Month: August 2021

Hiking in Shenandoah – Wordsworth on mountain ascents – Two prominent anti-vaxxers – Hospital strain similar to what was seen earlier this year – Governor Reeves and Heaven – Evening statistics

I went on Sunday with AD and RH along a loop starting from Elkwallow and involving the Appalachian, Thornton River, Hull School, Fork Mountain, and Piney Ridge Trails.  There were 11 of us in all, but EF and MJ went on their own along the AT and back, since they did not wish to undertake a hike that has most of its ascending towards the end.  Still, they wound up completing 10½ miles.  The ascent on the hike that the rest of us undertook was not enormous – 2200 feet spread out over 11½ miles (most of it in the last 4 miles, it is true).  It was just under 70 degrees when we started the hike and the temperature never reached the sweltering intensity that we had seen earlier in the week.  Moreover, towards the end of the hike a light fog rolled in, cooling us considerably.  All in all, it was surprisingly comfortable for a hike in late August, a most welcome contrast to the conditions of the hike on this past Tuesday.

And of course we ate and drank afterwards, and conversed among ourselves – and among other topics we touched briefly on Wordsworth, who might be said to be the Poet Laureate of hikers.  I’ve always admired in particular the passage in The Prelude that describes a situation familiar to anyone who has hiked in the mountains:

The only track now visible was one

That from the torrent’s further brink held forth

Conspicuous invitation to ascend

A lofty mountain. After brief delay

Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,

And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears

Intruded, for we failed to overtake

Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,

While every moment added doubt to doubt,

A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned

That to the spot which had perplexed us first

We must descend, and there should find the road,

Which in the stony channel of the stream

Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;

And, that our future course, all plain to sight,

Was downwards, with the current of that stream.

Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,

For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,

We questioned him again, and yet again;

But every word that from the peasant’s lips

Came in reply, translated by our feelings,

Ended in this, – that we had crossed the Alps.

It is quite true:  I have often approached a summit with excited anticipation, only to find that there is nothing to distinguish it from its surroundings and in some cases I have passed over it before realizing that I have already surmounted it.  It is perfectly possible to overlook a mountain apex or the top of a ridgeline, and then to discover belatedly that one is going downhill again.  The best views are not always at the top.

Caleb Wallace is dead at the age of 30.  He is the founder of the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group who sought to end what it labelled “COVID-19 tyranny” (i.e., the use of masks in public settings and the distribution of COVID vaccines).  His wife said at one point that he had been taking, in lieu of a vaccine, vitamin C, zinc aspirin, and – you guessed it! – ivermectin as preventatives against the disease. This past July 4^th he organized a “Freedom Rally” to protest against COVID-related restrictions.  He was hospitalized with COVID on July 30^th, lost consciousness on August 3^rd, placed on a ventilator August 8^th, moved to a hospice on August 27^th, and died on August 28^th.   There has been the usual emotional hemorrhage from various associates and family members, and not a single one of them mentions how he died – to read through them, one might suppose he succumbed to cancer or a heart ailment or anything but the disease whose baneful effects he spent most of the last year of his life denying.  But as a consolation to the relatives and friends he leaves behind, he has not failed to make his mark on his surroundings:  Tom Green County, in which San Angelo is located, has seen an increase of 50% in COVID cases and of 33% in hospitalizations during the past two weeks.

His achievements, however, pale in comparison with those of Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer who claimed to be the first person to call COVID-19 a hoax and who was among the earliest QAnon promoters.  He was hospitalized earlier this month with COVID and died on the 30^th.  But not even being placed on a ventilator could daunt that fiery spirit; in the very last post of his blog, dated August 17^th, he denounced vaccinations and spoke of testing positive for “whatever they’re calling ‘COVID’ today.”  His associates, fittingly, immediately constructed a conspiracy theory as to how he met his death, claiming that the hospital prevented him from using tablets of that miracle drug, hydroxychloroquine. 

The dismal legacy of Wallace, Steele, and others who think like them will take a long time to overcome.  It is true that more Americans are getting vaccines now that the FDA has given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine.  During the week before full approval, an average of about 404,000 Americans were initiating vaccination each day.  As of Monday, approximately 473,000 Americans were getting their first shot each day.  At this point about 74.2% of all American adults have received at least one dose.  Which is all very well – but that leaves over 66 million adults who are still unvaccinated, and hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise.  Idaho, for example, is now one of the numerous states running out of available ICU beds; there are only four left in the entire state.  In January our nation reached a peak of 125,000 hospitalizations before the cases subsided.  In June there were less than 12, 000 patients, but all of our gains in making headway against the pandemic have been wiped out.  We are now approaching the peak level again, with over 101,000 hospitalizations as of today.    

From Molière’s “Don Juan,” when the titular protagonist hypocritically proclaims to Don Carlos that he is submitting to a solemn voice from Heaven that has forbidden him to offer marriage to Carlos’s sister Elvire after he has seduced her and left her pregnant –

DON CARLOS:  Don Juan, do you think to dazzle us by these fine excuses?

DON JUAN:  I obey the voice of Heaven.

DON CARLOS:  What?   You expect me to be satisfied with such talk?

DON JUAN:  It is Heaven that so wills it.

DON CARLOS:  You have taken my sister out of a convent and then left her?

DON JUAN:  That is the way Heaven ordains.

DON CARLOS:  We are to stand for this stain on our family?

DON JUAN:  Blame Heaven for it.

And here is Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi, while speaking about the pandemic at a Republic fundraiser last week:

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID . . . and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say. . . . When you believe in eternal life, when you believe that living on this Earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things.”

It’s reassuring to know that the Mississippians are not frightened, because their state has more per capita COVID-related deaths than anywhere else in the country – or, if the state was to be assessed as a separate nation, anywhere else on the planet. 

The chief difference between Don Juan and Governor Reeves is that when they talk about the afterlife to justify their refusal to undertake some sort of reparation for the results their callousness has inflicted on others, Molière’s protagonist is made to sound amusing.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 217,174,718; # of deaths worldwide: 4,514,198; # of cases U.S.:  39,664,814; # of deaths; U.S.: 654,689.  Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 218,470,692; # of deaths worldwide: 4,532,374; # of cases U.S.:  40,078,275; # of deaths; U.S.: 657,861. 

Calvert Cliffs and Battle Creek Cypress Swamp – Another hiatus in club hikes – How children adjust to mask mandates – Another case of hubris and nemesis – The issue of body storage – Rand Paul’s blindness to the bad effects of ingesting medicine for cattle – Evening statistics

I led the hike in Calvert Cliffs that I scouted last month for the Capital Hiking Club.  It came off quite well.  It was very warm today, but not overpoweringly so.  The temperature of the water at the beach was extremely comfortable for swimming, and while some sea nettles were still present, they were less numerous than they had been a month earlier.  The hikers expressed appreciation in particular of the views of the cliffs at the beach and of the water lilies as we went along the boardwalk.  Afterwards we went to Battle Creek Cypress Swamp, which many of the hikers had not seen before, and they were all impressed by the majestic stature of the trees and the serenity of the forest.  Many cardinal flowers were in bloom when we passed upon the boardwalk through the swamp; they need soil that is moist at all times and are most frequently found in the vicinity of lakes, swamps, and rivers.   The facility has an indoor exhibit as well describing various flora and fauna of the area, and in particular it features a large albino snapping turtle that had been rescued thirty years earlier when it was still young.  Albinism is a relatively rare feature in turtles (about 1 in every 100,000 hatched eggs) and they ordinarily do not survive long in the wild.  Their coloring makes them fairly easy targets for predators to detect. 

The only drawback was the disappointment of the next CHC hike being canceled for lack of hike leaders and my being obliged to tell the participants of this hike, in response to their inquiries, that the club may be obligated to suspend hikes again unless the number of cases in the fourth wave reaches some sort of plateau. The CHC board will be holding an online discussion on this point this coming week. 

One of the hikers is a teacher in the DC school system and I asked her whether there was any difficulty about implementing mask mandates.  She said that there was none; there has been no opposition among the DC authorities to such mandates; and as for the children – they have come to look upon masks as completely normal and are rather inclined to take adults to task if they see any indoors without a mask on.  It may be just as well, perhaps, to put some of them in charge of such matters in states like Texas and Florida; I’m certain that these states would be better served by toddlers just beginning school than by the officials who are currently in power.

There are so many stories now about people fiercely opposed to vaccination contracting the virus and suffering fatal consequences that encountering them in various media is rather like picking up grains of sand from a beach.  Here is one, nonetheless.  Scott Apley, a Republican member of the Dickinson City council, was 45 years old when he died.  He was a determined opponent of vaccination, frequently venting his disapproval of them in public, and his last Facebook post on July 30^th was a mocking reference to COVID and the various vaccines.  Two days later he was admitted to a Galveston hospital with pneumonia-like symptoms. He tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed on a ventilator.  He died on August 25^th, some 3½ weeks after he was hospitalized.  Both the Texas Republican Party and the Galveston County Republican Party issued statements calling his loss a tragedy and extending condolences to his family.  It is scarcely necessary to add that neither of them made the slightest reference to the COVID virus that caused his death.

Two counties in Oregon, Tillamook and Josephine, have requested refrigerated trucks to hold the bodies resulting from the death toll from COVID.  In Tillamook only 30% of its residents are unvaccinated, but hospitalizations and deaths among them are sufficient to overwhelm the hospitals and the morgues.  Suicide rates have also risen in the counties as a result of the stresses imposed by the pandemic.  Morgues are restricted to contain a certain number of bodies at the same time, so the counties are forced to fall back on refrigerated trailers that must be obtained from the state.  Josephine County Emergency Manager Emily Ring asked the state on Tuesday for a refrigerated trailer that could hold “20-48 cadavers.”  Oregon is not the only state coping with this issue.  Alabama activated two of its four refrigerated trailers for the first time since the pandemic began in Mobile and Baldwin counties this week.

Rand Paul has issued a statement saying that he doesn’t understand why scientists are not devoting much-needed resources to testing ivermectin for its efficacy against COVID, even though FDA and the CDC have already warned people from ingesting it.  It may interest him to know that the Georgia Poison Center has fielded 23 calls so far this month related to ivermectin, as opposed to two or three in a typical year, in which the callers are complaining of vomiting, faintness, and double vision.  This last symptom gives plausibility to an interesting speculation:  Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist – can it be that he’s trying to drum up business for himself?

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 216,709,866; # of deaths worldwide: 4,506,796; # of cases U.S.:  39,617,417; # of deaths; U.S.: 654,381. 

Another lawsuit against Trump – The end of the eviction moratorium – Florida schools and mask mandates – Vaccines rejected in favor of medication for cattle – Why the mortality statistics from COVID should be multiplied by two or three – Hopeful developments in India – Evening statistics

Seven Capitol Police officers have sued Donald Trump, claiming that he incited the extremist groups who besieged the Capitol on January 6^th.  While I believe such a claim to be true, I am not hopeful that such a lawsuit will make much headway.  There have been numerous lawsuits of a similar nature levelled against Trump; but so far, none of them have come to fruition.  I had formerly had high hopes of the suit that was being prepared by Fani Willis to bring charges against Trump for his blatant attempt to overturn the results of the election in Georgia, but it has apparently come to nothing.  At times it appears that Themis, goddess of justice, has contracted the COVID virus and is displaying characteristic symptoms of the disease:  she is too short of breath to do more than creep along the ground with leaden pace, is chronically congested and perpetually fatigued, and not infrequently displays signs of mental confusion.

