Test results – Maryland Heights/Stone Fort/Harpers Ferry – Death of a health care worker – An American hero – Biden’s strategy of “enough rope” reaps rich returns – Evening statistics
The test results came back late last evening, and I am happy to say that they came out negative. The message in which I received this news cautions me that the test is not perfect and that I should not consider myself virus-free until I’ve undergone at least 72 hours after the test without fever (a condition that has already been reached by now) and no other symptoms for 10 days after the test. I took the test on the 13th and have had no symptoms since that time; so that means five days more to go. In any case, I believe that I can start making arrangements for traveling to New York.
The weather continues to be very hot. I went on the Maryland Heights/Stone Fort route today, and when I was ascending the Stone Fort Trail I had difficulties and was definitely slower than usual. But there were compensations: plenty of wineberries (their season is a bit later in this area than it is further east and at lower altitudes), lovely vistas, and a relaxing lunch at Maryland Heights itself. The sky remains much less hazy than it usually is at this time of year; it was intensely blue, as opposed to the bleached-out appearance it generally has in mid-summer. I selected this hike because, among other things, I wanted to walk along the new pedestrian bridge that has replaced the old one that was damaged by a train accident and also to go along the Appalachian Trail past Jefferson Rock. Not many people were on the AT – which is a large claim, considering that it runs directly through Harpers Ferry itself, but it is so nonetheless. The town had some visitors, but most of these remained on the Shenandoah St., Market St., and Potomac St., which are fairly level with the confluence of the two rivers; only a minority ascended along High St. and Church St. Probably the heat discouraged most of the visitors. On the other hand, numerous people were using rafts and inner tubes to float on the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, which were flowing very gently today.
Isabelle Papadimitriou, a respiratory therapist in Dallas, TX, died from the virus at the age of 64. She had no underlying conditions, but of course health care workers are continually exposed to people who are potential carriers of the virus, and she is one of 531 health-care workers who have died from it. The official estimate is that 99,000 health care workers have been infected nation-wide, and the CDC adds that the actual total may be considerably higher.
John Lewis, the civil rights leader, is dead at 80. Among his other deeds, he was one of the leaders of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march in 1965 (“Bloody Sunday”), until he and his followers were brutally beaten by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which certainly lived up to its name on that occasion. After the encounter, Lewis lay unconscious with a broken skull. He could easily have lost his life. But he persevered, and the march was not in vain: the Voting Rights Act came into being as a direct result of the national outrage that it generated on behalf of the marchers. I don’t suppose it would be possible to rename the bridge after Lewis instead? The one was a traitor and a terrorist (Pettus was named Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, a fitting achievement in his old age after a lifetime of cruelty, sadism, and chicanery); the other is a national hero.
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.” I don’t know if Joe Biden is in the habit of making prayers any more frequently than Voltaire was, but that one certainly has been granted to him. In a recent news conference, President Trump accused Biden of trying to abolish the suburbs and making office buildings too cold. It is not merely that there is no evidence for such claims; they are so bizarre, indeed pointless, that it is not worth the trouble of refuting them – and Biden, accordingly, has simply shrugged them off without comment. Biden has been very low-key during his campaign so far, and this strategy apparently is paying golden dividends; deprived of the daily back-and-forth insults that Trump craves, he flails about more wildly by the day. Even Trump’s disparaging epithet of “sleepy” for his opponent is backfiring; “sleepy” at any rate has implications of calm and composure, and Trump increasingly demonstrates that he is devoid of those qualities.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 14,407,643; # of deaths worldwide: 604,103; # of cases U.S.: 3,831,680 # of deaths U.S.: 142,861. The U.S. had a case increase of over 61,000 today, which actually is an improvement over the past few days. South Africa’s case count has now surpassed Peru’s, and it is fifth on the list of nations with the highest number of case counts, as predicted. Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh all have rapidly increasing case counts, although it will be several days before they overtake Spain and the U.K.