Hiking in Shenandoah – Wordsworth on mountain ascents – Two prominent anti-vaxxers – Hospital strain similar to what was seen earlier this year – Governor Reeves and Heaven – Evening statistics
I went on Sunday with AD and RH along a loop starting from Elkwallow and involving the Appalachian, Thornton River, Hull School, Fork Mountain, and Piney Ridge Trails. There were 11 of us in all, but EF and MJ went on their own along the AT and back, since they did not wish to undertake a hike that has most of its ascending towards the end. Still, they wound up completing 10½ miles. The ascent on the hike that the rest of us undertook was not enormous – 2200 feet spread out over 11½ miles (most of it in the last 4 miles, it is true). It was just under 70 degrees when we started the hike and the temperature never reached the sweltering intensity that we had seen earlier in the week. Moreover, towards the end of the hike a light fog rolled in, cooling us considerably. All in all, it was surprisingly comfortable for a hike in late August, a most welcome contrast to the conditions of the hike on this past Tuesday.
And of course we ate and drank afterwards, and conversed among ourselves – and among other topics we touched briefly on Wordsworth, who might be said to be the Poet Laureate of hikers. I’ve always admired in particular the passage in The Prelude that describes a situation familiar to anyone who has hiked in the mountains:
The only track now visible was one
That from the torrent’s further brink held forth
Conspicuous invitation to ascend
A lofty mountain. After brief delay
Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,
And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears
Intruded, for we failed to overtake
Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,
While every moment added doubt to doubt,
A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned
That to the spot which had perplexed us first
We must descend, and there should find the road,
Which in the stony channel of the stream
Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;
And, that our future course, all plain to sight,
Was downwards, with the current of that stream.
Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,
For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,
We questioned him again, and yet again;
But every word that from the peasant’s lips
Came in reply, translated by our feelings,
Ended in this, – that we had crossed the Alps.
It is quite true: I have often approached a summit with excited anticipation, only to find that there is nothing to distinguish it from its surroundings and in some cases I have passed over it before realizing that I have already surmounted it. It is perfectly possible to overlook a mountain apex or the top of a ridgeline, and then to discover belatedly that one is going downhill again. The best views are not always at the top.
Caleb Wallace is dead at the age of 30. He is the founder of the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group who sought to end what it labelled “COVID-19 tyranny” (i.e., the use of masks in public settings and the distribution of COVID vaccines). His wife said at one point that he had been taking, in lieu of a vaccine, vitamin C, zinc aspirin, and – you guessed it! – ivermectin as preventatives against the disease. This past July 4th he organized a “Freedom Rally” to protest against COVID-related restrictions. He was hospitalized with COVID on July 30th, lost consciousness on August 3rd, placed on a ventilator August 8th, moved to a hospice on August 27th, and died on August 28th. There has been the usual emotional hemorrhage from various associates and family members, and not a single one of them mentions how he died – to read through them, one might suppose he succumbed to cancer or a heart ailment or anything but the disease whose baneful effects he spent most of the last year of his life denying. But as a consolation to the relatives and friends he leaves behind, he has not failed to make his mark on his surroundings: Tom Green County, in which San Angelo is located, has seen an increase of 50% in COVID cases and of 33% in hospitalizations during the past two weeks.
His achievements, however, pale in comparison with those of Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer who claimed to be the first person to call COVID-19 a hoax and who was among the earliest QAnon promoters. He was hospitalized earlier this month with COVID and died on the 30th. But not even being placed on a ventilator could daunt that fiery spirit; in the very last post of his blog, dated August 17th, he denounced vaccinations and spoke of testing positive for “whatever they’re calling ‘COVID’ today.” His associates, fittingly, immediately constructed a conspiracy theory as to how he met his death, claiming that the hospital prevented him from using tablets of that miracle drug, hydroxychloroquine.
The dismal legacy of Wallace, Steele, and others who think like them will take a long time to overcome. It is true that more Americans are getting vaccines now that the FDA has given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. During the week before full approval, an average of about 404,000 Americans were initiating vaccination each day. As of Monday, approximately 473,000 Americans were getting their first shot each day. At this point about 74.2% of all American adults have received at least one dose. Which is all very well – but that leaves over 66 million adults who are still unvaccinated, and hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise. Idaho, for example, is now one of the numerous states running out of available ICU beds; there are only four left in the entire state. In January our nation reached a peak of 125,000 hospitalizations before the cases subsided. In June there were less than 12, 000 patients, but all of our gains in making headway against the pandemic have been wiped out. We are now approaching the peak level again, with over 101,000 hospitalizations as of today.
From Molière’s “Don Juan,” when the titular protagonist hypocritically proclaims to Don Carlos that he is submitting to a solemn voice from Heaven that has forbidden him to offer marriage to Carlos’s sister Elvire after he has seduced her and left her pregnant –
DON CARLOS: Don Juan, do you think to dazzle us by these fine excuses?
DON JUAN: I obey the voice of Heaven.
DON CARLOS: What? You expect me to be satisfied with such talk?
DON JUAN: It is Heaven that so wills it.
DON CARLOS: You have taken my sister out of a convent and then left her?
DON JUAN: That is the way Heaven ordains.
DON CARLOS: We are to stand for this stain on our family?
DON JUAN: Blame Heaven for it.
And here is Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi, while speaking about the pandemic at a Republic fundraiser last week:
“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID . . . and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say. . . . When you believe in eternal life, when you believe that living on this Earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things.”
It’s reassuring to know that the Mississippians are not frightened, because their state has more per capita COVID-related deaths than anywhere else in the country – or, if the state was to be assessed as a separate nation, anywhere else on the planet.
The chief difference between Don Juan and Governor Reeves is that when they talk about the afterlife to justify their refusal to undertake some sort of reparation for the results their callousness has inflicted on others, Molière’s protagonist is made to sound amusing.
Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 217,174,718; # of deaths worldwide: 4,514,198; # of cases U.S.: 39,664,814; # of deaths; U.S.: 654,689. Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 218,470,692; # of deaths worldwide: 4,532,374; # of cases U.S.: 40,078,275; # of deaths; U.S.: 657,861.