A welcome rainfall – Walking in town – A new business venture – Plans for a short trip – Dr. Fauci at the coronavirus panel – Evening statistics
Rain at last! And the best kind: not a torrential downpour that lasts half-an-hour or so and then dissipates, resulting in most of the rainfall draining off quickly, but a gentle, steady soaking that penetrates the soil and will go a long way to mitigate the effects of the hot weather of the past several weeks. In addition, the moderating influence will last for some time; there are no 90-degree days in the forecast for the next 10 days. I was able to shut down air conditioning and open the windows to air out the house for the first time in weeks. It’s still quite humid, of course, but it’s a much better than the tropical heat we’ve been enduring for the greater part of July.
Walking in the rain is not at all uncomfortable when there is no wind and one is equipped with a broad-brimmed hat (mine is a Tilley) to keep the rain from one’s eyes and an umbrella as well. I went about town to do a few errands. People are still a bit careless about wearing a mask out of doors; however, they do step to one side when they are approached from the opposite direction. Many people were out enjoying the more comfortable temperatures in their front yards, including several families with children. In one shopping area I noticed the newly opened food market (Lidl). There was a long line of people waiting to get in, so I did not enter; but it was heartening to see that a new commercial venture was doing so well. I will probably check it out next week – in the early morning, naturally, when it will be less crowded.
As I mentioned earlier, the trip to New York had to be canceled. I had planned, however, to stop at Wind Gap for a day upon my return and do a little hiking in Northern Pennsylvania. I had the option of canceling the hotel reservation but in the end I decided to go through with it. In a way it will be a type of information-gathering excursion – I am curious to see what it is like staying in a hotel at this point. Since I will be on my own in the hotel and since I will be doing solitary hiking while I’m in the area, the risk of infection is not great. I have taken some precautions, however, that will perhaps strike observers as wary to the extent of being comic. In particular, I have packaged a sufficient amount of food so that it turns out that I’m unable to find any place where I can obtain dinner or sandwiches for lunch in Wind Gap, I will have enough to eat in the evening, to say nothing of the afternoons during my hikes. I know that it sounds unduly fussy; but Wind Gap is quite a small village and I have no idea how the pandemic has affected the operation of its eating places. Even in normal times such matters can be problematic in some American small towns. I remember one vacation I took about three years ago, when I stayed in Gatlinburg with some friends to hike in the Smokies. We rented a cabin and, even though we went out to dinner every night, we prepared breakfast for ourselves in order to get an early start and of course we packed our lunches as well. In order to obtain the groceries we needed, we had to drive to Pigeon Forge, which is about five miles away. Gatlinburg, of course, is a tourist town taken to the extreme – just imagine a place that has at least four shops featuring Wild West photo shoots but which has no grocery stores anywhere either inside the town itself or within five miles past its borders! Still, I do not want to be caught flat-footed.
I will depart tomorrow, hike in the afternoon, check in during the evening, stay there overnight, check out, hike some more in the morning, and then return. It’s unlikely that I will be in a position to upload to my blog during my travels but I plan to take notes all the same and write up an entry for both days on Sunday.
In testifying to a coronavirus panel for the House of Representatives, Dr. Fauci said that the reason European countries are seeing decreasing rates while we are not is that they have been much more aggressive about lockdown, even to the extent of shutting down their economies by 95%. In addition, he expressed cautious optimism about the development of a vaccine. The interview also demonstrated, if any further proof was needed, that a queer kind of stupidity appears to be the most important qualification for any prominent politician. The most contentious moment occurred when Representative Jim Jordan (Republican, Ohio) tried to press Fauci on whether the government should limit protests against racial violence; Fauci said that all he could say was that any kind of activity that involved being in a crowd is a bad idea. “I don’t understand,” he added, “why you’re asking me as a public health official who should get arrested or not.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 17,744,811; # of deaths worldwide: 682,192; # of cases U.S.: 4,705,045; # of deaths U.S.: 156,742. The U.K. is no longer on the list of the top ten nations with the highest case counts. It has been displaced by Iran, whose case count is over 300,000. Columbia and Saudi Arabia are rapidly approaching these levels as well.
It has been a difficult month for us on a national level, and the next month promises to be harder. If we don’t manage to get our rate of increase under control, the number of COVID-19 cases will be augmented by between 1.5 and 2 million and the number of deaths from the virus by over 30,000 at the end of August.