Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from WaPo: 42.2K
Obviously, we have to be concerned over the uptick in hospitalizations. There are reports of China easing off its draconian "COVID zero" policies. I've seen one estimate out of California that nearly half of those infected didn't realize they had been infected. Congress is mulling over liberalizing the COVID immunization policy in a pragmatic sense (in the sense they aren't mandating boosters); some right-wingers want reinstatement of military members who left the service over the original policy with back pay, but that's unlikely because they don't want to set a precedent for disobeying a lawful military order.
More Notes
A weird readership slump where a few daily posts went to double-digits and others are barely a handful. I've seen times over the past week where the blog doesn't get a single hit over 12 hours, and/or I barely break double-digits all day. Meanwhile, a similar thing has happened, yes, even on post-Musk Twitter. I suspect a form of shadowbanning is at play which limits the reach of your product (post or tweet). For example. one of my newer tweets got only 1 impression (likely my own) over several hours. And most of my tweets yesterday got less than double digits, less than my number of followers. I don't write for pageviews or impressions but it just strikes me as odd. I have noticed I'm getting more Twitter Mommy popups; most of the time I think it has to do with the language/tone of the tweet (e.g., saying "idiotic") but it rarely tells you what is triggering the alert. You'll get something like "most Twitter users say this differently". Google doesn't provide feedback; I don't know if it could be filtering on one of the content providers I select from (e.g., McClanahan or Abbeville Institute).
I'm not going to reveal the vendor here, but I've just had one of the most bizarre online shopping experiences ever. In mid-November I placed an order for a current Chromecast and a mini-Keurig coffeemaker. I got the former the next day but the Keurig got backordered with delivery delayed until yesterday. In the interim I got a bewildering series of notifications, seeming to confuse which item was on backorder, then saying the item delivery might be delayed further. Then I got notifications yesterday that the item would be delivered at night. I go to the porch and no item. Was it a prenotification the delivery person was in the area? Nope. I open up the tacking information, apparently USPS. They indicate they left the package st or near my mailbox. This is common in apartment buildings with mail slot banks, but non-applicable. But then I suddenly noticed: the destination was somewhere in SAN DIEGO. I've never lived in San Diego and live on the other coast. I don't know how they got that address. Apparently, the vendor was working with a reseller which complicates matters. I needed more specifics on a prospective replacement shipment because I may have travel plans this month. Finally, I contacted the main vendor and requested a refund, which hopefully will be processed in a few days.