Still, she has given a few decisive utterances lately.  The Supreme Court has overturned the Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions.  Families have certainly been strained by the pandemic, but it has been going on for well over a year now and they have had time to adjust to the situation, particularly as the economy has been growing steadily this year.  The money is available for renters.  Of the $46 billion allocated for emergency rent relief money, only $5.1 billion has been distributed.  But many renters have refused to apply for rent payment relief and simply continue to live in their residences without paying at all.  Landlords have seen their properties become worthless and their sources of income dried up for months on end as a result of this policy and they, too, need some relief. 

And Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has been frustrated in his diligent attempts to leave the inhabitants of the state as helpless as possible against the ravages of the virus – er, I mean, in his attempts to resist “bludgeoning people with restrictions and mandates and lockdowns,” to use his own words.  Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper has ruled the DeSantis’s attempt to ban schools for imposing mask mandates upon their students exceeds his authority and that, consequently, Floridian schools are now permitted to implement rudimentary preventative measures in a state that has by far the highest rate of COVID-related hospitalizations in the country.   Florida now has 80 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.  Alabama, the state with the next-highest hospitalization rate, has 60 hospitalizations per 100,000. 

The manufacturers of ivermectin are somewhat bewildered by the skyrocketing demand for their product, as well they might be.  It is unclear how many are resorting to it, but numerous stores are running out of the drug; in Oklahoma there is hardly any left in stock within the entire state.  The people who are frantically swallowing a medication primarily intended for use on cattle are the same ones who are opposed to taking any of the COVID vaccines.  Dr. Nathan Boonstra, a pediatrician at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, IA, summed it all up:  “It’s hard to understand why people would turn down an FDA-approved COVID preventative in favor of a treatment that’s not only unapproved but has a large body of evidence showing it doesn’t work.” 

As a result of the strain on the hospitals, COVID has claimed many victims indirectly in addition that 653 thousand who had died from contracting it.  The story of Daniel Wilkinson, an Army veteran aged 46, is a case in point.  He was taken to a hospital in Bellville, TX, where he was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis, a condition that the Belville hospital wasn’t equipped to treat.  Hasan Kakli, the physician who made the diagnosis, hastily applied to one hospital after another, only to be told that facilities weren’t available.  Several of the hospitals had the specialists on their staff qualified to remove the gallstone, but because Wilkinson’s condition had deteriorated rapidly he needed an ICU room and none were available.  Dr. Kakli spent seven hours searching for a facility that could take the patient in and perform the operation.  Eventually an opening occurred at the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Houston and Wilkinson was accordingly transported there by helicopter, but by then it was too late; he died within 24 hours of checking in at the Bellville hospital.  Kakli said afterwards that if it weren’t for the COVID crisis, the procedure for Wilkinson would have taken 30 minutes, and he’d have been released shortly after the operation.  “I’ve never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever,” Kakli said. “We know what needs to be done and we know how to treat it, and we get them to where they need to go. I’m scared that the next patient that I see is someone that I can’t get to where they need to get to go.”

The caseload in India has been decreasing over the past several weeks, and at this point the COVID virus may have entered into the endemic stage.  The number of daily cases has fallen from a peak of 400,000 in April to about 25,000 this week.  A third wave is still possible but Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, says that India is unlikely to see another overwhelming surge in infections comparable to the amount in its second wave, which led to acute shortages of hospital beds and medical oxygen. 

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 215,428,560; # of deaths worldwide: 4,487,286; # of cases U.S.:  39,337,794; # of deaths; U.S.: 651,914. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 216,161,806; # of deaths worldwide: 4,497,680; # of cases U.S.:  39,539,133; # of deaths; U.S.: 653,397.  We are now back to 14^th in the list of nations with the highest amount of COVID cases per capita although, oddly enough, we have actually sunk a little in the rankings of nations by mortality rate:   we are now 21^st instead of 20^th on the list.

Plans for FDA approval of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines – Sheriffs’ outcry against non-existent mandates – John Pierce hospitalized – Evening statistics

Moderna has submitted its data to the FDA to initiate the process that will confer formal approval of its vaccine instead of its current EUA status.  It will probably take about 3-4 months for the process to be completed.  Johnson and Johnson will submit its data some time later in the year; at this point no firm timeframe has been given.

In a video posted on August 23^rd to the official Twitter account of Pinal County, AZ, Sheriff Mark Lamb has delivered an impassioned plea against “tyranny” (AKA “vaccine mandates”) and has sworn that he will never enforce them. Neither Pinal County nor the state of Arizona has a vaccine mandate; on the contrary, Governor Doug Ducey recently signed a measure that prevents local jurisdictions from imposing any.   Similarly, Sheriff Brian Wolfe of Malheur County, OR, released a letter on August 24^th vowing to resist any local vaccine mandate.  No such mandate exists in Malheur County.  On the same day Sheriff Chad Cubbage of Page County, VA posted a video of his own saying he intended to resist vaccine mandates.  Virginia has no vaccine mandates.  Is anyone noticing a pattern here?

John Pierce, the attorney who has represented such distinguished clients as Kyle Rittenhouse (the Kenosha shooter), Rudy Giuliani, and more than a dozen of the rioters who participated in the attack on the Capitol, tweeted last week that “the entire 82^nd Airborne couldn’t make me get an experimental government vaccine stuck in my arm.”  Recently he has been unable to appear at the court hearings to give defendants the benefits of his eloquence, having contracted the COVID virus shortly after this declaration of fearless self-reliance  Happily, the judges in these cases have conceded that his being hospitalized and placed on a ventilator is a sufficient excuse for non-attendance. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 214,695,608; # of deaths worldwide: 4,475,348; # of cases U.S.:  39,155,315; # of deaths; U.S.: 649,668.  In Florida over 21,000 people contracted the virus, about 17% of the entire new infections for the day in the U. S. 

Duncan Knob and Strickler Knob – The Pfizer vaccine receives FDA approval – A rally turns against Trump – Vaccine mandates increasing – Margaret Cirko’s sentence – Evening statistics

I went with the Vigorous Hikers on a loop in the Massanuttens that included Strickler Knob and Duncan Knob, two rock piles that involve a good deal of agility to reach the top.  Duncan Knob in particular is rated as a Class 3 scramble, the only peak in the Massanuttens that is rated at this level of difficulty.  Its panoramic view of the eastern Massanutten ridge and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and of the main western Massanutten ridge, Short Mountain, and the Shenandoah Mountains to the west is one of which I am especially fond.  Unfortunately, however, the heat was so intense that it greatly interfered with a route that I usually enjoy.  The shade and the higher elevation, which have been mitigating factors for the other hikes I’ve done this summer, had no effect here.  The climb up to the junction with the Duncan Knob trailhead via the Gap Creek Trail, which on ordinary days is strenuous but not exorbitantly so, was very difficult for me today.  Even though I was drinking a good deal of water, I became somewhat dehydrated; when I returned to car I was obliged to take a salt tablet to restore my equilibrium.  We literally did not see a single other person on any portion of the route we took; which means, I suppose, the most people were displaying a higher degree of sanity than we did.

It’s official:  the Pfizer vaccine now has full FDA approval.  Perhaps that will persuade some of those reluctant to take the vaccine into while it still had EUA status to accept it now.  Polls indicated that about a third of those who refrained from taking any vaccine were waiting for the FDA decision.  There is no timetable for full approval of the Moderna vaccines, since it has not yet submitted its data.  Various physicians who have encountered patients resisting the vaccines are not overly optimistic that this step will have much effect.  The summation of Dr. William Luking, who practiced family medicine in Reidsville, North Carolina, for almost 30 years, is typical.  He said that it was once rare for his patients to push back against his medical advice by citing the government’s support or its lack thereof, but that that has changed in recent years.  “Suddenly everybody’s a medical expert in this, but it’s medicine via misinformation,” he said. “It’s really concerning the direction we’ve taken.”

So great is the resistance towards vaccines in certain areas that Donald Trump was roundly booed in at a rally in Cullman, AL, after urging the crowd to take the vaccines.  Previously he had encouraged his followers to refuse the vaccines in the hope of discrediting the Biden administration, so it is only just that his current attempt to obtain praise for introducing the vaccines during his administration has fallen to the ground. 

More cities and other entities, in the meantime, are establishing vaccine mandates for their workers.   Chicago did so yesterday for its health care workers.  New York City, which had already done so, has added one for workers in its school system as well.  The Pentagon is currently setting up a vaccination requirement for military personnel (it could not do so previously as long as the vaccines had only EUA status).  Governor Bel Edwards of Louisiana has announced vaccination requirements for state workers (with submitting to weekly testing as an option for the unvaccinated) – a significant step, since the state government is by far the biggest employer in Louisiana.  More than 680 colleges are either currently requiring the vaccine or in the process of setting such a requirement up.  George Mason University, which is about a mile from my house, is an example; it has required all students to receive a vaccine by August 1^st. 

Margaret Cirko is in prison.  She is the woman in Luzerne County, PA, who, in April, 2020,  intentionally coughed and spat on the produce of a Gerrity supermarket, while saying, “I have the virus, now you’re all going to get sick.”  The store was forced to discard $35000 worth of food as a result.  She pleaded guilty to a felony weapons of mass destruction charge in June and in consequence was sentenced to one to two years in jail plus eight years of probation; in addition, she has been directed to pay back the money that the store had lost as a result of discarding its produce.  It’s a reasonable outcome.  The sentence is perhaps on the light side, but even if she ends up spending a few months in prison she may be discouraged from embarking on future exploits of this nature.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 9:00 PM (not a misprint; I was late in getting statistics yesterday evening) – # of cases worldwide: 213,273,952; # of deaths worldwide: 4,453,032; # of cases U.S.:  38,813,549; # of deaths; U.S.: 646,663.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 213,936,012; # of deaths worldwide: 4,463,654; # of cases U.S.:  38,962,160; # of deaths; U.S.: 648,089.

Hiking in Shenandoah National Park – Americans imposing vaccine mandates on their own – “Compassion fatigue” among the medical professionals – A novel approach to encouraging vaccination – Evening statistics

Today I went with AD and RH to hike on the Appalachian Trail between Jenkins Gap and Gravel Spring Hut.  The forecast called for the mid-to-high 80s in my area, but at this higher elevation the temperature never went beyond 80 degrees, and the skies were partly cloudy, so that the sun was not beating down on us and it never became uncomfortably hot.  A large number of us went together on this hike and afterwards we sat together for nearly two hours drinking and eating and chatting sociably.  These episodes are still the main source of social activity for me, and probably for many others in our group as well.  It was like a regular outdoor party, except that we were relaxing in a parking area in Shenandoah National Park recessed from the main road, instead of someone’s back yard.  We had the place to ourselves; and, indeed, we did not meet many other people on the trail itself.  Several schools have already begun their fall semesters, and as a result fewer parents are taking their children out to hike together, even on weekends.

About a third of the millennials have severed ties with someone in their lives who has refused to get vaccinated, as compared to 30% of Generation Z-ers, 9% of Generation X-ers, and 7% of baby boomers.  Part of the reason, doubtless, is the fact older people have had priority in vaccination availability and have on the whole shown less reluctance in taking them.  At this point 91.4% of all seniors have received at least one dose and 81.2% are fully vaccinated.  Only 4.7 million seniors are unvaccinated out of approximately 50 million seniors total.  About 62.4% of all Americans 18 years or older are fully vaccinated, so the numbers are steadily increasing.  But hospitalizations continue to rise, and among the unvaccinated in particular.  There are now nearly 7½ million active cases of COVID in the country, more than 40% of the active cases worldwide.

