It Might As Well Be a Spring Booster

COVID, or as the French might call it, le Covíde ("Le co-VEED!!"), continues to wane as March draws to close, but some epidemiologists warn that a new strain could appear as soon as the day after tomorrow and disrupt our entire spring.  Oh, joy!

An obvious solution to a sudden COVID resurgence would be to have spring booster vaccines available for the most at-risk citizens in These States.  There's just one thing wrong - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hasn't signed off on it.  It hasn't even indicated whether or not it would sign off on it.  Trouble is, the CDC has to take a stand, because as long as the agency stays mum on the issue, no one can allow Americans to get a spring booster vaccine because the vaccines are still under emergency use authorizations and thus haven't been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

However, British and Canadian citizens can get COVID booster shots for the spring, because their governments have given the all-clear on them.  Ah, but in America, the CDC takes this issue very seriously and so does not want to be rushed into making a decision.  Though, quite frankly, I can't remember the last time CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky actually made one.

For us silly Yanks, I suppose, all we can do is hope that the World Health Organization to finally declare the pandemic over.  Neither a decision on spring booster shots or a declaration to the end of the COVID ("Le co-VEED!!") pandemic is likely to happen any time soon, thouse I would expect a declaration of the end of the pandemic to happen first - say, on the eleventh of never.  

COVID Ci, COVID Ça

Oh, wonderful.

New strains of COVID are popping up just in time for winter - subvariants of Omicron calle BQ.1 and XBB - that can evade prior immunity and vaccination.  Anthony Fauci (below), who is stepping down as  director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases soon, just said that the pandmeic "certainly isn't" over.

When will it be over?  There certainly isn't an answer.

What am I looking forward to doing in the near and far future?  That's a question I can easily answer - absolutely nothing.  And going into New York City, near where I live, certainly isn't on the agenda any time soon thanks to increasing crime in the city and a truncated schedule for my local bus line that's based on the idea that they roll up the sidewalks at night in the Big Apple (the last bus for home leaves at 8:30 P.M.).

Unless we can wrap ourselves in bubble wrap, the only thing we can look forward to in 2023 is getting COVID again.

Winter of Discontent

There's a brand new COVID vaccine specifically aimed at Omicron and is effective against that family of strains, which are about as endless as variations of Vitamin B. It can help improve the quality of life in this country and do a lot to fight harmful pathogens in the air.

In that sense, it's like a compact EV.  It also has something else in common with a compact EV - not too many Americans want it. 😮 

Many Americans aren't aware that this new vaccine exists, and many of those that are don't want it.  They consider the benefits of getting this Omicron booster and they're like, "Enh!"  The only problem (and it's a big one) is that if not enough Americans get the new Omicron booster, we could have another big bad wave of COVID infections this winter.

"Could"? More like "will."

Dr. Anthony Fauci (remember him?) is afraid that the failure to vaccinate enough Americans could make it possible for a more contagious and more dangerous new strain to emerge this winter - maybe another Omicron strain but maybe this time a strain distinctive enough to warrant its own Greek letter . . . and the next one is Pi.

No, Alice, Pi! 

And if too few of us get the Omicron booster, America could very well get hit with a Pi in the face.

Well, O.K., Alice, I guess that makes the point . . . 

And this would indeed be funny if it weren't so serious . . . 

We could be in for a heap of trouble.  President Biden should never have said that the pandemic is over.  I wish he hadn't said that.  I'm sure he wishes he hadn't said that.  

One Million

That's how many people have died of COVID in the United States so far.

And it likely isn't over yet.  That wave predicted for the end of the year I mentioned a few days ago?  It's more like a tsunami - a possible one hundred million infections in the late fall and the winter.  And apparently, the only way to prevent it is to have more federal funding to fight the disease.

Except that the Republicans in the Senate won't allow any more COVID funding until President Biden rescinds Title 42 and blocks immigrants from coming over the border, or at least let the Senate vote on the issue.  But even if Charles Schumer allowed such a vote at the risk of Democrats joining the Republican caucus in supporting Title 42 and producing an pro-Title 42 majority, the chances of getting COVID funding passed after that are still slim because a handful of Republicans think we've given enough COVID money to state and local governments.

