Pandemic Report
The latest stats from CDC+
RFK, Jr., Biden's closest challenger and an anti-vaxxer, stepped in it, saying
"Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” Kennedy said, adding that “we don’t know whether it’s deliberately targeted that or not.”
We see any near-fatal health crisis involving celebrities being the target of some vaccine victim conspiracy theory by anti-vaxxers. The classic example was Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin who collapsed on the field late last season. The latest example is pop star Madonna who nearly died from sepsis following a chronic bacterial infection.
Anti-vaxxers engage in different attacks. One notorious example was the upload of a paper ""A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings in Deaths after COVID-19 Vaccination" to a preprint area affiliated with The Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal. The paper was never reviewed or accepted by the journal but it was removed from the preprint area because the methodologies deployed did not support the authors' conclusions. The anti-vaxxers attempted to imply the research was peer-reviewed but suppressed over its findings,
The Florida GOP, rather than celebrating the Trump Administration's arguably most significant success in his last year of office, the development and emergency approval of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines, is already having a grand jury investigating the vaccine rollout in Florida investigated for possible crimes, The Brevard County Republican Executive Committee (BREC) is taking stupidity to a whole new level by urging the state to ban mRNA vaccines.
Other Notes
Blog readership has modestly improved over the past week, but less than a dozen pageviews yesterday, which is lighter than usual. We are running somewhat slower than last month's pace. I worked very hard over days on the month's first essay. I had my first 4K+ tweet in a while. If someone told me a month ago, I would be supportive of Obergefell I would have thought they were crazy.
Sometimes having multiple Amazon devices can drive me crazy. I routinely use it as a timer, e.g., for the burger in my Foreman grill, I've got a Dot and a TV cube in my living room and a Show in my bedroom. If my TV is running off the cube vs. my cable works beautifully. My Dot and Show acknowledge timers and the alerts are clearly audible. If I'm watching cable, the cube will often take it, but no acknowledgement and I don't hear it. It's not just that but the devices often emit a 2-note alert of a notification, e.g., a weather alert or a package delivery. Half the time no acknowledgment to "Alexa, what are my notifications?" or an explicit denial of any. I'll then see something in my email or on my cellphone.
Odd. I went to Lidl after a medical test yesterday, and I was stopped from entering by an employee (?) saying no power. No general outage of which I am aware. The odd thing is I didn't see any subsequent status on the website or any phone number. Instead, I went to Walmart. Their 5-dozen egg carton now sells for under $5. I'll notice odd things. Like they used to sell Progresso soup for about $1.57/can, and now it's over $2. I've noticed some pricey but keto-friendly cereal. Some grass-fed butter alternatives to long-time favorite but absurdly expensive Kerrygold,
