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Vaccines, Star Trek, and Fluorescent Lights

Michael 2 Comments

I promise you, this will be my last rant for a while. Even I’m getting tired of listening to myself. Fortunately, I wrote this, waited a day, read it, then re-wrote and it isn’t actually quite so abrasive as its first incarnation.

I think a new rant is justified because stupid has really taken hold of the reins and we need to get this wagon back on track. (Did you like the horse and buggy metaphor? I don’t think I’ve used that one here.) (Anyway…)

Anyway, what got me thinking was another news article, this one that a group of shoppers was mounting a boycott of a local supermarket deigning to require all employees and shoppers to wear masks beginning this Friday. This group is taking some unusual “justifications” for their actions. Not only does a mask requirement infringe upon their rights (you remember those, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of fabric-free faces), but that the CDC calling for masks in high transmission areas of the country is “proof” that the vaccine doesn’t work. Well to that I say horse hockey!

Yes, you heard me right. Horse Hockey!

First of all, considering the meteoric rise of COVID deaths and hospitalizations are near exclusively among unvaccinated individuals speaks to the effectiveness of the vaccines. And that there have been some positive cases among vaccinated individuals and the notice that it is indeed possible for vaccinated people to spread the disease is not news among those who understand immunology at least as well as they do Tic-Toc.

Not Vaccinated Section (5)Try to picture this in your mind. Vaccines do not create a force field around you. This is not like in Star Trek. “Shields up, Mr. Sulu.” Even if it was, when do you ever see an episode when the shields weren’t breached, at least even a little bit? “I’m givin’ ‘em all wee got Cap’n, but I doona know how long thar’ll hold!” No, the vaccines are more like the incessant hum of a poorly grounded fluorescent light. You (or in this case the virus) goes into the room, plans on getting comfortable, switches on the light, and after hanging out for as long as you can take, you are driven out screaming, half crazed by the sensory assault. Before you went in the room you thought you found you happy spot. So you go on in but when you turn on the light, the room responds by making it so unlivable you are driven out.

Not Vaccinated Section (4)Vaccines work like those lights. They can’t keep the virus from entering you. Viruses are out there hanging around, looking for a happy place to settle in. They see those big nostril openings and buzz on in. (Note: make sure masks cover noses.) Their presence trips the sensor that turns on the immune system which drives the little buggers out. So you see, the vaccine doesn’t keep you from getting the virus. It keeps you from getting sick from the virus. That explains why 99+% of the people in the US now sick and dying from COVID are unvaccinated. And that also explains why a vaccinated individual can test positive for COVID when they swab the inside of the nasal passages.

PowertoProtect_1080x1080_FB-IGNow, here is something un-ranty. (Un-rantish?) (Un-rantlike?) August is Vaccine Awareness Month. It was founded by National Public Health Information Coalition nearly 10 years ago so it’s not something new just to trick you into getting the COVID vaccine. Remember my older posts. The first vaccine was developed in 1784. This is not new science. Do you part. Go get your vaccines. Already did? Wear a mask!

Okay, that’s it for now. Next week I promise promise promise I’ll be happier.

Uncommon Sense

Michael 3 Comments

The past few weeks have sorely tested my patience I wish everybody would go out and invest in some self-help books that include how to recapture some common freaking sense. Let’s start.

It’s summertime in the good old U. S. of A. which means, even in the absence of global warming, it gets hot. Glass amplifies heat. An enclosed space holds heat. Things inside hot enclosed spaces cook. And that’s how Jordan Mott came up with the oven in 1490 (minus the glass – that’s a bonus). Because we know it doesn’t count unless it happened in America, we can fast forward to 1882 when Thomas Ahern worked out the details for an electric oven. Granted, he was Canadian but that’s as close as we’re going to get unless you want to count the first person who fried an egg on the hood of a car. That had to be a “real” American, and that gets us to cars, hot cars, hot car interiors on hot summer days. There have been such a spate of kids being cooked in the back seats of cars – again. The government is mandating that by 2025 all auto manufacturers to put in systems that display and sound warning messages to check the back seat for Junior and Fido when you shut off your car. If you aren’t lucky enough to have one of the cars that already have such a warning and/or until you do, they suggest you put “something of value” in the back seat so you don’t forget your kid. Duh! Is it just me or is there nothing anybody owns more valuable than their own child? That was an honest to gosh, news piece just within the last week on most major news outlets. Don’t forget your kid, put something of value in the back with them.”