And even if it could pass, Rand Paul will probably block it.  

It looked like we might get a warm-weather reprieve in the meantime but with cases going back up in this country, the light at the end of the tunnel has once again turned out to be an oncoming train.

Let it run over all of us. 😠

Commie Karma

Shanghai breezes, cool and clearing, evening's sweet caress . . . and spreading Omicron BA.2.

China's largest city, with a population equivalent to three times the size of New York plus the population of San Jose, is and has been under lockdown for weeks over the COVID Omicron BA.2 strain spreading rapidly among city residents because they were either unvaccinated or got China's low-quality, zero-grade vaccine.  And the Chinese Communists think, as always that they can eradicate it with their zero-COVID strategy, which has already caused great misery among the Chinese people.

The residents of Shanghai have indeed been, well, shanghaied, forced against their will to sit in their apartments until the COVID wave passes and not even being able to go out for the most basic necessities except what the government gives them - like food that can make you sick.  Naturally, this is causing global supply chains emanating from China to break down even further, but I'm sure Xi Jinping sees that as a plus if it gets President Biden voted out of office in America.

The residents of Shanghai are getting so restless in a lockdown over a virus spreading in part because their government lied about it when it first emerged, even as Beijing now deals with Omicron BA.2, that this could cause - dare I say it?  a revolution.

One can only hope.

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao . . .  

Face-Covering Sunset

The federal face-covering mandate on public transportation to combat COVID, which is set to expire on May 3, was originally supposed to expire yesterday, April 18.  Ironically, a federal judge in Florida decided to put the kibosh on it yesterday.

Federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle (above), of the Middle District of Florida, struck down the mandate, saying that it exceeded the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and added that the CDC had not properly followed notice and comment procedures.  Calling the mandate "arbitrary and capricious," Judge Mizelle added in her opinion, "Wearing a [face covering] cleans nothing. At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither 'sanitizes' the person wearing the [face covering] nor 'sanitizes' the conveyance," Mizelle wrote.

If you suspect that Judge Mizelle is a conservative lackey who knows nothing about science, you're on the mark; the 35-year-old jurist was appointed by Trump despite her lack of judicial experience and had clerked for Clarence Thomas.  She was also rated by the American Bar Association as "not qualified" because she had never tried a case in a courtroom.  Also, as noted, she serves in Florida, her home state.  Florida is one of 21 states suing to get the public transport face-covering mandate thrown out.  Florida, however, is not a state known for heavy usage of public transportation.  It is, though, known as a state where high-speed rail was stopped - twice!

Aah, I don't care.  I mean, I'm resigned to the fact that this COVID pandemic will likely last until the end of time (which could be any day now) and I don't need to worry about it because I'm never going to take a bus, a train, or a jet airliner anywhere ever again.  Oh, yeah, I'm still debating whether or not to shred my never-used passport.

The Justice Department is looking into the possibility of appealing Judge Mizelle's ruling.

The Forever Pandemic

Not only is the COVID pandemic not over, the BA.2 variation of Omicron is causing an uptick in the United States that some commentators are already calling a wave.  And, as usual, the Northeast, long the most vigilant part of the country when it comes to SARS-CoV-2, is bearing the brunt of it.

So, just when we thought we'd get a reprieve with the warmer weather, we're already dealing with another possible surge.  

Both the Biden administration and World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus have declared that the state of emergency will continue for the time being, which I take to mean a very long, long, long time being.  Some epidemiologists have said it will take at least eight years for SARS-CoV-2 to mutate into a harmless cold. Coincidentally, that's the time it takes to get through medical school.

But wait - there's more!  Omicron keeps mutating into . . . new versions of itself!  Two new mutations of Omicron have been found in upstate New York, and a third has been found in Britain.  Two more have been discovered in Africa.  That's seven variations of Omicron in just the past five months. 

