Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
The latest from CDC:
Well, a welcome dip down to 58K/daily, the first in a few weeks, in cases; there was a worry about a spike with extended family reunions (although it can take a few days for an infection to manifest itself, like the miserable cold I caught over Thanksgiving). The biggest news continues to be the COVID-19 surge in China, where the government thankfully has ended its brutal zero-COVID isolation policies but by some estimates up to 9000 Chinese are dying daily. It is notable enough for the Biden Administration to reimpose Trump-era travel restrictions for travelers from China. The bigger worry continues to be the likely emergence of new, deadly variants as the pandemic drags on. Notice in the variant charts above, XBB has overtaken BA.5 and is now the dominant variant in New England
Other Notes
Well, with just over a day left in the month/year, it's all but a lock I'll set a record low for monthly pageviews, probably in the range of 200-300 pageviews, as multiple days this past week I barely cracked double-digits. I'm not sure why; I did post notes that blog scheduling might be affected by travel plans, but my recent illnesses affected those. I still have had to embed some older clips, e.g., when McClanahan took a year end hiatus from fresh publication (but they hadn't been published earlier in the blog) since my regular feeds have published fewer clips. Hopefully readership will recover in the new year.
Hallmark is winding down its Countdown to Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of old favorites, "Angels and Ornaments" and "A ChristmasVisitor" made cameo appearances on HMM, but several didn't, like "Farewell, Mr. Kringle" and Debbie Macomber "Mrs. Miracle" nanny movies, "Help for the Holidays", "Annie Claus", "Christmas Magic", etc. I think some might now be licensed to other family cable channels. I thought some were linked to the Hallmark Drama Channel (not in my bundle), but oddly I didn't see much of any holiday content in channel listings. I did add a few other holiday contents to my Amazon Prime watchlist, but I think those may disappear by New Year's.
Phone spam. The latest one was a phishing attempt using a USPS context to harvest personal contact information. The context was USPS couldn't deliver a package because an inapplicable piece of my (unprovided) delivery address was missing; shipper wasn't identified. There was a tracking number which pulled up nothing on the US tracking site. Not to mention I wasn't expecting a delivery.
I'm mostly recovered from being sick for over 2 weeks earlier this month. I lost a lot of water--I remember between Monday and Wednesday doctor visits, I had dropped 3-4 lbs. Yes, I was barely eating, but I rarely drop that kind of weight while dieting over a week or 2. I dropped at least another 12 pounds although the doctor scales tend to weigh me 4 or 5 lbs over my Taylor scale. The point is, I've already gained those 12 pounds back--probably all water because I'm still transitioning to my regular diet. (I bought a lot of nutritional shakes during my nausea stage.)
