Trump indicted at last – The approaching end of the COVID emergency declaration – Hiking downtown and in Shenandoah National Park – Evening statistics
Resolutions of various classes are looming in the wings.
Donald Trump has at long last been formally accused in a court of law. The lawsuit in question has been organized by New York Attorney General Letitia James and it is seeking $250 million in penalties, an amount which, if not sufficient to break Trump entirely if it were collected in full, would at any rate make a significant dent in his assets. It is true that the case against is one of peculation rather than sedition, the charges being that Trump and his family used fraudulent financial statements to obtain favorable rates of insurance and loans and tax benefits. I would have greatly preferred to see him indicted for organizing the treasonous assault on the Capitol two years ago. But since there appears to be little chance of such a case ever materializing, I am resigned to putting up with this one, as being at any rate better than nothing. At the very least it will divert some of his energies from the Presidential campaign that he is currently attempting to initiate.
Better still, the COVID emergency declarations are now officially scheduled to end on May 11th. I have already discussed, on numerous occasions, the difficulty of determining when an epidemic is no longer categorized as an epidemic and instead becomes labeled as “endemic.” This termination of the official emergency declaration that heralded the pandemic’s beginning seems as good a criterion as any. In many ways, of course, Americans are already treating COVID as something that is to be endured, without any of the emotional intensity that they displayed in earlier months. COVID-related restrictions in public areas are all but gone; travel has long gone unhindered; vaccination mandates are no longer in force; people are becoming increasingly careless about wearing facemasks in public. Not all of these types of behavior may be desirable, but there can be no question that COVID is no longer regarded as the dire threat it had once been.
And there is some justification for such confidence. Even now, in mid-winter, the rates of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are far lower than they were last winter, and there is every reason to believe that they will decline still further as the weather moderates into spring. Among the vaccinated, hospitalizations and deaths have declined dramatically. Still, COVID mortality rates as a whole are slightly over twice the rate of influenza mortality rates during those periods when influenza is at its most severe in terms of death toll. That is much better than being twenty or thirty times such rates, as they were in the past, but it is still high. In very approximate terms, COVID is currently responsible for an average of 500 American deaths per day.
What will the end of such a declaration mean? Many free health benefits will undoubtedly come to an end. COVID tests, for example, will have to be purchased. So will vaccines. Those who are uninsured or under-insured will be worse off. On the other hand, certain measures that have placed people in difficulties (landlords attempting to collect from renters who plead epidemic-induced poverty and refuse to pay, lenders attempting to collect student loans from graduates who refuse to pay for the same reason, and so on) will obtain some much-needed relief. I know that the word “landlord” conjures up the image of a Scrooge-like miser profiting hugely off of the rents of hapless tenants; but in fact many landlords are persons letting out small properties for the purpose of augmenting family income (and in some cases supplying it in its entirety) and they have suffered gravely during the pandemic. In short, the measure will benefit some and penalize others, just as any other large-scale government measure would do.
And amid all of this people carry on their pursuit of happiness with increasing regularity – as, indeed, I have done myself. I hiked with the Wanderbirds on a splendid tour of the various monuments in downtown Washington on Sunday (including a visit to the Jefferson Memorial, hence the phrase used in the paragraph’s first sentence), while today I went with the Vigorous Hikers up Little Devils Stairs and from there to do a loop to Overall Run and back. This last item was about 17 miles long and entailed about 4400 feet of elevation gain, much of it along trails in Shenandoah National Park that have suffered greatly from the ice storms in December, making for rather rough going at times, and all of it in damp, misty weather that made the rocks very slippery, particularly at stream crossings. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected when folks go a-pleasuring.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 675,168,909; # of deaths worldwide: 6,762,224; # of cases U.S.: 104,196,097; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,132,935.