Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
There is no way to sugarcoat infections rising to about 67K daily and deaths over 450. Hospitalizations are rising to 70-80% of capacity, with COVID-19, flu and cold-like RSV cases escalating. It does seem stats are pretty stark for some anti-vaxxer red areas: "One study, published in September by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that so-called excess death rates, or deaths elevated beyond what is expected based on historical trends, were 76% higher in Florida and Ohio among Republicans than Democrats from March 2020 to December 2021." The FDA has approved bivalent (omicron-protection) shots for young kids. Existing monoclonal antibody treatments are ineffective with newer variants. The latest defense bill before Congress rescinds the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
I do understand fatigue from over nearly 3 years of COVID-19; I was jobless at the start; I had a cluster of health issues, my savings were draining, etc. But there's a reason I've had all 5 shots, including 3 boosters, especially the last bivalent one. If you haven't completed your 2-shot primary series or haven't had the bivalent booster yet if you are immunized, please do so. It bothers me only a third of seniors are bivalently boosted.
You should not underestimate the possibility of infections over holidays and family reunions. I recently visited relatives in Ohio and must have gotten infected by a particularly nasty cold virus. It surfaced days after my return, really bad relentless cough, fatigue, loss of appetite. etc. It's lasted for over a week although symptoms have improved.
Other Notes
Blog readership numbers have been off all year; over the past week, it dropped even lower, less than a handful of pageviews for my latest post, in fact only 7 blog pageviews all day, none over one stretch of 12 hours or more. It used to be I would hit 1K readers by mid-month; now it's not a lock to get that in a full month. It's not just overall viewers; journal posts like this and essays used to attract double digit readers and that's no longer a given.
Hallmark has its good and bad moments during the holiday TV season. It looks like they've mothballed some long-time standards, like the 2 Doris Roberts' "Mrs. Miracle" movies, "Lucky Christmas" and of course "Farewell, Mr. Kringle". I've never understood why they never licensed the latter. I think technically it's in the "Hallmark Drama" library, but I've scanned the program listings and I don't think their drama channel is doing a comparable countdown. All I see are family drama series episode reruns like the Waltons.
I think the recent offering, "A Fabled Holiday", was an interesting twist on a fantasy. I loved the story they wrote for Scott McCreery's "Five More Minutes" on HMM, and it looks like there will be a second story in the series to be broadcast a week from now.
