Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
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Cases have dipped to about 105K new cases daily.
No doubt the biggest news over the past week is the relaxation of CDC guidelines. This seems to reflect the assessment that up to 95% of Americans past their mid-teens have acquired immunity through vaccine or natural exposure. While there are some cautions for people in high risk groups and areas with high infection rates, the following changes are now recommended:
- the minimum 6 feet apart rule no longer apples
- no need to quarantine after exposure to someone with COVID-19
- no more daily testing regimens at school.
Other Notes
Modest uptick in the blog readership over the past week, although on some days daily posts drew about a handful of pageviews, lowest I've seen in years.
A personal pet peeve I have has to do with certain commercial antivirus programs which will try to autoenroll you into 3-digit annual renewable rates on your credit cards; I refuse to pay rhar kind of money.. (I will not reveal them here, but there are at least a couple of well-known vendors I have used in the past.) My ISP used to include a "free" subscription to one of them but now claims to do its own network filtering. I choose to continue a separate subscription beyond the scope of this post. but I balk at those high renewal rates. And when one such vendor pulled the renewal trigger in advance, I ended up confronting customer service.
So there's a new (to me) spam message which spoofs originating from an antivirus company claiming my credit card has been charged , e.g., $350 for renewal. Say what? I don't know how exactly the scam works--maybe they try to get your credit card number to process a refund/partial refund. It is somewhat effective, because I've had the precedent of unwanted credit card charges. Is someone fraudulently using my credit card? I do remember scanning my card account for unusual/unauthorized charges. Usually this sort of thing gets trapped in my email provider spam filters, but occasionally they slip through. It's just annoying because of past legitimate issues and I didn't want to fight with customer service again.
I was interested in watching WWE Smackdown to see where they were going with Karrion Kross and the upcoming Reigns/McIntyre titles clash overseas. Kross made a cameo appearance, but I didn't really see McIntyre calling Kross out. Scarlett did approach McIntyre, but it served to distract from the Usos' attack on McIntyre (protecting their absent cousin). There are all sorts of rumors that WWE wants to split the titles to the separate (RAW and Smackdown) shows. So the rumor is that Reigns could drop one or both belts to McIntyre and Kross. Now to a certain extent the WWE has never given Reigns a consolidated belt, and USA is unhappy with Reigns' rare appearances on RAW.
The question is, how do you separate the belts? I remember years back WWE had a unified belt but I think separated the titles in the brand split. But how do you book it? One unlikely idea is to book a triple-threat match and have McIntyre and Kross jointly pin Reigns, splitting the belts to the winner. Another idea is that Reigns has to defend the WWE title on RAW based on a mandatory defense deadline. Or maybe Theory pins Reigns wearing just one belt. Likely none of these.
The women's titles are intriguing. We still haven't seen the return of Charlotte Flair, who has a built-in program for Ronda Rousey. They may be extending the latter's heel turn over losing her rematch with Liv Morgan. I am intrigued by their pushing Ronda's pal Shayna Baszler. I always thought they would put the tag team titles on Ronda and Shayna. They teased a confrontation between the two where Shayna was rebuking Ronda's attitude. The situation sets up some interesting angles, like having Ronda turn on Shayna so Ronda can confront Liv for the rubber match of their series. I think for the other title Bayley is aiming at Bianca's title, but I don't think she's even had a singles match yet since her return.