Needless to say, the BA.2 wave in the U.S. has brought back face-covering (FC) mandates, including in the city of Philadelphia, and it's extended existing mandates on public transport until May 3 and in Broadway theaters until May 31.  Although there are no new FC mandates in New York City, the mere threat of BA.2 has caused me to drop plans to go to the New York International Auto Show, back after a three-year hiatus.

Incidentally, BA.2 is just one reason I'm not going to the show this year.  Another reason is the long list of brands skipping the show this year (go here for more on that), along with the fact that most of the days I would have been free to go have since been planned for other engagements.  But BA.2 is enough reason to stay the f**k at home.

Tedros said earlier in the pandemic that 70 percent of the world had to be vaccinated to end the pandemic.  The last time I checked, the global COVID vaccination rate was 59.2 percent and rising.  Pretty good, huh?  Except that Tedros has since clarified his statement to mean that 70 percent of the populations of each country has to be vaccinated.  Terrific - even the U.S. can't reach that threshold! 

As far as I am concerned, I have stopped waiting for the pandemic to be over.  The only thing that's over is my hope of ever getting my life back.  This is why I've been quitting everything I can divorce myself from.  The auto show is just more more thing I have to give up (and besides, it's just not the same anymore).  I'll be quitting more things in the near future.  I have to get used to the fact that I have to stop living and just settle for existing.

The silver lining?  Although eight distinct COVID strains developed between Delta and Omicron, not one new strain different and distinctive enough to warrant its own Greek letter has formed since Omicron in November. That has to count for something.

Auto Show Blues - 2022 Edition

I just realized that I went through March without hearing a word about the Geneva Motor Show, and, given all the news about annual events returning after cancellations or being held after postponements, I wondered if I had just missed the news about it.

I didn't miss a thing.  After being canceled due to COVID in 2020 and 2021, the Geneva Motor Show was canceled again this year.  Apparently, the third time an auto show in Geneva was attempted was not a charm.

It turns out that the cancellation of Geneva 2022 had only partly something to do with COVID and nothing to do with Omicron.  The decision to pull the plug on the auto show was made this past fall, when Delta was the COVID strain of concern and Omicron hadn't even been discovered yet, and another factor was the ongoing semiconductor chip shortage that has made producing cars so damn difficult.  Once again, our overdevelopment of the natural world, which let COVID happen, and our technological overkill, which led to cars that are really computers on wheels, did something only Hitler had previously accomplished - disrupt life as we know it beyond belief.

Meanwhile, here in America, where the feared Omicron BA.2 surge hasn't happened yet and may not materialize at all, the New York Auto Show is a go for this Easter Week.  I was thinking of sitting this one out, since I feared that a few of the German marques would not be present, as had happened before, and because too many brands have tilted to SUVs to the point where I had to rule out seeing the Buick, Ford, and Lincoln displays due to their SUV-only lineups (except for Ford's Mustang).

Then Volkswagen announced it would be showing its new ID. Buzz electric van in New York.

Oh, dear.  I love VW vans.  Even the ones that have never been sold in the United States.  I actually spotted a not-for-America Sharan minivan with New York plates parked on a Manhattan street and I left a note for the owner wishing him or her luck with this obviously gray-market vehicle.  And I'm particularly excited about this revival of the original Microbus concept.  Should I go to the show this year?  Should I risk traveling by bus to spend a few hours in a convention center with thousands of my follow Tri-Staters in a pandemic that has abated but not entirely ended just to have the opportunity to see the first Volkswagen EV to be offered in the States that I might actually want? 

Or would looking at a picture like the one above suffice?

I'm waiting to see how the COVID numbers look by the last possible day  I could go to the show, but don't be surprised if I stay home.  I can't think of much else that I feel I just have to see, and even the new Golf GTI is something I can wait to see until I visit my dealer for service on my own Golf later this year.  I may just give up on auto shows altogether.  Auto shows themselves were becoming less relevant even before the pandemic, and the auto market these days is something I no longer recognize as relevant to my automotive interests.  That, of course, would be in keeping with my penchant for giving up on so many other things, like a relationship, foreign travel, and a real career.  Heck, I've thrown in enough towels to stock a linen store.  Why should I stop now?

