Great White Nuts

The only solace I can find in the Canadian trucker protest that started as a demonstration against COVID vaccine mandates and has continued as a protest against all sorts of restrictions from the Canadian government is that Canada has its share of cranks, too. 

And they can get just as ornery.

Some folks doubt if these people are Canadian.  Michael Moore has even said right out loud that he doesn't think these truckers are legitimate. Oh, they're legitimate, all right - doesn't matter whether they're from Canada or the U.S., truckers are extremely intolerant when it comes to respecting authority.  (Didn't the song "Convoy" teach anyone anything?)  But the supporters and the backers who have made these protests happen are American.  American right-wing populists are using this brouhaha to further their own political interests and shut down trade between the two countries to make President Biden look worse than he already does and make the Republican takeover of Congress in November that much more of a likelihood.   

As fo now, the blockades at the border are being cleared as regular Canadians - who have a higher COVID vaccination rate than their American counterparts - are getting fed up with them and want to get back to fighting the pandemic.  It won't be long before protesters are cleared out of Ottawa, the Canadian capital.  But the bad blood stirred up by the truckers came fairly close to bringing down the Canadian government, and it only shows how pervasive this movement against democracy and the rule of law is - not just in America but all over the world.

The Delta Corona

A week ago, I wrote about the disaster that would result once the Delta variant of SARS CoV-2 hit - really hit - in the U.S.  Well, it's really hitting now.  More people are catching the delta corona in numbers we haven't seen since we had to worry about the British Alpha variant, and states like Missouri and Florida are in full pandemic mode once again.   Even states where new numbers are low, like my home state of New Jersey, are seeing cases surge, though nowhere nearly as much as in states out west or down south.  The only thing keeping the delta corona from getting as bad as it was this past winter is the relatively large number of people already vaccinated, and a majority of people happen to be fully vaccinated in New Jersey.

Oh yeah, about vaccinations . . . I'm not as hopeful about the very incremental rise in vaccination rates as I used to be.  The national vaccination rate, according to the Web site Our World In Data, went from 47.8 percent to 48.5 percent between July 3 and July 11 - a daily increase of one tenth of a percent - suggesting that we could reach 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by some time in February 2022 if that rate continues.  But it's July 15 now, and so many people seem to have shunned a COVID vaccine lately that Our World In Data hasn't updated its figures since July 11 (this past Sunday).  

And yet the foolishness continues.  Right-wingers at the latest Conservative Political Action Conference applauded the news that vaccination rates have gone down.  Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential possibility, is basing his 2022 gubernatorial re-election campaign on demonizing Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Even as French President Emmanuel Macron (below) is now requiring vaccine passports, which caused vaccination appointments in France to go up rapidly, the very idea of vaccine passports remains as popular in America as proposals to legalize LSD.

Before you start checking out rental properties in Paris and looking at where you can get a good deal on a Renault once you're there, however, there is still a modicum of hope.  Republican leaders such as Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell and Arkansas governor Asa Hutchison are pushing for more COVID vaccinations ("We're in the red zone, but not in the end zone," Senator McConnell explained).  The Biden administration is preparing to fight back against vaccine misinformation, doubling down on efforts to get local political figures, clergy, and doctors to convince people to get vaccinated.  President Biden has even enlisted Olivia Rodrigo - a singer who's popular with American youth, though she's unheard of by folks whose idea of a great female singer is Janis Joplin or Stevie Nicks - to encourage more young people to get the jab.  President Biden is also preparing to send surge teams to areas of the country where COVID is rebounding to get treatments and testing for those who caught the bug.  And there's anecdotal evidence that, in hot spots like Springfield, Missouri, people are beginning to get vaccinated based on the alarming surge in COVID cases.

Despite all that, the pandemic in America is clearly going to get worse before it gets better.  Even those who get sick or know someone who does may not be convinced enough to get vaccinated, and if even any variant that arises from the Delta isn't vaccine-resistant, it's likely to be an even bigger deal in terms of transmission and symptoms.  Considering natural immunity from infection and any spike in vaccinations that may occur based on the current situation, the pandemic will likely end in America soon enough.  But it's going to end with a bang, not a whimper; once the Delta variant burns out, it's going to leave a lot scorched earth in its wake.

