Glimmerings of hope for the vote on Wednesday – The Mexican Undersecretary of Health on vacation – An enterprising cruise company – An argument in favor of less skin-revealing attire – Evening statistics
A couple of new developments today have made me slightly less despondent than I was yesterday. Several former Defense Ministers – all of them still living, in fact – have issued a formal rebuke to Donald Trump, stating that the military should not become involved in determining the outcome of elections. The Pentagon is evidently becoming jittery about being dragged into any kind of conflict over the election results and, as it appears, will make strenuous efforts to avoid it.
The other promising development is that Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice, a pair of House Democrats, have requested FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal probe of Trump concerning his phone call whose transcript showed him trying to bully Brad Raffensperger into overturning the election results in Georgia. While I do not suppose that an FBI investigation will result in any serious penalty for Trump, anything that diverts his energies and weakens his focus is to be encouraged.
Egregious political figures are not confined to our country, of course. Mexico’s Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, has repeatedly urged Mexicans to stay at their homes during the recent holidays. Although Mexico’s infection rate is considerably less than our own – barely over 1% of the population, as opposed to over 6.4% here – its health care system is much more fragile, and the pandemic has caused Mexican hospitals to run out of available beds and has caused more deaths of health care workers, proportionately, than in any other country. Mexico’s death rate, also, is much higher than ours: well over 8.5%, as opposed to our rate of 1.7%. Recently, however, López-Gatell himself was photographed taking an airplane trip and relaxing at a beach in southern Oaxaca, about 500 miles from his home in Mexico City, without wearing a face mask in either situation. This evidence of his methods of relaxation have not gone over very well in his home town, where nonessential businesses have been ordered shuttered for weeks, leaving shopkeepers, waiters and other workers scrambling to pay rent in a country that has no unemployment insurance. Indeed, the fact that he is taking a vacation at all has roused considerable resentment, since doctors and nurses at public hospitals in Mexico City have been asked to forgo their Christmas vacations to tend to a surge in patients.
The cruise industry has been languishing as a result of the pandemic, but it is working diligently to return to service. One cruise company is taking an approach that is, admittedly, unique. The name of the company is Bare Necessities and it features nudist cruises, its first big event starting on February 13, 2022. The cruise ride is two weeks long and it will stop at various ports in the Caribbean. To make the passengers more at their ease, the corporate management has thoughtfully adorned the cruise ship with classic nude statues and paintings.
I believe that the passengers of such a trip will be in for a severe disappointment. Once when I was in San Diego on a business trip, I had a couple of hours to spare one day, which I spent wandering along the beaches. My ramblings caused me to stumble accidentally upon a nudist beach, which caused me to recoil in horror – not on account of the nudity but on account of the hideous aspect of most of the bodies I saw. Not one of them could have been less than 250 pounds; their mode of propulsion was a waddle rather than a walk; and their skins all had a rough, raw, red, scaly appearance from over-exposure to the sun that was repulsive beyond belief. The sight of them constituted one of the most powerful anaphrodisiacs ever invented; and I think that if I were recruiting members for a monastery that enforced vows of perpetual celibacy, I would take its postulants to visit such a beach in order to encourage them in such pious resolutions.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 86,078,700; # of deaths worldwide: 1,859,756; # of cases U.S.: 21,341,982; # of deaths; U.S.: 362,043.