Vaccination requirements for some IT professionals – The two increasingly dissimilar groups of U.S. counties – Resistance to the mask mandate recommendation – One dissentient in particular – Evening statistics
Several large companies in information technology are requiring vaccinations for their U.S. employees in to get COVID vaccinations before entering campuses. This cannot exactly be regarded as an inducement to receive the vaccine, for quite a number of IT professionals are perfectly contented with working from home and have no desire to commute again on highways whose congestion is now approaching pre-pandemic levels. The strategy is more likely to work in retail, since employees must obviously be on site to sell products to customers.
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, has been pressured to explain why the vaccinated should pay the penalty of donning facemasks again in the counties label as “red” and “orange” (i.e., the counties with the greatest number of unvaccinated and of rising new cases of the virus, about two-thirds of all of the counties in the U.S.) when it is the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated that has put them at risk. Indeed, the contrast between areas where the vaccinated are now a majority and those that are largely unvaccinated is a strange one. In many parts of the Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, the virus has been described as now being “almost rare” by medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner. But in much of the Midwest and the South, the virus has been accelerating. Missouri, for instance, has experienced a five-fold increase of COVID cases in less than four weeks.
Walensky, however, has stood her ground. The main objective is to limit transmission, and vaccinated people as well as unvaccinated are quite capable of transmitting the disease. In any case, as I have repeatedly stressed in this journal, wearing a facemask is not exactly a killing sacrifice. I have recently taken to resuming the wearing of facemasks myself while shopping or visiting public indoor facilities, even though I do not reside in one of the counties falling into the most susceptible categories; the effort is a trifling one and if there is a chance that my undertaking it reduces the amount of infection, why should I wish to shirk it? How fond my compatriots have become at transforming a trifle as light as air into a crushing burden!
One of them in particular has reacted rather vehemently to such a policy. Thomas Connally, of Greenbelt, MD, is now facing federal charges after sending threatening E-mails to Dr. Anthony Fauci, including one vowing that Fauci and his family would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.” His ferocity is understandable: Fauci has, over the course of his work during the pandemic, inflicted the recommendation that Connally, along with others, adhere a strip of cloth to cover his lips and nostrils when he goes out in public; how could any red-blooded American fail to exact condign revenge for this deadly insult?
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 196,620,360; # of deaths worldwide: 4,202,537; # of cases U.S.: 35,469,204; # of deaths; U.S.: 628,058. Our brief superiority to India in number of critical cases has died a swift death: we are now heading the list again of nations with the greatest number of these. The number of daily new cases across the globe has increased by 21% within the past week.