Sick

It was Donald Trump who let Anthony Fauci run the COVID response when the pandemic hit.  It was Dr. Fauci who saved millions of people despite the fact that the very administration he worked for got in his way.  While Dr. Fauci led the effort to stop the spread of le covíde, Trump gave his administration the blessing to look for a COVID vaccine in Operation Warp Speed.  The vaccine saved millions more lives.

Now, because Dr. Fauci's pushback against Trump in 2020 has put him on his Trump's enemies list, the Republican Senate is prosecuting and persecuting him over how he handled COVID.

Dr. Fauci did make mistakes in handling COVID.  Because he was dealing with a novel virus.  That's the whole point about a novel virus - you're going to make mistakes in dealing with it because no one knows a twit about it!  

Aware that the Senate committee who subpoenaed him to testify on the pandemic, Dr. Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to questions from the committee's GOP members - especially Kentucky's Rand Paul, who put his libertarian values in a blind trust before the committee hearing began.   Dr. Fauci has since been held in contempt.

This has all happened at a time when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is in charge of America's public health and is voicing skepticism about vaccines.  And in the wake of Dr. Fauci's inquisition, leading virologists - may of whom the same Debbie Downers who kept shooting down our optimism like clay targets whenever it seemed that the pandemic was abating (and of course, it wasn't) - are warning that those of us who lived through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic might live to see another pandemic of such magnitude.  Some of them aren't saying "might" - they're saying "will!"  And an anti-vaccine, anti-science administration is in charge. 

If Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House in January, we should hope that Trump and Vance are taking medical advice from RFK Jr.  Then maybe Jeffries will become President by February. 

Swiss Time Has Run Out

Did you hear about how the Geneva International Motor Show went this past March?  No?  That's because it didn't go at all.

It was canceled again?  Oh, no, it was held, all right.  

See how well-attended it was?

The truth of the matter is that the 2024 Geneva auto show was a bigger lemon than any of the Renaults shown in the picture above.  In May, its fate was sealed when the show's organizers announced that they were disbanding and that there would be no more auto shows in Geneva.  No one cares anymore.  Only a handful of major auto brands even participated in the show, and none of them offer cars for sale in the United States.    

All auto shows were in a degree of trouble by the end of the 2010s.  Then COVID hit in early 2020.  When the Geneva show was canceled that February, that's when I knew that this virus from China was serious.  The show was canceled for the next two years due to la pandémie de le covíde and in 2023 due to lingering COVID fears and "uncertainties in the global economy and geopolitics," though the organizers were happy to display cars in Doha, Qatar to appeal to crazy rich Arabs.  This year the show was finally held again in Geneva, but a funny thing happened in the five-year interregnum - people in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe decided to do something else with their time because they didn't really miss it.  

A lot of my own personal life was forever ruined by le covíde, and so were my plans for when I finally go to Europe - this show was on my bucket list.  But as I said before on an earlier post on this blog,  when would I ever find myself in Switzerland in March?  The organizers have since retrenched and regrouped to continue holding auto shows in Doha, but I have absolutely no plans to fly halfway around the world to a dry, sun-baked, oppressively hot city in the middle of the desert with horrible architecture when Las Vegas is so much closer.   

As for European car shows, there's always the biennial Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung in Munich (formerly held in Frankfurt), and the next one is in September 2025, but whether or not I make that depends whether we have a President who believes in freedom to travel wherever we want or a President who plans to turn America into a 3.8-million-square mile East Berlin. 

COVID - The End (Sorta)

This past Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus finally declared the international COVID emergency over after three years, three months, and five days.  The United States - which of course won the booby prize for the highest case and death count of any nation on this earth - ends its emergency on Thursday.

Of course, the rest of the world figured this out long ago.  But though COVID is no longer the threat it was when it had us mask up and lock down, Tedros is asking the world to remain vigilant because COVID is going to be with us until the end of time and it's going to take some time before it truly becomes no worse than influenza.  In fact, the latest strain, Arcturus (sounds like a car), can cause itchy red eyes not unlike springtime allergies.  So now we have to look out for the Arcturus variant (now that sounds like a car, particularly a German station wagon!) and cross our fingers that it doesn't start another massive wave. And Tedros has said that he would not "hesitate to convene another emergency committee should COVID-19 once again put our world in peril."

For now, at least, the COVID scare is over, and many of us are back to living our lives.  I'm not, really.  For reasons both related and unrelated to the pandemic, I continue to refrain from making plans and from getting involved in anything.  I once said that I saw myself going to Europe in 2023 with the assumption that the public health emergency would end by then; despite the end, I have no plans to go this year or any time after.  I just can't see it happening.  With a couple of visits to New York City - my first in four years - behind me, I have no plans to return any time soon, mainly because bus service in my area has been severely curtailed and there's noting in particular I want to see or do in the city.  And, as always, I no longer wish to get involved in any social or political causes, as I remain convinced that it's all a colossal waste of time.        

