Halfway There

Whisper it quietly, but the planet is half the way toward getting everyone fully vaccinated against COVID.

According to this chart from Our World In Data, at least 50 percent of the global population has gotten both doses of a COVID vaccine, and, in breaking numbers on further, as seen in the statistics at the bottom of the chart, fully vaccinated people in this earth account for a bare majority - 50.33 percent as of this past Monday, January 10.

This is good news, of course, but as always in this pandemic, it comes with a caveat.  Several caveats, in fact.  First, it took thirteen months to get this far, meaning that at current rates of vaccination, it would theoretically take until February 2023 to everyone on the planet jabbed - and we know that many people refuse to get the shot anyway.  Second, while many countries are far along on full COVID vaccination, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa continue to lag dramatically; while more than half of the people on the various continents and in Oceania are vaccinated, only 9.7 percent of the people of Africa are fully vaccinated.  Third, at least two strains of the virus, including Omicron, came from South Africa, and others could come from African countries as random as Gabon or Zambia.  Any one of them could be the doomsday strain that humanity has no way to protect against.

The pandemic can end this year, but it won't until we get all of those people in Africa vaccinated.  The United States should approach the 70 percent minimum full-vaccination threshold some time this spring, and there will still be holdouts.  Once we've gotten as many Americans vaccinated as possible, it's more than imperative to get Africa and other areas of the world vaccinated.  And, given all of the new strains that keep sprouting up like so many gremlins from an eighties popcorn movie,  we can't wait until February 2023 to do so.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is already getting over a million COVID infections a day and hospitalizations have hit a new record high. 😢

"Gimme That Vaccine, Maxine!"

I'm a poet, and I know it.

Here's something else to wax poetic about: While President Biden fights COVID, the Republican Party is fighting his fight against it by opposing vaccine mandates, testing and PPE requirements, yet they keep blaming him for the rise in COVID cases. 

Why do the Republicans fight policies designed to alleviate and solve problems and then deflect the blame to the Democrats?  Mainly because it works.  Ronald Reagan blamed unemployment and failed foreign-policy initiatives on his watch on Jimmy Carter, Newt Gingrich blamed runaway spending on Bill Clinton despite being a strong proponent of increased military spending, right-wing talk radio hosts blamed 9/11 on Bill Clinton despite George W. Bush's lack of engagement with efforts to stop bin Laden, and John Boehner blamed a sluggish economy on Obama after blocking his efforts to improve it.  And look what happened: Reagan and Bush the Younger were both elected to second terms as President and Gingrich and Boehner became Speaker Of the House.

By blocking Biden from fighting the pandemic and dodging the blame for blocking him and thus not paying a price politically, Republicans think they can win back Congress in the 2022 midterms - especially if they can also keep concentrating on immigration (except that Biden went ahead and kept a Trump policy in place to have Mexico keep migrants bound for America for processing) and inflation (though the economy is still strong and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will likely raise interest rates gradually to reverse it).  If inflation does ease and immigration becomes less of an issue by November 2022, well, a perpetual pandemic is the GOP's magic bullet.

But get this: Thanks to the omicron variant - the omicorona, I call it - vaccination rates in America are spiking now.  More people are taking this seriously.  And Biden has wisely decided not to offer any happy talk about the future like he did when Delta first appeared here.  More and more people on the same page, and it's not one in the GOP's playbook.  Although the Republicans are pandering to their base, the fact is that over 71 percent of Americans 18 and over - that is, Americans of voting age - are fully vaccinated.  Not all vaccinated adults are Democrats, of course, but most unvaccinated adults are Republicans.  If Republicans think they can rely on the unvaccinated to people them to victory in the 2022 midterms while President Biden and the Democrats continue to work diligently at trying to get things done for the American people - with plenty of time for their efforts to bear meaningful fruit before November 2022 - they're going to have to play a better hand than that.

Although, voter suppression remains an ace up their sleeves.          

Try to hang on, Maxine. 

Happy New Year?

The Biden administration has outlined its requirements for COVID vaccines at large companies through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  For companies with 100 or more employees, starting Tuesday, January 4, 2022, every employee has to either get vaccinated or subject himself or herself to weekly testing.

