Another lawsuit against Trump – The end of the eviction moratorium – Florida schools and mask mandates – Vaccines rejected in favor of medication for cattle – Why the mortality statistics from COVID should be multiplied by two or three – Hopeful developments in India – Evening statistics
Seven Capitol Police officers have sued Donald Trump, claiming that he incited the extremist groups who besieged the Capitol on January 6th. While I believe such a claim to be true, I am not hopeful that such a lawsuit will make much headway. There have been numerous lawsuits of a similar nature levelled against Trump; but so far, none of them have come to fruition. I had formerly had high hopes of the suit that was being prepared by Fani Willis to bring charges against Trump for his blatant attempt to overturn the results of the election in Georgia, but it has apparently come to nothing. At times it appears that Themis, goddess of justice, has contracted the COVID virus and is displaying characteristic symptoms of the disease: she is too short of breath to do more than creep along the ground with leaden pace, is chronically congested and perpetually fatigued, and not infrequently displays signs of mental confusion.
Still, she has given a few decisive utterances lately. The Supreme Court has overturned the Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions. Families have certainly been strained by the pandemic, but it has been going on for well over a year now and they have had time to adjust to the situation, particularly as the economy has been growing steadily this year. The money is available for renters. Of the $46 billion allocated for emergency rent relief money, only $5.1 billion has been distributed. But many renters have refused to apply for rent payment relief and simply continue to live in their residences without paying at all. Landlords have seen their properties become worthless and their sources of income dried up for months on end as a result of this policy and they, too, need some relief.
And Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has been frustrated in his diligent attempts to leave the inhabitants of the state as helpless as possible against the ravages of the virus – er, I mean, in his attempts to resist “bludgeoning people with restrictions and mandates and lockdowns,” to use his own words. Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper has ruled the DeSantis’s attempt to ban schools for imposing mask mandates upon their students exceeds his authority and that, consequently, Floridian schools are now permitted to implement rudimentary preventative measures in a state that has by far the highest rate of COVID-related hospitalizations in the country. Florida now has 80 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. Alabama, the state with the next-highest hospitalization rate, has 60 hospitalizations per 100,000.
The manufacturers of ivermectin are somewhat bewildered by the skyrocketing demand for their product, as well they might be. It is unclear how many are resorting to it, but numerous stores are running out of the drug; in Oklahoma there is hardly any left in stock within the entire state. The people who are frantically swallowing a medication primarily intended for use on cattle are the same ones who are opposed to taking any of the COVID vaccines. Dr. Nathan Boonstra, a pediatrician at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, IA, summed it all up: “It’s hard to understand why people would turn down an FDA-approved COVID preventative in favor of a treatment that’s not only unapproved but has a large body of evidence showing it doesn’t work.”
As a result of the strain on the hospitals, COVID has claimed many victims indirectly in addition that 653 thousand who had died from contracting it. The story of Daniel Wilkinson, an Army veteran aged 46, is a case in point. He was taken to a hospital in Bellville, TX, where he was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis, a condition that the Belville hospital wasn’t equipped to treat. Hasan Kakli, the physician who made the diagnosis, hastily applied to one hospital after another, only to be told that facilities weren’t available. Several of the hospitals had the specialists on their staff qualified to remove the gallstone, but because Wilkinson’s condition had deteriorated rapidly he needed an ICU room and none were available. Dr. Kakli spent seven hours searching for a facility that could take the patient in and perform the operation. Eventually an opening occurred at the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Houston and Wilkinson was accordingly transported there by helicopter, but by then it was too late; he died within 24 hours of checking in at the Bellville hospital. Kakli said afterwards that if it weren’t for the COVID crisis, the procedure for Wilkinson would have taken 30 minutes, and he’d have been released shortly after the operation. “I’ve never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever,” Kakli said. “We know what needs to be done and we know how to treat it, and we get them to where they need to go. I’m scared that the next patient that I see is someone that I can’t get to where they need to get to go.”
The caseload in India has been decreasing over the past several weeks, and at this point the COVID virus may have entered into the endemic stage. The number of daily cases has fallen from a peak of 400,000 in April to about 25,000 this week. A third wave is still possible but Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, says that India is unlikely to see another overwhelming surge in infections comparable to the amount in its second wave, which led to acute shortages of hospital beds and medical oxygen.
Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 215,428,560; # of deaths worldwide: 4,487,286; # of cases U.S.: 39,337,794; # of deaths; U.S.: 651,914.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 216,161,806; # of deaths worldwide: 4,497,680; # of cases U.S.: 39,539,133; # of deaths; U.S.: 653,397. We are now back to 14th in the list of nations with the highest amount of COVID cases per capita although, oddly enough, we have actually sunk a little in the rankings of nations by mortality rate: we are now 21st instead of 20th on the list.