More temperate weather – The Farmer’s Market – A surprising omission – Local restaurants – The upcoming election – Angela Merkel on Donald Trump – Evening statistics
Although the weather continues to be hot and steamy, the nights have cooled down as a result of the recent storms. It is inexpressibly comforting to be able to sleep with the windows open after being forced to rely on air conditioning for weeks on end. In the coming week it will still be very warm, but temperatures should become slightly less tropical by Wednesday. It was cool enough in the early morning to work outside without discomfort, so I weeded the garden before setting out to the Farmer’s Market. There actually was not a great amount to pull up; the drought in July has lasted so long that even weeds have failed to flourish.
I have been going to the Farmer’s Market more frequently than before. This is a direct consequence of the restrictions imposed by the virus. Formerly on Saturdays I’ve been away from the metro area hiking with various clubs (generally the Capital Hiking Club, but one or two others on occasion). Now most of these have placed their hiking schedules in abeyance, so I have been hiking on a somewhat irregular schedule. I have managed to hike continually with the Vigorous Hikers (a relatively small group that can arrange to have all hikers drive to a trailhead without too much inconvenience) on Tuesday and, latterly, with small subsets of Wanderbirds hikers on Sundays. Most of the other hiking trips that I’ve done have been solitary.
Most people by now are using face masks and one vendor actually uses a Plexiglas shield, which must be rather uncomfortable in this weather. We try to observe social distancing, but it remains difficult to stay six feet from one another within such close quarters. Presumably there is less danger of infection out of doors but one cannot rely entirely on that. Part of the reason for the upsurge of COVID-19 in Latin American nations is the number of open-air markets, where many people are in close proximity. There is, of course, an abundance of fresh squash, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peaches, berries, plums, etc., but there is one curious omission: no one appears to be selling apples. Perhaps it is not yet the time to harvest them on the local farms; but in previous years apples were available in such markets from May onwards.
The streets of Fairfax were quiet this evening. Some people were dining out of doors, but not many. A few restaurants are open for indoor dining as well, but almost no one is taking advantage of it. I myself would be reluctant to dine in a room full of strangers at this point. It surprises me that the restaurants are operative at all. I don’t see how they can make money under these circumstances. I can only hope that more customers are relying on them for delivery and takeout orders.
It is just 100 days before the election. It will be one of the strangest ones I can remember. Usually many of the debates about the respective merits of the candidates focus to some extent on the national economy, whereas in this one that issue will undoubtedly take a back seat to the problem of how to handle the virus. Trump’s approval rating is one of the lowest for any incumbent, although it is to be hoped that the Democrats will not become too complacent about this and take victory for granted. It does appear that we will not be troubled about the manner in which electoral college votes are split. Biden has a clear lead in every single poll taken up to this point. It is quite possible that he can obtain as many as 400 electoral college votes out of a total of 538. A debacle like the one that happened with respect to Hillary Clinton four years ago is much less likely this time.
Angela Merkel has gone on record as saying that she has conceived a great aversion for Donald Trump (in which she is not singular) and is uncomfortable even with being in the same room with him. Since I myself find him thoroughly offensive both in manners and appearance, I cannot wonder at such remarks; what is surprising to me is the number of people who are able to endure him for more than five minutes on end. Larry Hogan, in that account to which I alluded to some days ago about his struggles to obtain testkits, had little to say in the way of praise of the President; but he did say, rather surprisingly, that Trump could be amusing and good-humored in company. I never would have expected it. In public, at any rate, he has invariably shown himself to be sullen, petulant, boorish, and foul-tongued. I am not here evaluating him as a politician – exposure of the egregiousness of his blunders and his unabashed self-interest I will leave to abler hands than mine – but simply on a personal level. Donald Trump has complained more than once that he is not loved. It never occurs to him to ask whether he has ever said or done anything, since the first day that he took office, that could inspire the slightest amount of affection.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 16,185,316; # of deaths worldwide: 647,515; # of cases U.S.: 4,312,588; # of deaths U.S.: 149,340. Today, as expected, the global case count has shot up over 16 million: another instance of an increase of one million within five days – and an increase of about six million over the past month. In very rough terms, the global population is slightly under 8 billion, which means that over one in 500 people worldwide have been affected by the virus. Of course, matters are significantly below the global rate here; in our country the ratio is closer to one in 75 per capita.
I’ve been in the habit of saying things like “a bad day” or “we’ve passed another milestone” after reports like these, but I suppose I should forego such expressions. They imply that such matters are exceptional, whereas it is quite apparent that daily case increases over sixty or seventy thousand and new deaths totaling to more than a thousand are to be the normal state of affairs for some time to come. As the old saying goes, may Heaven protect us from what we can get used to.