As soon as the order was handed down, though, multiple states and individuals - led by the Marquis de Sade of elected officials, Florida governor Ron DeSantis - sued to stop the directive, and the arch-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put a "temporary" stay on it.  The court's response, however, seemed to aim at making that stay permanent, as its wording was highly critical.

The Biden White House thinks it can win this case as it potentially makes its way up to the Supreme Court, where previous efforts to stop vaccine mandates have failed and where this effort will likely fail as well.  But as all of these cases proliferate in the court system, a different kind of case - COVID cases - continues to proliferate, as the number of infections seems to be rising faster than the number of vaccinations.  And they probably are; the vaccination rate has stagnated to the point where it can take up to three whole days for the rate of full vaccination to go up by a tenth of a percent, whereas it had previously taken only one day.  The death count will likely go up too, still not likely to reach two million to be as deadly as the 1918 pandemic in terms of a percentage of the population but still far more deaths than the 1918 pandemic per capita, and we can't afford any more deaths no matter how you measure them.  Recoveries?  No, the media still can't be bothered to report on those, though according to CoronaTracker.com, 37 million out of 47 million cases have been closed as of this past Sunday, for a 78.9 percent recovery rate.  

But, thanks to long COVID and continued vaccine resistance, along with a still-too-high seven-day new-case average, maybe none of that matters.  The only way out of this pandemic is to get more people vaccinated, and hopefully this court case will be ruled in favor of President Biden and we can indeed have a happy 2022.  Until we do get enough people vaccinated, though, we're going to have to continue to walk into banks looking like we're about to hold them up.  No wonder banking online is so popular these days.

57.1%

That's the percentage of Americans who are fully vaccinated from COVID as of today, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

But here's the bad news - that's also the percentage of Americans who are fully vaccinated from COVID as of yesterday, as well.

In other words, the full-vaccination rate increase in the U.S., which up to now was 0.1 percent a day, is now 0.1 percent . . . every other day.
That's not slow, that's stagnant.

I give up. 😠 

A Real Shot In the Foot

Remember that good news I had yesterday about full COVID vaccinations shooting up 0.4 percent in one day, showing that vaccinations were finally accelerating again?  All right - we're moving forward!

But no.

The Centers for Disease Control just revised its figures for full vaccinations - downward.  The CDC issued a revised tally for fully vaccinated individuals that decreased the number from 185,537,265 Americans to 184,335,263, a difference of more than 1.2 million.  So the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans, reported last night at 55.9 percent, is now . . . 55.5 percent.  That big bump is there no more.  And fewer people, by the way, are getting initial vaccinations.

And I've had it with Rochelle Walensky.  She can't even count right!

I'm a rotten mood now . . . 😠

A Real Shot In the Arm

While Congress seeks to figure out how to pass the infrastructure package, here's some good news for a change.

On Tuesday, September 28, 1,380,000 Americans got a COVID vaccine, of the number of those who became  fully immunized went up 0.4 percent Monday.  Why is that good news?  Because the daily increase in the vaccination rate is normally 0.1 percent.  This means it shot up four times its normal daily rate.  It looks like a combination of fear of the delta corona and the increase of vaccine requirements is working.  No one in the media, as far as I can tell, made note of this.  They mostly looked at the sluggish progress of first-time doses and talked about children's vaccines that haven't been approved yet. 

But then, maybe there's a reason for that.  Today, the daily vaccination rate increase went back to its pathetic 0.1 percent.  

COVID Vaccines For Kids (And More)

Pfizer just announced that its COVID vaccine shows a robust immune response in children aged 5 to 11, using only a third of the usual dose for individuals aged 12 and over.

This is good news, and it means that emergency authorization for a children's COVID vaccine by late October.  And hopefully enough parents - those who have already been vaccinated themselves - get their children vaccinated so that the rate of full vaccination in These States gets to at least 70 percent by early 2022.  Boosters, except for the elderly, will have to wait, though.

