Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
The latest stats from CDC:
As I write, President Biden, only days after emerging from his short-term BA.5 breakthrough infection, has revealed an asymptomatic reinfection, a known risk associated with the Pfizer antiviral he was taking, Paxlovi. It's somewhat discouraging, because on Twitter, the anii-vaxxers are spiking the ball, mocking POTUS. It gets discouraging because there are times I think I'm the only pro-vaccine libertarian out there. Rand Paul has had a long-time feud with Fauci, has been extolling the virtues of natural vs acquired (vaccinated) immunity, and been pushing the crackpot Wuhan lab leak COVID-19 origins theory. Massie with 2 MIT engineering degrees, has also been sharply critical of CDC science and the vaccines. Nearly all pro-liberty people are obsessed with lockdown policies (with some justification) and vaccine and mask mandates. My objections have been more nuanced: I have been sharply critical of the use of cloth masks, which provide at best modest protection from symptomatic individuals, and I've been supportive of employers implementing mandates to protect workers.
Other Notes
As I write, SummerSlam is underway, with Bianca Belair successfully defending her championship against Lynch and celebrity Logan Paul beating the Miz, both of which I expected. Following the woman's championship, Bayley finally made her long awaited term teasing a heel faction with Dakota Kai and Io Shirai; Lynch seemed to ally herself with Bianca. As I've been writing, Lashley successfully defended against prior champ Theory, which I expected but most others didn't, given Theory's push and current MITB winner. I'll have more to say, including McMahon's sudden retirement from WWE, in future posts.
Barring an unlikely burst of blog readers tomorrow, I'll likely have my first monthly sub-1K pageviews I can remember. Over the history of the blog, I've averaged 2K+/month, usually reaching 1K about mid-month. I've had multiple days this month with barely a dozen pageviews all day. As I write, the blog hasn't collected a single pageview over the past 9+ hours. It looked like the bleeding seemed to stop after 4 straight months of deep drops, but it looks like I dropped another quarter or so of readers this month. I don't do the blog for views but I don't understand losing half my readers over 6 months.
It looks like I lost another keyboard, which came bundled with my replacement desktop. It was really weird, like trying to start a new tweet was going crazy. I've had other issues with USB keyboards including missing keys. You can order a quick replacement from Amazon for maybe $13. I've got a couple of spares, one which I'm using now. It's just I seem to run through 2 or 3 a year.
Hallmark is ending its Christmas in July promotion, although its annual Countdown to Christmas is just 3 months off. Most of their romcom's are rather lame; I think I was only interested in maybe a half dozen. I did like one of their new ones, Christmas in Toyland, where a toy company data analyst channels her inner toy designer trying to save one of the company's outlet locations from ahutdown.
My new streaming TV series marathon involves the classic, All in the Family. There are some things I never liked, like Michael and Gloria's black friend, Lionel Jefferson, who openly mocks bigot Archie Bunker, which comes across as disrespectful. Still, some episodes wear surprisingly well, like when daughter Gloria suffers a miscarriage.