While we’re on the subject of kids, in June in a small Pennsylvania airport, the TSA confiscated a loaded handgun – in a baby stroller! According to a report on TSA.gov, “The man said that when he and his girlfriend take their dogs and child for a walk that he keeps his loaded gun in the rear stroller pocket and forgot to remove it when they came to catch their flight.” I call bull-doodoo! If you’re taking a baby on a plane with a stroller you are using every cubic inch of that to add carryon volume. And where in H-E-Double Toothpicks is this guy walking that he needs to carry a loaded gun with him when he’s out with his pseudo-family? Let’s stay with guns in airports for a while, even though I ranted about this before. Also, from TSA.gov, “Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers detected twice as many firearms per million passengers screened at airport security checkpoints nationwide in 2020 compared to 2019, and at a significantly higher rate than any other year since the agency’s inception.” A total of 3,257 guns were confiscated from passengers carry them on their persons or in their carry-on bags, and about 83 percent of them were loaded. Those figures didn’t include the number of guns confiscated because they were improperly packed in checked baggage, or toy and BB guns. All while people on planes are beating each other up for taking too much of the shared armrest or [shudder] being compelled to wear a mask.

And now that the delta variant has bloomed in the US to where masking might become more routine again, I figure something in August I get to write this post all over again with a new set of “can you believe this” tales.

Patience. Please give me patience.

not-vaccinated-section-3

At Your Service

Michael 5 Comments

I’m not completely certain about this but I think we have given up on the idea of service. Ads still use the word. Businesses have the word in it. Some entire fields of business are known by it.  But just having the word around is no guarantee of service.

Lately much of my personal world has had questionable service where service should have been expected if not outright assured. My friend ordered a washer/dryer set with the “deluxe installation service” which was then delayed for over a week because a required piece of hardware was not delivered with the appliance. The installation team didn’t have access to the needed pieces because they were the installation “service,” not the delivery “service.” I recently had a delivery go awry when a package entrusted to a delivery service (which coincidentally includes the word “service” as part of its name) to go from Point A to Point B was never seen at Point B. The cost of the contents was reimbursed as per their agreement but when questioned about a possible refund on the cost of the “service” I was told that was not part of the warranty. My daughter had her roof re-shingled last month, and the service included clean-up facilitated by a dumpster placed in her driveway (her one-car width driveway) blocking the garage for a full week after the one-day installation was complete. When she called and asked when, or if, it was going to be removed, she was told that would be determined by the trash removal people and they schedule their own “service” dates.

Service with a“Service” is defined as the action of helping or doing work for someone. Merriam Webster goes a step further and adds “a helpful act.” We would argue that in none of the above examples was help or work done. Others may say work was done. It just wasn’t especially helpful, and the definition does not specify the act of helping and doing, merely helping or doing. If I was running a motivational speaking service and presenting this as an argument for how to tell the truth and nothing but the truth yet far from the whole truth, I would cleverly label that as qualified honesty.

There once was a time when our entire way of life was exemplified by service. Neighbors would unthinkingly do for other neighbors. My mother never baked a dozen cookies or a single pan of lasagna. She would, together with a few neighbors baked a dozen dozen cookies and a half dozen trays of lasagna. Half would go to the church for some fundraiser and the other half split among the women who made them. Young people still enlisted for military service or committed to reserve officer training in school even during peacetime literally to serve the country. Social clubs, professional organizations, parent groups relied on volunteers to serve as officers, and committee members and chairs. And there was always plenty of help.

Now service is a bad word. Contracts specify what isn’t included in the service. Service crews stipulate the limits of their responsibilities before anybody even asks. One of the biggest service scams of the entire galaxy, the United States Congress, doesn’t even recognize the people they theoretically are elected to “serve.” If so, why then are their assigned seats grouped in their chambers according to party rather than by the states they represent. And don’t even get me started on every company’s and website’s terms of service.

So the next time somebody offers you counter service, curb-side service, free delivery service, claims they are service experts, serve with care, or are known for their service with a smile, ask to read the fine print on their service limits. Bonus points if they actually do and help.