Dr Anita Sircar of Mary Medical Center in Torrance, CA, has expressed a sense of “compassion fatigue” that I suspect is fairly common at this stage among health care professionals.  She cites the story of one patient in his 50s, in good health until he caught the infection 10 days before he was assigned to her for emergency procedures.  As his symptoms worsened, he had resorted to various treatments (including hydroxochloroquine!), all of them ineffective in his case. Eventually he ended up in the ER with dangerously low oxygen levels, exceedingly high inflammatory markers, and patchy areas of infection all over his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe. His wife and two young children were at home, all infected with COVID-19.  He had decided to wait until full FDA approval of the vaccine before taking it, saying that he did not want to be a human guinea-pig.  “Well,” Dr. Sircar told him, “I am going to treat you with remdesivir, which only recently received FDA approval.” She proceeded to explain that it had been under an EUA for most of last year and had not been studied or administered as widely as COVID-19 vaccines – which indeed would be rather difficult, since more than 353 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. along with more than 4.7 billion doses worldwide over a period of several months, without any overwhelming catastrophic side effects. “Not nearly as many doses of remdesivir have been given or studied in people and its long-term side effects are still unknown,” she went on. “Do you still want me to give it to you?”  He agreed to submit to this treatment, but it also proved ineffective; he died of a stroke nine days afterwards.  “Last year,” she wrote in her account of the matter, “a case like this would have flattened me. I would have wrestled with the sadness and how unfair life was. This year, I struggled to find sympathy. It was August 2021, not 2020. The vaccine had been widely available for months in the U.S., free to anyone who wanted it. Cutting-edge, lifesaving vaccines were available where people shopped for groceries, and they still didn’t want them.”

The Mae Chaem district of Chiang Mai province in Thailand has chosen an unusual incentive for its residents to get vaccinated.  Starting in September, a raffle will be held every week to determine which fortunate inoculated person will receive a cow as a reward.  It appears to be working:  according to district chief Boonlue Thamtharanura, “Our vaccine registration numbers have gone from hundreds to thousands in a couple of days.”  Regrettably, I doubt whether such an approach would work here.  I myself am an advocate of the COVID vaccines, as I think the past several entries have shown; but if I thought that taking one of them would result in a live cow being deposited on my front doorstep, I would strive my utmost to avoid them.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 212,554,270; # of deaths worldwide: 4,443,890; # of cases U.S.:  38,545,144; # of deaths; U.S.: 645,058.

An unusual warning – Rising vaccination rate – Two vaccine skeptics – Evening statistics

The FDA has been forced to issue a warning that to most people would seem absurdly unnecessary but which, sadly, is not.  The same people who turn up their noses at vaccines have no hesitation in resorting to other medical treatments that are thoroughly ineffective at best and positively harmful in most cases.  We have already seen an example of this earlier, when several rushed, at Trump’s urging, to use hydroxochloroquine as a preventative.  But they, at least, had the excuse that no vaccines were available at the time.  Recently there have been accounts of people medicating themselves with ivermectin.  Ivermectin is used to treat parasites in animals and is given primarily to horses, cows, and sheep.  In carefully controlled doses it can be used to treat intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis, two conditions caused by parasitic worms.  It is not, however, an anti-viral drug, so it does not have the slightest effect as far as the COVID virus is concerned.  But it does have certain other consequences.  Even approved doses have to be monitored carefully because they can interact with other medicines, such as blood thinners, and not at all favorably.  In doses intended for horses and cows – which, of course, weigh much more than humans – it can become toxic, inducing rash, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and, on occasion, severe hepatitis. 

However, the vaccination rate is rising.  Over a million people received the vaccine for three consecutive days.  More than 60% of all people aged 12 and older are now fully vaccinated.  Unquestionably it is time:  at this point more than 11.5% of the population has tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the pandemic.  Our mortality rate is relatively low – 1.7% cumulatively and considerably less than that in recent weeks.  But we have already lost nearly 645,000, more than the total population of cities such as Las Vegas and Detroit.

One prominent vaccine skeptic has succumbed to the virus.  The radio host Phil Valentine tweeted In December, 2020:  “I have a very low risk of A) Getting COVID and B) dying of it if I do. Why would I risk getting a heart attack or paralysis by getting the vaccine?”  As matters turned out, Valentine’s assessment was wrong on both counts:  he contracted the disease less than a month ago, was soon hospitalized in a critical care unit as a result of pneumonia brought on by the virus, and died today.   After he was taken to the hospital his family posted for his audiences a plea to get vaccinated on the radio station’s Facebook page.

But there is some encouraging news for the anti-vaxxers.  At least one of them has been consistent from first to last.  Pressley Stutts, a local Republican Party official in South Carolina, and his wife were rushed to a hospital on August 1^st after being diagnosed with the virus.  His wife had mild symptoms and was eventually released, but Stutts’ case was more serious, quickly causing him to be placed in an ICU.  From there he routinely posted protests against vaccine mandates and mask mandates on his Facebook page, as well as denunciations of the vaccines generally, with assurances that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump thrown in for good measure.  He might still be doing so if it were not for a trifling incident.  His death on August 19^th is the circumstance I allude to.  Several residents in his state appear to be heeding the advice he delivered in this moribund condition; only 42% of South Carolina’s population is fully vaccinated, with the state recording an average of more than 3,500 cases a day and more than 1,600 people currently hospitalized.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 212,103,181; # of deaths worldwide: 4,435,512; # of cases U.S.:  38,519,247; # of deaths; U.S.: 644,838.

The DC metro area dodges summer weather ills and hospital shortages – An attempt to blow up the Capitol and its unedifying sequel – Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party takes a leaf from Donald Trump’s book – Impending full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine – Evening statistics

It seems so strange to hear about some of the ills afflicting other areas of the country that appear to have bypassed the DC metro area entirely.  In much of the western part of the country, for instance, people have been undergoing continual heat waves, drought, and wildfires.  In this region we certainly have had a hot summer, but our heat waves have been interspersed with periods of less torrid temperatures and we certainly had nothing comparable to last year, when we endured 19 successive days of more than 90 degrees.  Woodland streams have begun to run dry, as they generally do at this time of year; but this past week has seen moderating temperatures, as well as numerous rainstorms for the past several days and a good steady soaking rain for much of last night.  From a purely local point of view, it has not been an especially troublesome summer, at any rate as far as weather is concerned.

Similarly, our hospitals are not running out of ICU beds.  There have been increases in hospitalizations and in some cases patients have been diverted from certain hospitals in central Virginia to others; but in no case has anyone been obliged to wait in an improvised treatment area until a bed becomes available.  This is due, no doubt, to the fact that the vaccination rate is significantly higher than the national average.  Nearly 80% of Maryland’s adult population, 77.5% of DC’s adult population, and 76% of Virginia’s adult population have received at least one dose of a vaccine. 

This is not to say we have not had our share of troubles.  Yesterday one Floyd Ray Roseberry drove a black pickup truck onto the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress and proceeded to deliver an hour-long rambling video in which he threatened to blow up the Capitol.  The police managed to talk him into surrendering and to defuse the situation without any ill consequences.  And that might have been the end of the matter, had not Representative Mo Brooks – he who had spearheaded the movement to overturn the ratification of the Electoral College vote in January – issued a statement which, after expressing rather perfunctory concern for the safety of the police and the first responders, added, “I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial Socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom, and the very fabric of American society.”  That is to say, we have just been treated to the spectacle of a member of Congress expressing open sympathy for a would-be domestic terrorist.  It is at times like these that we in the Washington DC metro area feel envious of those in other regions who have to cope with mere ordinary, natural disasters.

I have frequently had occasion to remark on how numerous American politicians have stooped to underhand methods in order to obtain campaign funds, but it appears that the tactics of their Canadian counterparts are no less murky.  The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario has recently sent out fundraising letters – carefully crafted to resemble mail-order bills, with the phrase “INVOICE ENCLOSED” on the envelope, the word “INVOICE” in large bold letters in the top right corner of the letter, the phrase “Balance Due” underneath a three-column table whose headers are “DESCRIPTION,” “QUANTITY,” and “TOTAL,” and a one-line item for “Election Readiness Fund” as the sole table entry.  The word “donation” (all lower-case) does not appear in the body of the letter – only on the detachable bottom that one customarily encloses with bill payments.  So it is quite easy to see how people scanning their mail in a hurry could be fooled into thinking that it is simply another bill they incurred from ordering a product by telephone or even online. 

Veronica Doyon, one of the recipients, was so incensed by this piece of duplicity that she posted an image of the letter on Reddit, adding “I couldn’t believe the gall of whoever put this together to try and tell me I owed them money while at the same time trying to ask me to voluntarily donate it.”  The Ontario Liberal party has denounced the scheme and is calling for an investigation, but it is unclear whether such letters actually violate any election rules.  Elections Ontario oversees the provincial elections to prevent fraud during the election process, but no one appears to know whether fundraising letters come under its purview.  At least one recipient, however, has filed a complaint with the Ontario Provincial Police, who accordingly are determining whether a criminal investigation should be launched.  The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is also looking into the matter.  Even if the election rules do not cover such a situation, it is possible that such letters constitute a violation of Canada’s Post Corporation Act.  The PC party has belatedly realized that it has the makings of a first-rate scandal on its hands and issued an apology of sorts yesterday, trying to foist the blame onto Responsive Marketing Group, one of its vendors.  Someone within the party had to sign off on the letters’ format before they sent out, of course; but the PC party is maintaining a discreet silence about that.

The Pfizer vaccine may be receiving FDA approval soon, perhaps as early as next week.  More than a few anti-vaxxers have alleged that their reluctance to take any of the COVID vaccines is due to the fact that they are currently qualified for emergency use authorization (EUA) only.  A recent poll showed that about 30 percent of those still unvaccinated say they would be more likely to get a fully approved vaccine than an EUA vaccine.  There still is the possibility of last-minute delays, but in any case the FDA gave a target date of early September for reaching a final decision and it appears to be on track.  The need to sway the anti-vaxxers is more urgent than ever; today we have again seen a death toll of more than 1,000, well over 10% of the daily deaths worldwide. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 211,485,747; # of deaths worldwide: 4,426,477; # of cases U.S.:  38,384,240; # of deaths; U.S.: 644,281.

Musk’s and Bezos’s lunatic quarrel – Jupiter and Galileo – The over-used Colorado River – ICUs in Alabama and Mississippi – Evening statistics

Ivan Boesky, the stock trader who became infamous for his prominent role in an insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States during the mid-1980s, once heard his wife remark during a certain night upon the beauty of the moon, to which he responded:  “What good is the moon?  You can’t buy it or sell it.”

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would beg to differ.  Those two determined wheelers-and-dealers are arguing over which of them should possess the moon – or, at any rate, which of them will be the center of attention when NASA resumes astronauts landing on the moon.  Musk’s and Bezos’s space companies are developing lunar landers, vehicles capable of landing gently enough to avoid damage when they touch the moon’s rocky surface.  Originally NASA handed out three contracts to SpaceX (Musk), Blue Origin (Bezos), and Alabama-based Dynetics, which were intended to initiate development of lunar landers and were worth about $100 million to $600 million each. NASA then planned to select up to two companies to receive the final contracts.  When Congress allotted the agency $2 billion less than NASA had originally anticipated, it selected only a single technology, SpaceX.  Bezos is now suing the government on behalf of his Blue Origin technology to protest the decision.  Protests of this nature, of course, are not uncommon for high-priced government contracts.  Resorting to a Twitter war in which each competitor publicly abuses the other’s products, as Musk and Bezos have done, is somewhat more unusual.  Both have a personal stake in the matter, since the NASA initiative is being conducted with the eventual goal of building a permanent lunar settlement, and each of two multi-billionaires is anxious to have his name associated with it.  There used to be a time when robber barons gratified their vanity by building libraries, endowing museums, subscribing heavily to charities, and in other ways subsiding works of genuine utility with their surplus wealth, but that era is over now.

