Pandemic Report
The latest stats from CDC:
It doesn't look as though CDC updated hospitalization numbers on its website over the past week. No relevant posted notice. The webpage notes weekly updates twice, the latter being Thursday. (In part that's why I've generally published my journal posts on weekends). I sent an unacknowledged email to the website
The latest subvariant of interest is EU.1.1, a more distant descendant of the XBB.1.5 variant that had surged earlier this year, tle subvariant having manifested itself in Europe.
On COVID-19 public policy, the SBA inspector general has estimated nearly 20% of the $1.2 trillion released under the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan from March 2020 to January 2022 was lost to potentially fraudulent bad actors, mostly under Trump (86%).
Other Notes
Well, blog readership in June slightly dipped below May's numbers, about a third of the long-term trend. Disappointing but it is what it is. July seems off to a soft start.
I'm not happy with Peacock and my ISP. Peacock had been bundled. The announcement was made only recently tehy were dropping the bundle. I was supposed to get my first year at a discounted rate (about a third off). Long story short, I never saw the discount. I got charged the full $50 annual rate. I've gone through bureaucratic hell in a futile attempt to get a partial refund. It isn't so much the amount but the principle. I'll keep it primarily for WWE PLE contents, but I have a long memory on getting cheated. Around 2000 I had accumulated $600 in a Chase credit card auto rebate program, and they rejected cash in on some technicality. I don't buy cars that often, and I dropped the credit card.
I recently bought some ointment jar from Amazon--not the first time, But this jar seemed as though its open thread was stripped; I did not want to go through the hassle of returning the defective jar. Now years back when I was benching over 350 lbs. on Universal equipment, I would laugh at the idea of buying a jar opener. But one day after banging a sauce jar lid on the counter one too many times to loosen it, I bought this jar opener with a metal teeth grip on the bottom. The plastic lid was not a conventional application, but I was finally able to pry off the ointment jar lid.