Reuse it or lose it

Michael 4 Comments

Are you a recycler? There are recyclers and then there are re-recyclers. And don’t forget the upcyclers. I might be a little of all but mostly I’m a re-recycler. That’s where I’m doing my most to save the planet. Actually, if I’m going to be really, super honest, that’s where I’m doing my most to save a few bucks, the planet comes along for the ride. Let me explain.

Recycling is what we do with our blue bins and our bottles and cans and papers and cardboard. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere where the recycling agent accepts glass, plastic, carboard, and paper you’ve got it made because that’s the most of it anyway right. Once a quarter some organization will have a program that will accept your extruded polystyrene, household chemicals, and electronics, but if you stick to the four basic food groups, er, if you stick to the big four, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing your part. ‘Nuff said on that.

Upcyclers are the creatives of the recycling world. They can look at a TV stand, a stained chunk of kitchen tile, and a garden hose and say “Gee that would make a great a wet bar” and do it, and add an integrated wine rack, wine and beer coolers, and cheese platter with a well for a fondu pot and skewer storage. Damn they’re good.

I fall in between. I’m a re-recycler. I’ll find an old TV stand and turn it into a different color TV stand. I believe recycling doesn’t stop at getting rid of stuff from your home but not putting it in the trash. It’s donating it to charity run thrift stores, consigning it to second hand shops, or giving it away through neighborhood apps, Facebook groups, web communities, or the old stick it on the curb with a “free to a good home” sign. Then when somebody like me needs a new stand for his toaster oven, or a new toaster oven, he’s likely to shop first at the thrift store to see what can be given a new life.

lampI thought of all this last week when my daughter asked me if I’d like a stand to hold my herb pots in the kitchen, she found one on the curb. My first thought was “damn I’m glad that apple didn’t fall far from its tree.” My second thought was to run right over there and get it.

A lot of stuff that people don’t want still has lots of life left. Usually just a little cleaner is all it takes to have them looking good enough for company. Right now I have several kitchen small appliances, a mug holder, a table lamp in the living room, a floor lamp in my office, the stand for my keyboard, a small bookcase, and the office worktable courtesy of several thrift stores, and a roll of sound insulation that I’m working into a podcast booth that I found in front of one of the buildings here marked “free if you want it.” A couple old favorites of mine at the house were an arbor made from an old brass headboard and an end table for the sunroom fashioned out of 4 shutters and some plywood leftover from an old project. When I get tired of these or almost anything else, I make a drop-off trip to the local charity.

Re-recycling may not for everybody. Out and out upcycling is beyond a lot of people’s capabilities, certainly mine. But providing the raw material isn’t. The next time you have a TV cart or a garden hose that you don’t want anymore, donate it to a thrift shop, or put it out with a sign for somebody to take. Don’t jus throw them away. There could be a wet bar out there waiting to happen that just needs a little help from you.

The shot heard around the world -or- Yes, Virginia, there are other vaccines out there

Michael 8 Comments

One hundred, thirty-seven years ago this month, Louis Pasteur administered the first rabies vaccine and things haven’t been the same since. That wasn’t the first vaccine developed for an animal. That would have been the chicken cholera vaccine in 1879, also developed by Pasteur. But when he gave that first rabies vaccine five years later he was setting a course for protections from a then universally deadly disease in humans by inoculating the animal. Prevent the disease in the animal and the animal can’t transmit the disease to the human. And thus, today dogs are roaming the streets with rabies tags hanging from their collars indicating they bear no risk to their human companions other than perhaps smothering them with dog kisses. And all is right with the world.

Except it isn’t. Cats and dogs aren’t the only animals who can get rabies. Nor were there in the days of Pasteur’s experiments. Bat, rats, raccoons, even cattle can too. In fact, any mammal can carry and transmit rabies to any other mammal. Could then, can now. In 1885, a year after he developed it for animal use, Pasteur injected the rabies vaccine into nine year old Joseph Meister who had been mauled by a rabid dog. The boy survived the rabies infection, the first ever to do so.

Animal vaccines were new in the 1880s but they weren’t the first time animals had been used in the development of vaccines. That happened 90 years earlier when Edward Jenner injected cowpox into humans to prevent the closely related smallpox virus. Through subsequent studies and experiments, the lives saved from smallpox through vaccination was so significant that by the 1922, primary schools in the United States began requiring smallpox vaccination for admittance. Through the 1930s diphtheria, tetanus, anthrax, cholera, plague, typhoid, and tuberculosis vaccines were developed, and then by mid-century work was completed on vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella. The latter half of the century brought vaccinations against chicken pox, pneumonia, and hepatitis B. This century saw the successful development of rotovirus, herpes zoster in adults (shingles), and human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines. And don’t forget SARS-CoV2 aka CoViD-19.