The folks in Geneva might be getting those towels out right about now.  Three cancellations in a row have cast doubt over the Geneva Motor Show's sustainability over the long run, and hopes for a more impactful show in March 2023 seem like pie in the sky . . . by next year, the shows organizers could end up feasting on humble pie.

With second helpings.  

COVID Nine-What?

The second anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of the spread of COVID-19 (henceforth to be known as COVID, because COVID-19 sounds like a droid in a Star Wars movie) as a pandemic was this past Friday.  No one cared.  The news channels are about all Ukraine, all the time.

It's true that more people in the West are vaccinated against COVID and that the receding Omicron surge has left the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike with natural immunity.  The global full-vaccination rate is 57 percent now and even African countries are beginning to pick up in vaccinations more steadily, with a full-vaccination rate of 14 percent for the entire African continent; two months ago, it was less than 10 percent.  But the focus on Ukraine and little if anything else means that most of us will never learn that COVID infections are rising again in Britain and Germany, China keeps closing down a city each week because of rising cases, and a hybrid of Delta and Omicron called "Deltacron" has been spotted in France!  

And while all that is going on, Congress can't agree on a bill that would fund vaccines and tests,  

Which is why people still talk of the end of the pandemic in future tense.  And, likely, they always will. 😨

Slowhand Jive

Recently, many rock and rollers and also a few rappers have been drawing much-deserved flak for flouting COVID restrictions and speaking out against COVID vaccines.  And even though folks like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and now Nils Lofgren have had their music pulled off Spotify to protest the streaming service's commitment to airing Joe Rogan's podcast, it's the anti-vax stars who continue to and will continue to get the big headlines.  And no anti-vax rocker has gotten more press than Eric Clapton.

Clapton has spoken out against vaccines after feeling side effects from the AstraZeneca shot, and he's campaigned vigorously against vaccine requirements and restrictions on live performances during the worst of the COVID pandemic.  He's even suggested that those who follow COVID guidelines are victims of "mass formation hypnosis," a theory proposed by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet that says that manipulative leaders use their power and influence to make people to do their bidding to gain control over them.

Since Clapton is an alcoholic, I have to wonder if he's drinking again.

Clapton is hardly alone here.  He's teamed up with Van Morrison to protest against COVID restrictions and vaccine requirements in Britain, and other rock and rap stars have spoken out against restrictions elsewhere - among them Nicki Minaj, Jim Corr of the Irish band the Corrs, and also Meat Loaf, who died a few days ago of what was most likely COVID.  But Clapton's case - which includes bankrolling an anti-vaccine musicians' organization in Britain - is especially troubling, revealing his predilection for conspiracy theories and distrust of the government, which led rock fans to recall his most infamous moment ever.  At a 1976 concert in Birmingham, England, an inebriated Clapton, fearful of foreigners taking over Britain and driving down job wages for native-born Britons, bashed the country's immigration policies and used racial epithets to describe the West Indian and Pakistani immigrants entering the United Kingdom.  He also declared his support for rabid right-wing anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell.  For rock fans aware of Clapton's debt to the blues and for his appreciation for black musicians, it was a slap in the face.  His music was no longer heard as a tribute to black American blues but as a form of cultural colonialism.  

Which is ironic, as Clapton in the mid-seventies was beginning to water down his sound, eventually becoming content to offer bland ballads like "Wonderful Tonight" and pop ditties like "I Can't Stand It."

Clapton's outburst led to Rock Against Racism concert festivals in both Britain and America in the late seventies, and though his Birmingham incident was eventually played down or forgotten, it's since come back to haunt him.  Not that Clapton cares; he continues to double down on his anti-COVID-restriction, anti-vaccine stand, offending even his own wife and daughters while leaving rock fans with their mouths agape.  His guitar skills don't excuse him.  As noted surgeon Ben Carson proved, you can be good with your hands while still having emptiness in your head.