And it may even upend Ron DeSantis' campaign strategy.

Viruses, vaccines, variants . . . I'm surprised that the "v" key on my laptop hasn't worn off completely by now.

COVID Continues

I keep typing "when will the pandemic end" in Google searches to get an answer to that very question about COVID, but no one seems to know.  And in fact, the latest news about COVID is not reassuring.

A lot of progress has been made in shutting down the virus in a good deal of the U.S., and despite a lagging vaccination rate, the number of fully vaccinated Americans goes up each day - 46.4 percent as of the end of last week.  It has been going up by a couple of tenths of a percentage points each day for the past several weeks, and while that may not sound like that big of an increase, it's still an increase and a steady one at that.  However, the so-called Delta variant of the virus threatens everything, even though the mRNA vaccines are still effective against them (provided you get two doses of either).   And in countries where vaccination rates lag, the situation is particularly dire. 

In Australia, for example, the federal and state governments have been effective at testing and tracing, as seen in testing sites like the one above, but their vaccine rollout has been a flop - only 23.9 percent of Australians have been partially vaccinated as of the end of last week with only 4.7 percent of Australians fully vaccinated.  And it's late June, which means it's winter down there - winter, of course, being an easier time for the virus to spread.  (True, it's only 60 degrees Fahrenheit down there at this time of year, not freezing cold like winter in the American Northeast or continental Europe, but its still chillier overall.)  So it should come as no surprise that the Sydney area is under a two-week lockdown because of the rapid spread of the delta corona, as I call it.   The Aussies have also given up on its main vaccine, the ill-fated AstraZeneca shot, switching instead to Pfizer and Moderna. 

Unfortunately, as always with COVID, it's worse than you think.  Israel has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.  As many as 57 percent of its population has been fully vaccinated as of last week.  Also, it's not winter there now.  And yet the Israelis have had to re-impose face-covering mandates as a result of a wave of delta corona infections  - some of them among the fully vaccinated.  The World Health Organization, meanwhile, has gone so far as to recommend that even the fully vaccinated continue to wear face coverings indefinitely.  And in some parts of the world where national and local governments have dropped face-covering mandates, private establishments continue to require them, making fully vaccinated people wonder why they bothered getting vaccinated in the first place.

Or getting unvaccinated people to ask why they should get vaccinated at all.  Back in the U.S. of A., many experts and politicians, like Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, are calling for the federal government to give final approval to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines instead of the emergency approval they're currently authorized under in order to boost vaccine demand among those hesitant to get it.  I say, do it - the results are in, they work!

Until all of this gets taken care of,  the question  "When will the pandemic end?" may have no answer.  And when it does have one, you probably won't like it very much.

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News

Where we are in the COVID pandemic depends on how you view it.  And two of President Biden's top COVID advisers are looking at the same data and coming away from it with different conclusions as if the data were an ink blot test.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walnensky, who last week said she had a sense of impending doom as signs of a fourth surge in COVID cases started up, said a few days ago that vaccinated people can't get or spread COVID based on the available data but then walked it back ("walked it back" - I'm beginning to detest that saying) by suggesting, well, maybe you can get and spread the virus even if you've been vaccinated. "The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others," she said.  "We are continuing to evaluate the evidence."

And how many vaccine-hesitant Americans won't bother to get vaccinated if they think they'll get COVID one way or another?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, has a slightly different - and more optismtic - view.  He doesn't deny that  a fourth COVID surge is very possible.  But he does believe that a fourth surge can be blunted very effectively, citing the fact that four million people received vaccinates on the day before Easter and noting that more vaccinations are to come.  He assured CNN's Jim Acosta that this pandemic is not going to last forever and that a return to life as we knew it or something like it is imminent.  He seems to suggest that once enough of us are vaccinated, the general population will be impregnable from a SARS CoV-2 mass infection.

I hope he's right, because if he's not, it won't just be the rabbit that dies. 😱

Maybe not a good expression to use on this Easter Monday . . . 😢