I'm still in a funk, mainly because I had to give up on my Volkswagen Golf 8 blog (we're never getting the base model in North America) and also because a Facebook friend unfriended me after over a decade and turned out not to be a true friend after all.  Add to that some personal problems I'd rather not go into here and you can understand why I'm now more, not less, reluctant to put my life back together in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Besides, if I withdraw more from public life, I can more easily avoid Arcturus.  

Three Years of COVID

It was three years ago today that COVID was declared a pandemic.

In case you're wondering . . . of course I've had it, despite having been vaccinated.  After Omicron broke out, everyone got it! But then, the vaccine makes COVID cases more mild, it doesn't necessarily prevent it.

I'm happy to say that after vaccination and infection, my immunity is pretty good.  But I'm still in a towel-throwing mood.  I've given up any idea that I can get my old life back, and even to this day, when the worst of COVID is supposedly behind us, I rarely go out for entertainment or pleasure, I haven't been to a restaurant since just before the pandemic started, and I haven't been to New York City, the metropolitan area of which I live in, in nearly four years.  That might change, as I have been invited to event taking place in the city next month, but it's an evening event and my local bus line - which shut down in 2020 due to the pandemic - has since resumed operation but with a schedule that no longer includes buses running after 8:00 P.M.

When did the bus company decide that New Yorkers roll up their sidewalks at night? 

I've just become more disconnected and embittered after three long years of this, and some TV news anchors are already talking about a fourth year of it.  I keep giving up on everything I can - I've lost interest in so many endeavors in the past three years - and I'm too disgusted to resume any of my previous activities.  When Lent started, I tried giving something up for the pre-Easter period, but I was too disgusted to follow it through after everything I've given up on indefinitely.  Ironically, I've recently been thinking again about recommitting myself to the Church.

As the pandemic eases but does not end, some friends of mine are resuming their pre-pandemic activities, and my English ladyfriend Therisa - who has a passport full of visas already - will soon be leaving Manhattan, where she's lived for nearly a quarter century, to move back to Britain - to Wales, to be precise - to open a dance studio.  I may be looking forward to an endless future of mostly staying put - staying the fuck at home, as Samuel L. Jackson once put it.  (Oh yeah, I've been dropping F-bombs - something I never did before COVID hit - and sometimes I've dropped enough to level Dresden.)  I feel like a fox poking its head out of its hole and looking at the landscape after a big forest fire and surveying the damage . . . and wondering if it's safe to come out.     

COVID, COVID, COVID

No one talks about COVID anymore.  But I have to.  I have to bring up something for people who think I didn't get vaccinated on account of the fact that I'm still using social mitigation measures that pre-date the vaccine.

I did get vaccinated.  Everyone in my household did.  But I could still get sick, and if the next strain can evade vaccines, what good will it be?

So, no, the pandemic s not over yet, and it's possible that it never will be.  

COVID Moment of Truth

Tomorrow, the World Health Organization is to meet to discuss where to end the emergency phase of COVID.  That is, whether they're ready to declare the pandemic over.

If you expect an announcement that the pandemic is ending, don't hold your breath.  On second thought, do hold your breath - it's a good way to avoid getting COVID.

The fact is that since China ended its zero-COVID policy, COVID cases have shot up there like a rocket.  It's spreading so rapidly that it is likely to fall just as quickly, but it's still possibly going to cause a new strain in its wake - a strain serious enough to warrant its own Greek letter.  This hypothetical new strain could keep the pandemic going for another three years.

Some pandits (my term for "pandemic pundits") are critical of efforts of other national governments to test Chinese nationals entering their countries because there's already a lot of COVID outside China that could cause a new strain.  Yes, but there's also a good deal of immunity in the rest of the world because the rest of the world didn't shoot for zero-COVID like China did.  If another strain is going to come from anywhere, it;s where COVID began.

Of course, add American idiots who won't get vaccinated, and you have yourself plenty of reasons why we should expect the emergency to continue . . . and zero reasons why we should not.   

Relax? Don't Do It!

I thought we'd been spared.

It looked there was light at the end of the COVID tunnel.  Despite a rise in infections in the West and a tandem increase in RSV and flu infections, COVID infection rates in late 2022 were still below what they had been in late 2021, the RSV spike among children was due to a lack of exposure to earlier respiratory viruses (and was likely to peak soon and fall off as a result), and the flu spike was likely to follow that same trajectory.  Certainly, I thought, the pandemic would finally fizzle out by this coming spring.  