In the meantime, we have to get as many eligible people vaccinated, and so far the best we can manage is still a quite embarrassing 0.1 percent daily increase in full vaccination.  This is all happening as the government has reported that more people have died from COVID than died in the 1918 flu pandemic.  And while 1 out of 500 people have died in this pandemic compared to 1 our of 150 in the 1918 crisis, when the U.S. population was a third of what is it is today - meaning , that it 1 out of 150 people were dying of COVID today, the numbers would be even worse - the death toll in this pandemic is till pretty bad.

Numbers showing that the situation it relatively better now than it was over a hundred years ago can't change the fact that people who shouldn't have died from COVID - because we have vaccines and no flu vaccine existed in 1918 - died just the same.  Then again, maybe they can.  I don't personally know anyone who has had or died of COVID, but I look at it this way.  If a friend or loved one of mine did die of COVID, I would be devastated and upset, but the fact that we don't have a death rate of 1 out of 150 cases would make me appreciate the friends and loved ones of mine who got COVID and recovered.

Get vaccinated, people.     

F**k Your Freedom

That's what Howard Stern said to people who say they refuse to get the COVID vaccine because they're free to refuse it if they don't want to.

And I'm with Howard.

To hell with your freedom, anti-vaxxers.  You're making life in America much more unpleasant than it already is.  Your refusal to get a COVID vaccine and your subsequent efforts to sue the Biden administration to stop its new mandates are making us the laughing stock of the world, as more countries surge past us in getting the shot and ending this pandemic sooner rather than later.  People in these countries are about to go back to their pre-pandemic lives, while we, because of you, keep having to live under restrictions that require even the vaccinated to go into banks looking like they're going to rob the place.

You're ruining my life, that's for sure. At the start of 2020, I ha big plans - taking up bowling again, spending more time at the gym, spending more time with friends, possibly going to France to see a friend of mine there.  Then COVID hit.  Having recovered from an appendectomy and eager to get out and enjoy life, I was told to stay the hell at home.  When the vaccines became available, I got my two-dose vaccine immediately, protecting myself, my mother and my friends.  Restrictions were dropped.  I could go out again.  Things were looking up.  But you wouldn't get a shot.  The the delta corona hit and we ended up back where we started - face coverings, canceled events, six-foot distancing, red flags against American tourists abroad.  And we're going to end up somewhere we've never been if you cause a variant that evades vaccines as a result of the spread of the delta corona. 

Your right not to get vaccinated does not cancel out my right to enjoy my life.  Your right not to get vaccinated does not cancel out my right to life - my right to live!  You have no right to deny my life, my liberty, and my pursuit of happiness!  Because of you, I can't go to parties, I can't eat out or go out to a movie, I can't work on site at my reporting job (and if a power outage knocks out my electricity while I'm trying to cover a public meeting remotely, which is what happened to me the other night, I can't do my job at all), I can't make a doctor's appointment when I want to because of COVID emergencies, and I can't take something out of the library or buy something at the store without wiping it down!  And I'm sick and tired of disinfecting my mail!  A lot more people could have been enjoying could be the best times of their lives.  But you've been instrumental in making this the worst times of our lives.  Well, I hope you're having a good time. Because a lot of you are getting the COVID bug and filling up hospitals to the point where people are dying of heart attacks and strokes because they can't get care in a hospital full of COVID patients!  You are the bane of my existence, you are the bane of every other vaccinated American's existence, and it's because of you that we worry about having an existence, never mind an active lifestyle! You are ruining our lives!

And for this I can never forgive you. 😠     

50.1%

The United States has now, as of this past weekend, vaccinated 50.1 percent of its citizens against COVID - a bare majority.

Fifty percent plus one-tenth may be enough to win an election, but it's not enough to stop the spread of the delta corona.  It does, however, mean that more Americans are protected against getting sick from COVID, even though it doesn't prevent someone from getting the SARS CoV-2 virus entirely.  With Delta surging in most parts of the country, it means that the Biden administration and private businesses have to step up their efforts to get a majority of the remaining 49.9 percent of Americans vaccinated.  

