time chasing the various animals around. Edward reads and tries to help when he can. He also plays with James now that he is older and smacks him a bit too much, but it's hard to be patient when one is 10.
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