We have been so fixated on COVID for the last 18 months we may have forgotten, or at least not actively considered, all the other vaccines and routine vaccination recommendations for children and adults. This was illustrated last month when this year’s influenza vaccine strains were selected with no notice by the mainstream media and little fanfare even in specialty media circles.

Although we may take a break from thinking of all the horrible things that can happen to us (besides being asked to wear masks, wash hands, and give others some space), viruses don’t take a break from causing potentially horrible things to happen. So, you should probably start worrying about a bad flu season for 2021-2022. It’s not that far away.

Part of the reason we might expect a bad flu season is because we’ve been pretty good with our CoViD mitigation. Masks, handwashing, and social distancing (which I still think should be called personal distancing because there’s nothing social about it), did a fabulous job of keeping influenza airborne rather than allowing it landing zones in our persons. Now those little fellows are mad as anything and will be twice a virulent this year. Well, okay, that would be a great story line for a book or a movie but, viruses aren’t all that vengeful in reality though sometimes it may seem they are.

I’ll give you two reasons why this year’s flu season may be back with a vengeance, and these reasons are valid for any viral infection. One is science based and the other is more social. Science tells us the body’s immune system actually thrives on small, short term exposures (which is why vaccines work) and that the lack of repeated exposure to the flu virus deprived the body of an additional weapon to augment the flu vaccine. The social reason that this year will see a more substantial flu season is that people, having had over a year’s worth of “isolation” will do what people often do and overdo. Without mandated masking and social distancing, people will try to make up for lost time in close social settings and forsake those mitigation practices that added up to making flu season 2020-2021 a non-event.

To reiterate, this covers all viruses. Last year also saw record low incidents of respiratory syncytial virus (RVS) and rotovirus in children, adenovirus and rhinovirus in everybody, and subsequently less non-COVID induced pneumonia.

I know, you are thinking, and possibly saying out loud to your screen, “But it’s too early to think about a flu shot!” You’re right. And I’ll remind you again in September and October to get out there and get your shot. But now is a good time to think about all those other vaccines we’ve spent a year not thinking about. Are you due for a tetanus booster? Did you put off your second shingles or pneumonia shot? Young adults, have you been evaluated for meningococcal vaccination; caregivers, do you need a new hepatitis titre and possible booster? Parents, what is the status of your children’s vaccine regimens? Travelers, are your shots all up to date?

There are so many more vaccines than COVID and now is the time to refresh yourself about them. For years we’ve relied on them to keep us safer and healthier than we were just a single generation ago. But vaccines only work if people are willing to be vaccinated. Go ahead, be willing. Joseph Meister did and lived to talk about it.

Links to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization schedules for 2021:

For adults age 19 and older
Table 1: By age
Table 2: By indication

For children and adolescents, birth to age 18
Table 1: By age
Table 2: Catch up schedule
Table 3: By indication
Parent Friendly easy-read chart

Resources
Information for adults
Information for parents

VaccinatedFamily

Making Beautiful Music Together

Michael 2 Comments

For some reason I was thinking of a time ago when my daughter was a teenager filling her after school day hours with after school activities. Two of those activities, or one with two arms perhaps, were concert band and marching band when she played flute and piccolo respectively. The thing about those particular winds is that, except for perhaps in the fingers of Ian Anderson, they rarely play much that by themselves would be recognizable as good music. While she would practice, I couldn’t be sure she was playing the right notes but during the performances, with the other winds, strings, and percussion, all the individual pieces came together to form true music. Every now and then an instrument might be featured in a solo but for far longer the group played ensemble to make the really good stuff.

In a sappy poetic way, America is like those bands. Alone, we don’t sound like much. We’re single instruments playing random notes that make little sense alone. If you put all the piccolos together, they still don’t make much musical sense, only now they make little sense louder. Likewise, groups of like-thinking individuals spouting the same lines make little sense even when making a lot of noise. No, it’s not the number of people that make the country, it’s the variety. It might not work for other countries and that’s fine, but for America to work, there have to be different voices, playing different parts of the same song.

