Pandemic Report
The latest stats from CDC:
The latest daily from Worldometer:
The stats, except deaths, continue to show the summer mini-wave tapering down. The big news is only 7% of American adults (including myself) and about 2% of children have taken the updated monovalent COVID-19 vaccines. In a sense, we have seen a normalization of COVID as pneumonia (another preventable disease with vaccine available) is yielding more fatalities currently. (I have been vaccinated for pneumonia over the past year. I also highly encourage the flu. Tdap, and RSV vaccines.)
Anti-vaxxer rubbish continues to flood social media. The latest example: the recent drowning death of 54yo actor Matthew Perry who played Chandler Bing on "Friends" over the past decade.
Other Notes
The blog readership will exceed over 1K this month, which seems legit compared to last month's Singapore bloated numbers. Well, a few questions because I saw Singapore back on top over the past week, but not like last month; the intraweek daily numbers seem to diminish past hump day and pickup over the weekend. I probably average about 200 impressions daily on Twitter/X, which isn't bad considering my small group of followers and less than interesting trends: there are noisy Trumpkins and the tiresome leftists quoting Biden talking points like Biblical verses.
As much as I love Google services, they drive me crazy sometimes. For some odd reason, Google Maps calculated some local destinations (like 10-15 miles away as taking 3+ hours). And whereas I prefer sticking to major routes Maps will often send you down side streets and less familiar areas. To give an example, I have an upcoming doctor's visit in an unfamiliar clinic; I heard multiple people reference a corner Bob Evans restaurant I've probably passed over 100 times along a familiar route. Ihe clinic is one major intersection past the restaurant and a few blocks away. In fact, Mapquest found these simpler directions, while Maps had me going through at least a half dozen round-abouts in more residential areas.
Another thing that's repeatedly annoyed me on my Android phone is Google will give me weather for a Charleston, SC suburb where I last lived about 7 years back. You can reset the location if you go to the Google weather page, but alas it doesn't stick. I've double-checked my Google account profile for stored addresses, etc. I have no idea how or why Google was reverting to an old location. My phone does maintain the correct local temperature on the home page, but Google was ending phone notifications with the wrong location. I did find an online forum on a similar topic, and this contributor suggested installing a well-known weather app (I have others installed). I don't know if it's a coincidence or a fix but so far after downloading said app, the Google notification is now showing my correct location.
Another pet peeve is my VPN. I set the default to US East or maybe Baltimore, but occasionally I'll sometimes finding Twitter/X trends coming from Brazil or in an unfamiliar language from across the ocean. The weirdness goes away if I go off VPN.
I hadn't done grocery shopping for a while (in part because I'm on Nutrisystem and there are modest supplemental grocery items, like cleaning supplies, produce and dairy, beverages, etc.) I went to Walmart, in part to the expanded choices over Lidl. One of the (few?) must-buy options is the 5-dozen boxes of eggs (I'm still working through the last box) for $5. (You can buy standalone dozens for about $1.13. Lidl for the longest time held at $1.04 but has gone up similarly.) Also, Walmart has Honeysuckle White frozen turkeys on sale for 98 cents/lb. But for the most part, things are astonishingly up. To give a simple example, I remember buying a small bag of iceberg lettuce for 92 cents or so; it's since doubled over the pandemic. It's more than that. Take a loaf of Ezekiel bread; I saw it selling for about $7.50. I mean, I can recall buying them for about $4.50 at Trader Joe's, where I haven't shopped in a while. People are definitely bargain hunting. For example, all of the racks of budget brand hamburger and hot dog buns were completely sold out
