The Holly Hill Trail in the ACLT – Jan Psaki on Ted Cruz – Evening statistics and inferences from them
A new trail has been open in the American Chestnut Land Trust for just two months, and a group of us tested it out today. It is called the Holly Hill Trail and it is well-named, being bordered with numerous holly bushes along its sides. The trail runs past the site of an old barn dating back to the 18th century. The barn itself is long gone, but it has been painstakingly reconstructed. The day was fine, cloudless, clear, and with barely any wind. It was also a couple of degrees warmer than yesterday, which meant, unfortunately, that the ice crystals in the soil that provided such firm footing in the morning nearly all melted away by noon, so that one had to step carefully to avoid sliding. Some of us used the raft to cross the creek and go there and back on the North/South Trail, which added a bit of distance and elevation gain to the hike.
Ted Cruz denounced Biden’s declared intention of nominating a black woman as the next Supreme Court Justice. There is some validity to this statement: the race or gender of any candidate for such an office should not be a primary factor in his or her selection. However, Cruz is not in the best of positions to make such an assertion in his own person. When Donald Trump vowed to replace Ruth Baden Ginsburg with a woman after her death in 2020 (which promise, for a wonder, was one of the few he kept, by appointing Amy Coney Barrett in her place), Cruz at that time did not offer the slightest objection. Upon asked to explain this apparent contradiction, the best reaction came from Jan Psaki: “I am blissfully not a spokesperson for Senator Cruz, so he can best answer that question.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 395,860,389; # of deaths worldwide: 5,758,442; # of cases U.S.: 78,017,402; # of deaths; U.S.: 926,029. Rates in the U.S. are certainly falling. We are now 38th highest on the list of nations ranked by incidence of COVID cases, the lowest position we have occupied almost from the beginning of the pandemic. However, we are still 18th when ranked by number of deaths per million of population. The current mortality rate, i.e., deaths among people who have contracted the virus, is about 1.2%; again, this is considerably lower than it was during the earlier stages of the pandemic. The average mortality rate worldwide is 1.5%, so we are doing relatively well, despite the death toll in recent days. As noted earlier, there is a lag time between the period when patients become infected and when they succumb. As the number of new cases continues to recede, the death rate should decelerate during the next several weeks.