Then the Commies running the so-called People's Republic of China ruined everything.

China is relaxing and in some cases ending its zero-COVID restrictions and allowing the virus to spread all over the country like runny jelly on toast.  As a result, there have been 250 million COVID infections in China - 18 percent of the country's population - although the government has officially reported only 63,000 cases in the past couple of weeks.  Effective immediately, the government won't be reporting new cases at all.  Meanwhile, Chinese hospitals and crematoria can't keep up with the spike in cases and deaths.

So what does that have to do with the rest of the world? Not only will the Chinese stop testing foreign nationals entering the country, it will start allowing - in a controlled manner, the Chinese government has cryptically explained - Chinese citizens to start traveling outside the country.

Unless other countries rigidly test Chinese travelers entering their domains, we can expect the horrors of 2020 to happen all over again.

And even if prior infections and vaccinations in North America and Europe blunt the spread of the lastest COVID wave now hitting China - the largest wave anywhere since March 2020 - the case and death numbers will still be high . . . particularly in the United States, where right-wing science skeptics still won't get vaccinated.

In other words, don't look at a bright side to all this because there isn't one.

I've been unable to go to many places since the pandemic started nearly three years ago because, even when restrictions were lifted in the United States, I've still had to wear face coverings and engage in some social distancing in indoor public spaces, and as I am uncomfortable going places under these circumstances,  I don't really go anywhere I don't have to other than meetings of the stamp collector's club I belong to.  Many annual events I've regularly attended have been scaled back or canceled altogether.  I still won't attend any events that haven't been cancelled if they're indoors.  But I thought we might be getting toward the end of the pandemic by April 2023 at the earliest.  Hey, Donald Trump wasn't necessarily lying back in 2020 when he said that SARS CoV-2 would go away by April; he just never said what year. 😃

The Chinese have seen to it - all for the sake of  the mighty yuan (and avoiding public unrest that could cause the government to collapse and the army to side with the people) - that this pandemic will go on indefinitely.  And they'll largely escape blame because ,well, we need their supply chains to function.  And the World Health Organization has inexplicably treated China with kid gloves, taking Xi Jinping's propaganda at face value and letting efforts to find the source of COVID atrophy.  The Chinese, of course, are safe in the knowledge that no one in the West will attack them for fear of being labelled racist.

 I am so confident that I will never travel abroad now thanks to all of this that I'm thinking of using my passport - with pages as empty as a monograph book of Irish erotic art - for kindling.  I've gone back to finding the alternative way of seeing Europe - scrolling through landscapes on Google Earth.  Yesterday I virtually visited Holland.

I disagree with most of what the Republicans stand for, but if the House Republican majority in the new Congress makes good on plans to investigate the origins of COVID, I'll be egging them on enthusiastically.

Since I can't go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or see the latest movies in the theaters, I'll have nothing else to do. 

A Quarter Decade of COVID

 It was two and a half years ago today that the World Health Organization declared COVID to be a pandemic.  Even though the pandemic continues, case numbers have decreased enough to make people think it's over, or at least that the worst is over.  Don't you believe it.

In the United States, people are still dying at a rate of about 350 to 400 a day, many parts of the country are in "high" contagion zones, and anyone who doesn't wear a face covering in an indoor public space - i.e., most of us - is asking for trouble.

That includes the World Trade Center in New York, the original version of which was also destroyed 21 years ago today.

I still haven't resumed going to indoor public spaces for non-essential purposes, except my local stamp club meeting.  I still won't go to museums, I still won't go to movie theaters (hence, I refuse to go to the Montclair FIlm Festival in New Jersey, an event I once looked forward to) and I still won't go to auto shows, which suck nowadays anyway. 

Socializing?  Going out for fun?  With very few exceptions, all of that is O-U-T spells "out."  I remain indifferent and uninterested in pre-COVID public indoor activities as ever, and I still have no interest in looking forward to anything, as I originally declared back in March 2022.  COVID is far from over, but I am done with pretty much everything. Sure, I'll get an Omicron booster, now that they're out,  but I know it won't be a game changer like so many other vaccines, boosters, and treatments were supposed to be.  As always, the only way to stay alive is to . . . stop living.

Wake me when the pandemic is over.  See you 'round the clubs! 😠 

Pivot Pool

It's the new game being played by Washington Democrats - a game more consequential than Russian roulette. 

President Biden's - and the Democrats' - fortunes in November and beyond hinge on where the pivot cue is going to aim next.  And the cue ball is out of control once the cue goes off.  

