Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
Other interesting notes, not necessarily comprehensive:
- political issues:
- Washington state diverted nearly one-third billion dollars of federal COVID relief to immigrants
- Prisoners sued Oregon's governor for lowest tier priority in vaccination. The ninth circuit of appeals ruled state officials have qualified immunity
- A Louisiana resident was arrested over a satirical COVID-19 post on Facebook. He tried suing the sheriff's office for violating his rights, but the court ruled qualified immunity. One of my favorite groups, the Institute of Justice, took up his case and the fifth circuit of appeals reversed the lower court and has since been awarded $205K in damages
- Quality face masks provide an important layer of defense in congested gatherings, buildings without filtered air circulation. WAPO suggests some poplar brands like the Powecom KN95s made by Bona Fide Masks, Kimberly-Clark’s KimTech N95 Pouch Respirator, the 3M Aura N95s, Well Before, evolvetogether, Vida and KN94s.
- LA County rolled back face mask regulations at local health facilities
- Vaccines have been credited for saving at least 1.4 million European lives
- Research into contact tracing shows it is up to 40% effective in controlling pandemic spread, which varies by variant, housing, and type of occupation; for example, white-collar workers can isolate with remote work, while sailors and meat packers are more vulnerable. "Frontline workers in health care, food, transit and other essential systems in the United States faced unnecessary risks and disproportionate harm from the COVID-19 pandemic." The latter research study looks at regulatory policy failures or too narrow applications, e.g., inadequate incentives for sick employees to stay home, inadequate air quality filtration systems, etc.
- Continued fraud prosecutions including but not restricted to:
- a former Broward County law enforcement official (Sheriff's lieutenant) improperly collected $167K in PPP forgiveable loans has been charged
- two NYC women have neen sentenced over fraud and ordered to surrender related assets
- A Monterey chef has been indicted on $4M in PPP fraud
- More on vaccine efectiveness:
- "In our study, we evaluated three different vaccination regimens: 1) the monovalent booster targeting the original strain, 2) the second monovalent booster also with the original formulation, and 3) the new bivalent vaccine updated in fall 2022 to target newer omicron variants. We saw that all sequential doses provided a substantial benefit in terms of preventing hospitalization and death, and the estimates from the fall 2022 omicron specific vaccine dose were stronger from worldwide studies we looked at."
Other Notes
Blog readership has been below average over the past week. I meant to publish a couple of commentaries, one on the race for the White House and another on the Texas/US standoff on the Southern border. As time permits I hope to publish them over the coming week. On Twitter/X they seem to have relaxed what I perceived was an informal shadow ban. Again, other things preoccupied my attention and my impressions took a hit the last few days of the week.
What is it with microwave ovens and hard drives? I've literally lost 3 each of these over the past year or so. We're in an era of disposable appliances. I normally don't discuss brand names but 2 of them were Hamilton Beach I bought at Walmart (I think for about $70). Both ended up with the same problem: the microwave seems operational but it doesn't heat. I'ne seen some relevant repair clips on YouTube but I don't have the tools (beyond a screwdriver) or whether parts are brand-specific and where to buy them. You can buy a basic oven for my purpose for maybe $60, smaller than the HB. One might as well buy a new one given likely repair costs. But the microwave is an essential, e.g, fot Nutrisystem entrees.
Then the portable hard drives. I used the ones I've lost primarily as backups, and I have some cloud drive subscriptions as well. There's this one Chinese brand (A#######) that offers a 12 TB unit (maybe 11 TB which are usable) for roughly $130, maybe half the price of a comparable Seagate or Westeern Digital. Take my word on it--stick with the brand name. The last model lasted less the a month before malfunctioning and Windows basically found it unusable. Supposedly they have a 2-year warranty with no details available: Amazon simply says check with the vendor. I bought another brand and am hoping for Amazon to refund the failed unit or at least honor the warranty with an exchange like Walmart does for some products.
It takes me over a day to clone the backup from source. And worries about my desktop computer and recent issues with internet connection led mr to buy a Win 11 backup. This one came with WIFI and bluetooth dongles. I've normally patch-corded from the router to the network jack on the back of the PC. I have other devices running on WIFI with no issues but I just realized unlike my laptops, the desktop didn't have WIFI ot bluetooth functionality. Getting a "new" PC up and running is a sinkhole of time. It's the backlog of patching, installation of applications, configuring accounts to run on different devices, etc.
Wow, WWE is really pissing off its fans. I'm going to comment on a few things here. Now to be honest, everyone knew WWE was planning on CM Punk facing Seth Rollins for his "World" championship. And the WWE has been planning for years to have the Rock, now one of the busiest movie stars on the planet to confront his relative, Roman Reigns, the unified 2-belt champion with a multi-year tenure as champion; so it's finally going to happen. Cody Rhodes has a dream to get the title his late dad, Dusty, never achieved, but Reigns holds. So last year, Cody won the Royal Rumble, landing a chanpionship bout last Wrestlemania against Reigns. WWE screwed Cody, having him job to Roman, probably to save the belts for the dream match against the Rock. Everyone know the world's biggest movie star is going to lose to Reigns because he doesn't have the schedule to defend the belts.
So, Punk got injured in the Rumble, leaving Rollins without a high-profile opponent. Cody won the Rumble--but Rock had already telegraphed he was coming for Reigns. There was speculation likw a 3-way among Reigns, Rock and Rhodes or maybe having Reigns wrestle both nights of Wrestlemania. Then on Raw they had Rollins beg Cody to choose his belt, So on Smackdown, Cody ceded his spot to Rock, which makes no sense. Plus Damian Priest still hasn't cashed in hi MITB championship shot yet. Maybe they plan to have Rhodes beat Rollins (who is reportedly injured and ready to take time off) and have Priest immediately cash in--and have Rhodes challenge Reigns at SummerSlam. But having Rhodes win the Rumble only to cede the spot he won makes no sense.
I should have mentioned it on my last journal post but I was really impressed by TNA Knockouts/women's champ. Jordynne Grace, in the Rumble.