I have two Clapton solo albums on cassette, and because my cassette player is on the blink yet again, I can't play them.  Since cassette players are so unreliable, I think I'll just replace as many albums on cassette as I can with CDs, but I can't afford to replace all of them, so some of those titles will have to be culled from my record collection.  The Clapton albums are two of those titles on my cull list.  Because even though Clapton's boneheaded conspiracy theories and virulent racism have hardly interfered with his status as a legend, he's lost fans - including me - he will never get back.

Ahh, Jimi Hendrix was a better guitarist anyway.  So was Duane Allman.  And so is Stephen Stills.

Vax Facts

The Omicron strain of COVID appears to be peaking, even as a variation of Omicron that spreads more easily but is harder to detect is suddenly out there, making it more imperative to vaccinate as many people throughout the world as possible.  An I'm happy to report that some progress is being made on that front.

Two weeks I posted on how the world reach the 50 percent vaccination benchmark.  Today, the number of people fully vaccinated on this planet is now a solid majority - 52 percent.

But, as the chart above shows, Africa remains the sticky wicket - only 10 percent of Africans are vaccinated, and only one country on the continent has a full-vaccination rate higher than 60 percent . . . Morocco, which probably doesn't even count because it's not a sub-Saharan country. 

I guess we should be happy that the number of fully vaccinated people in Africa broke into double digits. But that double-digit number has to get higher to ensure fewer new strains in the future.

WHO's Fooling Who?

It seems ironic that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), because his pronouncements on the COVID pandemic are making me sick.

An increasing number of experts seem to agree that, even though Omicron won't be the last mutant strain of COVID by a long shot, its antibodies and its rapid spread will combine along with vaccinations and antiviral treatments to turn COVID into an endemic disease.  But Tedros - and, I might add, his minions at the WHO - insisted that the pandemic is "nowhere near over" after two years, even though Tedros began 2022 by saying that we have a chance to end the pandemic this year.

Which is sort of funny, because one of his minions, Michael Ryan, an Irish doctor who's been echoing Tedros' statements, just said early last week that "we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about" - such as vaccinating more people in poor countries.

So what is it, guys? Is this pandemic going to continue well into the 2020s or can we get it behind us by June or July?  Of this year, I mean? 

As long as the WHO, which Tedros leads,  keeps contradicting itself, it doesn't matter what message it's putting across.

I'm well aware that African countries, among others, need more COVID vaccines.  I'd be pleased to see President Biden donate all of the COVID vaccines in the U.S. that vaccine-resistant Americans don't want (i.e., most of them).  Tedros himself has been calling for more vaccines for poor countries as a way to end the pandemic  But he hasn't suggested how we could do that and end vaccine inequity, at least as far as I know.  He's mostly been pontificating without offering any constructive criticism.

But then, it's hard for your organization to provide constructive guidance when you let the Chinese government strong-arm you into abandoning an investigation of the origins of a virus that same government allowed to proliferate in its own country and then beyond. 

If Tedros can't offer any suggestions as to how we get out of this mess - it he just keeps talking in admonitory tones with a wag of the finger - maybe he should get out of the way.  Because he clearly isn't leading or following. 

Oh yeah, get vaccinated.

Supreme Disaster

While the Omicron bug rages on, the Supreme Court has blocked President Biden's mandate to have all large companies vaccinate their workers against COVID.  The Court said that the power to regulate safety and health standards in businesses.

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly," the Court declared in an unsigned (?) opinion.  The National Retail Federation - who represents employers who come into contact with people every day - was pleased (pleased?) with the ruling and called on the White House "to discard this unlawful mandate and instead work with employers, employees and public health experts on practical ways to increase vaccination rates and mitigate the spread of the virus in 2022."

Yeah, right.

Given all of that, here are things the Biden administration can do to get as many Americans vaccinated against COVID as possible:

Did I miss anything?

(Silver lining: The Court did approve the vaccination mandate for health-care workers.) 

