The Browntown/Jenkins Gap hike – The worm turns in Iran – Correlation between COVID and coronary disease – Mark Meadows joins the list of those who ignore subpoenas – Evening statistics
Another lovely day and another lovely hike to make the most of it. I went with the Vigorous Hikers to the little village of Browntown, from where we went up the Browntown Trail to Gravel Springs, then went along the Bluff Trail to the Mt. Marshall Trail, and descended back via the Jenkins Gap Trail: 16 miles in all, and about 2600 feet of elevation gain, most of it fairly gradual. The day was clear, with the beautiful autumnal light characteristic of this time of year, which for some reason seems fuller and mellower than the sunlight of other seasons. Towards the Jenkins Gap parking area, the high point of our hike, bands of mist hovered a few feet above and below Skyline Drive, making the color of the sky bordering the clouds all the more vivid in contrast.
My return home was somewhat less eventful than that of Elnaz Rekabi, the Iranian sports climber who had neglected to don her hijab during the competition in South Korea. She is now reportedly under house arrest, after having issued a public apology for her grave omission – whether or not under duress is unclear.
Iranian women generally are growing restive, it seems. Students are protesting at universities across the nation. Tensions have been mounting on the eve of planned ceremonies marking 40 days since the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who appeared in public with a hijab that did not conform with the imams’ exalted standards of decorum and who was beaten to death for this grave transgression. (Forty days mark the traditional period of mourning in Iran, and a ceremony is customarily hold upon the 40th day after a death.) Security services warned Amini’s family against holding a mourning ceremony and instructed them not to ask people to visit her grave today. Otherwise, these authorities jovially explained, “they should worry for their son’s life.” The establishment has responded to the demonstrations at schools and universities with equal mildness, wiping out the lives of at least 141 protestors. Such is the legacy of Jimmy Carter’s misguided policies that undermined the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and paved the way for the theocrat Ruhollah Khomeini to impose a stranglehold on the country that has lasted nearly half a century.
Deaths from heart attacks have risen over the past two years, particularly among young adults in the 25-44 age range. In the first year of the pandemic, they went up by 14%. B y the second year of the pandemic, the “observed” compared to “predicted” rates of heart attack death had increased by 29.9% for adults ages 25-44, by 19.6% for adults ages 45-64, and by 13.7% for adults age 65 and older. It is not clear to what extent that these increases are a direct result of COVID itself and to what extent they are the result of the pandemic’s side effects: increased levels of stress, decreased levels of exercise, and more failures to undergo medical checkups that could have detected problems in their earlier, and more curable, stages. There seems little doubt, however, the virus has been triggering or accelerating the incidence of coronary heart disease to an alarming degree.
Mark Meadows has joined the ranks of Trump co-conspirators who think themselves above the law. He is urging a judge in Pickens County, S.C., where he now resides, to reject an effort by Fulton County, Georgia, to subpoena him for testimony in November. Meadows was on the line for the infamous phone call from Trump to Brad Raffensperger demanding that the latter “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia ballot in the presidential election. Meadows also traveled to Georgia in December 2020 to monitor an audit of the state’s election results in a further effort to cheat the Georgian voters of their choice. Meadows contends that the probe by Fani Willis – being conducted via a “special grand jury – doesn’t qualify as a criminal investigation, which prevents her from compelling him to appear. If attempting to undermine a national election isn’t criminal, I don’t know what is. My mind isn’t flexible enough to digest these legal subtleties, I suppose.
Today’s statistics as of 8:30 PM – # of cases worldwide: 633,563,725; # of deaths worldwide: 6,585,200; # of cases U.S.: 99,139,887; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,093,303.