Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
The latest vaccine and other stats from CDC:
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The BA.5 mini-wave continues to progress at about 130K cases daily. I read one good Fortune post which explains how T cells, vs. antibodies, may be the unsung hero of the pandemic. If you do a quick Google search on the mRNA vaccines and T cells, you'll see a robust response. Long story short, whereas the vaccines haven't done a great job warding off infection, they could explain why, with significant vaccination coverage, hospitalization rates remain manageable, even as cases continue to surge.
Other Notes
Blog readership has been slower than normal over the past week; it's been a while since my last triple-digit day in pageviews.
I'm finally nearing the end of my Dallas marathon, down the home stretch of season 14. My liver almost hurts over how much alcohol is consumed every episode, especially JR's signature bourbon and branch. I think I didn't watch much of the tail end of the run because none of these plots ring a bell.
I did remember early in the run over how JR got locked up in Cuba. The back story was JR needed revenues and sold Cuba oil in defiance of an embargo. Long story short, there is an issue in getting the necessary bribes paid, and Cuba takes delivery of the oil without payment. JR desperately goes to Cuba in search of the money and finds himself jailed basically as a price to pay for not handling the bribe protocol correctly. So you wonder how the hell JR is going to get out of jail, never mind his missing money for oil. It turned out they let him out after a day with full payment for the oil because "We Cubans are an honorable people".
Then there's the whole plotline behind how JR meets and seduces Cally, a naive young waitress in some rural town while on a hunting trip. Cally's crazy brothers seize him, Cally and JR (at gunpoint) wed, and he is quickly convicted of rape and finds himself on a forced manual labor gang. One really doesn't see how he'll get out of this mess. He manages to escape, but the plot really doesn't make sense: after all, JR is well known in Dallas, but there's no apparent search for an escaped convicted "rapist". Cally finds him though and has an extended run as JR's second wife. The marriage eventually ends over Cally's fears of JR's alleged womanizing.
Then there's the unlikely plot of how JR gets himself committed to a sanitarium, mostly in a plot to get access to stepdad Clayton Farlow's crazy sister Jessica, Dusty Farlow's real mother. JR wants Dusty's shares' voting rights in WestStar, a key rival which at one point took ownership of Ewing Oil assets. He has a plan to get released in 5 days, but alienated son James Beaumont, in an alliance with now estranged wife Cally, intercepts the plan paperwork, gets into a confrontation with JR at the hospital and when JR vows payback after signing a property settlement for Cally as part of a quid quo pro for release papers, destroys them. Cally has a second copy of release papers and seems sympathetic to JR's plight but fears payback. JR eventually gets released through Cally's copy of papers but not from Cally herself. You might think JR would go after James but JR has strong ideas about family.
There were other odd plot lines, which I may save for a future post. I think there was at least one post-run movie around 1996 but I haven't found it yet on streaming sources. Then there was a multi-season reboot on TNT around 2012.
