Hiking in central Virginia – The renewal of COVID as a state of emergency – Nemesis overtakes Alex Jones – Evening statistics
I have just returned from completing a section of the Appalachian Trail in central Virginia. As with all such trips organized by AD and RH, we stayed in a house in a rural location convenient for driving to parking areas for the AT. As always, we relied on ourselves for meals rather than going to restaurants and we dined very well indeed. The description of the individual hikes will have to be deferred to a later entry (it will take a while to write), but there are a few general characteristics that can be noted. We had splendid weather throughout the week, most of the days clear and sunny, and all of them moderate in temperature. The sole day that had rain in the forecast eventually turned out to be merely cloudy at times. The section of the trail that we covered – from Rte. 621to Pearisburg – is not an especially striking portion of the AT, but our hikes coincided with the beginning of the peak autumn foliage. The colors are more vivid in that area than they will probably turn out here, since the valleys and peaks we went through have had the optimum combination of warm (but not hot) days and cool nights. The house in which we stayed was by far the best-equipped of any in our experience, including a particularly well-stocked kitchen. There were only two bathrooms, but each bedroom contained a washstand as well. It was located in the Greenbrier Valley, and every morning and evening we had beautiful views of the range containing Peter’s Mountain. The drives to the parking areas frequently involved roads that had to accommodate the contours of the ridges they passed over, and they could be narrow and winding as a result. But the roads are well-maintained and the majority of them are paved. The group as a whole covered about 55 miles in all. For AD and myself, the hikes that we took during the trip completed hiking the entirety of the Appalachian Trail that runs through Virginia – and it should be borne in mind that Virginia contains nearly 550 miles of the AT, about one-quarter of the AT total mileage.
A significant COVID-related event occurred yesterday. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) renewed the declaration of COVID as a state of emergency. The next time of re-evaluation of COVID’s status will occur in January. This seems a prudent measure to take, in view of the fact that winter is approaching, and COVID-related deaths have spiked dramatically during the preceding two winters. In all probability any spike that occurs this coming winter will be considerably less damaging, but it is just as well to wait until the most dangerous season has passed and to assess its effects before declaring that the pandemic is over. Even as it is, nearly all of the states have ended the state of emergency status individually. After October 31st, only California, Kansas, and West Virginia will maintain the state of emergency that has been renewed by HHS.
It will be seen that defining the end of the COVID pandemic is a matter of some difficulty. Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, which inspired the title for this record, described the Great Plague of London. Bubonic plague had been endemic in European cities, but it still broke out into massive epidemics from time to time. This particular one caused over 100,000 deaths in London, about a quarter of the city’s population. However, when it ended, it proved to be the last major outbreak of plague that England was to experience – hence the note of finality towards the end of Defoe’s journal:
“However, it pleased God, by the continuing of the winter weather, so to restore the health of the city that by February following we reckoned the distemper quite ceased, and then we were not so easily frighted again.”
We already know that COVID is not in the least likely to become “quite ceased” and that in all probability we (not merely Americans but the global population at large) will have to be resigned to a certain amount of debilitating disease and loss of life on an annual basis, just as we do now with several diseases such as malaria and the flu. So when does a disease transition from a state of emergency to a merely endemic one? Perhaps we will learn the answer this coming winter.
Alex Jones, after having been found liable for suppressing evidence of his defaming the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, has just undergone a trial assessing the damages to be awarded to the families of the murdered school-children whom he traduced. The jury handed down 15 individual awards that ranged from $28.8 million to $120 million, totaling $965 million in compensatory damages. And this amount does not include the punitive damages, which have as yet to be determined. Some post-trial motions undoubtedly will be held, and a court has the option of reducing the amount to what it considers to be reasonable damages, but the likelihood is that even in such a scenario Jones will still be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars. His assets total to less than a third of the amount he has been ordered to pay, so he may very well be reduced to a subsistence lifestyle for many years to come – a fitting climax to a story of a fortune acquired by a career of years of lying and chicanery with the deliberate intention of tormenting relatives mourning the victims of murder. And so the whirligig of time brings in his revenges!
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 629,276,649; # of deaths worldwide: 6,569,648; # of cases U.S.: 98,811,369; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,090,287. For the current season, at any rate, COVID now appears containable. The mortality rate is well under 1%, both nationally and globally.