On the McLean Loop – Trump vs. his base – A mistaken delivery – The one unmistakable symptom of omicron – Evening statistics
I scouted the McLean Loop hike today, partly because I am scheduled to lead it for the Vigorous Hikers in 2½ weeks and partly, I must confess, because scouting it before the New Year, along with the hikes I’m scheduled to do tomorrow, Sunday, and Tuesday, will push my mileage total to just over 2000 for the year. But, frivolous though this last reason might be, it turned out to be a good thing that I investigated the route, because the trails have altered over the past few months. The path the led to the underpass at Old Dominion Road has been closed off, and it has become necessary to devise an alternate route from the starting point at Balls Hill Road to Scotts Run Nature Preserve. Then, too, I just barely managed to cross Pimmit Run. Despite the dry weather we’ve been undergoing lately, it was a challenge to find a series of rocks to use without getting my feet wet. If even a very moderate rain occurs a day or so before the actual hike date, that crossing will also have to be bypassed. After the hike I went over the local maps to work out these alternate routes, and I will have to verify them on foot before the day of the hike with the group.
It is possible that instead lawsuits becoming Trump’s downfall, his own followers will accomplish this feat. After his announcement that he has received the vaccine and a booster as well, many of the extreme right groups who have idolized him up to this point are now fuming at him. A typical reaction is that of the recently subpoenaed “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander: “Trump, stop. Just stop. Have your position (backed by Fauci) and allow us to have ours (which is backed by science). This losing is getting boomer level annoying.” The events that led the supremely incompetent Trump to occupy a position of power at a time when the nation was at its most urgent need for genuine leadership might in some lights be considered a tragedy, but everything he touches eventually turns into farce.
Farce, however, is not limited to the anti-vaxxers of our own nation. In Great Britain they reacted against a statement from Alan Shearer, a football pundit who formerly was a well-known Newcastle and Blackburn Rovers striker. Shearer simply urged everyone who is eligible to get the vaccine and the booster as well. Some anti-vaxxer protestors placed what they called “legal papers” (which indeed use the template of various legal documents but which have no validity whatsoever) into his external letterbox – or at least what they believed to be his letterbox. A person who lives in the area, after seeing the footage of them inserting the letters into the letterbox, exclaimed, “That’s an old address they have for him.” The anti-vaxxers’ research capabilities as to the location of their targets appears to be on a par with their scientific capabilities generally, as well as their legal expertise.
The symptoms of the omicron variant are elusive. The shortness of breath and the loss of the senses of taste and smell are common to most variants, but they are present much less often for omicron. Instead the symptoms greatly resemble those of the flu and the common cold: nasal congestion, coughing, and so on. But there is one symptom that is always prominent: fatigue.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 279,324,374; # of deaths worldwide: 5,408,741; # of cases U.S.: 52,986,307; # of deaths; U.S.: 837,671.