Post #7094 J

Pandemic Report

The latest COVID-18 weekly stats:

Clearly with the serious stats, including deaths, still on the rise, but we aren't seeing numbers yet like past surges. Probably the biggest news over the past week is the upcoming Trump Adminisration next week and 2 of his cabinet picks; Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary who supports reinstating with backpay those who left the military for not taking the COVID vaccine shots (which I oppose but relevant legislation has been introduced in Congress) and RFK, Jr., a vaccine skeptic I also oppose, who apparently opposed the approval of the COVID vaccines.

Other relevant items of interest include:

• Legal or political items of interest include:
• "The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that its Occupational Safety and Health Administration has terminated its COVID-19 healthcare rulemaking."
• "Jury awards $133K to MGM Grand Detroit worker who refused COVID-19 vaccine"
• "Biden Health Agency Sued Over Covid-19 Vaccine Injury Process"
• "Mesa County deputy who caught COVID-19 while on duty gets $1 million in workers' compensation"
• "Broadband access associated with fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths"
• "COVID-19 Vaccine Confers Protection Against Post-COVID-19 Conditions"
• "COVID-19 Vaccines Do Not Increase Risk for Thyroid Diseases"
• "Study uncovers why lupus patients have weaker response to COVID-19 vaccines"
• "COVID-19 vaccine developed by Brazilian researchers shows promise in mice"
• "1 in 20 COVID survivors may have condition characterized by extreme fatigue"
• "UQ and Vaxxas win global prize to accelerate patch-based mRNA vaccine for COVID-19"
• "Despite international concerns, doctors say China flu-like virus is no COVID-19"
• "Maternal COVID-19 Infection Leads to Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Newborns"
• "False claims of Covid-19, hMPV virus hybrid in China circulate"
• Prosecution of COVID relief fraud and other crimes continue:
• "Former state Rep. Carolina Amesty charged with COVID-19 relief fraud"
• "New Mexico business owner reaches settlement over use of COVID-19 relief funds"
• "West Virginia Man Sentenced for COVID-19 and Unemployment Benefits Fraud Scheme"

Other Notes

The blog has seen a suspicious rise in pageviews; I still haven't published the commentary posts.  On Twitter/X i finally reached a high of 75 followers this week, although I've seen a few of those drop off. I really don't get feedback on people who stop following, but I'm somewhat nuanced. For example, I'll be contrary on some anti-Trump tweets or some anti-Biden tweets, but if you stick around long enough, I am highly critical of both. I try to stay away from purely personal attacks. .But whatever the case, this is roughly where I got with my old Twitter account, and just 2-3 months back it seemed almost impossible to ever reach the 70's because I had been at a lower ceiling for so long.

A lot of my more technical blog posts have dealt with practical issues in managing personal emails. I probably get  up to 500 emails daily. I transitioned from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. (I had tried Microsoft Mail, the successor to Outlook Express, but my experience was that it was unusable if you maintained large enough email folders.) Over time I had set up elaborate email filtering schemes that even since I have a licensed copy of Outlook I've stayed with Thunderbird.

MailStore has a free client which I use to stage monthly filtered folders into an email warehouse. As a professional DBA, I like having redundant clients and MailStore's search functionality.

So I recently ran into ran into some corrupted emails and I couldn't delete them directly. There was a link to report the problem, but I got an automated response they don't actively support the free client but I could check with their user community forum.

Long story short, there's a way to port my warehouse folders back into Thunderbird and I rebuilt my MailStore structure which effectively got rid of the corrupted email problem.