Shutdown Diary
The latest stats from Washpo:
In the past week in the U.S. ...
New daily reported cases fell 7.2%
New daily reported deaths rose 8.4%
Covid-related hospitalizations fell 3%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 9.1%.
The number of tests reported fell 22.6%
An average of 267.4k adults received the first dose in the U.S. over the last week
In the last week, an average of 711.9k doses per day were administered, a 24% decrease over the week before.
From CDC:
So it looks like the national wave has peaked, with the rolling average declining from about 160K to 145K. (Note this is over all states and your mileage may vary.)
No big stories since my last journal post other than Biden's mandates. I ran across an article which talked about comparable viral loads in Delta vaccine breakthroughs and unvaccinated patients but argued the former were less likely to shed virus due to the nature of the mRNA induced immune system response. (I can't find my source for that article.) This article does mention the period of infection of a vaccinated patient is about a third of the unvaccinated and he is less likely to shed virus. Not to mention vaccine breakthroughs are very uncommon and account for a negligible percentage of the hospitalized and dying.
Some tragic cases went viral on Twitter. An Alabama man died in transit from a cardiac event because over 40 nearby regional hospitals were full up on COVID patients needing an ICU. and Dr. Dena Grayson tweeted this: "Just learned that a former high school classmate – who is a nurse practitioner in #Florida – is now on a ventilator battling #COVID19. She was NOT vaccinated and yet continued to see patients.
Another preventable tragedy." "UPDATE: my former high school classmate who was UNVACCINATED and has been on a ventilator due to #COVID19 will have life support withdrawn tomorrow.
Her husband remains in the ICU on a ventilator and has no brain activity.
They have a 16-year-old daughter."
Probably the biggest news over the past week involves Biden's vaccine mandates for federal government employees and contractors and for larger (100+) employers through OSHA. The former would probably include me (although I've been fully vaccinated since early April), I don't think that the government has rolled out logistics for the earlier announced military mandate yet so I suspect these mandates will also take time.
I usually don't get involved in politics in this segment, but the OSHA mandate has led me to call for Biden's impeachment. The issue isn't so much the idea of an employer mandate or a state mandate (in fact, I would recommend it for certain states like Alabama which are seeing hospitals at capacity) as a fed mandate (health security is a state responsibility). There are practical issues in enforcing it, including privacy of health information, previously infected do have some natural immunity, and some people cannot physically tolerate vaccines. But employers have their own vested interests in maintaining a safe workplace for customers and employees. And with most adults already fully vaccinated, it's not an effective way to handle the 25% of the unvaccinated. I do think it's easier for companies to scapegoat the government. Some job positions require close contact; remember that Navy ship with a huge outbreak early in the pandemic? Obviously some positions--medical personnel, physical therapists, makeup artists, mass transit, cashiers, child care, mail clerks, etc.--can breach social distancing heuristics. Others, for example in IT, can be done remotely; I have Microsoft Teams on my work laptop; I can text, call or attend remote meetings from home easily. Even if I encountered infected people at work, the risks of infection are low, even less when I wear one of my N95 masks and/or unvaccinated people wear the same. I do think there are alternatives, like taxes/surcharges on health insurance/services/prescriptions and/or state/local/federal taxes, waived for vaccine compliance, vaccine registration cards (so-called vaccine passports), etc., which could be required for public events, transit, and various businesses (such as movie theaters). (You could build in some exemptions, e.g., like driver licenses requiring corrective lens for nearsighted people. So, for example, a designated M requires the bearer's use of a mask.)
Life's Little Problems
As I have posted before, I have 5 PC's and a Chromebook, most of which are older and serve as backups and/or specialized services (e.g., I have MS Office and ActivClient software on one of them. The latter was needed in a past position where I needed a Smarcard reader to use a CAC to access certain government websites (say, mail or training) and I didn't have access to a government PC or network.). I really don't hold multi-license packs beyond security software and backup software. Now as to apps, you have some online options like free Google Chrome Apps (which allow you to read or write Office-compatible documents, spreadsheets, and more). But one key tool I use is freeware collections that can run from a relatively inexpensive USB flash drive; I can recommend PortableApps.com: I maintain a number of utilities, including a key password manager, multiple browsers, office suites, process manager, note, image, pdf, and sound utilities, etc. With cloud-backed workfiles or local backups and the like, I can easily be productive on another system in a short period of time.
I routinely will ensure my flash drive software collections are up to date. I did notice the flash drive on my workhorse PC had to be scanned one system bounce (which seemed to take an unusually long time); the files/programs seemed to be usable so I moved on. Until I did a routine software update--and found the updates hanging indefinitely. Long story short, on further investigation, I found the flash drive in read-only mode, and I tried multiple unsuccessful attempts to clear the status (to read-write mode). No Internet tips seemed to work.My conclusion: there's been some sort of physical corruption of the USB device. It's not a total loss; the software is still usable, but workfiles which re updated to new versions may not compatible.
So this was a 256GB drive I bought a few years back at a hefty price (I think it was in the $60+ or higher range), and I was using just a fraction of the storage. (My Portable Apps directory is under 8GB,) For example, Amazon sells a 5-pack of 64GB drives for about $26. You can find some 2TB drives in the $40 range (I have not tested the latter, but with that capacity I could theoretically store PC backups on the device.)
I had a spare 64GB flash drive; it did take a while to clone my drive over to it, but I was able to update the directly, plus add 2-3 new programs.
Entertainment
Nothing has really sparked my interest, except I saw a Lifetime promo for a rebooted Highway to Heaven episodic or movie series featuring a woman of color as the lead. I remember watching many of the original episodes. I believe the new fall TV season starts next week; I'm relieved to see Blue Bloods returning; Superman & Lois, which I haven't watched in a while, apparently premiers its second season next year. The only new series grabbing my interest is a reboot of The Wonder Years on ABC Wednesdays.
Well, we'll be in fall a week from Wednesday. And of course college and pro football seasons are finally underway. Of particular interest to me are my 2 graduate school alma maters. Of course, back then, Texas and Houston were in the now defunct Southwest Conference. UT will transition to the Southeast Conference sometime between 2022 and 2025, which will likely renew the rivalries with Texas A&M and Arkansas. And it looks like Houston will be moving into the Big 12 to replace a vacancy caused by the loss of Texas and Oklahoma.
