Shutdown Diary
The latest stats from Washpo:
According to CDC:
At work in northern MD, the local population is sufficiently saturated that my group of IT contractors has now resumed a full telework schedule (versus 2 to 3 days on site per week) and mandatory masking on site includes us vaccinated.
I got into a testy text exchange with my RN sister about the renewed vaccinated-indifferent masking protocol for our female relative in a memory care facility in Texas, which operates under Texas state health regulations. It's probably a case of 'don't shoot the messenger'. I haven't seen any empirical evidence that conventional cloth masks do much of anything about the spread of bioaerosols, even assuming the masks are worn appropriately. I think the biggest protection is two-way protection against virus-laden splatter from respiratory events, like coughing, sneezing, singing or yelling. The evidence against vaccinated or previously infected people spreading the virus is limited and mostly of an anecdotal (vs. scientific) nature. It's basically an inference of comparable nasal and mouth concentrations of virus from vaccine breakthrough cases. with vague appeals of the sort "well, cloth masks are better than nothing". The problem is that this Kabuki dance lends a false sense of security.
The primary issue with this mandate extension to the vaccinated is that vaccine breakthroughs account for maybe 3% of cases and the percentage of vaccine breakthroughs is something like 0.04% of the vaccinated population. The preponderance of the issue is with the 30% of the population which remains unvaccinated, especially for children under 11 for which vaccines are still unavailable, although they tend to be less at risk for health complications than other age groups (except for babies and immunocompromised individuals).
Going back to the kerfuffle with my sister, the far bigger I've seen is that this same facility had cases of COVID-19 among both staff and residents (and we aren't talking about hundreds of people). Still, after all that, THERE IS NO VACCINE MANDATE FOR STAFF AND RESIDENTS. And I'm concerned about evidence that effectiveness of the Pfizer and/or other shots may be reduced after 6 months. The FDA seems to be moving at a slow speed towards approval of a booster shot approval for immunocompromised individuals. The practical problem in terms of masking regulation is there is no easy way of distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, and some unvaccinated people prefer not to mask at all. My relative and the rest of us siblings are all vaccinated, but all this focus on a Kabuki dance aimed at the vaccinated is absurd when by far the biggest risk is from unvaccinated individuals.
Tom Woods, one of the content providers for my daily blogposts and a well-known libertarian historian, recently admitted that he caught COVID-19; we don't know the specifics of when he was diagnosed, but he's currently recovering from pneumonia. Apparently there is such a thing as COVID pneumonia. although I'm not sure Woods has it. Woods, of course, has been obsessed with COVID-19 and public policy, and he's still promoting his online quiz where he compares say liberalized (policy-free) states to lockdown states on some COVID-19 case metric, and dares you to identity the policy-heavy state.
But it's like all these Mises caucus libertarians (Woods, Rand Paul, Tom Massie, Dave Smith, Nate Thurston (GML) , etc.) are all reading from the same dopey playbook. (I would hope that Ron Paul has been vaccinated, but I haven't heard him mention it.) But it's like Woods is echoing Rand Paul and Tom Massie swearing off vaccination after infection, insisting their natural infection immunity is good enough. MedPage, one of my sources for COVID-19, information, reported a Kentucky-based study showing unvaccinated previously infected patients were more than twice as likely to get reinfected, suggesting that naturally conferred immunity may be less responsive, say, against newer variants like Delta.
Speaking of MedPage, here is a post reporting on why the Delta variant is considered a thousand times more infection than earlier types of COVID-19. Here's another interesting post as some doctors, who were immunized over 6 months ago, noticing data from Israel and elsewhere on declining protection against, say, the Delta variance, especially among the elderly and/or immunocompromised, are worried about the FDA waiting for more hard data domestically before authorizing a third Pfizer booster shot.
Miscellaneous Notes
I have a recurring dream of returning to UT/Austin (where I earned my first Master's) with one or both of the following elements: (1) not knowing when or where my first classes are scheduled and (2) not knowing where to park. [I lived on campus for my degree.] It's weird because a lot of the 40K+ students live off campus and manage to commute, and I started at UH as a part-time MBA night student commuting to campus, so I'm sure I would figure it out. The dreams all end the same way: Screw it! I don't need this; I guess I'll just wake up. Seriously...
Following the late July burst in readership, readership seemed to crash back to barebones levels of the past 2-3 weeks. It's since modestly recovered, but far below the 2000 monthly pageview pace over the past 6 months. Most posts see low 2-digit pageviews, with my one-off/essay posts doing better but well off the pace I've seen in the past 2-4 years where a number of posts ranged in the multiple-dozen range. Who knows? Maybe I've turned off fellow pro-liberty readers with my relatively unpopular anti-Trump and pro-vaccine stands. Maybe Google isn't promoting my content. I will say, though, Google Analytics said my website visits exceeded over 120 visitors last month. In the past I've seen numbers like 23, so that's an improvement.