Lately too many of us have been closing our ears to the other instruments that make up the American band. We’re content hearing only our own part, or worse, playing only solos. Then we question why others are thinking the same thing. Oddly, the others are wondering likewise, everybody convinced their part is the main part, that their idea is the right idea. Why won’t everybody think alike? It really isn’t a matter of why everybody won’t think or say or do the same things. It’s because we can’t. We can’t think the same things because we don’t have the same backgrounds to formulate those thoughts. No matter how hard a piccolo tries, it cannot reach the same notes as a tuba.

You can only listen to a tuba solo – or piccolo or sax or marimba – for so long before you get up and walk out on the concert. The strength of the band, the beauty of the music, is not in the instrument. It is in the players who know when to play their notes, trusting that by allowing the other musicians to play their own notes, they will make beautiful music together.

This Independence Day, take a moment to think about how our differences are what makes us unique as a country. Yes, celebrate those differences, but celebrate the whole also. The music sounds best when all the instruments are playing together. Celebrate this Independence Day and enjoy our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of really good harmony.

Happy Birthday America!

Saving SPAM

Michael 3 Comments

Some time ago in the not too terribly distant past but distant enough that a gentle reminder wouldn’t be out of the question, I posted an entry that began with a one-sided discussion about spam e-mail although that wasn’t the focus of the post. Likewise, this one will start with spam – emails and others.

At least once a day I check the spam email folder and more days than not I find an email in there that is definitely not spam. I often wonder how they determine what can and can’t be let through when I also, and usually on the same days, wonder how they determined an email that got to my inbox was let through. What was it about my mechanic’s email reminding me to bring my car in for service that made it suspicious enough to be shuttled into the Junk folder yet the one to me from me declaring I could “lose 61 pounds in 4 weeks” seemed perfectly normal and allowed admittance to the safety of the Inbox? (And why 61 pounds? Did 60 sound too unbelievable?) But I didn’t start this to discuss what got into the Junk folder. But while I’m here . . .

2021-06-23Is it just the email clients I use, and there are 4 of them (the laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone all use different applications to access my email), or does everybody have multiple junk and spam folders to hold undesirable dispatches? Mine has Junk, Junk, Spam, sometimes Spambox, and sometimes Junk Mail, and always at least three of them. How do they decide? And who are they anyway?

Speaking of They, who are they who decides what gets to be called a virus. My anti-virus program pops up at least once a day to remind me of additional services it can provide – for an additional fee. If it was a phone call it would be routed to the “Silenced” folder as a possible spam call by the phone’s version of a Junk folder. (And speaking of viruses, even though we weren’t really, why is virus bad when you’re talking about computers but viral is good? Who makes this stuff up?) Naturally the same thing happens with the phone’s spam filter as the email. Perfectly innocent calls like the automated reminder from the doctor’s office gets tagged as possible spam and silenced while three different people expressing their concern that my car warranty has expired are let through. At least the phone and email “blockers” don’t cost me an annual fee to be wrong.

SpamBut do you want to know what really annoys me about all this? Spam. It’s rendered SPAM as an undesirable. SPAM as in Special Processed American Meat by the Hormel Corporation. Since 1937, SPAM has had its haters too but more lovers for sure. By the way, SPAM does not stand for Special Processed American Meat. That was a sobriquet given it during WWII by non-American troops treated to the canned delicacy. SPAM is actually a portmanteau of Spiced Ham although it is available in a variety of flavors, even (ugh) pumpkin spice.

There have been a billion recipes written for SPAM and a million cookbooks to hold them. (Too hyperbolic? Well, there are a lot!) There is even an annual SPAM cooking competition. At least there was until the pandemic forced its cancellation last year. The point is SPAM is an unexpectedly wonderful American treasure. Naturally we should confuse it with spam, a expectedly awful pile of junk.

Canned ChickenIt’s a good thing there aren’t any filters in the canned meat section of the supermarket. If there were, we’d be reduced to eating . . .

. . . canned whole chicken?

Now that’s some spam!

Mental Meanderings – Get ’em while they’re hot!

Michael 5 Comments

A collection of things I saw/thought/wondered about/shook my head over last week.

