December 19-20, 2021

Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve – Holiday cards – The surge of COVID in Europe – Marjorie Taylor Greene and other anti-vaxxers – The anti-vaxxers part company with their idol – Evening statistics

I went out with the Wanderbirds on a new hike yesterday, in the Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve.  It is a fairly recently formed park area, having been established as a nature preserve in 1999.  Previously, it was a working farm that goes back to the 19th century.  The land was purchased for farm use in 1841 and remained operative until 1979.  The nature preserve contains the remains of several buildings used as barns, silos, storage areas, etc., and it skirts along the bank of Goose Creek.  The creek is somewhat narrower here than it is at its merging with the Potomac River further to the east and is clear, shallow, and meandering.  The trails go through a varied mixture of meadows, forest, and riverine scenery; and they are very well-tended, having been cleared of leaf cover and any type of overgrowth.  Most of the attendees covered about 7½ miles in two loops, but six of us added a third loop for a total of 10 miles in all.  This was an “official” Wanderbirds hike, as opposed to the somewhat informal meetups in which I participated throughout most of this year.  The club is actively organizing hikes now, even though it will not be able to use a bus for some time to come.

There was a visit to a winery after the hike, but I reluctantly passed it up.  After the hike I came home directly and spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening addressing holiday cards. These are personalized cards designed by my brother, who is an animator.  He has been working very hard at various projects over the past several months, and as a result the cards were completed a bit later than usual.  It is not of course necessary that they all be mailed out before Christmas, for my brother always uses the theme of the old year being displaced by the new one to signify the holiday period that generally occurs between Christmas and New Year’s.  But I prefer not to drag out the process of addressing them if possible.  There were nearly 200 of them to send out this year, and I spent much of Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, and the better part of today completing them.  I now use a newsletter to insert into the cards in order to standardize the process a bit, but it still can be fairly time-consuming.

It is a useful practice, however.  In the U.S. it is particularly applicable.  We live in a huge country, with contacts spread out over hundreds of miles.  After retirement, especially, people tend to move away from the area where they have worked and settle in all corners of the country.  Without this mechanism of ensuring that we hear from one another at least once a year, many of the relationships enjoyed with former colleagues would die of inanition.

RB told me some distressing news at the end of the hike.  She originally came from Denmark and she gave me a disturbing report of the results of the new surge in COVID there.  For quite a while Denmark had appeared to be in excellent condition with respect to the virus.  In September it had had well under 1,000 new cases per day and only a handful of deaths.  I have, as I admit, paid little attention to what has been going on in other countries in recent months; the problems confronting our own occupying most of my notice.  But of course they are all inter-related.  We cannot hope to overcome the pandemic until it becomes less active in all countries, not merely in our own.  I knew, in a vague sort of way, that European nations in generally have been undergoing a great surge of new cases but the issue was brought home to me in much more vivid hues when I heard about some of the figures.  Denmark, with a population of less than 6 million, at one point was experiencing as many as 12000 new cases per day. 

Some of RB’s relatives came down with the virus even though they were vaccinated, although they have since recovered.  This scenario appears to be typical.  The vaccines have, by and large, been showing their efficacy:  despite the number of so-called breakthrough infections, the seriously ill are generally to be found among the unvaccinated.  Still, the situation is far from optimal.  Anyone who contracts the disease, vaccinated or not, must spend at least a few days in a state of wearing suspense as to whether its effects will prove to be long-lasting or even mortal. 

Upon learning that Cory Booker has had a breakthrough case of COVID, which was attended by very mild symptoms, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted “How many breakthrough cases of polio are there?”  This remark, of course, ignores the fact that the polio vaccine won almost universal acceptance when it was introduced to the public and that polio subsided in a remarkably short time after it was disseminated, as well as the fact the breakthrough infections have for the most part have been fairly mild and that the overwhelming majority of the hospitalized are unvaccinated.  Which leads up to the question that has been begging to be asked for months . . .

What the hell is the matter with these people?

How have these fanatics imbibed the lunatic notion that a vaccine with proven effectiveness is more dangerous than the disease itself? – a disease, it may be added, that is responsible for at least 5 million deaths worldwide, at least officially (the figure is almost certainly a gross under-estimate).   It would tempting to declare that this is yet another one of the many falsehoods Trump has administered to his gullible supporters, but that simply is not the case.  Trump in fact earnestly wishes to take the credit for introducing vaccines into the U.S.; and he appears to realize, in addition, that the deaths of the unvaccinated in this country have been occurring chiefly among his supporters.  In an attempt to promote the vaccines, he publicly revealed at a rally in Dallas that he received a booster shot.  The announcement was greeted with boos from the crowd.  So on this issue Trump’s own base are at odds with the man who they claim is infallible. 

In the meantime the unvaccinated continue to drop like flies.  Nuria Daniela Gomes of Liverpool, England, is a typical example.  She was 38 years old, fit and healthy, and on that account she thought that she was safe in declining the vaccine, being concerned about its long-term effects.  She tested positive for the virus on December 2nd and developed symptoms (fatigue and a persistent cough) a day later, but insisted that she felt fine.  A few days afterwards, her daughters noticed that she was struggling to breathe when they turned in to sleep; they shared the same bedroom.  They turned on the light to investigate and saw that, in one of the daughters’ words, “her hands were purple, her lips were purple, and her eyes looked huge.”  They immediately called the hospital but Gomes never made it there; she died before the paramedics could arrive.  The date of her death was December 9th, just a week after she received her test results.  As a man sows, so shall he reap; such is the poisonous fruit of the anti-vaxxers’ rotten seed.

At this point about 40% of the world’s population is unvaccinated, sometimes out of necessity (many of the Third World nations have difficulty procuring the vaccines) and sometimes out of sheer obstinacy, like those whom Greene is attempting to encourage.  So the COVID virus has plenty of material to work with, an ample laboratory to use for developing new mutations.

Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 274,995,307; # of deaths worldwide: 5,370,105; # of cases U.S.: 51,765,714; # of deaths; U.S.: 827,323.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 275,735,365; # of deaths worldwide: 5,376,105; # of cases U.S.: 52,022,781; # of deaths; U.S.: 828,543.