Visit to relatives in New York – Inter-state traveling then and now – Reflections on American education – Incredibly (and I mean that in a literal sense) low COVID rates in China – The investigating committee winds up at last – The enigma of Mike Pence – Oppression of women under the Taliban – Fraudulent pseudo-abortion clinics – Evening statistics
I have just returned from a visit to my aunt in Manhattan; and I was struck, as I could hardly fail to be, by the contrast between arranging this visit and arranging the one two years previously.
Two years ago travel from one state to another was just becoming possible again, following an interdict that lasted for months in order to prevent the COVID virus from spreading. When I wished to visit my aunt for her 90th birthday in the summer of 2020, any plans I made to that end had to be flung away and it was not until several months afterwards that I was able to revive them. Now, of course, there were no obstacles whatever. National and indeed international travel is completely unrestricted, and the bans placed on traveling from one state to another at this point seem like a bad dream.
Nonetheless COVID still remains with us, and it had a significant impact on the circumstances of my visit. Originally I had planned to drive all the way to Riverdale to stay with my cousin there. A car is much less of a liability in the Bronx than in Manhattan, and it would have been easy to park in the neighborhood where he lives. But this arrangement had to be jettisoned when my cousin’s son came down with COVID and went to his parents’ apartment to recuperate. So I stayed with my aunt instead and, since she lives in Manhattan, I drove only as far as Princeton Junction and took the train from there to Penn Station. COVID, to be sure, is less of a threat now than it was two years ago, thanks to the prevalence of the vaccines; the mortality rate is down and detrimental long-term effects are less frequent. But it remains a plague; even now a patient is more than ten times as likely to succumb to COVID than an influenza patient is to the latter disease. In the end my young relative left his parents’ residence after staying for a few days, even though he was still testing positive. But he felt no ill effects at that point and was anxious to return to his own place.
In general I would say that the residents of New York are more cautious about the disease than the residents of DC. I used the public transit on a few occasions, and my estimate is that about a quarter of the passengers were wearing facemasks, whereas in DC very few now bother to don one. In stores, also, a greater number of cashiers and customers were wearing masks – not a majority by any means, but a significantly higher proportion than what I have observed in Washington.
There were several other relatives whom I encountered during this visit. One of these is the son of my cousin who lives in Chile. He is staying with my aunt while completing some coursework in New York, but he plans to return eventually to Chile as his permanent homeland. We were discussing numerous topics last night and among them was the quality of American education. By his own estimate my young cousin’s mathematical skills are mediocre at best and he openly admits that he has difficulty in balancing a checkbook. Nonetheless, when taking a remedial mathematics course, he found that the majority of his classmates were woefully ignorant about the subject, unable to do as simple an operation as rounding numbers up or down. He actually wound up performing the role of an informal assistant to the teacher, to the surprise of both of them. “The American educational system is failing its students,” was his verdict, and it is difficult to disagree with him.
The mortality rate of COVID appears to be much, much lower in China than it is here. It seems that only five COVID-related deaths in the entire country occurred today and two yesterday, all of which were in Beijing, meaning that somehow every one of the remaining provinces has miraculously escaped. We know this must be true, because the Chinese health authorities have said so themselves. This result is all the more surprising when one takes into account the low vaccination rate of the elderly, with only 42% of those over 80 having received boosters. For some unexplained reason, though, Chinese funeral homes have been unusually busy lately. One such service in Beijing’s Shunyi district clandestinely contacted The Washington Post to say that all eight cremators are operating around-the-clock, cadaver freezer boxes are full, and there is a five-to-six-day waiting list.
Yesterday the House January 6 Committee concluded its investigation at last. It unanimously voted to recommend that Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted, for charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an act of Congress, and, of course, insurrection.
It’s a step in the right direction, but now it remains for the Department of Justice to take action. There are certain difficulties in the way. It could be plausibly argued, for instance, that Trump’s speeches to the rioters never explicitly called for violence and that his instructions for the crowd to “fight” (a word he used about 20-to-25 times) were metaphorical. If such were the case, prosecution of him would amount to prosecution of freedom of speech.
But his behavior both before and since provides ample evidence that he was advocating sedition. One example is his hijacking of thousands of classified documents to his residence at Mar-a-Lago. As recently as a couple of weeks ago he openly called for defying the Constitution in order to overturn the 2020 election.