I will say that I did get my new 12 TB hard drive in MD vs. SC (see my last journal post). Plus, I got a slight unexplained credit to my charge card (maybe a difference in sales tax across states?) I do recall wincing at the sales tax, but I got a discount which offset the sales tax.)It still takes a day or two to mirror my key data between drives.
Entertainment
Well, I was probably on my feet the whole fourth period as the US men's basketball team edged France in the gold medal game, closer than the final 5-point winning margin indicators. I think the French's starters have all or mostly been NBA players. The French never had an Australia-like dominant early lead, but it took a while for the US men to get going. It seemed like the US had no answer for France's dominant center for most of the game; they were lucky that he sucked at the free throw line. The US led most of the latter part of the game but it seemed like every time they got into a double-digit lead and threaten to put the game out of reach, France would inevitably claw back to within 5 or 6 points. And they are talented from the 3-point range. I'm sure the US team felt like deja vu from their earlier pool play loss to France, leading late in the fourth period but France ended with a 16-2 run to take the game. I think for a few minutes in the fourth quarterly France held the US to 2 points and cut the lead at one point to 3 points. There were worrisome moments down the stretch like when the US player missed both free throws but there was a clutch 3-point shot and a breakaway steal and bucket, and you knew when France desperately fouled "Captain America" Durant, leading all scorers with 29, in the closing stretch, the US would pull it out. But you never could rule out a 3-pointer and a steal of the in-bound pass. It really wasn't until France missed a clutch closing-minute shot that you knew we had the gold.
Down the home stretch I'm looking to the US women's volleyball and basketball gold medal matches. It's hard to say what other sports (besides swimming last week) held my interest. I loved my 1995 business visits to Brazil and was thrilled they won the gold medal soccer game against favored Spain I don't think I've played soccer since 8th grade gym in Kansas. I remember going to some Brazilian weekend resort outside Sao Paulo and got invited to play in a pickup game, but I wasn't about to embarrass myself. USA Network was playing the gold medal game when I got up this morning, and I thought it was live until I looked at Twitter and saw Brazil had won it.
I was absorbed by the men's repeat gold medal American shot put winner, who won it in memory of his just-deceased grandfather. I was cheering the men's baseball team but didn't catch their losing the gold medal game against Japan, which has yielded many great baseball players in the post-WWII era. I don't think I've played badminton or ping pong since my undergraduate days. I think I last played volleyball in a church league in my late twenties, and my last organized sports effort was in a UH softball league as a graduate student. In terms of other sports, I remember men's track and boxing were dominated by US stars during my college years, and there was a fumbled US men's relay team baton exchange.
The closing ceremonies are late tomorrow. as I write, the US trails gold metal leader China 38-36, but the US has the aggregate medal lead at 109 by 21 medals.
On the entertainment front, Hallmark ended its Christmas in July promotion last weekend, and so I'll likely turn to PosiTV and Amazon Video and Peacock streaming services. I know that USA preempted NXT wrestling during Olympics coverage. (I think they had episodes on SCIFY, not in my cable bundle. I think it's available a day later on Peacock, but Peacock does a poor job of organizing content. I think I caught last week's episode mostly by recognizing Latino wrestlers in an image.
Much of the buzz in WWE wrestling has been AEW apparently signing CW Punk and Daniel Bryan and WWE cutting Bray Wyatt as apparently a cost-cutting move. Lots of speculation about Wyatt also ending up in AEW (following Aleister Black. Christian Cage, Big Show, and several other WWE veterans like Chris Jericho, Cody Rhodes, and others) and possibly former NXT champ Adam Cole, RAW once again had NXT Champ Karrion Cross jobbing, this time a return bout with Keith Lee. The rumor I've heard is that the storyline involves his absent escort Scarlett Bordeaux, that she is the missing element to his dominance in the ring.
The storylines aren't very compelling except maybe for Sasha Banks return for her championship rematch with Bianca Belair. It looks like WWE is teasing a 3-way among Reigns, Cena, and Balor, with Balor pissed off that Cena "stole" his championship match with Reigns. Never mind his shot was because Reigns rejected 16-time champ Cena's challenge. I wasn't a fan of how WWE turned Edge's Wrestlemania match against Reigns into a 3-way with Daniels. It just seems like a cheap way to have Reigns win a match by default by having the babyfaces battle each other. It also looks like WWE is teasing a Nakamura challenge to Apollo Crew for the intercontinental title and a split between the Mysterio father-son tag team.