Things look pretty good or the party and the President right now.  The bill designed to fund medical care for service personnel in the Iraq War made sick with cancer by burn pits in the front lines just passed the Senate, and the CIA just took out Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's leader and Osama bin Laden's one-time second-in-command, in Kabul - and I don't mean to dinner.  And while all this happens, gasoline prices are slowly inching down.

But right now, things could go either way.  All signs point to a recession, though we're not quite in one just yet.  U.S. Senator Krysten Simena of Arizona still isn't on board with the bill designed to lower prescription drug prices, reduce climate change, and cut inflation - once again reminding Democrats of how they cold have avoided this by winning at least one or two of the three Senate seats Republicans held in Iowa, Maine and North Carolina in 2020.   New York State has declared a state of emergency over monkeypox - 95 percent of the state's cases are in New York City - when the nation still hasn't licked COVID yet.  And, President Biden now has symptoms from his COVID rebound.  (He didn't rebound, his COVID infection did.)  And if the worst happens, we could see . . . President Kamala Harris?

That'll be a boon for Donald Trump's comeback.

The bottom line is, everything could keep going well for the Democrats and at least minimize midterm election losses or everything could unravel again and help election deniers sweep everything in November. 😱

What the 5?

Dr. Eric Topol was on the PBS NewsHour last night to discuss the COVID pandemic in America.

I can count all of the pieces of good news he gave on one hand with fingers to spare.  But I can't remember any of them.

I can, however, remember the bad news he gave.  He said that BA.5, the latest variation of the Omicron COVID strain, is the worst strain yet - a COVID strain, like a Madonna record, is always worse and more unbearable than the one preceding it - and that it can re-infect people who have had their shots or have had the bug.  Americans who have been double-boosted - myself included - are far more immune to BA.5, but because the BA.5 bug is so contagious, infection levels are where they were in early 2021, with re-infections all too common. 

And what is the Centers for Disease Control doing about this?  Practically nothing. What are Americans doing to prevent getting sick?  Practically nothing.  So few people have gotten their first boosters - with few of them getting second boosters - that the United States now ranks 67th in the world in booster vaccine deliveries.  The only Americans who will be happy to hear that are Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.  And possibly Jim Jordan.

The director general of the World Health Organization said, "The pandemic won't be over anywhere until it's over everywhere."  What he meant to say was, "The pandemic won't be over everywhere until it's over in the United States." 😠 

COVID Continues

I was optimistic that the daily COVID case rate, spiking thanks to a new sub-strain of Omicron, would resume its downward trend once it got warmer in the spring, but after a chilly April, it's only beginning to get warm now and the seven-day new case average has already doubled over the past month.

And to make things even more disheartening, Dr. Anthony Fauci (below), after having declared an end to the pandemic in the U.S., quickly backtracked and said that the "acute phase" of the pandemic is over in the U.S. and that we're still in a pandemic. Some experts are actually expecting another surge - in the Southern states this summer.  But things are quiet for now, right?  Judge for yourself - Dr. Fauci skipped the White House Correspondents Dinner to avoid getting sick - despite being vaccinated - due to his age (he's 81, two years older than President Biden). 

Well, things should be done in my area for awhile by June, at least.  In fact, I was planning to go to a local art museum that opens to visitors for free every first Thursday evening of the month on June 2 to see a special exhibit.  June is usually the last month the museum has free first Thursday nights before resuming them in the fall.  I figured that going this Thursday, the first Thursday of May, was too soon.  Except for one thing; there won't be a June free first Thursday this year, so if I want to see this special exhibit, I have to go this week. 

And after that, I don't see myself returning to this museum any time soon.  Or doing much of anything else locally; there's a film festival every year in my area, and this year the festival is in October.  Thanks to COVID, and thanks also to high ticket prices, I don't expect to go to a movie at the film festival, and I have unsubscribed from the e-mails the festival organizers send out.  Dropping out of life's pleasures, of course, is nothing new to me, as I've made clear in the past month and change. 😢    

COVID Confusion

I live in a county with low COVID hospitalizations.  So I shouldn't have to wear a face covering.

But the contagion rate in my county, despite rapidly declining Omicron cases, is still high.

Wait," I thought, "that doesn't make sense!" 

It turns out that nothing makes sense.  So many face-covering mandates are coming down, but 70 percent of the country is still in a state of high contagion, which means I'm not sure if I should go into an indoor public space without an "FC" now, or even later.  As to whether or not we're nearing the end of the pandemic, experts say that it's "complicated."