And his support for the rioters went beyond mere words. When told that magnetometers were keeping members of the crowd away from the stage, Trump ordered them to be removed. Happily, this order was not obeyed; if it had been, the crowd would have been more heavily armed and physically closer to the members of Congress under siege. When returning to the White House, Trump ordered that he be driven to the Capitol so he could accompany the crowd, an order that the Secret Service refused to carry out. For much of the first hour after his return to the White House, Trump kept insisting on being taken to the Capitol. And not only did Trump not intervene for several hours once the violence began, he tweeted, knowing full well that the mob was calling for the hanging of the vice president, that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Speaking of Mike Pence, this gentleman has announced that he does not believe that the Department of Justice should arraign Trump. The rioters had repeatedly called out for Pence’s blood and Trump apparently was only too ready to betray him to them; and yet this besotted man is still attempting to deflect the much-deferred justice awaiting the megalomaniac who would have connived at his murder. One cannot write Pence off merely as a coward. During the time of the riot itself he displayed remarkable courage. He turned down the offers of the Secret Service personnel to escort him to safety in order to ensure that the process of ratifying the election could be completed. Indeed, the outcome of the election would have been greatly delayed and possibly would have led to numerous other altercations if it had not been for the firmness and rectitude he showed on that occasion. Pence’s consistent refusal to call Trump to account for his actions reflects weakness of a different nature than simple cowardice, one whose motivation is well beyond my powers of comprehension. But it is weakness nonetheless.
Women are now prohibited from seeking college education in Afghanistan. The Taliban initially promised to institute a more moderate rule respecting rights for women’s and minorities, and they then proceeded to do what all religious zealots do: they lied through their teeth. Girls are now banned from middle school and high school, while adult women are restricted from most employment and ordered to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms. “Is being a girl a crime? If that’s the case, I wish I wasn’t a girl,” one student said mournfully.
Since our home-grown zealots do not possess quite the level of power assumed by the Taliban – not for lack of trying, it may be added; but this is merely by the way – our holier-than-thou types, I say, in addition to their efforts to ban abortion on a state-by-state basis, have stooped to downright fraud in their effects to discourage women from terminating their pregnancies. The experience of Estefania (her last name was withheld at her request) is typical. She was apprehensive that she might be pregnant after a missed period, so she typed “abortion pill near me” into Google and went to the first clinic that came up on the web page. What she wandered into was not an abortion clinic but a “crisis pregnancy center” (or CPC for short), whose express purpose is to dissuade women from having abortions. CPCs outnumber abortion clinics by a factor of three-to-one. Some are deliberately placed near abortion clinics, and use names and building signs nearly identical to these clinics to create confusion. Many of them also use multiple names to conceal their religious agenda. The Keim Centers, which Estefania consulted, is run by a non-profit called the Crisis Pregnancy Center of Tidewater, whose website openly proclaims the organization’s anti-abortion and religious views. But the Keim Centers itself does not make any religious references, so Estefania had no idea why the nurse she consulted was repeatedly pressuring her to forego the abortion she expressly came to obtain or why the center refused to give her a referral to an abortion provider. CPCs are not required to be licensed or to answer to any state or federal regulatory bodies. California tried to get CPCs to disclose whether or not they were medically licensed, but the Supreme Court struck down that law. Many people who work at CPCs do not have medical degrees or experience, which does not prevent them from dispensing medical advice. Such was Estefanía’s experience at The Keim Centers, which she said “scared” her. She was given a pamphlet that claimed abortions could cause breast cancer (they do not). Her counselor also told her that if she had a medical abortion, she might see little hands or little feet during the process – another false claim, as Estefanía was only four weeks pregnant at the time. She eventually managed to end her pregnancy, but she was one of the lucky ones. Women who are tricked into coming into CPCs for consultation are frequently delayed by being kept at their centers for hours or scheduling follow-up appointments. By the time women manage to make an appointment at a real clinic, the procedure could become more costly or difficult – or, indeed, in several states, past the time limits that abortions are legally permitted.
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 658,820,448; # of deaths worldwide: 6,675,451; # of cases U.S.: 101,865,927; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,113,808.