That looks like it's going to happen.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may be just a few weeks away from full FDA approval, which will allow more companies to mandate vaccines for its workers.  Trump's former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci - who famously served in that post a shorter time than William Henry Harrison served as President in 1841 - has already mandated them for employees of his hedge fund.  And President Biden has already moved to require federal workers to get the shot.  What's the difference between a requirement and a mandate, you ask?  A mandate means you have to get the shot or else.  A requirement leaves you the option to get tested regularly.  Either way, this should help prevent further mutations of the virus that could lead to a highly infectious SARS CoV-2 superbug that no virus known to humankind can stop.

Trump's former FDA director, Scott Gottlieb - who left his post in 2019, before the pandemic began - thinks the Delta variant (sounds like I'm talking about a hot-hatch version of a Lancia, no?) will peak early this fall, not because vaccination rates will shoot through the roof as they did this past spring (though that could still happen), but because there are so many unreported Delta cases that there are more infected people than we think and there won't be many more Americans to get infected either way.  It's going to take a combination of vaccination, care for those unfortunate enough to get sick, and strict COVID protocols to get through  this wave.  Me, I'm staying home.  This past weekend, I missed a local jazz-festival event near where I live, but with the spread of the virus possible even in crowded outdoor events like this one, I'm sort of glad I didn't go.  I can wait for the next festival in 2022. 

Crazy Like a Fox

Sean Hannity did something shocking Monday night.  He urged his viewers to get the COVID vaccine.

This is a game changer, as Fox News "personalities" have largely been responsible for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine since it was first made available in December 2020.  This is likely due to something else that emerged that same month - the Delta variant, first in India, and later in the rest of the world.  Hannity, who must have seen the latest COVID case and death numbers, finally saw the light.  He made it a point not to urge people to listen to President Biden - there are some prejudices that the right will never abandon - but he did tell his viewers to do the research and look at the the results of the different versions of the vaccine to see how effective they are. 

"Please take COVID seriously," he said. "I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. We don't need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals you trust based on your unique medical history, your current medical condition, and you and your doctor make a very important decision for your own safety."

Oh yeah, it's not just Hannity saying this.  Two hosts of Fox News' morning show "Fox & Friends," Brian Kilmeade and the unfortunately surnamed Steve Doocy also urged viewers to get the jab, with Kilmeade comparing resistance to the COVID vaccine to diving off a cliff and Doocy being more to the point on the consequences.  "If you have the chance, get the shot. It will save your life,"' Doocy said.

And if that's not enough, another Fox News star, Geraldo Rivera, lashed out at those who won't get the vaccine out of personal freedom, saying they disregard those getting the shot and exercising their personal right not to die. 

Well, all right.  All right.  Good for them.

It doesn't take much for vaccine-resistant folks to change their minds.  Just a dangerous viral mutation.   President Biden wasn't going to go after Fox News commentators for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine - he would only stir up a hornet's nest of anti-Biden rhetoric at a time when he doesn't need it - but he obviously didn't have to.  I think we can expect Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham to follow suit . . . and they'll find some Orwellian method of convincing their viewers that they had faith in the vaccine all along and never meant to suggest otherwise.  Especially Carlson.  He's good at those Jedi-style mind tricks.  

The COVID Vaccination Rate Is Going Up

The COVID vaccination rate is going up.

Let me repeat: The COVID vaccination rate is going up!

I'll say it again: The COVID vaccination rate is going up!!

I re-iterate: The COVID vaccination rate is going up!! 

People in the United States have their knickers in a knot because so many Americans haven't been vaccinated yet even as a new and far more contagious variant of the original SARS CoV-2 virus has been circulating and is likely to become the dominant variant in the near future.  To hear people talk, you'd think that no one in America is getting the vaccinated anymore. 

Not true.  According to the data Web site Our World In Data, 47.5 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, with about 55 percent of them partially vaccinated, as of Thursday, July 1.   The number of adults partially vaccinated adults is about 67 percent, according to other sources.  While we're not exactly close to herd immunity just yet, the numbers have been steadily rising and continue to do so.  About 680,000 Americans get vaccinated every day, and as of July 1, the number of  fully vaccinated Americans rose by one million, while the number of partially vaccinated Americans rose by an even bigger number - 1,630,000, according to Our World In Data.  The increase in fully vaccinated people in this country is roughly at a rate between one-fifth of a percent and half of a percent - about three-tenths of a percent from Wednesday to Thursday of this past week.  

