A winery hike – Lunch at the winery – Attempts to encourage people to receive the vaccines – An unvaccinated person becomes a vaccination advocate – An unvaccinated person who still refuses the vaccines – An anti-vaxxer demonstration in London – Evening statistics
I met with a few others for a winery hike; and, being a winery hike, it was relatively short: we went along the Appalachian Trail three miles to the junction with the Fisher Hill Loop Trail and then turned back (six miles total). I took the loop as an addition, thinking that it would add only a mile, but it was somewhat longer – between 1½ and 2 miles is my guess. The forest foliage was dense and green and luxuriant, although I found, to my regret, that the summer heat, which on most of the other hikes I’ve done this season was mitigated by shade, lower temperatures at high elevations, and breezes, was felt in full force today. It was not unusually hot for the season, but extremely humid, and, brief as the hike was, I was quite tired by the end of it.
Afterwards we went to the Naked Mountain Winery, which I have often noticed in passing (it is on the road to a couple of the parking areas for the trillium hikes that we take annually in May) but had not visited until today. We had the place to ourselves; now that the school year has started, the number of people making excursions to such places during the weekdays has diminished. We ate outside, but the dining area was shaded with a white canopy that shaded us from the sun and the temperature was quite comfortable. Virginia wines have certainly improved in quality over the years; we ordered a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine for the five of us, and both of them were very flavorful. LH and MM provided, as might be expected, ample provisions for lunch, including some trout and an excellent Cambozola cheese, and we conversed leisurely as we sat and ate and drank together.
Quite naturally, one of the most animating topics was the fourth wave and how it is aggravated by the obstinacy of so many people to take the vaccines. The number of people getting vaccinated has certainly increased, but the total is still about 0.1% of the population per day – which means it will take many months to realize a goal of, for example, 80% of adults getting fully vaccinated. Various organizations, it is true, are doing their best to encourage the process. For instance, the Pentagon is attempting to require members of the U.S. military to get the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15th. It cannot mandate the COVID vaccines as long as they are still listed as emergency use authorization by the FDA. However, their administration can be authorized as a security measure if it receives sanction from the President, which it probably will.
We mentioned how many who have resisted taking the vaccines changed their tune quickly when they became ill. For instance, Travis Campbell, a father of seven, aged 43, delayed taking the vaccine and eventually was stricken with the virus, which in his case nearly wound up putting him on a ventilator. He has now issued several videos on Facebook demonstrating his condition – he has to struggle continually in order to breath — and pleading with viewers to get vaccinated. In some of these, he mentioned how he contacted various friends to be pallbearers at his funeral should the worst happen, and how he has asked his 14-year old son to give his older sister away in his stead at her future wedding. These appeals may have had some effect: Campbell told the Bristol Herald Courier that he knows of at least 20 people who received vaccines after watching the videos.
And there are some who resist the vaccines tooth and nail even when the disease becomes impossible to ignore. Robert and Vi Herring, an Arkansas couple in their 70s, refused to take the vaccine; eventually they contracted the virus and died from it. The last communication sent from Robert Herring to his daughter Shandra Parish was a voicemail sent from his hospital bed. “It doesn’t even sound human,” she said of the noises he was making. “I don’t like hearing it, but I can’t delete it.” Even so, Parish, who incidentally is a hospital nurse, still refuses to take the vaccine herself and says that she has no regrets about her parents declining to do so. (Is it merely a coincidence that her surname is a homonym of the word “perish”?) She has quarreled on this account with her brother David Herring, who has expressed considerable resentment towards the purveyors of sentiments that induced his parents to decline the vaccine. “I’m absolutely angry and frustrated,” Herring said. “Their age and health conditions – they should have gotten vaccinated really early. And then trying to talk to friends of theirs and hearing these ridiculous things about depopulation and computer chips.”
Sometimes the anti-vaccination sentiment takes a form that is frankly comic. Today several British anti-vaccine advocates attempted to storm the news headquarters of the BBC for what they called purveying of misinformation. There was only one slight problem: the protestors congregated at the Television Center building in West London, which was indeed the news headquarters until 2013, at which time the BBC sold it to a developer who converted it into a building of private residences. Andrew Neil, chairman of The Spectator and GB news, summed it up best: “Anti-vaxxers protest BBC coverage of pandemic by storming a building in White City. A building the BBC vacated in 2013 and is now luxury flats. Is there a link between stupidity and anti-vax? Opinions vary but evidence is growing.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 204,089,181; # of deaths worldwide: 4,315,452; # of cases U.S.: 36,771,525; # of deaths; U.S.: 633,788.