The “mild” status of the omicron variant challenged – Long overdue recognition of Edmonia Lewis – Evening statistics
Several physicians are challenging the judgment that the omicron variant is particularly mild. According to Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa, a Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine specialist with twenty years of clinical practice, “This wave is the worst one we’ve yet endured. Almost half of all the beds in my hospital are occupied by COVID patients. More than half of my ICU is COVID patients, and all of them – every single one – is on a ventilator. We have surpassed our record numbers from last fall, and the end is not in sight at all. And, every hour, more and more COVID patients keep coming to our hospital.” “For the overwhelming majority of those who are vaccinated,” he adds, “COVID is a mild illness.” But the case is very different for those who have declined the vaccines. Dr. Hassaballa’s ICU patients, for example, are for the most part well under 60 and every single one of them is unvaccinated.
It may seem strange that hospitals are being overwhelmed with patients when 86.4% of the adult population has received at least one dose. This means, however, that there are still over 35 million adult Americans who are unvaccinated, and it is from this segment that the hospitalizations are for the most part recruited. The weekly hospitalization rate for COVID for the population of New York City is nearly 1 in every 1,000 people. But the weekly hospitalization rate for COVID among vaccinated people is 3 per 100,000.
On a pleasanter subject, the U.S. Postal Service has honored the sculptor Edmonia Lewis by creating a commemorative stamp for her. Lewis was unusual in many ways. She was one of the first women and one of the first African-Americans to become an American artist of international stature. She herself did not care to dwell upon this distinction: “Some praise me because I am a colored girl, and I don’t want that kind of praise,” she said. “I had rather you would point out my defects, for that will teach me something.” She need not have worried; her works would be admired even if the artist had been anonymous. In particular, her skill in depicting folds of clothing in the medium of stone has to be seen to be believed. She challenged the conventions of her art in several ways. She spent several years in Rome, where many sculptors practiced their art; but the process was somewhat different for most of them than it was for sculptors of earlier periods. Most of the so-called “sculptors” simply modeled the statues in clay or wax and then hired Roman stone masons to reproduce their works in marble. Lewis, lacking the funds to hire such help, created most of her works on her own. She became a master of sheer technical skill. Her copy of Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) from an ancient Roman statue in the Vatican – it was a frequent subject for copy by many artists – is virtually indistinguishable from the original. But in her own works she infused an emotional intensity that startled contemporary observers. Her “Death of Cleopatra,” instead of using the decorous conventions of the time, shows the queen seated on her throne , lifeless, with arms splayed out and head twisted in unmistakable agony. Alas, many of her works have not survived, as a result of her reputation becoming eclipsed after the Neoclassicism of which she was an adherent fell out of favor. There is some satisfaction in reflecting that many of her most important surviving works are to be seen in this city, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 307,788,077; # of deaths worldwide: 5,505,739; # of cases U.S.: 61,263,030; # of deaths; U.S.: 859,356.