Some long-term social effects from COVID – Blaming the victim, in this case by the victim himself – Evening statistics
On yesterday’s hike I met KW, who had lived in Washington several years and had, upon his return to Canada, periodically visited the area for two to three months at a time. Whenever he was in the area he was a fairly frequent participant in Wanderbirds hikes. Such participation, of course, came to end after the pandemic began and traveling from one country to another became restricted. This year was the first time since 2019 that he had been in Washington, and naturally any changes that occurred during that period were much more apparent to him, who was seeing their results all at once, than to those of us who had witnessed the changes occurring gradually over a period of many months.
Among other things, he said that the business offices in Washington had far fewer occupants than they had had during the pre-pandemic days. This observation did not surprise me at all. Many employees had taken to working from home and telecommuting during the days of the pandemic; and even now that the pandemic was receding, the majority of them have no great desire to resume commuting. It is has been asserted by some experts that the amount of work performed by people in offices, as opposed to telecommuting, may eventually be diminished by as much as a third. In an area like DC, in which information technology forms a large component of its industry and which by its very nature can be performed remotely without any impact on the quality of the work, this situation seems especially likely. Telecommuting, moreover, allows people to take up residence in areas at a greater distance from the physical location of the office to which they report, and such areas tend to have less expensive housing. I cannot tell what the eventual consequences of this increase from working remotely and the subsequent reduction of personal interaction among company employees may be, but I have no doubt that they will be far-ranging.
Blatant sycophancy was of course endemic (to use a word that is greatly in vogue these days) during the Trump administration, but today we received a reminder that it was a prominent feature in American politics long before he ever took office. On this day Harry Whittington passed away at the age of 95. And who was he, it may asked? Whittington’s claim to fame is rather a singular one. He was shot in the face with over 200 spray pellets during a quail hunt by Dick Cheney, who was Vice-President at the time. The shot was of course accidental, but the injury was severe nonetheless, resulting in a heart attack and a collapsed lung that required a week-long treatment in a hospital.
All of this might have been dismissed as an unfortunate incident, were it not for the sequel: Whittington publicly apologized to Cheney for being the victim of the latter’s carelessness. In this way he set the example for the numerous ranks of men and women who have been insulted, vilified, traduced, and manhandled by Donald Trump, only to grovel and plead for forgiveness, and to express gratitude for the spitefulness that he bestowed upon them. Self-respect is not a quality that is greatly cultivated among our politicians, and an American legislator or executive staff member who possesses even a vestige of it is truly a rara avis, as unusual a sight as a black swan or a white crow.
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 676,396,299; # of deaths worldwide: 6,773,261; # of cases U.S.: 104,509,261; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,136,448.