The recent dearth of political scandal – Bride and groom as gate crashers – An appeal for all-electric vehicles – Vaccine scams – Continued tragedy in India – Evening statistics
I have been fairly dilatory about scanning the news in recent weeks. The fact is, there is much less report than previously, at any rate on the domestic front. I may not agree with all of Biden’s policies (his handling of the influx of undocumented emigrants at our borders, for instance, seems to me very ill-advised), but in general he has been conducting himself as a hard-working, straightforward, diligent public official, without any of the offensive manners and corrupt practices of his predecessor. I thus have been in the position of W. S. Gilbert’s King Gama, who feels aggrieved because he has “nothing whatever to grumble at!”
One item, however, caught my attention today. Courtney Wilson and Shenita Jones held a lavish wedding at an opulent 16,313-sq. foot mansion, whose features include a bowling alley, a theatre, an elevator, a tennis court, and nine bedrooms. There was one slight problem: the mansion in question did not belong to them. Nathan Finkel, the actual owner, has been trying to sell the house for two years. Wilson had previously posed as a potential buyer, scouting the scene in advance and calculating that he would be able to hold the wedding at a house that he knew would be vacant. He didn’t realize that Finkel lived in another home on the same property and, as a result, was an astonished witness of a flock of strangers invading his house. Eventually Finkel called in the police. “I have people trespassing on my property. And they keep harassing me, calling me. They say they’re having a wedding here and it’s God’s message,” he told the 911 dispatcher. This divine message acquired a little postscript when the police arrived and forcibly escorted the groom and other organizers of the event from the scene.
The governors of twelve states have sent a letter to Biden urging that all vehicles with internal combustion engines by phased out by 2035, including trucks as well as cars. They do not seem to be aware of what they are asking for. Electric cars go for relatively limited distances before recharging is necessary. Outside of the extremely expensive Tesla models, not one of them goes more than 300 miles per charge and the majority of them are not even capable of that much. Surely the governors cannot be unaware that recharging an electric vehicle is a much more time-consuming process than filling a car’s tank with gas. For truck drivers who must travel hundreds of miles per day in a country with huge distances between population centers that are likely to have recharging stations available, the all-electric option is not feasible. The drive that I recently performed traveling from Chicago back to Virginia, for instance, would have taken me three days with an all-electric vehicle; the length of the charging time would have obliged me to stay overnight in the area where the recharging was taking place. Presumably the technology will improve and the driving range of a newly-charged vehicle will increase over time – but the issue of the time required for recharging is much less easy to overcome.
It was only a matter of time, I suppose, but the ubiquitous scammers have discovered that vaccines can be exploited just like male “enlargement” treatments, cures for cancer, remedies for hair loss, and various other medical issues. Counterfeit vaccines have recently been discovered in both Mexico and Poland. The Mexican government has urged its citizens not to acquire the vaccine from private sellers, since all genuine vaccines are distributed by the government.
India, once looked upon as having done well in combatting the COVID virus, is now being devastated. Almost 1.6 million cases have been registered in a single week. The COVID positivity rate doubled to 17% nationwide in a 12-day period, while in Delhi it hit 30%. Hospitals across the country have filled to capacity. The patients are now much younger than in the earlier phases; in Delhi, 65% of cases are under 40 years old. Hospitals have run short of beds and many patients are forced to wait for treatment in the buildings’ corridors. Over 99% of ICU beds in Delhi hospitals are occupied, and the supplies of oxygen and plasma are being rapidly depleted. Crematoriums and graveyards are overwhelmed. On this past Sunday, Delhi’s largest cremation facility, Nigambodh Ghat, ran out of space, despite doubling its funeral pyres to more than 60.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 144,416,137; # of deaths worldwide: 3,070,857; # of cases U.S.: 32,600,201; # of deaths; U.S.: 583,288.