Don't count on anyone in the media offering an explanation.  Everyone is busy reporting on Ukraine and on Ukraine only.

And even if Ukraine weren't under siege, Dr. Rochelle Walensky would still be no big help.

Oh yeah, it turns out that the Capitol lifted its face-covering mandate just before President Biden's State of the Union address last night, so practically  no one wore a face covering at the speech.  How nice . . . 

Beijing Blahs

I was happy to see American Nathan Chen (below) win the gold medal in men's figure skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics.  I think the Elton John medley he skated to helped him with the judges. 😃 Ditto for Chloe Kim in women's halfpipe snowboarding.  And I just have to give a shout-out to Lindsey Jacobellis, the Dan Jansen of snowboarding, who finally won a gold medal in the women's snowboard cross and followed it up in the mixed-team snowboard event with another gold medal.

But these Winter Games have mostly been a bummer.  Shaun White finished his Olympic career with a disappointing fourth-place showing in the men's halfpipe snowboarding competition. (Even Jackie Joyner-Kersee managed to finish her Olympic career with  a bronze medal.)  Mikaela Shiffrin could do no better than place ninth in the women's Super G ski race.  And reminders of China's repression and zero-COVID policy are everywhere - not just with the absence of fans in the stands but also with a face-covering mandate so strict that people have to mask up outside - and so we get pictures like this! 

That's Mikaela Shiffrin - you only know that because I just told you - checking her Apple tablet while looking like she's about to fly a jet fighter or audition for a role in a Star Wars movie.

Well, maybe she can still win a medal in the downhill. 

Even without COVID, these Winter Games don't feel right.  You sense that even by watching them on TV, the way NBC covers it.  Everything is rigidly controlled by the Chinese, and the vibe among the competitors mostly reflects that.  The good cheer is more fake than the the snow.  And the commentary is more pat than usual.  What would you rather do - listen to Dan Hicks or pull your own teeth? Me, I'd rather pull Dan Hicks' teeth.

The coverage got so pat that, on Friday night, I was watching the mixed-team snowboard cross race . . . and I actually fell asleep. 😮

Enough.  I want my classic Winter Olympics back.  I want the Winter Games held in a small ski town up in the mountains in a remote area.  Preferably in a country whose government doesn't monitor its citizens with their own smartphones. I want the atmosphere to be so cozy that you can imagine the athletes and the fans hanging out together and having cocoa in a homey ski lodge - and you feel like you're there with them.  I want a twelve-day Winter Olympiad, not a sixteen-day one - sixteen-day Winter Olympiads are just an excuse to make more money.  I want fewer athletes - except for the Jamaican bobsled team, no more athletes from tropical climates! I want Mike Tirico to host the Winter Games from a studio with a fireplace - a real fireplace, not a fake one like the one Stephen Colbert sat in while a "fire" was going!  And unless climate change is really bad, I want . . . real snow!

In 2026, when the pandemic should be over, the Winter Olympics will be held in Italy - the outdoor events in Cortina d'Ampezzo and the indoor skating events in  Milan.   There won't be any restrictions, but the grandiosity of holding the Winter Games in two separate places a hundred miles apart doesn't give me much hope.  It may be too late for 2026 to have a classic Winter Olympiad.  But then, there's always 2030 . . .

Ring Out the Old

I don't know if I'm in a position to wish anyone a happy new year.

My life continues to be the exact opposite of everything I'd hoped it to be this time two years ago thanks in no small part to the pandemic, which merrilessly rolls along.  The year 2020 was horrible, and 2021 was only marginally better, thanks to Trump being displaced from office and the brief respite we got from the pandemic between the decline in cases and the sudden blow from Delta.  But the year is now ending the way it started; the record for the highest daily average COVID case count was broken after eleven-and-a-half months, and the new one was broken in eleven-and-a-half hours.  And it will be broken again. 

Me, I'm hunkering down again. I've been told I don't have to go into lockdown because of Omicron, and it's not March 2020 and all that, because there are these "tools" to fight the virus (yes, and I hear them on CNN all the time), but we're in winter now, so where the heck am I going to go apart from the supermarket?  And I'll probably end up getting the omicorona anyway.  Cases are expected to spike to an all-time high before dropping off sharply, at least until the next variant comes along.  And, of course, I am looking at the items on my bucket list that COVID, appropriately enough, has made it increasingly impossible to check off.

Oh yeah, while all this has been going on, the replacement cassette player I got under warranty malfunctioned, and now it plays tapes to slowly as well.  I'm going to have to wait for Omicron to pass before I get this one replaced under warranty.