Okay, a fraction of a percentage point is not a big increase, and everyone would agree that a daily vaccination increase of three million people, like we had back in April, would be preferable.  And it's too bad that we haven't met President Biden's goal of getting 70 percent of all adult Americans partially vaccinated by Independence Day.  But my point - and I do have one - is that more and more people are getting vaccinated against SARS CoV-2 every day, and it's not like people suddenly stopped going to their clinics, their doctors, or their local pharmacies and are letting all of those Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine to waste!  We're chipping away at the number of unvaccinated Americans toward herd immunity.

Does that mean we shouldn't worry about the Delta variant?  Certainly not.  Should we be vigilant against the Delta variant?  Absolutely.  Is the pandemic over in the United States? No.  But things are a whole lot better than before and they continue to get better every day.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines all work against what I call the delta corona, and Johnson & Johnson just confirmed that its single-dose shot is just as effective against the variant as the mRNA double-dose injections.  And whether the vaccination numbers go up by a little or a lot, every increase helps.

In fact, seeing as how the daily vaccination numbers of this past Thursday were higher than usual, I think I can say that one good thing has come out of the Delta variant - people who were reluctant to get a shot beforehand were scared to death into getting vaccinated after hearing about it.

Now let's all get vaccinated . . . and let's get the world get vaccinated, too.  

COVID Vaccine For Kids?

The Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve the Pfizer COVID vaccine next week for children between 12 and 15 years, and it could be approved for all children 2 and older by September.  This could theoretically help push the United States toward herd immunity, which it could have a whole lot of trouble doing with just vaccinating people 16 and older - many of whom don't want it.

So this news is a game changer, right? Curb your enthusiasm, Sparky.  Children could be eligible for the COVID vaccine, but their parents still have to allow them to be vaccinated.  An anti-vaxxer's 15-year old child won't be able to get the shot no matter how much he or she wants it if Mom or Dad or Uncle Lonnie are set - dead set - against it.  As for the issue of children aged 2 to 11 wanting a shot, ha ha - can you imagine any kid in that age range volunteering to get a shot for anything?

Schools are likely to make children's COVID vaccines mandatory, but that will only politicize the vaccine further.  I remember when Christian conservative columnist Cal Thomas said he transferred his child from the public school system to a private Christian school when drugs became a problem in the public school.  Forget for moment Thomas' responsibility as a parent to do something about drugs in the public school system rather than just pull his kid out of it.  If someone could pull their children out of the public school system over drugs, what's to stop them from doing the same over medical mandates? 

Conclusion: Hope for enough responsible parents to get their children vaccinated against COVID.  That's the only way they'll get to see Grandma.

Losing the Game

Remember the "game changers" of the past?  Remember how the Renaissance Center was supposed to enliven downtown Detroit?  How grunge was going to rescue rock and roll?  How Christian Pulisic was going to make the U.S. men's soccer team a potent squad?  

Ah, game changers.  Well, here's something to consider as you drive through the Motor City's desolate streets listening to the latest Lil Nas X record on the radio while wondering whom to root for if the U.S. doesn't make the 2022 World Cup.  Johnson & Johnson's COVID vaccine was supposed to be a game changer in the fight against the disease the stopped the world because it required only one shot and could be stored at refrigerator temperature.  Then a few young women got blood clots after having received it.  The vaccine was paused, and so were people's enthusiasm about getting vaccinated.

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which obviously has had a hard time in both of those endeavors, and the Food and Drug Administration allowed the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine to go forward with a blood-clot waning label, saying that it is highly effective and that blood clots are extremely rare.  Too little, too late.  This pause in the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is expected to boost confidence in the vaccination efforts because the government took questions about the vaccine seriously enough to investigate the issue and put it through the rigors of great scrutiny before concluding it's safe.  No one buys that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is safe.  And the fact that Johnson & Johnson had Yugo-like quality problems in producing it in the first place only makes people wonder if getting it - or the much more effective and reliable Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, for that matter - is worth it.  Even President Biden has given up on the idea that the COVID vaccine from Johnson & Johnson could boost the number of Americans vaccinated because of its one-does regimen, saying it has enough of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to vaccinate everyone in the U.S. Besides, so few people have actually gotten the Johnson & Johnson shot compared to the the two.