Jupiter is in opposition with our planet tonight, i.e., it will appear opposite of the sun from the perspective of the Earth.  It is the time that Jupiter comes closest in distance to the Earth, so that it not only is easily visible without a telescope, but is close enough for an ordinary modern telescope to view the Galilean moons:  the four moons Galileo discovered and recognized as satellites in 1610.  This discovery was not accepted by many well-known astronomers and various other authorities of the day, including the Catholic Church, since it went against the Aristotelean cosmology, then generally regarded as infallible, in which all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth.  His publication of the discovery was the beginning of the long sorry affair that led to in subjecting Galileo to trials by the Roman Inquisition in 1616 and later in 1633, and ended by placing him in house arrest for the remainder of his life.  Much has been written about the cowardice shown by Galileo during his trial; but considerably less is said about the cowardice of the Church in the matter.  Yet it is worth remarking upon.  During the trials Galileo presented the results of his laborious studies and said, in effect, “Here is the data.  Look at it.”  And Church responded, “We will not.”  The preconceived ideas that the Church had formulated were more important to its representatives than any evidence that suggested that they could have been mistaken.  As a result, they closed their eyes when such evidence came to light, and they afterwards closed their minds.  Such attitudes among both ecclesiastic and secular authorities are not unknown in modern times, as the events of the past year and a half during the pandemic have shown.

Greeley, CO, is a booming town; both the city and Weld County, in which it is located, have grown in population by 30% in the last ten years, one of the fastest growing regions in the nation.  It has a pleasant climate, since it usually does not experience fully developed storm systems; warm fronts, sleet, and freezing rain are virtually unknown in the area.  Nighttime low temperatures never rise above 68 degrees, even during the hottest summers.  Principal employer firms are numerous, and they include JBS USA (meatpacking), the North Colorado Medical Center, the county government, the University of Northern Colorado, and State Farm Insurance.  Its Union Colony Civic Center is one of the largest performing arts venues in the state.  The North Colorado Medical Center, the primary source of health care for the county, is a state-of-the-art facility.  Moreover, the city is less than an hours’ drive from Denver and the numerous cultural facilities that the state capital contains.  Crime rate is significantly lower than the national average.  For a mid-sized city (slightly over 100,000 population, as per the last estimate given in 2019) it has a fairly extensive public transportation system, with seven different bus routes, a regional bus service that connects the city to Fort Collins and Windsor, and buses to Denver and to Buffalo, WY.  It would appear that Greeley has everything going for it – everything but one, that is:  namely, water.

As with so many cities in the American West, Greeley is largely dependent upon the much-beleaguered Colorado River, which at this point has been declared by the Federal government as undergoing a water shortage, the first time in the river’s history.  Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is at its lowest ebb since it was first formed in the 1930s.  Mandatory water cuts have been instituted throughout the Southwest.  Arizona will see an 18% reduction of its total Colorado River Supply and Nevada will lose about 7%.  Colorado, being among the Upper Basin states, is not affected by the cuts directly.  However, the Colorado River Compact obligates the Bureau of Reclamation to release an annual average of 8.23 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir.  Runoff into Lake Powell this year is about 30% of the average yearly amount, and to make up for the shortfall, the Bureau of Reclamation will release more water from three Upper Basin reservoirs: Flaming Gorge in Utah, Blue Mesa in Colorado, and Navajo on the Colorado-New Mexico border.  Yet people apparently look upon the river as inexhaustible and continue to flock to areas in the proximity of Denver, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix as if they were as well-watered as the Aleutian Islands or the west coast of Norway.

There are now no unoccupied ICU beds in Alabama.  As of today, there are 29 more patients than there are beds available in the entire state.  Hospital staffers have been forced to convert hallways, regular patient rooms and emergency spaces into areas where they can treat patients in need of ICU room.  The state has a rate of 35% of its population vaccinated, the second lowest in the country.  Mississippi, which now has the lowest vaccination rate of all states, is in a similar situation, with only 7 ICU beds available statewide.  Dr. Jawauna Stewart, a hospital worker at Hattiesburg Clinic Hospital Care Service, has said that one of the most difficult aspects of her job now is to talk with the families of patients about treatment plans:  “To be honest, that’s one of the most frustrating things because I rarely have good news.”

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 210,784,682; # of deaths worldwide: 4,416,088; # of cases U.S.:  38,228,384; # of deaths; U.S.: 643,091.

Great North Mountain:  Big Schloss and Little Schloss – Booster shots to become available – Governor Abbott and Texas school districts – The sad case of the Daniel family – An anti-vaxxer recants – Evening statistics

I led a hike yesterday for the Vigorous Hikers, going along an 18-mile loop in the Great North Mountain area that included views from the rock formations known as Big Schloss and Little Schloss, both of which resemble battlements.  The forecast included some rain in the afternoon, but the area where we roamed remained dry.  And happily, the torrid temperatures of the preceding week have moderated.  It was quite humid, of course, but the temperature was never more than 80 degrees at the most.  Not many people attended, on account of the uncertain weather and the long drive; it is approximately a two-hour trip from our usual departure point in Centreville to the parking area.  The sky was overcast, but not to a degree to interfere with the splendid views to be seen from both.  The two “castles” are on opposite sides of the valley that encompasses the Stony Creek watershed, well under 2 miles apart as the crow flies, but requiring about 9 miles of walking along trails to reach one from the other.  Little Schloss, which we visited first, actually has the more challenging climb of the two, for the spur trail leading up to it ends at a point about 70 feet below the summit, and going up to the top is rather a scramble.  Big Schloss is the more frequently visited of the two, since it can be reached relatively easily coming from the opposite direction of the Wolf Gap recreation area.  Even though we saw no one else on any other part of the hike, we did encounter three or four people at its summit.  Under these circumstances it gives an added zest to the view from Big Schloss to espy Little Schloss across the valley.  Even though I have done this hike more than once, when I gaze upon the high ridges and trace the length of the route I have just traversed along both sides of the valley I find myself exclaiming, “Did I really do that?”  We maintained a fairly brisk pace, starting close to 9:00 and finishing between 3:30 and 3:45, pausing for lunch where Sandstone Spring crosses the Mill Mountain Trail and on both of the castles to take in the views.  

Coming down from the mountains I returned with reluctance to the concerns of daily life, with the ever-increasing spread of the virus taking pre-eminence.  The CDC has recommended that vaccinated people get a booster shot eight months after receiving their second dose, and the Biden administration has announced that boosters will be available for distribution starting on September 20^th.  There are differing opinions as to how necessary they are.  The WHO has said that current data does not confirm a need for booster shots and European Union officials say that they are not distributing them to the general population, although they are making them available to seniors and to immuno-compromised people.  However, the CDC has some justification for being more cautious than either of these agencies.  The U.S. is regrettably now the world leader again both in rate of new infections and rate of new deaths.  The increase for today accounts for over 22% of new infections and 10% of new deaths globally.

Yet another politician who has done his best to thwart efforts to contain the virus has become infected:  Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who has forbidden all school districts in the state to impose a mask mandate.  It is to be noted that he is not an anti-vaxxer – having received a vaccine himself in 2020, well before they became available to the general public – and that his case is not serious.  In all fairness, he is showing some prudence by isolating himself in the governor’s mansion and receiving antibody treatment.  The announcement that he became infected occurred just a day after he posted a picture of himself on the Internet, not wearing a mask while speaking indoors near Dallas to a group of Republicans, most of whom were likewise unmasked.

For that matter, Texas school districts are openly defying the ban he has striven to impose.  The superintendents in Dallas and Austin have issued a mask mandate for all schools in their districts, and health authorities for the city of San Antonio and of Bexar County health authority have followed suit for their schools.  One school district has come up with a novel method for defying Abbott’s ban on a mask mandate.  The Paris Independent School District, which contains about 4,000 students, has made facemasks a part of the schools’ dress code. 

An unvaccinated couple in Georgia has fallen to COVID, although in this case their resistance to the vaccines is sadly understandable.  All members of the family contracted the disease in June, and Martin and Trina Daniel died within hours of each other, leaving behind two teen-aged children.  Martin Daniel was a chemist and, as his nephew explained afterwards, trusted vaccines that had had a long history of effectivity, such as the polio vaccine.  But he was wary of the COVID vaccines, feeling that they had been developed too hastily.  It is true that their development was accelerated, but the technology have been prepared for over the course of several years and when the pandemic began government funding for completing it was contributed to an unprecedented degree.  However, Daniel had an additional reason for mistrusting vaccines in general:  the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, which charted the progression of syphilis in black men who were unaware of that they carried the disease, who never gave consent for being subject to experimentation, and who were not provided with treatment, even though penicillin became available in 1943 for combatting it.  Daniel was not alone in looking upon vaccines with mistrust for this reason:  the amount of vaccinated African-Americans lags behind the amount of vaccinated whites by 11 percentage points.  The Daniels had actually become reconciled to the idea of vaccinated and they were scheduled to receive vaccines in mid-July; but they contracted the disease in late June and it quickly spiraled out of control by July 4^th.  Martin Daniel died on July 6^th and Trina’s death followed just hours later.  Miles and Marina Daniel, the two children, came down with milder cases and were battling the disease at the time of their parents’ death.  They were released from the hospital on July 7^th, but had to quarantine for two weeks – a severe restriction under any circumstances, but doubly so when coping with the loss of both parents in rapid succession.  They are now planning to get vaccinated, not trusting to the antibodies alone that they acquired through surviving a bout of the disease.

Other skeptics are being swayed by the influx of new cases and deaths.  Roger West, of Callahan, FL, was a vehement anti-vaxxer who repeatedly, as co-owner of the Westside Journal weekly newspaper, issued opinion columns to discourage his readers from getting the vaccines.  “I do not trust the Federal Government,” he wrote recently. “I do not trust Dr. Fauci, I do not trust the medical profession, nor the pharmaceutical giants.”  But shortly afterwards three of his friends came down with the virus and one of them died.  At that point West’s mother and other relatives urged him to get vaccinated, and he decided to follow their advice. 

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 209,326,903; # of deaths worldwide: 4,393,412; # of cases U.S.:  37,886,998; # of deaths; U.S.: 640,073.  

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 210,075,393; # of deaths worldwide: 4,405,342; # of cases U.S.:  38,065,433; # of deaths; U.S.: 641,306.   Today’s death toll was over 1,000.  We have slipped in the ranking of nations by COVID mortality rate, now occupying the 20^th instead of the 21^st place.

Hiking in Sky Meadows – Travel plans – The Taliban seizes Afghanistan – Another true believer winds up on a ventilator – Employers pressuring employees to get vaccinated – The U.S. leads the world again in infection rates – Evening statistics

Yesterday we had another winery hike, taking a 7-mile loop in Sky Meadows.  The weather was cooperative, being much less oppressive than the weather earlier in the week – humid, to be sure, but less than 80 degrees, and quite breezy and comfortable on the ridgeline.  The hike had an additional purpose, providing a means for LM and JM to distribute materials about the Idaho trip planned for September.  Considering that the trip was improvised to replace the original trip to France that was canceled, it appears that we will be getting comfortable accommodations and well-coordinated flight arrangements.  There were an abundance of butterflies to be seen throughout the hike, black swallowtails and tiger swallowtails in particular.  I remarked to DC that I have been seeing more butterflies than usual this year on the hiking trails, and he said that that is a result of the cicada cycle; several birds have died as a result of the parasites they ingested after eating the cicadas and as a result more caterpillars have lived long enough to form chrysalises and transform themselves. 