I don't know what my commentary on this blog in 2022 will look like, but I can guarantee you that there'll be a lot less popular culture.  I can't and don't keep up with it these days, largely because I don't care about it.  I found the story of Britney Spears' conservatorship to be largely dull, and I could care less about all of the pop music and TV shows from South Korea.  Just to show you how behind I am, I actually discovered on public television this year "Packed To The Rafters," an Australian comedy-drama series that went off the air Down Under (except for a reunion or two) in 2013.  

A for what's going on today, well, I'm very sorry that Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story is a box-office disaster, but despite the good reviews it's gotten, there's been a lot of pushback from Hispanic groups about the new movie, continuing Spielberg's uneasy relationship with communities of color - as if trying to turn The Color Purple into a movie taught him nothing.  (See why I gave up making year-end winners and losers lists?)  I can't let 2021 go ,however, without addressing the shooting accident on the set of Alec Baldwin's latest movie project: It was a terrible, tragic accident, and I hope all of the parties involved get through this.

Right, I'm done for the year, expect for one more Music Video Of the Week - that's coming tomorrow. See you soon.

China's Reward?

It never ceases to amaze me how people are undeservedly rewarded for the damage they cause to civilization.  Why is Donald Trump still considered a leading contender for the Presidency in 2024 after having staged a near-coup back in January?  How did Rush Limbaugh get away with being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom after using his power and influence to smother voices opposed to his political views?  How come Madonna got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after destroying the form by pushing her lightweight, oversexualized brand of pop and also promoting hip-hop?  And why, despite having started a pandemic that ruined everyone's lives- possibly for good - does the People's Republic of China still get to host the Winter Olympics? 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (above) has successfully gotten his country to evade blame for giving the world COVID, even though it originated in Wuhan due to either unsanitary conditions in a wet market or a botched experiment in a virology lab, and the Chinese government punished doctors who poke out about it even as they were letting the Chinese people get infected and allowing them to spread it to other parts of the world and create a pandemic - the word coming from the Greek words meaning "all people," because that's exactly who can get COVID now.   And thanks to Omicron, that may very well be who gets it.  And yet there Xi will be in February, presiding over the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a city that should never have gotten the Winter Games in the first place owing to the fact that it hosted the Summer Games as recently as 2008 and to its humungous size despite Winter Olympic locales usually being small towns in remote, snowy areas (northeastern China is neither).  Beijing only got the Winter Olympics because the International Olympic Committee was clearly afraid to cross China and the committee members really, really, really wanted to avoid giving the Winter Games to the only other bidder for 2022, Almaty.

Well, guess what!  Numerous countries, led by the United States, are not sending diplomats or government representatives to the Winter Olympics - not to protest the failure of China to contain COVID  but to protest China's treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.  (Which is near the part of Kazakhstan where Almaty is.)   Take COVID out of the picture, b the way, and that would have been more than enough reason to instigate a diplomatic boycott.  Xi has vowed to revenge, but what more can he do after running up big trade deficits with everyone else and getting 273 million people and counting sick with SARS-on-steroids?  Oh, right, invade Taiwan. Well, if Xi does start a war, it's likely to be for something other than sour grapes over the empty seats for the diplomatic corps in the stands at the Winter Olympic opening ceremonies. Maybe he should pay attention to the empty seats in the stands for people who would have bought tickets to see the Winter Games in person - had it not been for COVID.

"Steve," you say, aren't you concerned that the Chinese government will ban your blog in China after what you've just said?"  Hah!  You think I care?  Facebook already bans it, so why should I mind if Xi does?

And yes, I still think it. 😉   

Omicron?

Oh, swell, another COVID variant.

The World Health Organization declared the new variant discovered over the weekend in South Africa as a variant of concern, and in this pandemic, concern is usually a prelude to disaster.  This variant could be more contagious than Delta and may even evade vaccines, suggesting a real-life Andromeda strain that is incurable and could wipe out humanity completely,

But it probably isn't.  What little data there is suggests that the symptoms from what I am tempted to call the "omicorona" are milder than previous strains (I still hate the use of the word "variant," it sounds like they're taking about a German station wagon), and vaccines are likely to either be effective or adaptable to the new strain.  The question is, it they have to be adapted, whether people already vaccinated and boosted should get a fourth shot.

While we wait a few days for the verdict (swell, another word beginning with the letter "v" associated with this pandemic) on this strain, I ought to explain why the Greek letter omicron was used to name this COVID strain.  Because the next two available letters had problems.  The next available one was "nu," and calling it the "nu" variant could easily be taken to mean it's the "new variant," suggesting a possible riff in the tradition of Abbott and Costello.  ("I heard of a new COVID variant.  What is it called?" "The nu variant."  "I know it's new, but what is the name of the variant?" "No, nu, not what!" "What?" "No, nu."  "Look, I'm trying to find out that name of the variant." "Which one?" "The new variant."  "That's the name of the variant!" "What?" "What the name of the variant is." "That's what I'm trying to find out!") 