COVID-22

After all, that's what the Omicron strain really is.

Omicron is a new disease that is nothing like the original Wuhan strain of COVID, and it's creating more havoc than even the Wuhan strain did when there were no vaccines.  Mainly because one thing vaccines did not take care of was access to vaccines. But it's also because the virus has mutated to the point where vaccines are less effective.  What if a future strain is completely vaccine-resistant?

Numerous experts have speculated that Omicron is so contagious that the latest surge of infections - already plummeting in South Africa, where the Omicron strain was first detected, and beginning to recede in the United Kingdom - will give us so much immunity in the form of antibodies, in tandem with vaccinations, that it will end the pandemic once the virus can't infect anyone. "Driven by the inexorable, inevitable spread of the Omicron variant and the use of vaccines, the global population will generate immunity to this virus," Australian physician Nick Coatsworth told a news site from Down Under.  Dr. Julian Tang, a respiratory-science professor at Leicester University in Britain, concurs.  "The virus will evolve itself out of the pandemic strain very soon and become milder, more transmissible to the point where you may only need to think about vaccinating the more vulnerable members of the population," he said.

To assume such a thing would mean that there's no chance of the virus mutating into something more contagious, as everyone assumed when Delta was receding. But it obviously did.  And so there's no reason to assume that a new strain - the next Greek letter to be used is pi, by the way - won't be worse than Omicron.  The only solution to avoid new mutations (I won't call them variants, a variant is a German station wagon) and prevent contagion (I won't say "transmission;" it's a virus, not a radio signal!) is to vaccinate more people.

That's where we're really far off.  

In a good deal of the world, many countries have met or exceeded the World Health Organization's year-end goal of vaccinating 40 percent of its populations, even with so much misinformation of and resistance to vaccines.  In the Western Hemisphere, every country has met that goal except for Guatemala, Bolivia, Surinam, Haiti, Jamaica and a few of the countries in the Lesser Antilles.  In Africa, however, you can count on one hand with fingers to spare every country that met that 40 percent standard at the end of 2021.  In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and, at 211 million people, the seventh most populous country in the world, the full-vaccination rate is a pathetic 2 percent.  And there are other undervaccinated countries in Europe and Asia, as well.  

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has declared that the booster programs of wealthy nations lead to the hoarding of vaccines by these same wealthy nations and deny poorer countries the ability to get more vaccines, which will thus prolong the pandemic by allowing new strains - especially one that throws the proverbial finger to vaccines by evading them completely and making them worthless - to proliferate.  Dr. Anthony Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy have disputed this, insisting that there are plenty of vaccines for everyone, including boosters, and Dr. Fauci has noted the numerous vaccine supplies the U.S. has already donated for the rest of the world.  American protests of the World Health Organization's lecturing, however, seem irrelevant in light of all the donated vaccines that have expired or have arrived in poorer countries without any plan to distribute them.  One must conclude that the plan to vaccinate the world is not getting anywhere.

Or maybe it is.  As of December 21, the latest date for which data is available, 48.3 percent of the world's population have been fully vaccinated - about 3.76 billion people, with 4.49 billion people, or 57.5 percent of the world's population, have gotten at least one dose.  And if you look at the chart below - click on it to enlarge it and see it better - the vaccination rate is going upward in a steady diagonal climb, with a couple of big jumps in the spring and summer of 2021. 

It's for that reason, as the seriousness of the Omicron surge makes itself clear, that World Health Organization Director-General Tedros (he's Ethiopian, they go by first names there) sees hope and optimism for the pandemic to end in 2022. On the other hand, maybe Omicron will end the COVID plague and turn the virus into an endemic contagion, like the flu.  But we still have to get the rest of the world vaccinated to prevent future strains.  If not, we won't end the pandemic.  The pandemic will end us. 😢 😭

Slouching Into Christmas

As we go into Christmas, the Omicron variant now accounts for nearly three out of every four COVID cases in the United States.

