Shutdown Diary
WaPo continues to experiment with its format, so I'm adjusting mine accordingly:
On the vaccine front
In the last week, an average of 1.34 million doses per day were administered, a 4% increase over the week before.
According to CDC:.
Well, the slender bounce to flat increases isn't unexpected; in the past few weeks my journal posts have suggested recent declines had plateaued. I haven't seen a good explanation but two contributing factors include lackluster vaccination rates (although we see some welcome advances in booster shots and child immunizations (see clip below)) barely denting the unvaccinated during the highly contagious Delta wave and we're well into the cooler autumn season with people spending less time in the better ventilated outdoors. The concentration of bioaerosols will only intensify as we transition into winter next month.
-I usually don't go too much into legal issues, including on Biden's OSHA mandate A federal appeals court panel has temporarily blocked the private company mandate provision. As I tried to explain in my earlier essay, I'm not convinced the 84M workers, likely mostly vaccinated already, for larger-scale employee pools are driving the pandemic wave. and employers could restrict unvaccinated workers in other ways, such as more isolated workspaces, daily temperature checks, etc. The risks posed by the unvaccinated workers on the vaccinated are modest.
I think, like perhaps my favorite legal analyst, Ilya Somin, Biden's case for the federal workforce is more compelling, but the private sector mandate has nondelegation and federalism issues. This piece explains why I and other libertarians are receptive to certain vaccine mandates (like the ones for government workers).
Other Notes
The readership is modestly up over the last few weeks; there was 1 week where my number of double-digit posts dwindled to 1 over the past week. For most of the recent past maybe a majority and especially my special format posts have been in that range. However, it's been a while since I've had more than 4 dozen readers to a post.
The booking of WWE's signature Survivor's Series has been puzzling. You have the men's champs Roman Reigns confronting Big E. The question is how to book a victory without weakening the opposing champ. It seems obvious to oppose their factions, the Bloodline and the New Day. That way one of the tag teams could job. Of course, the Usos are already scheduled against RK-Bro. But the Usos could intervene in favor of Reigns, and the match gets recast as a 3-on-3. Then there's Aaliyah (a Canadian; at first I thought this was Mysterio's daughter) who got picked onto the Smackdown women's team despite no matches on Smackdown.
Hallmark is well into Countdown to Christmas I think Lifetime has started transitioning as well, over the last 2 days' schedule. The two Hallmark movies tonight, about a father's purported daughter outside of marriage and a split hit singing duo, intrigue me.
