A home COVID test – The vigilance of QAnon – Encouraging developments in South Africa – Our declining population – Evening statistics
I took a home test for COVID this evening. It was surprisingly easy to follow, consisting of a nasal swab followed by swirling the absorbent tip of the swab in an extraction buffer tube to collect the specimen, and then squeezing a few drops of the resultant solution into a kit with a well for collecting the sample and a window displaying the test results once the sample is analyzed. It takes about 15 minutes to obtain the results. The window has two markers, “C” for “control” and “T” for “test.” When a line appears beside the “C” marker, it means that an adequate amount of the specimen has been collected. A line appearing beside the “T” marker signifies a positive test result. The desired result, obviously, is to see a line beside the “C” marker and none beside the “T” marker, which I am happy to say was the outcome in this case. I have wanted to obtain a home test kit for some time, because I had spent so many days away from home in the early part of December – and the last days of the trip were spent in Vernon, NJ, where the attitude towards COVID-related restrictions was a bit too nonchalant for my taste. But home test kits are difficult to obtain in this area; they sell out within hours after the pharmacies receive a shipment of them. I obtained the one I used this evening from CC, who had recently visited West Virginia. In many parts of that state people’s attitudes are as phlegmatic as they are in Vernon and test kits remain on the shelves for days as a result. So she was able to purchase several without any difficulty.
David Trent, a QAnon personality who has 20,000 followers on his Bitchute channel, has frequently accused Democrats, and Biden in particular, of being pedophiles working as part of a global child sex trafficking ring. He has accused them of being as culpable as one David Todeschini, a sexual predator who was convicted in 1999 of raping an 8-year-old boy, and who then spent almost five years in prison as a result of his sentencing – hey, wait a minute! David Trent and David Todeschini are one and the same person. “Todeschini” is his real surname, while “David Trent” is simply an alias. He was listed on New York’s sex offender registry as a “sexually violent offender,” meaning he is at “high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety.” When he moved to North Carolina 18 months ago, he was promptly listed on that state’s sex offender registry as well. However, he has concealed these notable achievements from his followers, doubtless out of modesty.
Encouraging news is emerging from South Africa. The omicron variant appears to be past its peak already. The country reported a record-high 27,000 new COVID-19 cases last Thursday, almost all of them of the omicron strain. That number, however, dropped to 15,424 on Tuesday. There are some caveats. Daily virus counts can be unreliable, as they may be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays, and other fluctuation. In addition, the average age of the population in South Africa is 27, considerably younger than that of the U.S. or most European countries. Still, it is possible that the dominance of the omicron variant will be brief in other nations as well.
We are seeing the long-term results of our long struggle with the COVID virus by now. The United States population grew by only 0.1% within the past year, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021. This amount represents the lowest rate of population increase since the nation was founded. As the pandemic recedes, the death toll will certainly decrease, but population growth will in all likelihood remain low on account of fewer births. Our population is aging, the number of women of child-bearing age is proportionately lower to the total population than it has been in the past, and many young families are deferring having children or even foregoing parenthood altogether. Almost half of New York City mothers who had been trying to become pregnant before the pandemic began in the U.S. in March 2020 stopped in the first few months of the outbreak. In more than two dozen states, deaths have outnumbered births. Florida in particular has been hard-hit: deaths exceeded births in Florida by more than 45,000 people.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 277,478,586; # of deaths worldwide: 5,392,723; # of cases U.S.: 52,506,200; # of deaths; U.S.: 832,939.