Cases are rising rapidly, and based on the latest numbers but of South Africa, they could fall just as rapidly.  But the doomsayers - you know they're out there - dismiss this development, insisting that South Africa has a younger population than North America or Europe (where COVID is also skyrocketing), and in South Africa, it's summer.  And meanwhile, regarding monocleomal antibody treatments, or monoclamiral antibody treatments or mononuclear antibody treatments or whatever the hell it's called . . . yeah, well, it doesn't matter what they're called, as they don't work against Omicron.  Well, except for one of them.  And while Moderna insists that two vaccinations and a booster are effective against Omicron, a doomsayer - not Michael Osterholm - say the two vaccinations and a booster of Pfizer are worthless against Omicron after three months.  And what does Michael Osterholm think?  He's one of the people offering hope - hope - that Omicron rates in the U.S. could fall as quickly as the rise.

Ugh.

As today is Festivus, I'm going to try to perform the superhuman strength of just staying out of bed - I haven't been feeling well lately, though I don't think it's COVID because I can still smell things - and I am very disappointed in what's going on.  But I'll still try to have a good Christmas, once I put my cardboard pole away.   

Yes, a cardboard pole, taken from a just-finished roll of Christmas wrapping paper.  I can't afford an aluminum one. 

Ninety Days In the Hole

I'm hibernating for the winter.

I m staying home for as much as I can this coming winter, and, with few exceptions,  I'm not coming out until spring. 

It's all because of Omicron, a COVID mutation so fierce it forced the cancellation of the Rockettes' Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. 

It; also because, even as breakthrough infections are becoming par for the course with Omicron, the symptoms. contrary to popular wisdom, are not less severe than the symptoms from the very severe Delta strain.  Or so say scientists in a recently published paper out of England (a place I will never, ever see).

Thanks to not enough people getting vaccinated and thanks to not enough effort to vaccinate the Third World, this pandemic will continue indefinitely.  Or, at least through winter.  One epidemiologist is predicting a "viral blizzard" for winter.  This is in tandem with the possibility of a literal blizzard.  Then we'll all have to stay home.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (above) says that we can still overcome COVID and end the pandemic and that we can't give it up.  Me, despite having been vaccinated and boosted, I've given up already.  But only because everyone else has.  

Eight Hundred Thousand . . .

The United States is approaching 800,000 deaths since the COVID pandemic began.  We will likely reach a million deaths - still half of the toll from the 1918 pandemic when adjusted for population differences, but still too many - before it's over.

As to when it's over . . . well, there doesn't seem to be much consensus on that.  Most people do seem to agree that it will be over sometime in the New Year, but that could be as early as spring or as early as this time next year.

Some people are counting on Omicron to be the final major variant, as it spreads more rapidly than Delta but has far milder symptoms.  Forgotten in this theory is the fact that the virus that causes COVID - SARS CoV-2 is called a severe acute respiratory syndrome - that's what the SARS acronym stands for!  Omicron  may be mild, but no one's calling it BARS (benign acute respiratory syndrome) or a MARS (mild acute respiratory syndrome), and there are many reasons for that.

One is that an Omicron-infected patient in Britain just died. 

The lesson is that the distinction between a severe COVID variant and a mild COVID variant is the difference between getting nuked and firebombed.

Not very cheery today . . . sorry. 

Boost THIS!

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention just authorized COVID booster shots for all adults in an effort to end the pandemic sooner rather than later.  But I fear it will end later.

Here's the deal, folks.  Yes, COVID boosters will provide extra protection for longer than the original two-dose vaccinations, as the two-dose regimen wanes after six to eight months, and boosters can only be a good thing.  But meanwhile, 41 percent of Americans remain unvaccinated and, while the initial-dose rate has picked up in recent days thanks to COVID vaccinations for children, the full-vaccination rate has gone from increasing 0.1 percent a day to 0.1 percent every three or four days. Meanwhile, after dropping to 60,000 new cases a day in late October, the seven-day average for new cases is rising again, as it is in Europe, and Florida has actually enacted legislation to prevent county and municipal governments and private businesses from requiring vaccines and face coverings.  And speaking of the latter, part of the reason we have to keep wearing "FCs" in the other 49 states is because of a lack of testing, combined with the government's failure to trace infection chains.  And, as always, we don't know how many people have recovered from COVID or how many people have it now.  