Afghanistan is now in control of the Taliban.  Biden has received a great deal of criticism as a result, from Democrats and Republicans alike, and it may be that he was somewhat precipitous in withdrawing troops from that nation.  But while I am sorry for the Afghanis I can’t blame him overmuch.  We have, after all, been bolstering the government for twenty years.  The fact that it fell within a week or so of our troops’ departure suggests that it never was able to exert a very strong hold on its populace to begin with.  There comes a time when nationalities must be allowed to control their own destinies, without outside interference.  If the Afghan government was not able to contain the Taliban in the course of being subsided for two decades on end, no wonder that it fell.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a former arch-bishop of St. Louis, has been an outspoken critic of inoculation and has claimed that the best weapon for battling “the evil of the coronavirus” is a relationship with Jesus Christ.  In light of the fact that he contracted the virus this past Saturday and is currently on a ventilator, he might perhaps consider resorting to Pfizer or Moderna instead. 

More employers are imposing a vaccine requirement for their employees:  Tyson Foods (the nation’s largest meat producer), Morgan Stanley (investment bankers), Microsoft.  Job postings that mention a COVID-19 vaccination requirement have increased by over a third, compared with just a month earlier.  The pace of first doses being administered averaged 441,198 new vaccinations per day of August 5^th, an increase of 95% since one month earlier.

Such pressures from employers are to be encouraged, since we are now accounting for over 18% of the daily increase in cases.  In deaths, it is true, the ratio is considerably lower.  A significant number of the cases are less serious than previously and our therapeutic treatments of the disease have improved over the past few months.  But still, we are leading the world in the rate of infections, just as we had done about a year ago.  About 72.1% of all American adults have received one dose by now.  But that means that about 72 million American adults are still unvaccinated, allowing the delta variant a wide range in which to wreak its havoc.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 207,944,965; # of deaths worldwide: 4,374,233; # of cases U.S.:  37,466,718; # of deaths; U.S.: 638,736.  Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 208,638,253; # of deaths worldwide: 4,382,882; # of cases U.S.:  37,719,467; # of deaths; U.S.: 637,561

A tropical week – Mitigation of Biden’s border policies – Increase in vaccinations – Evening statistics

There is an explanation of why the personal element is missing from recent entries.  It has been so hot this entire week that my excursions out of doors have been minimal.  At times it has been like a steam bath outside, with temperatures close to 100 degrees and well over 90% humidity.  There have been heat advisories and warnings to avoid unnecessary outdoor activity posted during the entire week.  Such periods are not unknown in the DC area, of course, although they usually occur earlier in the summer season.  Nor has this issue been confined to a single region; this past week is said to have been one of the hottest on record for the entire nation, on both coasts and in the interior.  Temperatures moderated today; it was still well into the 80s and at one point was just under 90 degrees, but at any rate I could go outside without wilting and was able to mow the lawn without any strain.  According to the forecasts, tomorrow will begin a series of days with more seasonable weather, in the 80s for the most part but not going much beyond the mid-80s.    

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Federal judge, has blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to overturn the policy that requires migrants to stay in Mexico until their US immigration court date is held.  It is unclear why Biden is showing such an extraordinary blindness in this matter.  State and Federal agencies tasked with defending the border have been greatly overburdened as a result of his earlier directives.  It is much easier to bar a person from entering the country at all until his legal status is determined than to allow a person to enter on a temporary basis, provide lodgings for him for an indefinite period until a hearing decides whether or not he can remain, and then attempt to repatriate him if the judgment goes against him. If the potential emigrants were all confined to a single isolated location (as they were many decades ago on Ellis Island), that would be another matter; but when they are scattered across a border that extends nearly 2,000 miles they become much more difficult to track.  The states of Texas and Missouri had filed a lawsuit against the administration earlier this year, stating that “Dangerous criminals are taking advantage of the lapse in law enforcement and it’s resulting in human trafficking, smuggling, a plethora of violent crimes, and a massive, unprecedented burden on state and Federal programs for which taxpayers must foot the bill.”  Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision will probably not be allowed to remain the last word on the subject, but at any rate it will put a temporary halt to the madness of admitting several thousand persons of indeterminate legal status and little documentation to the country, particularly while it is in the throes of a pandemic.

The spread of the delta variant has resulted in an increase of vaccination rates.  The number of people receiving a first dose each day has nearly doubled since July 11, when that figure stood at 7.5 new doses per 10,000 people.  Now it is nearly 15 new doses per 10,000 people.  In Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, and Missouri, vaccinations have increased by 95% since mid-July.  This increase should not be exaggerated; the pace of vaccinations is still far below the amount of doses seen in the period from January to April.  But at any rate the trend is now in the right direction.  At this point the tallies of Americans who are vaccinated are as follows:  80.7% fully vaccinated and 90.9% single dose for seniors, 61.6% fully vaccinated and 71.8% single dose for adults 18 years or older, 59.2% fully vaccinated and 69.6% single dose for everyone 12 years or older, and 50.6% fully vaccinated and 59.5% single dose for all Americans regardless of age.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 207,473,688; # of deaths worldwide: 4,366,048; # of cases U.S.: 37,435,422; # of deaths; U.S.: 637,438. 

Why the anti-vaccine sentiment persists – The refusal to examine data – The increasing rate of hospitalizations – Marjorie Taylor Greene’s love for her fellow-Georgians  – Evening statistics

I have written a good deal in these pages against the anti-vaxxers, but in one respect I can understand where they are, as we say in the U.S., “coming from.”  There is a good deal of arrogance among those who would dictate to them and to the populace generally as to what they should and should not do, which naturally rubs some people the wrong way.  A couple of months ago Dr. Fauci said that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”  Quite frankly, Dr. Fauci is not the embodiment of all that science is capable of achieving.  He has had a long and distinguished career, but that is all the more reason to be wary announcing himself infallible.  It is not for refusing to conform to the accepted medical wisdom of the day that I blame in the anti-vaxxers; the accepted medical wisdom of any age is far from reliable.  For example, over the course of many centuries blood-letting was used as a response to many different diseases.  This is not quite the barbarous practice that its reputation would lead one to believe; in some cases it might have counteracted the effects of hypertension.  But in the long run it undeniably did more harm than good.  During much of the history of human medicine, to quote Charles Reade’s “The Cloister and the Hearth, “for one Mr. Malady killed, three fell by Dr. Remedy.”

My quarrel with the anti-vaxxers, then, is not that they challenge the accepted wisdom of contemporaneous medical experts but that they refuse to accept or even to look at the evidence of the data that are available to everyone, regardless of whether or not they are scientists.  The ratio of unvaccinated to vaccinated patients requiring hospitalization varies from one locality to another, but the range is 999:1 to 19:1.  Similarly, the range of those who have succumbed to the disease is 499:1  to 15 2/3:1.  No one can be definitely proven as having died as a result of having received the vaccines and the number of adverse reactions to any of them that are not limited and temporary appear to be 1 in 200,000 at the most.   And it is not as if we are dealing with a small statistical sampling emerging from one or two isolated laboratories.  In the U. S. alone, nearly 168 million people have been fully vaccinated.  Any fears that the anti-vaxxers about the vaccines’ effects in light of this evidence are, to say the least, overblown.

Our hospitals are now clogged with cases that for the most part consist of people who have resisted the vaccines.  In North Texas (including Dallas and Ft. Worth), no pediatric ICU beds are available; at this point any child who is materially injured in a car accident or who comes down with the disease will have to be transported to another county or even to Oklahoma for treatment.  In Middle Tennessee no ICU beds, pediatric or otherwise, are available; while Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Florida, and Georgia have filled more than 90% of their ICU beds.    San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenber has said that “Yesterday in San Antonio, we had 26 minutes where the seventh-largest city in the United States was without EMS units to transport people.”   Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and Texas account for half of the recent surge in hospitalizations, and, with the exception of Florida, every single one of these states has a vaccination rate well below the national average.

Speaking of Georgia, I must not neglect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s poignant display of concern on behalf of her constituents.  When questioned about hospitals exceeding capacity on account of COVID, she replied with majestic simplicity:  “We can’t live forever.” 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 206,878,352; # of deaths worldwide: 4,357,276; # of cases U.S.:37,336,706; # of deaths; U.S.: 637,132. 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain – The anti-anti-vaxxer sentiment – The delta variant increases steadily – Evening statistics

Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, began a 72-hour cyber-symposium in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Wednesday in an attempt to obtain support for his theories about the election being stolen and other dire plots of that nature.  Lindell has offered $5 million to anyone who can disprove his theory, on condition that such a challenger attends the symposium in person.  This event is not open to the public; invitees included various politicians, cyber experts, and media personnel.  It was, however, streamed on his website with the declared objective of obtaining 1 billion viewers.  He reserved 800 rooms for the event.  Since, for some inexplicable reason, the majority of those invited did not even bother to respond, let alone attend, most of these rooms were not exactly crammed to the rafters with participants when the streaming began, and they became emptier still by the second day.  There is reason to suppose, also, that the actual number of viewers has been rather below his expectations, considering that the first presidential debate received the comparatively modest total of 73 million viewers and even the sacrosanct Superbowl itself received a paltry 114 million viewers. It is a pity in a way.  Those who tuned in could have the pleasure of observing his reaction when news reached him that his motion to dismiss Dominion Voting System’s $1.3 billion lawsuit against him was denied and that it consequently will proceed in full.  He abruptly quitted his seat, rushed from the stage, and disappeared behind a dark curtain.  Here he differs somewhat from the Wizard of Oz, who took these precautions before Dorothy and her three companions entered the room. 

As more and more people are falling ill with the delta variant, and more children in particular, popular sentiment against those who refuse to receive the vaccination is intensifying.  Muriel Muric, a mother of a 9-year old daughter stricken with COVID, lashed out against the anti-vaxxers and the facemask opponents on her Facebook page.  “LOOK AT MY CHILD.  THIS is why people are afraid. THIS is why people beg for you to wear a mask. Who are you hurting by wearing one? What freaking rights are you losing?!”  The comment accompanies a picture of her daughter Blair on a ventilator.  She is off of the ventilator now and shows signs of recovering, but a 14-day struggle with the disease that inhibits something as vital as breathing, a horrifying experience under any circumstances, must have been especially so for a young child. Her situation is hardly unique.  COVID cases among the youth of Tennessee, the state in which the Murics reside, account for 27% of the new increase, while more than 1,400 children under the age of 13 nationwide have been hospitalized during the recent surge.  North Texas has run out of beds for pediatric intensive care units.  There are 73 confirmed pediatric patients hospitalized in the region, the highest level of pediatric COVID patients to date.

Several states, including Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Mississippi, are now averaging more daily cases than at any other point in the pandemic.  This past 24 hours has seen an increase of over 130,000 cases nationwide, the highest increase since January.  About 40% of the new hospitalizations occurred in Florida and Texas.  Nearly 9,700 patients are being admitted to hospitals each day, up by 31.3% in the last week and marking the highest number of patients seeking care since February.  Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 now account for about 40% of the hospitalizations.  It is hardly surprising; at this point more than 90% of all seniors have received at least one dose.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 206,155,894; # of deaths worldwide: 4,346,672; # of cases U.S.:  37,182,117; # of deaths; U.S.: 635,937.   No longer are we accounting for less than our due proportion of cases and deaths globally.  Today’s increase in cases today comprised over 17% of the world’s total and our increase in deaths was nearly 6.5% of the world’s total. 

