Pandemic Review
The latest stats from WaPo: 13.3 K
The CDC charts I've normally clipped were not updated this week. I've normally included charts on vaccine and variants. The former webpage indicates it has suspended updating the page since last week until mid-June. The latter webpage announced that it is going to be published on a biweekly schedule. I will resume clipping updates as they become available,
New cases continue at roughly a 13.3K clip. Just a reminder: vaccines augment the body's natural immunity response, but even vaccinated people can get infected given the nature and extent of infection. I saw a recent Chicago op-ed where, like me, a 5-shot mRNA vaccine recipient, reported his recent COVID experience. I sill limit my public exposures; I haven't been to social events like sports arenas, parties, etc.
The battle against anti-vaxxer misinformation continues. One was a study that linked COVID to long-term brain damage; anti-vaxxers attributed to vaccines instead. Another was a study that linked severe COVIF with accelerated aging where again they substituted vaccines for the disease. Another antivaxxer myth busted: vaccines during pregnancy do not pose more risk of miscarriage.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, primarily Republicans, continue to promote the lab leak hypothesis on COVID origin, despite little direct evidence.
New USC research estimates the pandemic, by the end of this year, will have cost our economy some $14T.
Other Notes
Readership has modestly improved since a poor first week, with one recent day totaling over 150 pageviews. Not a clue to explain ii. It's possible to improve over last month's low numbers; it depends on the coming week.
I'm doing my part in energy savings. My hybrid auto reports I'm averaging about 54,7 mpg. Oh, and much of my driving is lower since the start of the pandemic with a number of work-from-home days. And my utility provided me with the following report;
/I'm not sure of the secret of my success; I keep my thermostat in check. My home is maybe a couple of degrees warmer than comfortable, However, I remember once coming down with prickly heat in Houston keeping the AC setting too high.
Well, egg prices continue to drop, at least locally. 5 dozen cartons of Walmart's budget brand are about $6.02. Or you can buy a dozen for a slightly higher $1.24/doz. My favorite supermarket of the past couple of years (Lidl) usually is very competitive, but their most recent price is $1.69/doz. A local supermarket circular is selling 18-count cartons for $1.99. I just love eggs; I usually boil a few for a meal staple sandwich since childhood, occasional tuna salad, or a snack between meals.
If you followed my nutrition blog, you know I have a preference for grass-fed meat; lots of reasons but basically grain-finished meat tends to have higher Omega-6 fatty acids. I can usually find $5 bricks at Sam's Club or on sale Lidl. Lidl often puts psckaged 8 or so oz GF sirloin, ribeye or strip steaks on sale. I also like to try different meats, like bison, lamb. or even venison (Weis and Trader Joe's have occasionally offered it) You can usually find GF leg of lamb or chops sourced from Australia or New Zealand at Sam's Club.
I'm also into organ meat (livers, kidneys, heart, tongue, etc.) for similar reasons. Sometimes you have to do mail-order. So, tonight for dinner I head a head choose sandwich, which is roughly (in this vendor's fully cooked version, about a third heart or tongue). Different, not bad, somewhat chewy. Probably for most people an acquired taste. I also tossed some beef kidneys from the vendor in the crockpot and loved the results.
When it comes to chicken, I have a couple of preferences. Safeway used to carry air-chilled SmartChicken. I think I also bought some birds directly from SmartChicken. Air-chilled chicken will rock your world over your conventional chicken. I think since then, SmartChicken no longer offers whole birds through its online store.
And then back when I subscribed to Butcher Box back in AZ, they had tossed in as a bonus an Emmer & Co. heritage bird. I was later disappointed to find Butcher Box didn't carry it. I roasted the bird, and I've never tasted more flavorful chicken in my life. Unfortunately, as a bachelor I didn't have the freezer space to buy 6 birds (costly, about $150), and I think they must have since gone out of business since I can't find them.
Captcha hell. Especially when I'm using my VPN. Google can be annoying as hell with these stupid games (e.g., click all the boxes with a traffic light, bicycle, whatever in it). If you use Google's own VPN, you don't run into it, but half the time it doesn't work on my desktop, Oh, there's a workaround: I can put my VPN on snooze, but I can just as easily switch my search provider to Bing or DuckDuckGo.
I'm not sure what happened the other day but I ran into some cable connection glitch. It's not I'm a Fox News regular user but I thought it was a typical temporary glitch and it became an outage. There were workarounds: I could watch on my TV or cellphone... Apparently, the issue was resolved by the overnight programming update.