And what good are boosters if we can't give everyone their first two doses?

And yet, former FDA director Scott Gottlieb - who accurately predicted the current spike in vases - thinks we'll be out of pandemic mode after the first of the year.  I hope he's right.  I don't want to live in a world where face coverings are as much a permanent and essential part of our wardrobe as undershorts.   That, to me, would be utter dystopia.  To think . . . a child born today might have to ask his or her parents, "Mommy, Daddy . . . What's a smile?" 😮 

As if we'll have any reason to give one. 😢

Boosted

According to my earlier calculations, I would have had to wait until Christmas Eve to get a COVID booster shot.  Then the CDC declared that those of us who had the god sense to get a double dose of the vaccine could get a booster after six months.  So I did, this past Sunday - Halloween.

Eleven percent of Americans have gotten a booster shot, and I'm now one of them.  I feel a whole lot better, now that I've gotten the booster, and I am happy to report that my home county in New Jersey is down to a moderate level of transmission, even as much of New Jersey is still high. However, the seven-day average for the country is beginning to pick up again, just in time for the colder weather that's so favorable to respiratory viruses.  Most places even in heavily vaccinated New Jersey still require "FCs" (face coverings) even for those who can prove they've been fully vaccinated.  I've already long since decided that I will not go to any non-essential indoor public venues until the pandemic is over; given where we are with the virus, it may be a long time before I see the inside of a restaurant, museum or movie theater again. 😢     

I try to look at the bright side.  Despite the pathetic first-dose vaccination rate in These States, it's still inching up - okay, millimetering up, perhaps - and the increase in mandates may push it up even further in the coming weeks, even as children from age 5 to 11 are finally eligible for vaccination.  I keep hoping we get to the end game for this pandemic, and I hope it's in sight.

Right now I'm trying to tune out Michael Osterholm, who says it isn't.   

Biden's Bungles

President Biden's misfortune have turned into an ongoing disaster, which must be making sane Americans fearing a Trump comeback quaking in their boots. 

I mean, he did the right thing in withdrawing from Afghanistan, and the United States is now at peace for the first time since before 9/11.  Except that he didn't consult other members of NATO, the auspices under which we were in Afghanistan in the first place, before going ahead and ending the war.  Even the Germans have complained that Trump consulted with them more than Biden did.

Biden is now pivoting toward eastern Asia to counter the growing threat from China, having signed a deal with the United Kingdom and Australia to sell nuclear submarines, marine craft exclusive only to the U.S. and the U.K., to the Australian navy, to increase security in the Pacific. Except that he forgot to inform France, which had a now-canceled deal to sell diesel-electric submarines to Australia and has overseas territories in the region (can you say "New Caledonia," boys and girls?), and now the French are livid over it.  He has a lot of fence-mending to do when he addresses the United Nations General Assembly today.

Which doesn't give him any time right now to handle the sudden influx of Haitian migrants trying the enter the country from Mexico.

And as if that weren't bad enough, we now learn that a retaliatory strike responding to a terrorist attack in Afghanistan killed innocent civilians.

The poor guy can't get any relief from his allies in Congress as the Democrats attempt - I use that verb loosely - to pass a two-part infrastructure bill.  There aren't enough votes in the Senate to pass a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill and progressives in the House vow to sink a bipartisan Senate infrastructure deal if the reconciliation package doesn't pass, as they are committed to settling for nothing instead of something when they can't have everything.

And COVID is still a thing, with the vaccine requirements already under threat from state lawsuits before the requirements are even written and with China, which invented COVID, unresponsive to proposed Sino-American efforts to lead the world out of the pandemic. Not to mention the lack of a Sino-American deal to lead the world against climate change.

Biden has the wind at his back.  Unfortunately, it's his own.