Masks mandates near and far – Air travel begins to slacken again – Pressure on the unvaccinated intensifies – Dominion Voting System lawsuits – Evening statistics

I went to several stores today and in all of them both customers and employees were wearing masks.  Neither the county nor the state has instituted a mask mandate (although Virginia has required the use of masks in schools), the surge in cases has made people apprehensive and they are wearing them of their own accord.  Washington DC, Baltimore, and several Maryland counties have already required facemasks for indoor venues; the counties with such mandates are Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince Georges, i.e., the counties within the DC-Baltimore-Annapolis triangle that are by far the most populous counties in the state.  Some states have instituted state-wide mandates:  California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Washington.  Oregon has a pending mandate that will begin on Friday.  The mandates in Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon, and DC apply to vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, whereas those in the other states apply to unvaccinated only.

Airline travel is starting to decline again, on account of fear of the delta variant.  The Transportation Security Administration officials yesterday screened just over 1.7 million passengers at U.S. airport security checkpoints – the lowest amount since June 15.  Ironically, this development comes just as more destinations are opening up for travel:  Canada, for instance, began to allow vaccinated Americans to cross the border earlier this week.  Southwest Airlines has seen an increase in passengers canceling their reservations and has projected the surge in cancelations to continue into September.  People are becoming hesitant about international travel in particular, since a traveler might not be able to come back into the U.S. for some time on account of the testing requirement.  And of course, anyone who tests positive as a result of contracting an infection abroad will have much greater difficulties in re-entering the country.

An increasing number of organizations are now putting pressure on its unvaccinated employees.  Amtrak has announced that all of its employees must be fully vaccinated by November 1^st or else undergo weekly testing.    Employees of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority and Port Authority will have to be vaccinated by Labor Day or undergo weekly testing.  The New York Stock Exchange will require proof of vaccination for all personnel to access the trading floor.  Education Secretary Miguel Cordona has advocated requiring all teachers to get vaccinated, while Governor Gavin Newsome of California has already announced a vaccination requirement for all teachers in the California school system.  West Virginia Wesleyan College will be charging a $750 “COVID fee” from unvaccinated students.  All students at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama will be charged a $500 fee for the fall term to offset the cost of weekly testing and quarantining, but vaccinated students will receive an immediate refund once they submit proof of having received their doses. 

U. S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols denied motions of dismissal from Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindall of the defamation lawsuits brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems.  Dominion has since filed three additional defamation lawsuits against right-wing media networks One America News, Newsmax, and Fox News.  Nichols’ judgment virtually gives the Dominion lawsuits a green light to proceed.  In the verdict that he delivered Nichols came down heavily on Powell in particular.  Powell has claimed that her statements were hyperbole made in the course of political debate, but Nichols said that Powell must have had prior knowledge that her claims were false, that she may have personally fabricated sections of some affidavits, and that one “expert” she cited in her lawsuits was clearly a conspiracy theorist.  The expert in question, who was not named, has publicly claimed that George Soros, President George H.W. Bush’s father, the Muslim Brotherhood, and “leftists” helped form the “Deep State” in Nazi Germany in the 1930s – in which case, George Soros must have been a master conspirator when he was three years old; he was born in 1930.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 205,408,150; # of deaths worldwide: 4,336,418; # of cases U.S.:  37,013,021; # of deaths; U.S.: 635,538.  At this point over 11% of the population has come down with the virus since the pandemic began.

The downfall of Andrew Cuomo – ICU bed shortage in Arkansas – Mississippi’s governor becomes a recluse – Vaccination initiatives in Pennsylvania – Evening statistics

Among the topics my friends and I discussed while lunching at the winery yesterday were the potential consequences of the New York Attorney General’s report on Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo resigned his governorship today, unable to withstand the calls for him to step down.  The rapidity with which he has been discarded is actually somewhat astonishing, considering that he was something of a media darling a bare year earlier, during the first stages of the pandemic.  His top aide, Melissa DeRosa, resigned this past Sunday, feeling that her position was no longer tenable; Nancy Pelosi, a long-time political ally of the Cuomo family, was among the first to call for his resignation; and President Biden, who is (or was) a personal friend, lost little time in doing likewise.  Hardly anyone in his own party tried to defend him and, had he insisted on remaining in office, he would have been the second governor in the history of the state of New York to be impeached. 

At the beginning of this year, Cuomo seemed in an impregnable position.  He was widely praised for his governance of New York during the pandemic and many experts were predicting that he would be running for a fourth term, after which he might well have considered himself positioned to be a presidential candidate for 2028.  Moreover, Cuomo must have been aware of what awaited him if news of his behavior towards women in his employ had leaked out.  Eliot Spitzer, who was governor of New York for only one year, was ousted from his position in 2008 when it was revealed that he was a long-time client of a prostitution ring and had used state resources to set up his assignations.  Cuomo himself was New York’s Attorney General at that time, so he can hardly plead ignorance of such matters.   It requires a strong head and a strong will not to allow political power to go to one’s head, causing to its possessor to regard himself as a member of an elite to whom ordinary rules do not apply; and most American politicians, regrettably, do not possess these traits.

The fourth wave continues to increase in intensity.  Today Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that only eight ICU beds were currently open in the entire state of Arkansas.  The state reported 995 new cases on Monday and 21 additional deaths, according to Hutchinson.  On yesterday alone 103 people were hospitalized, marking the largest single-day increase in hospitalizations.  Arkansas is particularly vulnerable to the disease, having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country:  only 37.6% of its population has been fully vaccinated, as opposed to 50.3% of Americans generally. 

In Mississippi every ICU bed has been taken.  Unlike Hutchinson, Governor Tate Reeves has no plans to impose a mask mandate anywhere in the state and has given only the most tepid of endorsements for vaccination.  (Mississippi has recently become the state with the lowest vaccination rate, having displaced Alabama for this dubious distinction.)  He is, however, a believer in taking precautions against the virus – for himself.  He has lived in virtual quarantine for weeks.  He spends most of his time at the Governor’s Mansion, rarely venturing outside of it except for purposes of travel.  He has isolated himself from many of his closest advisers in recent weeks and is holding no press conferences.  He has been losing staff members rapidly since he took office in January, 2020, with four senior staffers and several policy staff members leaving by June, 2021 and four additional staff members in the past six weeks.  None of them have been replaced.  Those who remain in his administration are scrambling to keep the state government operational.  Liz Welch is currently splitting duties, acting as Reeves’ his interim chief of staff as she continues to run the Department of Finance and Administration. Prominent officials who have been striving in vain to get in touch with Reeves are now reaching out to David Maron, the governor’s chief counsel and deputy chief of staff, who has never previously worked in state government. 

In Pennsylvania, by way of contrast, Governor Tom Wolf has announced a new vaccine initiative.  All state employees in state health care facilities and high-risk congregate-care facilities will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 7^th.  All new hires in those facilities must be vaccinated before starting work.  On October 1^st, all vaccinated state employees are eligible for an additional 7.5 to 8 hours of paid time off.  Pennsylvania is ranked as the fifth highest state in vaccination rates, but Wolf is determinedly continuing to press state residents to get the vaccines.  “Pennsylvania has had a lot of success in our vaccination efforts, but 63% is not the goal,” he said. “Sixty-three percent still leaves far too many eligible Pennsylvanians unvaccinated, which puts their communities at risk.” 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 204,713,148; # of deaths worldwide: 4,325,608; # of cases U.S.:  36,888,351; # of deaths; U.S.: 634,636.  Today’s increase was slightly under 98,000, so I suppose that’s an improvement.

A winery hike – Lunch at the winery – Attempts to encourage people to receive the vaccines – An unvaccinated person becomes a vaccination advocate – An unvaccinated person who still refuses the vaccines – An anti-vaxxer demonstration in London – Evening statistics

I met with a few others for a winery hike; and, being a winery hike, it was relatively short:  we went along the Appalachian Trail three miles to the junction with the Fisher Hill Loop Trail and then turned back (six miles total).  I took the loop as an addition, thinking that it would add only a mile, but it was somewhat longer – between 1½ and 2 miles is my guess.  The forest foliage was dense and green and luxuriant, although I found, to my regret, that the summer heat, which on most of the other hikes I’ve done this season was mitigated by shade, lower temperatures at high elevations, and breezes, was felt in full force today.  It was not unusually hot for the season, but extremely humid, and, brief as the hike was, I was quite tired by the end of it. 

Afterwards we went to the Naked Mountain Winery, which I have often noticed in passing (it is on the road to a couple of the parking areas for the trillium hikes that we take annually in May) but had not visited until today.  We had the place to ourselves; now that the school year has started, the number of people making excursions to such places during the weekdays has diminished.  We ate outside, but the dining area was shaded with a white canopy that shaded us from the sun and the temperature was quite comfortable.  Virginia wines have certainly improved in quality over the years; we ordered a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine for the five of us, and both of them were very flavorful.  LH and MM provided, as might be expected, ample provisions for lunch, including some trout and an excellent Cambozola cheese, and we conversed leisurely as we sat and ate and drank together.

Quite naturally, one of the most animating topics was the fourth wave and how it is aggravated by the obstinacy of so many people to take the vaccines.  The number of people getting vaccinated has certainly increased, but the total is still about 0.1% of the population per day – which means it will take many months to realize a goal of, for example, 80% of adults getting fully vaccinated.  Various organizations, it is true, are doing their best to encourage the process.  For instance, the Pentagon is attempting to require members of the U.S. military to get the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15^th.  It cannot mandate the COVID vaccines as long as they are still listed as emergency use authorization by the FDA.  However, their administration can be authorized as a security measure if it receives sanction from the President, which it probably will. 

We mentioned how many who have resisted taking the vaccines changed their tune quickly when they became ill.  For instance, Travis Campbell, a father of seven, aged 43, delayed taking the vaccine and eventually was stricken with the virus, which in his case nearly wound up putting him on a ventilator.  He has now issued several videos on Facebook demonstrating his condition – he has to struggle continually in order to breath — and pleading with viewers to get vaccinated.  In some of these, he mentioned how he contacted various friends to be pallbearers at his funeral should the worst happen, and how he has asked his 14-year old son to give his older sister away in his stead at her future wedding.  These appeals may have had some effect:  Campbell told the Bristol Herald Courier that he knows of at least 20 people who received vaccines after watching the videos.

And there are some who resist the vaccines tooth and nail even when the disease becomes impossible to ignore.  Robert and Vi Herring, an Arkansas couple in their 70s, refused to take the vaccine; eventually they contracted the virus and died from it.  The last communication sent from Robert Herring to his daughter Shandra Parish was a voicemail sent from his hospital bed. “It doesn’t even sound human,” she said of the noises he was making. “I don’t like hearing it, but I can’t delete it.”  Even so, Parish, who incidentally is a hospital nurse, still refuses to take the vaccine herself and says that she has no regrets about her parents declining to do so.  (Is it merely a coincidence that her surname is a homonym of the word “perish”?)  She has quarreled on this account with her brother David Herring, who has expressed considerable resentment towards the purveyors of sentiments that induced his parents to decline the vaccine.  “I’m absolutely angry and frustrated,” Herring said. “Their age and health conditions – they should have gotten vaccinated really early.   And then trying to talk to friends of theirs and hearing these ridiculous things about depopulation and computer chips.”