This snafu with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine isn't just going to cause vaccine hesitancy; it's going to cause vaccine refusal.  Hesitancy is one thing - "Oh, I'll wait see what happens, but I'll probably take it eventually" - but refusal slams the door on getting a shot. And with herd immunity now in doubt because of all that, hopes to end the COVID pandemic before Thanksgiving have been dashed. And all because a turkey of a vaccine.

By the way, I'm probably going to root for Germany next year.

Another Brick In the Wall

Today is the the day that President Biden is making the COVID vaccines available to all Americans aged sixteen and up.

But thanks to a sudden turn of events regarding the vaccines - and no, I'm not talking about the pause on Johnson and Johnson's single-dose shot - that doesn't matter. 

Vaccination appointments once difficult to secure are becoming all too easy to get because almost everyone who wants a shot has gotten one.  The holdouts - mainly comprised of racial minorities, anti-vaccination skeptics, and, of course, Trump supporters - are a sufficiently large share of the population to cause the vaccination rate in the U.S. to plummet in the near future and render the nation's vaccine stockpiles to go unused.

The media are calling this the vaccine wall.

Blacks and Hispanics have a right to be hesitant about the vaccines, though a little extra persuasion can help to bring down hesitancy among those groups.  But in trying to educate anti-vaxxers and Trump Republicans - many of whom are one and the same - the Biden administration is finding out that, all in all they're just another bunch of bricks in the wall.

They don't need no education . . .  

And talking to them is like taking to a brick wall.  

Anti-vaxxers were eschewing vaccines for just about anything long before COVID, so trying to make them change their minds would be like selling ice cubes to Eskimos.  And even though Donald Trump did publicly endorse COVID vaccinations (albeit after having been vaccinated himself in secret), his supporters continue to resist the vaccines for no apparent reason.  I actually saw a Republican voter in Maine on CNN, wearing a face covering (FC), telling the CNN reporter - who was also wearing an FC - that he's not getting a shot and not even the knowledge that Trump has been vaccinated can change his mind.

I wanted to jump into the TV set and teleport myself to Maine to say this this joker, "If you want to stop wearing that damn piece of cloth over your face, you should get a shot, bucko!"  

The conventional wisdom is that Republicans don't want to get vaccinated against COVID because they think COVID is a hoax anyway, or at most, "just the flu."  Of course, if this guy thought COVID was a hoax, then why was he wearing a face covering?

I give up.  You can't fight stupid.  Thanks to these clowns, herd immunity will not be achieved in the U.S., and the pandemic will go on well into President Biden's successor's term . . . and this is assuming Biden gets re-elected and serves two full terms.  It looked just a week ago like the virus was going to hit a wall of vaccinations, but now it looks the vaccines will hit a wall of virus.

And your wise men don't know how it feels to be . . . oops, wrong prog song! 😠

COVID Vaccine? PAH!

Just a few days after Britain, then Canada,  approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for use for their citizens - or subjects, since both Brits and Canadians bow to the Queen of England - the United States recommended it for approval for its citizens, half of whom bow to Donald Trump.  The Food and Drug Administration gave American doctors and clinics emergency authorization to se the vaccine.

The beginning of the end of the pandemic?  Curb your enthusiasm, Sparky.   The number of vaccines we're getting is far to small to make a dent in the COVID outbreaks we're currently experiencing in this country, and it will take several months for everyone to get vaccinated.  That is, assuming everyone will get vaccinated; a large minority, say 40 to 45 percent, of Americans don't trust COVID vaccines.  Which works out fine, since not too many of them will be available anyway.  Some epidemiologists expect that the vaccine won't let us get back to normal until the middle of summer at best, but others are warning us that we'll have to keep staying six feet apart and go into banks looking like we're about to rob them until next December.

And 2022 may not be all that promising, either.

