Hiking along the Potomac (more or less) –COVID comes to Mount Everest – The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is resumed – Robert Chapman fumbles at Bumble – Evening statistics
Both yesterday and today I continued hiking with RS on routes that more or less parallel the Potomac River. Yesterday we went from Ft. Belvoir to Roosevelt Island (22 miles, but with little elevation gain) and today we went from Roosevelt Island to Riverbend (23 miles, with numerous ups and downs that totaled to about 2000 feet of elevation gain in all). The hike yesterday was not without its high points, but RS and I agreed not to use the route again. The last six miles involved walking along the Mount Vernon Trail from Bellehaven to our end point. Although the segment has extensive vistas of the Potomac and passes along the waterfront of Alexandria, it is marred by the continual traffic on the George Washington Parkway that swerves by noisily just a few feet away from the trail itself. The trail also skirts the airport, and numerous planes come flying in; as they descend towards the terminal they are so low to the ground that they seem almost to threaten grazing our heads. Today’s hike was better, although we had to make extensive detours eliminate walking along Georgetown Pike as much as possible. Even the minimal amount that we were forced to do was extremely disagreeable; it is a major traffic artery with no sidewalk and hardly any shoulders to walk on. However, much of the hike took place along the Potomac Heritage Trail, which is in excellent condition and was not especially muddy in spite of the overnight rainfall. We caught the remains of the bluebells, as well as numerous other wildflowers. The weather on both days was nearly ideal: in the sixties, with no rain during the day and low humidity.
The coronavirus has now invaded Mount Everest. Erlend Ness, a mountain climber from Norway, tested positive for the virus at the Mount Everest base camp, the first base camp visitor to do so. He was quickly flown down to Kathmandu, but one mountain guide has warned that the virus could spread among the hundreds of other climbers, guides, and helpers who are now camped on the base of Everest if all of them are not checked immediately and appropriate safety measures are taken. Ness lived among them for weeks and the people at the base camp eat and sleep in very close quarters together, so the odds of others getting infected from him are high. In addition, anyone who is infected while staying at the base camp is at a considerable risk no matter how much of an athlete he may be; the reduced oxygen in the environment will inhibit recovery and healing.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is being used again, after temporarily being placed on hold because of isolated cases of persons developing blood clots after receiving it. The number of these is very small – a bare 15 cases of the nearly 8 million J&J vaccines administered – and so the CDC has lifted the pause after it spent ten days investigating the matter. It has come to the conclusion that the advantages outweigh the risks, but it is issuing a caveat about the potential side effects. Women under 50 appear to be particularly vulnerable to this development. All of the 15 cases reported so far have been women, most of them in their 30s. Three of them have died. The condition appears to be treatable if it is detected sufficiently early, so these who receive the J&J vaccine are cautioned to monitor themselves for several days after it is administered. In my own family, both my brother and my cousin’s daughter received this vaccine several weeks ago, happily with no ill effects.
In an effort to impress a young woman via the Bumble app, Robert Chapman boasted to her that “I did storm the Capitol” and said that he “made it all the way into Statuary Hall.” The woman was not impressed, replying simply: “we are not a match.” However, his remarks did procure the attention of another party – namely, the Justice Department, when his remarks were forwarded to them by the other Bumble user, and they were then able to corroborate Chapman’s claims by comparing his Bumble profile picture to body camera footage from police officers who were inside the Capitol. Uocovering incriminating social media has become something of a hallmark of investigations for the purpose of identifying the rioters, including posts from (among others) Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Parler, and Snapchat where they bragged about their exploits.
Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 147,039,773; # of deaths worldwide: 3,112,291; # of cases U.S.: 32,788,341; # of deaths; U.S.: 585,875.
Today’s statistics as of 8:30 PM – # of cases worldwide: 147,780,245; # of deaths worldwide: 3,122,415; # of cases U.S.: 32,824,361; # of deaths; U.S.: 586,152. Today is the first day that our daily number of COVID-related deaths is actually under our percentage of the global population: our number of new deaths today is 2.8% of the number of new deaths worldwide.