Gallows humor there.

The next letter after "nu" in the Greek alphabet is "xi," pronounced "she," just like the surname of a certain world leader from a country where last names come first spells and pronounces his surname.

And we want to make sure that he doesn't take offense, right?  Especially when he made omicron, or nu, or xi happen?  Or did he?

For he may be Xi, but what I'm told is never, never for certain.

And I'm told, and I'm told he's a virgin.  

More gallows humor . . . 

But I'm not kidding around when I say this: Any new COVID "variant of concern" is serious.  Get vaccinated if you haven't and get boosted if you have.

Biden At Rock Bottom

And if the bedrock erodes, he could sink lower.

This is a disastrous time for President Biden, the Democrats and the nation.  The President is still reeling from bad foreign policy decisions he made over the summer, the Democratic Congress won't give him any relief in the form of infrastructure bills he can sign into law, and COVID continues to plague the country.  Democrats don't blame Republicans entirely for COVID either; they cite the administration's CDC guidelines as being too confusing and incomprehensible, and the administration has only just begun straightening out the booster mess it created for itself by having a start date for boosters that contradicted scientific reality.

I am extremely pessimistic.  Because while he's foundering, Donald Trump is convincing more and more Republicans that the Democrats did indeed steal the presidential election . . . and conspiracy theories about things such as the election, COVID, and left-wing terror groups are multiplying faster than rabbits.  Let me put it this way: This time in 1993 and in 2009, I was relieved to be living in an America where a Democrat was President and in which Democrats controlled Congress, we had just put a bad President named George Bush behind us, and the future looked bright, with a renewed interest in public policies that would make America a country worth living in.  This time now, I'm scared stiff about the future.  I'm anticipating a takeover of state and local offices by Trump supporters in the the off-year and midterm elections to come, the rigging of the electoral process to pave the way for a Trump comeback in 2024 and a final conflict between Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee (who may or may not be Biden) that will result in 45 (Trump was the 45th President) becoming 47 and our civil and constitutional rights being eighty-sixed.  But then Bill Clinton and Barack Obama didn't have to contend with twin crises like a pandemic and a alt-right movement.  Biden should be able to deal with both, but so far he's proven himself to be a late-twentieth-century man operating in an early-twenty-first century world. 

There's still time for President Biden to recover, though.  In fact, his recovery may have already begun and we don't know it yet.  Afghanistan is slowly receding from the news while the Biden administration continues diligently to get more Americans and Afghan allies out of that country.  The dustup with France over U.S. nuclear-submarine sales to Australia has been settled - "a misunderstanding among friends," as Napoleon once described tense U.S.-French relations during the Presidency of John Adams.  The Delta COVID variant is receding as more people get vaccinated.  (The jury's out on the immigration issue, though.)  Meanwhile, the January 6 select committee is finally showing some backbone - more on that later.  The big question mark is whether the President can get congressional Democrats to pass both of his infrastructure bills before the year is out and also get voting rights legislation meant to prevent a Republican rigging of the system passed as well.  And both of those tasks rest in the hands of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin (below), who balks at more spending on social programs but is pushing a voting-rights bill that he thinks he can get passed without having to abolish the filibuster.

See why I'm pessimistic?

Hopefully, Manchin will come to his senses soon enough.  And while I'm not going to say that I have a feeling he will - there's nothing to suggest that as of yet - the nightmare scenario that brings about second Trump Presidency and puts the workings of government in the hands of a reactionary cadre of white supremacists and unindicted insurrectionists should move him at least a millimeter tor two.  I just hope it won't be too late when it does. 

A Little Traveling Music, Please

At the beginning of this month, I ranted about the European Union (EU) removing the United States from its "safe travel" list of countries tourists come from due to the spread of the delta corona here, blaming that on the assortment of goobers, hicks, and other morons in These States from allowing that to happen by refusing COVID vaccines.  It turns out that I overreacted - a little, at least.

As of now, only two EU member countries have banned all Americans from entering them - Bulgaria and Sweden.  All other countries in the EU still allow vaccinated Americans to enter and travel freely.  Unvaccinated Americans are allowed in only for essential and necessary purposes, however, and they have to show proof of a negative test before arriving.  In other words, if you're vaccinated, you'll still be able to travel if you're planning to go to Paris, Rome, Berlin, or any other EU capital not named Sofia or Stockholm.  Heck, if you go to Europe, you may have less of a chance of getting a COVID infection than if you travel within the United States.  (Since most unvaccinated Americans likely have no business in Europe and are probably the sort who would never to go the Europe anyway because America is the greatest country in the world and all that, I suspect they don't matter here at all.)  