Sometimes the anti-vaccination sentiment takes a form that is frankly comic.  Today several British anti-vaccine advocates attempted to storm the news headquarters of the BBC for what they called purveying of misinformation.  There was only one slight problem:  the protestors congregated at the Television Center building in West London, which was indeed the news headquarters until 2013, at which time the BBC sold it to a developer who converted it into a building of private residences.  Andrew Neil, chairman of The Spectator and GB news, summed it up best:  “Anti-vaxxers protest BBC coverage of pandemic by storming a building in White City.  A building the BBC vacated in 2013 and is now luxury flats. Is there a link between stupidity and anti-vax? Opinions vary but evidence is growing.”

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide:  204,089,181; # of deaths worldwide: 4,315,452; # of cases U.S.:  36,771,525; # of deaths; U.S.: 633,788.

Hiking in the Frederick Watershed and on the Catoctin Trail – The struggle to resume normal social activities – Anti-vaxxers of my acquaintance – State governors expressing resentment towards the unvaccinated – Mask mandate in Louisiana – An unexpected proponent of federal anti-COVID measures – Evening statistics

I met up today with various hiking friends in the Frederick Watershed, where we roamed on one of its numerous unnamed trails until we came to the intersection with the Catoctin Trail, and went south for a few miles before turning back.  The Frederick Watershed Cooperative Wildlife Management Area (CWMA) contains about 7,000 acres of forest surrounding the county reservoir and its trails are popular with mountain bikers, of whom we encountered several.  It tends, however, to be less frequented by hikers and we spent the greater part of the hike without seeing anyone else on foot.  Even though the day was hot and nearly cloudless, the paths were well-shaded and frequently breezy, and the hiking conditions were thus quite comfortable.  The portion of the Catoctin Trail that we covered lies between the steeper areas just outside of Gambrill State Park and in the vicinity of the Cunningham Manor; nonetheless, the various ups and downs totaled to about 1170 feet of elevation gain.  The group who attended the hike today was fairly large, more than 15 in all.  Afterwards we ate and drank and conversed together. 

One topic that arose was the subject of future plans for Wanderbirds hikes, since AD, the organizer of the hikes I’ve been participating in during the weekends, is a member of the club and one of the Wanderbirds Board of Directors, while most of the participants are Wanderbirds members as well.  This club’s approach is somewhat more cautious than that of the Capital Hiking Club and  it will not be re-instituting bus hikes for some time.  Instead, it will set up carpool hikes.  The Board is currently working out the guidelines for the leaders of such activities.  There are several issues to be resolved, such as how to ensure that the participants of any given hike are vaccinated and whether the hikers should regroup at junctions instead of, as in the past, go each one of his or her individual pace from beginning to end.  By degrees these two clubs, along with many other social groups, are attempting to reweave the social fabric that has been unraveled by the pandemic; but it is a difficult and uncertain process, thanks to the fourth wave created by the spread of the delta variant.

The number of hospitalizations among Americans from the COVID virus is now over 50,000, as opposed to 16,000 only one month earlier.  The pace of vaccinations has increased; nonetheless, at the current rate it will take until mid-February before all of the people eligible for vaccinations will receive at least one dose.  I myself know several people who still refuse to get one.  One has had the disease and believes that such immunity as he has acquired has made the vaccine unnecessary for him.  Another has rejected it because he feels that the likelihood of his being afflicted with the disease is minimal, since he lives in an area with a low rate of infection and is in excellent health.  It’s impossible to argue with them on this point.  They know better.  It must be so, for they have said so themselves.

I can readily enter with the frustration expressed by Spencer Cox, governor of Utah.  He has said outright that he is “fed up” with those who resist the vaccines.  Neither he nor the state school system has the authority to issue a mask mandate – in Utah such decisions are made on a county-by-county basis.  But he has not been slow to voice his resentment towards those who have had the opportunity to receive the vaccines but who have refused to accept them.  “I’m not really excited,” he said, “to have to sacrifice to protect someone who doesn’t seem to care.”  Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey went further, lashing out at a group of anti-vaxxer protestors by calling them “ultimate knuckleheads” and adding “because of what you are saying and standing for, people are losing their life!”

Cox, incidentally, is Republican, but on this point he is certainly diverging from the mainstream of his political party.  However, it appears that others have been shaken by the recent surge as well.  Governor Bel Edwards of Louisiana has reinstated his state’s mask mandate for all people ages 5 and older, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in indoor public places. The mandate goes into effect Wednesday.  The number of COVID-related hospitalizations in Louisiana was 2,119 on Thursday, a new record for the state.  Of these, 222 are on ventilators. 

And there certainly is one curious example of a notable GOP statesman who has indicated that the current administration has not taken a sufficiently militant stance against the pandemic:  namely, Donald Trump.  During an interview yesterday with Fox News’ Dan Bongino he said:  “Could you imagine if I were president right now and we had this massive attack from the coronavirus?”

Well, actually, it doesn’t require any great stretch of the imagination to envision such a scenario, because it already happened.  There are a great number of records itemizing Trump’s numerous blunders during the last year of his presidency in his handling of the COVID crisis, among which this journal of mine may be included. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 203,404,398; # of deaths worldwide: 4,306,942; # of cases U.S.:  36,543,338; # of deaths; U.S.: 633,116.

The inaugural bus hike of Capital Hiking Club – The steadily increasing fourth wave – Organizations that put pressure on the unvaccinated – Organizations that do just the opposite – Evening statistics

The Capital Hiking Club conducted its first hike using a chartered bus since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago.  It was, if I may say so, a resounding success.  We had excellent hike leaders and all of the hikers expressed satisfaction with the hike itself, which took place at Sugarloaf Mountain, the monadnock a few miles south of Frederick.  I had been obliged to reroute the hike when we were planning it out because we were obliged to begin at the base of the mountain rather than at one of the large parking areas about three hundred feet higher.  The roads are so narrow and they wind so much that it was doubtful that the bus could navigate them successfully.  This meant that the moderate hike had to be longer than originally planned, and it ended up being about 7½ miles in length, with 2000 feet of elevation gain.  But while many found it strenuous, all were delighted with the opportunity of getting out of doors in such a setting.  Many had been leading fairly reclusive lives since the beginning of the pandemic; I overheard one of them say to another, “This is the furthest I’ve been from my house for over a year.”  The weather was cooperative as well.  There had been rain in the forecast, and I discovered later that indeed it had rained downtown; but in this region the sky was cloudy only, not especially grey, with temperatures in the high 70s and with a series of breezes to moderate the humidity.  After the hike we relaxed on the lawn near the entrance as we waited for all of the hikers to complete the route, several of us eating food we had supplied for ourselves individually and all of us conversing animatedly with one another.

We had to restrict ourselves in certain ways.  We limited the number of attendees so that the bus was only half-full.  I was told later that club members eagerly scanned the Meetup website for the time that one could register for the hike (8:00 AM on the preceding Saturday) and that all of the slots were taken up in a matter of minutes.  Masks were worn on the bus.  And no refreshments were served by the leaders, as is our usual custom; for the first few hikes, at least, the hike leaders will have enough responsibilities to look after as it is.  Later, perhaps, we can get a closer approximation to conditions as they were before the pandemic began, with a full bus and refreshments provided after the hike, but it is first necessary to re-establish the old setup and to advance to previous conditions by degrees.  Even with these limitations, it was very pleasant to be able to go back and forth to the trailhead without having to worry about driving there on one’s own, without having to worry about finding one’s way to the trailhead or finding parking space for a car, and with the opportunity to relax thoroughly and even to nap on the way back, and thereby to counteract the initial fatigue that follows the completion of an extended hike. 

The only discordant note came when PF told me that the Board will have to discuss whether we can continue the hikes in this limited format or be obliged to suspend them again in light of the rapidly increasing delta variant.  I hope that it will not be necessary to do so.  Everyone on today’s hike had been vaccinated and the risk of severe illness generally has greatly decreased, at any rate in areas such as ours, where the vaccinated form the majority.  After all, public transportation is being used now on a daily basis, and I cannot see that a bus ride like the one we had on this occasion differs from a ride on a city bus or the Metro for the purposes of commuting.  Of course it is not only trips such as these that may be affected by the increase in cases.  It is possible that interstate travel as a whole will become subject to restrictions as it was during much of 2020. 

From having averaged about 11,000 new cases daily in June, the average number of new COVID cases has grown to over 100,000.   At this point 61% of all adults are fully vaccinated and 70.8% have received at least one dose.  That means, however, that nearly 80 million adults still remain unvaccinated, giving the virus ample opportunity to cut a wide swath.  Already many institutions are clamping down on those who refuse the vaccine.  CNN requires employees who report to a work site in person to be vaccinated and has recently fired three of them for coming to one of its offices without having been vaccinated first.  United Airlines has told its employees that they must be inoculated by late October if they wish to retain their jobs.  Frontier Airlines has done the same, except that the deadline its management has set for full vaccination is October 1^st.  California’s health department is requiring all of its health care employees to be vaccinated, and a similar requirement is pending in Oregon.  New York will require workers and patrons at indoor businesses to show proof of vaccination starting on Sept. 13, the first major city to do so. 

Many others, however, are behaving as if the pandemic simply doesn’t exist.  Yesterday Florida recorded 22, 783 new cases, the highest ever recorded in a single day in the state since the pandemic began, accounting for over a fifth of the new cases that day nationwide.  It also broke the record for hospitalizations for a fifth day in a row, with a total of 12,864 hospitalizations.  But Governor Ron DeSantis adamantly upholds bans on mandates, both for facemasks and for vaccines.  And in South Dakota the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally began yesterday, with thousands of bikers descending on the town as relentlessly as locusts.  The event is expected to attract 700,000 guests over a period of 10 days.  It is true that about 67% of adults in the state have received at least one dose, with about 60% fully vaccinated – not much below the national average.  But for Meade County, in which Sturgis is located, the number of fully vaccinated adults is a good deal lower:  only 46%.  Unlike the participants of the excursion I described above, the celebrants will be flocking in great numbers to indoor public places such as stores, restaurants, bars, and hotels, and the great majority of them will not be wearing masks.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 202,928,490; # of deaths worldwide: 4,298,643; # of cases U.S.:  36,518,908; # of deaths; U.S.: 632,987.

The fourth wave continues – Increase in vaccinations – The eleventh hour repentance of one state governor – Belarus and Iran both defied at the Olympics – Evening statistics

It has been relatively uneventful the past few days, both on a personal and on a national level.  The vaccination rate has increased a bit as a result of the fear of the delta variant.  At this point 50% of all Americans are fully vaccinated, while 60.9% of all adults and 80.3% of all seniors are fully vaccinated.  This recent flurry of vaccinations will require some time to take effect.  Those who are receiving their first dose will have to wait 2-3 weeks before receiving their second (unless they receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is a single dose only) and after that it will take at least an additional two weeks for the immunity to develop.  In the meantime we are receiving over 100,000 new infections on a daily basis.  It should be added that our mortality rate is considerably lower than it was at this time last year – at this point it is about 0.6%.  The prevalence of vaccines has made it unlikely that the so-called “break-through” cases will require hospitalization and our therapeutic treatment of the disease has greatly improved.  Still, we have been losing several hundred every day for the past few weeks.

