The first hike of the year – Governor Hogan on Maryland’s health care – Twitter takes on Marjorie Taylor Greene – Plans of the investigating committee for the January 6th riot – Evening statistics
I have begun my hiking log today for 2022. The first hike of the year was something over 11 miles and about 2000 feet of elevation gain, quite a reasonable beginning. We had a little rain off and on, but nothing approaching the downpour of yesterday, and to my surprise the trails were a great deal less muddy than I anticipated. Until this past week the weather has been relatively dry and as a result the soil absorbed most of the water from the rainfall. The hike took place at the Cool Spring battlefield, which has a network of trails, including a loop that begins and ends at a defunct golf course. There are many views of the Shenandoah River in the final part of the hike. Afterwards we partied a bit in the pavilion at the park there; we celebrated not only the new year but the birthday of one of the hikers in our group.
My observations about the depletion of our health care system were repeated in part by Governor Hogan of Maryland on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He was speaking about the strain that the new surge in cases has placed on Maryland’s health care, saying that although his administration has done all that it can to lure doctors and nurses to the hospitals, “you can’t really manufacture doctors and nurses that don’t exist.“ Maryland has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, with 92% of all adults having received at least one dose – which means, in his own words, that “eight percent of the population who has not been vaccinated is responsible for 75 percent of all the people that are filling up our COVID beds in the hospital.”
Once again Twitter has intervened with people disseminating misinformation, although in the present case its target is a less prominent person than Donald Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal Twitter account has been closed out and she is permanently banned from the network. In particular, Twitter has cited her fallacious claims about deaths caused by the vaccines, a conspiracy theory that has been debunked repeatedly; the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which she uses as her authority, is open to public submission, and as a result the more than one million reports of injury or death among individuals who have received the COVID vaccines are largely unverified by the federal government. It is true that only her personal account has been banned. The one used by her congressional office, @RepMTG, is largely operated by staff and at this point is not affected. Up to this point she has used the account mainly for noting her objections towards the COVID-related mandates; but if she decides to spread anti-vaccine propaganda on that account, it may be struck down as well.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is preparing to go public with its findings. Its goal is not only to show the severity of the riot, but also to make a clear connection between the attack and Trump’s pressure on the states and Congress to overturn the 2020 presidential election. There certainly has been no lack of material to support this contention. The committee has already gone through 35,000 pages of records, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump, in order to flesh out the details of the attack. But it has no power to enforce accountability. Congressional investigations are not criminal cases and lawmakers cannot dole out punishments. Nonetheless, its members hope that they can present the public with a thorough accounting that captures what could have been, in Liz Cheney’s words, “an even more serious and deeper constitutional crisis.” There is considerable time pressure on them to present the findings before the midterm elections, which the Republicans are expected to win. If the Republicans obtain a majority in the two chambers, it can be said with a certain amount of assurance that the committee will be swiftly dismantled.
In connection with this episode in our national history, a noteworthy interchange between one of the rioters and the judge presiding over the case may be mentioned. Anthony Mariotto, a Florida man who was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, expressed remorse for his actions that day, giving the following explanation: “I was hoping that they would just pause the election,” Mariotto said during his December sentencing. “I wish Joe Biden, President Biden, would have won by billions of votes. None of this would have happened.” To which Judge Reggie Walton replied, “He won by 7 million.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 290,588,293; # of deaths worldwide: 5,460,216; # of cases U.S.: 56,142,175; # of deaths; U.S.: 847,408. If we take the number of Americans who have contracted the virus and subtract from it the number who have died from it, the amount of living Americans who have contracted COVID is 16.6%, about one in six throughout the population.