I read a new car review. The reviewer loved the car, its handling, style, performance, gas mileage, comfort. Everything about the car. But he could not recommend it because the now ever present touchscreen in the middle of the dash becomes just a screen when the car is put in gear. Apparently the manufacturer values safety and disables the touchscreen function and you have to use either the fingertip controls on the steering wheel or the voice recognition. While I’m driving, other than driving type things like switching on a turn signal or operating the pedals and steering wheel, the only controls I might need to reach are radio station or volume, window control, or possibly to shout “Answer!” to accept a connected phone call but that’s quite rare. What is this guy doing that is so involved or intricate that it cannot be handled without pawing all over a mobile tablet? While moving?!

There was another gun found at the local airport security section. Once again the dipstick trying to board an airplane while toting a loaded firearm used the excuse, “I forgot it was in my bag.” I’m all for innocent until proven stupid and all that, but isn’t the admission of stupidity enough to take these people immediately out to tarmac and have the next arrival land on them?

There are at least 4 states where audits, legislative initiatives, and/or court cases are still questioning/contesting the results of last fall’s Presidential election. I applied for a job in 2009 and didn’t get it. I’m sure the interview notes were switched and somebody stole that job from me. Can I get one of the of the legal wizards behind these election follies to take my case.  I bet their last dollar that I probably have a better chance of winning.

It was 96 degrees where I was yesterday (which is actually where I am today and just about every day). (I don’t know why I felt the need to clarify that but… .) Yesterday was the first day of summer and summer is usually hot but three days prior it was 45 degrees! Doesn’t Mother Nature ever get whiplash from these dramatic swings?

HotSpeaking of summer. Sunday was the first day of summer but not the first full day. That’s today. Summer in the eastern time zone in the US began at 11:31pm, Sunday June 20. That has to be q great job. Figure out when summer start. How much do you think that pays.  Anyway, because summer did not start until after 11 last night, when it was 96 degrees outside my car, technically it was still spring! I’m sorry but that is just too hot for spring. Somebody find a lawyer and get the courts working to revoke that temperature.

Still speaking of summer, am I the only one who remembers when all the calendars labeled June 21 as the first day of summer. Now it can happen anytime between June 20 and June 22. All this exactness about when the seasons start began around the same time the government declared Area 51 off limits. It sounds fishy to me. Somebody should look into that.

Autumn begins on September 22 this year. That’s 94 days after Summer began. Summer is one of four seasons and should comprise one-fourth of the year. One fourth of 365 is 91.25 days. Summer is almost 3 days longer than it should be fairly allocated. No wonder there’s global warming!

Last week a business man in a Florida town I never heard of bought a small building from the town to use as a fitness center. Somewhere along the way when checking with the county about the property he discovered the deed included not just the building and the land it sat on but also the town’s water tower behind the building. Somebody was supposed to split the property and transfer only the small portion of land the building sits on, didn’t, and when the deed was recorded in the county office, the would be fitness trainer got it all. Naturally he didn’t want it. I mean, hydration is important when exercising but there is a limit to how much water one can take in! Long story short (too late) they got the paperwork sorted out and he deeded to water tower back to the municipality. And was charged $10 to do so! Wait. What? The town couldn’t swing the ten bucks without raising water rates? Quick, get another one of those lawyers working on the election. This guy has a better case than that fellow down in Palm Beach. I think he should his $10 back. That’s a steal that should be stopped.

Thank you. My brain feels much lighter now.

Oh, if anybody is wondering, and from the poll results I’d say not, it looks like I have to decide for myself how often to turn out this drivel. You guys don’t like answering surveys, do you?

Flying in the face of convention

Michael 2 Comments

As vaccination totals continue to climb and gathering limits are lifted just in time for the start of summer, people have been commenting on returning to normal. During an interview on a recent local television newscast, a party planner proclaimed, “Now we can get back to planning June weddings and graduations like normal,” and a vacationing couple interviewed at the airport said, “It’s good to be travelling again like normal.” “Like normal” is becoming the latest soundbite fodder, much in contrast to last June’s oft referenced, “Flatten the curve.”

As far as graduations go, June 2020 decidedly was not normal. My friend’s daughter graduated from high school last year in an on-line ceremony that may have truly been the only unprecedented moment during the early months of the pandemic. But was it “not normal,” or was it “not expected?” Years before the pandemic wreaked havoc on graduation schedules, my daughter graduated from college a semester earlier than typical, and her December commencement, although not broadcast on a streaming video platform, was recorded and made available for those who chose not to attend the small, indoor ceremony in contrast to the thousands who would fill the outdoor stadium the following spring. Broadcasting the ceremony was, for the winter graduates, quite “normal.”

