I continue to check my little dashboard of San Francisco COVID numbers each morning to figure out whether getting together with a dozen nerds in someone's house to solve puzzles is fun weekend plans or an embarrassing thing I'll have to explain to my doctor when we determine the cause of my long-term lung problems. Lately, the numbers have been looking OK, but they don't all look OK: of the three numbers I track, one of them, COVID-in-wastewater, recently rose up from not-so-scary to kinda-scary. Although those wastewater numbers are noisy, the level's stayed high for over a week, so it's probably not just a blip.
I'm still going places; the low number of reported new cases and % positive tests give me some reassurance that things are OK. But don't be surprised if folks who only track the wastewater numbers start canceling their get-togethers.
As it happens, I did cancel my weekend puzzle-get-together plans; not because of scary wastewater numbers, but because of a lack of those numbers. The California Department of Public Health paused posting their numbers on January 6th and didn't resume posting until the Tuesday after Mystery Hunt. The day they paused, San Francisco's numbers were rising very steeply. I kept hoping they'd post new numbers that showed the rise had slowed down so I'd feel confident swapping air with friends for a few days. And they did post those numbers, just too late to reassure me. Ahem. It's a good thing I'm not bitter.
