In the southern portion of Shenandoah National Park – Trump’s new social media falls flat – Vagueness about the end of the pandemic – Evening statistics
The weather has become spring-like, even though officially we still have over two weeks of winter left. I took advantage of the conditions today (in the high fifties-to-low-sixties, dry and clear) to go to the southern portion of Shenandoah National Park and finish up bits and pieces of the Appalachian Trail I’ve missed out in the past. Even though the southern third of the park between Swift Run Gap and Rockfish Gap is by far the least used, there were several people on the trails. I was particularly pleased to encounter a hiking group of African-Americans. In general, people of color are under-represented on the trails, but I’m in hopes that this trend is being reversed. The party included a few conscientious hike leaders, who were carefully monitoring the others and communicating with one another by walkie-talkies. But none of the hikers appeared to be having any particular difficulties during the ascent to Hightop Mountain (about 900 feet over the course of two miles) and they were all enjoying themselves.
“Your wait is over! Tap here to start using Truth Social.”
And what might Truth Social be? It is nothing less than Donald Trump’s response to his being banned from using Twitter. He has set up a social media app of his own for his followers to use. Tweets or posts are labeled as “Truths” and retweets are called “ReTruths” (the capital T in the middle is not a misprint). Quite simply, there is not much activity on this application. It has fewer than 1 million users, far below the much-quoted figure of 75 million who voted for Trump in the 2020 election. Twitter, by way of contrast, has an estimated 6 million unique visitors per month.
Moreover, a good number of these who access Truth Social are doing so in order to troll it. For example, one user, who called himself “Jon Conn,” made the following post about a partnership between Planned Parenthood and Walmart: “We are pleased to partner with Planned Parenthood in offering abortions in all Walmart locations up to 1 year after birth.” In another parody account, this same user issued the following “Truth”: “In honor of gay pride month, we will be restricting access to @truthsocial for non-LGBTQ users on the App Store.” Both of these created something of an uproar. Trump’s followers tend to be behindhand in technological matters, and so far the trolls have had no difficulty in baiting them unmercifully.
“I don’t think people should get the impression that we’re saying that this is all over,” Dr. Fauci said in a video interview with Samantha Manning of the Cox Media Group. “We are going to be dealing with SARS-CoV-2 for quite a while. We want to prevent the necessity of shutting anything down.” I could wish him to be a little more specific. It acknowledged in most quarters the COVID will be with us for a long time to come. The question is: what are the conditions that will enable us to say that it is no longer a pandemic? We seem to be close to such conditions now, with mask mandates disappearing and travel requirements easing. Masks are still required on public transportations (although a few people appear to believe that the virus will in some mysterious way offer them a dispensation when they remove their masks to talk on their cell phones). But even that may change by the middle of the month.
According to Johns Hopkins University, which has been maintaining daily measurements since the onset of the pandemic, deaths from COVID have dropped 11% from last week. But the U.S. is still averaging over 1,500 new deaths per day, which is much worse than a disease such as the flu. Many are still vulnerable. About a third of the population is unvaccinated (though it is true that a large number of these are children, who tend to be less vulnerable to COVID than adults) and the immunocompromised, about 3% of Americans, or 9 million in all. “Clearly, it isn’t over yet. There are still people we need to protect,” said Dr. Claudia Hoyen, the director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland . “But hopefully, maybe, just maybe this is the beginning of the end. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
It would indeed. But when exactly is “soon”?
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 445,122,961; # of deaths worldwide: 6,015,048; # of cases U.S.: 80,912,619; # of deaths; U.S.: 983,837.