At least one state governor has abandoned his hardline stance against mask mandates, albeit rather late in the day.  Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas publically announced that he now regrets having banned the mandate in April.  Unfortunately, the ban has passed into law and therefore will have to be overturned before he can put such a mandate into effect – a troublesome and time-consuming process, even assuming that the state legislature will cooperate, which is by no means certain.  In the meantime, Arkansas has seen an increase of 517% in cases between April and July.  Hutchinson is an exception among state governors of his party.  Ron DeSantis (Florida), Greg Abbott (Texas), Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Kim Reynolds (Iowa), Doug Ducey (Arizona), and Kristi Noem (South Dakota) have all ridiculed the CDC recommendations for mask-wearing and declared that they will do nothing to enforce them.

Belarus continues to make headlines.  The International Olympics Committee has revoked the accreditation of athletics head coach Yuri Moisevich and team official Artur Shumak, who were directed to leave the Olympic village.  Moisevich and Shumak had attempted to force sprint runner Krystsina Tsimanouskaya against her will to go to the airport to take a flight back to Kyiv, the Belarus capital.  But Tsimanouskaya had already been advised, through private communication with her grandmother, of repercussions if she were to return home and she had made up her mind to get away from Lukashenko’s loving embrace at any cost.  She managed to elude this undesired escort, to obtain the protection of the Tokyo police, and eventually to find her way to the Polish embassy, where she was granted asylum.  In response to the IOC’s action, Moisevich and Shumak slunk away from Tokyo and returned to Belarus by plane this evening, their departure being regretted by no one.

Tsimanouskaya is not the only athlete at the games who has used them as an opportunity to defy a repressive regime.  Saeid Mollaei, who won the silver medal in judo, is originally from Iran, although he has left the country and is currently a citizen of Mongolia.  He dedicated his medal to Israel.  He had left Iran two years earlier when the government directed him to lose a match at the 2019 World Judo Championships to ensure he wouldn’t have to face the Israeli champion Sagi Muki in the final.  He and Muki subsequently became close friends and were frequently to be seen cheering each other on in various judo competitions.  When Mollaei, with Muki’s encouragement, competed at an international judo competition in Tel Aviv in February, he lauded the hospitality of the Israeli people. It is unclear how he wound up settling in Mongolia, but I have no doubt that it is a haven of freedom in comparison to the country he left behind him.

Tomorrow promises to be more interesting, from my point of view at least.  It will see the first official hike of the Capital Hiking Club since the hikes were suspended nearly a year and a half ago.  The slots available for signing up were taken rather quickly, but I and a couple of other members of the Board will be on the bus to ensure that everything goes according to plan.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 201,630,503; # of deaths worldwide: 4,279,243; # of cases U.S.:  36,297,583; # of deaths; U.S.: 631,859.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 202,345,271; # of deaths worldwide: 4,289,579; # of cases U.S.:  36,438,182; # of deaths; U.S.: 632,627.

Whiteoak Canyon and Hawksbill Mountain – Mayor Muriel Bowser lapses –Governor Andrew Cuomo under fire – The thuggish regime of Belarus – Herd immunity in Tennessee – Evening statistics

I went today with the Vigorous Hikers up Whiteoak Canyon, and from there we continued taking the trail past Skyline Drive to the junction with the Appalachian Trail, after which we went south along the AT to Hawksbill, the highest point in Shenandoah National Park.  It was a wonderful day, cool enough to make the long ascent (about 2500 feet in 4½ miles for the Whiteoak Canyon Trail and about 1000 feet more on the Appalachian Trail and on the Salamander Trail that leads to Hawksbill’s summit) less arduous than might be expected in mid-summer.  Hawksbill itself was breezy and quite cool, almost to the point of being chilly, and at least one person in our group brought out his jacket as we ate lunch there.  The view from the stone observation platform is advertised as a 360-degree view, but the validity of this claim depends on the season.  During late autumn, winter, and early spring, when the foliage has fallen, the view is indeed 360 degrees, but at other times the view to the east are obscured by the trees.  But the view to the west is one of the most striking in the park; Hawksbill is over 4,000 high and, as a result, one is looking down from the summit towards a greater depth than usual into the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia piedmont.  Even though the day was cloudy, the verdant hues of the valley formed a brilliant contrast to the blue sky and white clouds above.  I will admit, though, that it was a pleasure rather dearly bought when we descended along the Cedar Run Trail, which is extremely rocky and reminded me, not very pleasingly, of some of the boulder fields I had endured this past year when exploring the portion of the Appalachian Trail that goes through northern Pennsylvania.  But even this portion of the hike had its compensations:  the stream contains a few waterfalls that terminate in pellucid green pools at their base and during the latter part of the descent I saw a scarlet tanager pausing briefly on a branch just a few feet away from me. 

I have thought well up to this point of Mayor Muriel Bowser for her responsible attitude towards the pandemic and for her governing of the city in general, and I would like to continue to do so, but my favorable opinion of her has been somewhat shaken by her behavior over the past weekend.  The mask mandate was imposed on Washington DC on Saturday morning.  The previous evening she had celebrated her birthday at a reception in which everyone was maskless – and while the party had taken place out of doors on a rooftop and had been held a few hours before the mandate was imposed, such conduct is certainly inconsistent.  But on Saturday she did worse:  she officiated at a wedding at the Line DC hotel in Adams Morgan, a ceremony that was held indoors after the mandate was officially imposed, and nearly all of the guests, including the mayor herself, were maskless.  This seeming insouciance is especially startling for someone who lost a sister to the virus just five months ago.  One cannot help thinking of politicians outside of this country such as Angela Merkel of Germany and Jacinda Aherne of New Zealand, who willingly comply in their own person with the measures they prescribe for others; but, alas, statesmen of that breed have died out here long ago.

Bowser’s lapses, however, are mere peccadilloes in comparison with the alleged actions of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.  A report released by Attorney General Letitia James – who, it may noted in passing, has been conducting a criminal investigation against Donald Trump and hardly be said to be biased in favor of Republicans – claims that he sexually harassed at least 11 women in his employ and that retaliations were made against anyone who made accusations of being harassed, creating, in the report’s wording, a “toxic” work environment.  Many party leaders, both Republican and Democrat, are calling for Cuomo’s resignation, including Nancy Pelosi (a long-time ally of the Cuomo family) and President Biden himself.   Cuomo has denied the charges and has given no indication that he will resign, but his political career is unlikely to last long in any case; the New York state legislature is currently conducting an impeachment examination, and this report in all probability will give the examination more impetus.

After a period of receiving relatively little interest from its neighbors, Belarus has recently been gaining international attention – not of the most flattering kind, however.  Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a track sprinter in the Tokyo Olympics, did not board the flight back to Kyiv as expected, but instead fled to the Polish embassy in Tokyo to request asylum, which the Polish authorities granted.  She had criticized Belarussian sports officials in public and, as a result, fully expected to be imprisoned or even executed if she were to return to her native land.  That her fears were not entirely without cause was confirmed by the discovery of the hanged body of Vitaly Shishov, an activist who had fled to the Ukraine and was involved in helping other dissidents to flee the country as well.  Ukrainian police are already conducting an investigation to determine whether, as seems likely, it was a murder made to appear like a suicide.  Authorities in Belarus have ramped up the pressure against non-governmental organizations and independent media, conducting more than 200 raids of offices and apartments of activists and journalists in July alone, and detaining dozens of people.  President Alexander Lukashenko has responded to demonstrations against the election that awarded him his sixth term with a massive crackdown that resulted in the arrest of 35,000 people.  He is as unwilling to tolerate any breath of criticism as vehemently as Donald Trump himself; and regrettably has much more power to punish those who disparage him than our unlamented deposed 45^th President.

Previous entries have noted how the state government of Tennessee recently fired one of its chief medical officers for promoting vaccinations among adolescents and has consistently refused to offer incentives of any kind to encourage people to receive COVID vaccinations.  Never let it be said, however, that state officials make no effort towards the much-publicized goal of herd immunity.  Tennessee’s Herd Health program currently reimburses participating farmers up to $1,500 for vaccinating their bulls and cows against respiratory diseases and other maladies, handing out $492,561 over the past two fiscal years.  By an amazing coincidence, Governor Bill Lee has a family ranch business, Triple L Ranch, which breeds Polled Hereford cattle.  Whether any political or humanitarian considerations will eventually persuade Governor Lee to display a similar concern for his own species, is unknown to mortal man.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 199,547,478; # of deaths worldwide: 4,239,621; # of cases U.S.:  35,884,940; # of deaths; U.S.: 629,840.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide:  200,213,325; # of deaths worldwide: 4,258,031; # of cases U.S.:  36,036,799; # of deaths; U.S.: 630,458.  Some sad statistics were tabulated today:  the number of COVID cases is now over 200 million globally, and the U.S. has seen nearly 100,000 new cases today, the biggest increase we have had for months.

Basalt columns and a waterfall – A break-through infection – Resistance to CDC mask guidelines – Giuliani speaks definitively about the next world – Evening statistics

The  morning began ominously:  rain came down periodically during the night and the sky was gray and overcast, threatening more rain to come.  But in Shenandoah National Park, at any rate, the rain held off all day and eventually the sun emerged from the clouds, while the recent rainfall reduced the temperature to well under 80 degrees.  Five of us met to hike along the Appalachian Trail from Jenkins Gap to view the basalt columns close to Compton Peak.  This site is one of the finest examples of columnar jointing, the formation of regular polygonal columns as a result of cooling lava flow.  In this case, the columns are hexagonal in shape and consist of metamorphosed basalt from lava that flowed in the area about 800 million years ago.  From there we continued to Lands Run waterfall via the Dickey Ridge Trail, and then backtracked, taking the Spring House trail on the return to the AT.  The waterfall levels were rather low, unsurprisingly in view of the previous series of hot, dry days.  Afterwards we snacked on fruit and cheese in the Jenkins Gap parking area, sitting on outdoor foldout chairs and chatting comfortably about various topics.  The sky did not exactly clear, but it became less overcast and the atmosphere was less humid than it had been in the morning, so that it felt like sunning on the beach on a warm but not sultry summer afternoon.  The virus did not loom large in this conversation; and indeed, under such circumstances, it seems very remote and far away. 

Still, the day did not pass without reminders of the increase in infections.  RK texted me about a mutual friend of ours who has become one of the “break-through” cases, i.e., someone who has caught the disease even though he has been vaccinated.  He is in his late seventies and has undergone considerable breathing difficulties as a result of the illness, but so far hospitalization has not been found to be necessary.  No vaccine, of course, confers 100% immunity.  That has been one reason that, as of last week, I have taken to resuming the wearing of facemasks in places such as shops and banks, even though Fairfax County has no mask mandate as yet; the increase in COVID cases is too rapid and widespread to be ignored. 

The CDC guidelines about wearing facemasks is, as might be expected, meeting considerable resistance.  The communities that are the most vulnerable are the ones least likely to be cooperative.  Washington DC, as I have noted, has recently re-imposed its mask mandate for public indoor activities.  It currently is seeing about 8 new cases per 100,000 on a daily basis.  But Springfield, MO, which has a much lower rate of vaccination and is currently seeing 77 new cases per 100,000, has flatly rejected the CDC’s recommendation for a mask mandate, saying that such a measure would only discourage people from getting vaccinated.

In view of the legal jeopardy that is impending over him for his actions as Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani has announced that he is willing to go to jail if convicted but that those who place him there will “suffer the consequences in heaven.”  The statement is somewhat puzzling:  does Giuliani believe that his accusers will be sent to heaven as a punishment?  If so, he can be assured that he is not at all likely to encounter them there. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 198,970,331; # of deaths worldwide: 4,239,621; # of cases U.S.:  35,767,126; # of deaths; U.S.: 629,380.