Except for one thing: The State Department is strongly urging Americans not to go anywhere in Europe, including the United Kingdom (or virtually anywhere on the planet, for that matter) due to COVID, and the government continues to ban European tourists from entering America despite the EU's higher vaccination rates.  Then again, with all of the unvaccinated goobers, hicks and morons running loose in our country, maybe the government thinks it's doing Europeans a favor.

Oh yeah, the State Department advises against travel to some European countries such as Italy or France not just because of COVID but because of fears of acts of terrorism.

Oh, you mean acts of terrorism like this? 

I'm still hoping to travel to Europe in this decade.  If I go when Biden is President, I'll be back in a month or so.  If I go when Trump or DeSantis is President, I won't be back at all. 

Six Points of COVID

President Biden has had enough.

The President amounted a new six-point program to combat the delta corona.  His plan is to move forward toward booster shots for vaccinated people, keeping schools open through face coverings and staff vaccinations and vaccinations of students 12 and older, increasing testing, allowing small businesses to borrow up to $2 million in long-term, low-interest loans to deal with the pandemic, improving care for the infected, and getting shots for the unvaccinated with mandates for workers, public and private.  The program makes it easier to mandate vaccines for government employees while giving private employers a great incentive to so the same.

It's this last point that is getting all of the attention, because Biden didn't want to force anyone to get vaccinated.  But nationwide vaccination rates are only going up 0.1 percent daily, while COVID infection rates are much higher than that, mainly because people who don't want to get vaccinated are getting sick.  A lot of folks are saying the President should have done this sooner.

But it seems that even more people don't want the President to to do it at all.  Republican lawmakers and leaders, mostly at the state and local levels,  oppose the vaccination mandates as government overreach, recognizing how many Republican voters distrust the vaccines despite the overwhelming science in their favor.  They're even going to try to stop the mandates with lawsuits.

And they'll only delay the mandates, allowing more people to refuse the shot get COVID and die.  Which in turn will make Biden look weaker and buoy Republican hopes for regaining power in 2022 and 2024.

Republicans are sick.  I don't just mean with COVID 

I'll have more to say on this later.

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Tear up your passports, boys and girls.

Thanks to the vaccine-resistant cult in These States, fueled by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham at Fox News - both of whom are championing some sort of horse medicine as a COVID cure - the European has once again removed the United States from its "safe travel" list from traveling to its member states, citing the rapid increase (still in progress of the delta corona and our pathetic vaccination rates.  Which more or less means that Americans are unable to travel to European Union states once again. 

And of course, this news won't convince holdouts to get vaccinated against COVID, because, as I'm sure I've noted before, most of them are the same sort of people who think America is the greatest country in the world!  Why would anyone want to go anywhere else?  Mainly to get away from the same people who resist COVID vaccines and think America is the greatest country in the world.  (That would include Clarence Thomas, who spends each summer traveling around America in an RV.) 

It turns out the feeling is mutual. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already put European Union countries such as Estonia, France, Greece, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain on its list of countries you should not go to because COVID transmission sis very high, and it just added Switzerland to that list.  Oh, yeah, don't think of hopping on board a flight to London to see Big Ben or Abbey Road Studios - the United Kingdom, no longer an EU country, is on the list, too.  

It is true that the European Union is way ahead of us in vaccinations, having reached 70 percent of all of its people vaccinated.  And we're bragging that we got to 52.4 percent with a sudden surge in vaccinations that likely won't show a quantum leap in that number for awhile yet.  But thanks to the delta corona, the European Union may need much more than 70 percent of its residents vaccinated to get over the virus. Maybe at least - at least - 85 percent.   

Once again, my hopes of going abroad - I've been waiting for the end of the pandemic - have been  dashed.  I thought I'd be able to go in 2023, but even that date may be too optimistic.  Every time I thought i had a chance to go to Europe in the days before COVID, I made an effort only to have reality pushed me back.  My last chance to go was when a friend who lives in Paris invited me to come on over.  I began to start making arrangements, and then I got appendicitis  I had just recovered from my appendectomy when COVID hit.

I shouldn't have waited for a chance to go abroad.  I should have made the chance.  No it's probably too late. 😢 

And by the way, don't listen to Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingham about COVID.  They have little horse sense.  Feel free to clop your foot twice if you disagree, righties.