In the half-dozen or so weeks that air travel has sort of started its return to normal, I hope its not what we will eventually come to expect whenever we get on a plane. So far this year, the FAA has identified over 400 cases in violation of its Zero Tolerance policy that states any passenger who “assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members” can be fined, jailed, or both. For comparison, the FAA recorded 146 violations in all of 2019. The rate of incidents has climbed dramatically since early May when the CDC relaxed mask wearing requirements but maintained the requirement for air and other public transportation.

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The cited incidents do not involve only mask controversies. People have attempted to open aircraft outer doors while on taxiways, refused to surrender open alcohol brought on board, and brawled over who gets to use a shared armrest. Many incidents devolved to violence, at least one resulting in a charge of felony battery, that when a passenger refusing to follow cabin instructions violently attacked a flight attendant caught on video, a video that went viral shortly after the incident. In May, the FAA announced that it was proposing penalties as high as $15,000 against five passengers for violations that included allegedly assaulting and yelling at flight attendants.

In an interview with CNBC, Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, relayed that unruly behavior are more than 20 times higher than what’s normally recorded in an entire year.  I’m not sure this is what we all meant when blithely referring to the new normal. New it may be. Normal? Let’s hope not.

In case you are wondering, Monday’s poll results were 100% in favor of me writing every darned day if I could. There was one write in vote for weekly. That made it a tie! I noticed that the poll was displayed on the post on the full site. For whatever reason, which I’m sure is an absolutely dandy, it was not included on the e-mailed or WordPress Reader versions. (No, me neither.) Anyway, I’ll stick it here one more time. If you really really really want to answer it, make sure to click through the blog site because I just know for sure, that wasn’t a one-time glitch.

Be careful out there

Michael 6 Comments

Deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 already have surpassed the total number of deaths in all of 2020. Let me type that again. Deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 already have surpassed the total number of deaths in all of 2020. Globally. If you are in the US, Canada, UK, pick a country that last year was locked up tighter than Marley and Scrooge’s backroom safe and you are going out later today without a mask on, that means there are places this year that make what you went through last year look like you were just trying to stay ahead of getting a really bad cold. One more time. Deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 already have surpassed the total number of deaths in all of 2020. Globally

WorldDeathsAccording to data generated by the Johns Hopkins University, about 1,880,000 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded in 2020. As of the first week of June 2021, less than halfway through this year, about 1,883,000 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported. Globally.

Globally. That sort of is important because we are a global world. Planes are back in the air with all seats filled, crossing borders. Ships are at sea again stopping at ports not always in the same country as the previous port of call. Students, vacationers, businesspersons are moving to and fro, free as can be. Give or take.

In the United States, the total reported cases, not deaths, for the single day, June 11 (the last full weekday before this was written) was 26,006, the running seven day average cases was 14,768. The last time a seven day average of less than 15,000 was reported at week’s end was on Friday, March 27, 2020 at 12,127. Then, seven day averages were increasing; now, they are declining. Proof that mitigation and vaccination worked and is working. It’s questionable that mitigation without vaccination would have eventually gotten us to the current case load, and certainly not by the end of May. By the end of 2020 with only mitigation, seven day average case totals routinely ran greater than 200,000 and peaked in January 9, 2021 with a single day case total of 300,779 and a seven day average of 259,615 cases. Widespread vaccination and continuing mitigation have since reduced both single day and seven day averages continuously to where we are today. The lowest single day reported cases for 2021 was May 31 at 5,557  with a seven-day average of 17,171. The last time previous to that when a single day case load less than 6,000 was reported was on March 20, 2020, with 5,619 cases.

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Interestingly, since May 31, the daily totals and seven day averages of cases reported in the US have consistently increased. Also, since May 31, have the majority of states relaxed or eliminated mitigation requirements.  It would not be unreasonable to ask if vaccination without mitigation is and will be working. Certainly not wanting to cry wolf, but I will type once more, deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 already have surpassed the total number of deaths in all of 2020. Globally.

Let’s be careful out there. There’s a lot of virus still out there.