Meanwhile, Congress can't pass a COVID relief bill, which would help millions of people in the verge of being kicked out onto the street, because Senate Majority Leader A. Mitchell McConnell won't let anything pass unless he gets protection against COVID lawsuits for major corporations.  Given the closeness in the polls in the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia, I doubt that the Democrats will take over the Senate and get anything done.  Bottom line: Just because we're heading into a new year doesn't mean we have to deal with the same old crap.    

On the other hand, the Supreme Court rejected that lawsuit from Texas demanding that the ballots of voters in four swing states that went for Biden be invalidated.  That should be good news.  But Trump and his minions keep fighting the result of the election. 

Bipartisanship At Its Best

When the polio vaccine came out in the mid-fifties, many people were suspicious about its safety until Elvis Presley volunteered to be vaccinated on live television - and he did get vaccinated, on Ed Sullivan's variety show.  It sent a powerful message - if the world's most revered rock and roll star didn't have a problem with the polio vaccine, no one else should either. The result? Millions of people got vaccinated and polio was all but eradicated.

Now we have COVID-19, and new vaccines that can end the pandemic are slowly coming out, yet only a bare majority of Americans have confidence in their safety.  NBC News' Brian Williams has suggested that a revered pop-culture figure like Elvis ought to take the COVID vaccine to show how effective it is.  The sad fact, though, is that there is no revered pop-culture figure like Elvis, our popular culture being just as fragmented as our politics.

Think about it.  If Beyoncé gets the vaccine on live TV, folks in the so-called red states will think that white liberals and minorities trust the government too much, and they won't get it.  If a country singer like Brad Paisley or Kenny Chesney gets the vaccine on live TV, folks in the so-called blue states will think that country-loving Trump supporters are politicizing the vaccine, and they won't get it.  And if Maroon 5's Adam Levine gets the vaccine - on "The Voice" - no one will get it, because Adam Levine is a blooming idiot!

And if the guys in the rock band Greta Van Fleet volunteer to get the vaccine on live TV, people will react by saying, "Greta Van Fleet? Who the hell is she?"  (The sad truth is, current rockers are even more irrelevant than classic rockers.)

Also, there's no one TV show that everyone watches in this 500-channel universe.

So who would be willing to get the COVID vaccine on live television once it becomes available for people under 80?

How about three of our four living ex-Presidents?

Bill Clinton, George Walker Bush, and Barack Obama have all volunteered to get the COVID vaccine on live television as soon as it's available in order to prove its safety and effectiveness and encourage the rest of us to get it.  It's a true bipartisan effort.  It's also a significant one, because they represent all sides of the political and cultural spectrum, and as (until January 20, 2021) the only living Republican ex-President, Bush has a special role here.  As President, he instigated a blueprint for a national strategy to plan for a pandemic back in 2005 - a strategy Trump ignored.  I wouldn't be surprised if the three ex-Presidents got their wives to take the vaccine on live TV - especially Michelle Obama, because everyone loves Michelle Obama.

Look, we have to do something to get people to take the vaccine, because this is the only way to end the pandemic and get back to normal by at least this time next year. Otherwise, we'll have to keep walking into banks looking like we're about to rob them.  We'll have to continue staying six feet apart from each other.  And we'll have to keep washing our hands twenty times a day until our skin cracks open from all that excessive washing.  Small businesses will keep going under, we won't be able to gather for parties,  we'll have to keep wiping down groceries, we won't have any more concerts (or whatever passes for concerts in popular "music" these days), and we'll all have to learn how to use Zoom to see our relatives - and after trying Zoom, I gave up on it because it was so complicated.  Come on, people - do you really want to live like this for the rest of your lives?  As for me, I don't need any ex-Presidents to encourage me to get the vaccine. Give it to me, already!  As soon as it's ready, I'll take it! I'll be first in line!  I want my life back! This year was going to be one of my best ever because of all the things I had planned to do in 2020, and it ended up being my absolute worst year ever!  I'm sure it was your worst year ever, too.  So come on, everyone - what do you have to lose?

The one thing that could seal the deal for the COVID vaccine is if Joe Biden takes it too once he's President.  The one thing that could ruin efforts to get people to take it is if Trump takes it - because Trump is the reason a lot of people don't trust the vaccine.

I'm only sorry that Elvis - who would have been 86 this coming January - isn't around to take it.