Shutdown Diary
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It looks like about 4.5 million 5-11 yo kids have been at least partially (and just under 1M fully) vaccinated. Booster shots continue to improve but it looks like fully vaccinated adults are leveling out at just over 71% of adults.
Of course the big news is the new omicron variant; rumors were rampant, even roiling Wall Street on fears of another economic shutdown. I've been hesitant to write anything about it given little information. I think the first diagnosed case in the US was reported this week, and I just saw in a recent Google search some 3 new cases reported in Maryland. One of the sources I've used in this segment is Nature; this piece is relevant. Currently about 99% of US COVID-19 cases involve the Delta variant. What is worrisome about omicron is the R number, a measure of propagation power; reportedly this is above 2 which was last seen in the early days of the pandemic; in addition, the nature and extent of spike proteins may cause problems for antibodies resulting from natural infection or vaccines, although keep in mind there's more to immunity than antibodies, e.g., T cells. There's some evidence of milder illness and/or some protection by enhanced immunity against severe disease. Vaccine developers are already working on strain specific shots which reportedly could take up to 3 months to develop and a few months to scale up to production.
Other Notes
I fell under 2000 November blog pageviews, an informal objective, by a handful, the second time by a similar margin over the past year. No doubt this was affected by a short month and fewer posts, in part due to my local relocation. But really readership numbers fell off in the latter part of the month, except for a decent close of the month. I also haven't tweeted much lately; so much of it is boring recycled trends on Trumpkin Republicans or Trump's family members, Republican governors (TX and FL), Fauci, various Congressional Dems, the Biden legislative agenda, etc.
My UH Cougars are enjoying their first successful football season than their Jack Pardee prolific scoring "run-and-shoot" days (back around the early 90's). They're up for the conference championship against undefeated Cincinnati later this Saturday afternoon as I write.
I hate moving. I had to do so for a number of reasons recently (among other reasons, my former landlord never replaced a defective full-size refrigerator freezer or kitchen overhead lights in over a year) But worse, the noise was pretty bad; I lived in an integrated complex and have never cared for rap, hip-hop and the like; (I probably stopped listening to pop hits a decade ago.) I did like some classic sole and R&B (some of my early album purchases included hit compilations by Diana Ross and the Four Tops) and could tolerate some disco. But I find most recent stuff unlistenable; I remember an old Doonesbury strip that had a line I loved, which I would paraphrase: "could sterilize a frog from 20 yards away". Yup. Not to mention some cars were so obnoxious, my apartment windows would literally rattle from the noise, which I would think would impair the perpetrator's hearing. Not to forget young ethnic neighbors who are so inconsiderate in imposing their noise on other people, that I had to spend a lot of time wearing earplugs. Moving to a smaller apartment meant lots of trips to my storage unit and pitching a lot of stuff, including MBA textbooks I haven't opened in over 20 years. I expect to spend a lot of time over the weekend unpacking. I'm still recovering from days of bending, climbing stairs, cleaning, etc.
As to WWE, I enjoy seeing Brock Lesnar coming back to challenge Roman Reigns. I thought the story they were doing was to have Sami Zayn, who had tricked his way into a championship match, get a Miz-like run beating McIntyre, only to be destroyed by Lashley, in this case with Lesnar playing the Lashley role. Instead Zayn gets the inverse treatment, wiped out by Lesnar to set up a rematch with Reigns. A shame: I think a brief reign by Zayn would have been great for his character.
