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Saturday, August 2, 2025

Post #7305 J

 Pandemic Report

The latest CDC weekly stats:


A slight uptick in 3 of the 4 stats above, mostly in 27 states. Celebrity infections continue: "Actor Josh Gad announced Wednesday he was withdrawing from this weekend’s performances of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl because he has tested positive for COVID-19." The crackpot Trump Administration continues to challenge health science: "FDA chief says NIH ‘brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people’: "Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary again promoted a conspiracy theory about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Wednesday of funding the lab that created the virus." Noting that military fitness for duty has always included vaccines, I totally reject backpay and the like for service members who left the service rather than comply with a COVID vaccine mandate: "Congressman Ryan Zinke from Western Montana introduced the COVID-19 Military Buyback Act of 2025 in the House. The legislation aims to provide back pay and restore benefits to thousands of U.S. service members discharged under the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate."

In June, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), established by the World Health Organization (WHO), presented its assessment of the origin of COVID-19.

According to their report, although the exact origin of the virus that caused the pandemic remains unknown, “a zoonotic origin with transmission from animals to humans is currently considered the most plausible hypothesis.”

SAGO found no scientific evidence supporting the theory of “deliberate manipulation of the virus in a laboratory followed by a biosafety breach.”

COVID news items of interest include:

More Notes

The blog continues to attract a flood of dubious pageviews. I used to note the month-end stats but GIGO. I did hit my monthly post quota but it's almost impossible for me to reach 500 posts this year given my month off the Internet. I thought I might publish an essay, but my priority is to renew my Sec+ 3-year renewal  That will likely happen over the coming week. On X/Twitter, no new viral tweets; the new trends really don't play to my tweets. I am wondering if some of my new followers are "real". A number of them seem to reference Musk. I'm not sure if they are parody accounts or bots.

My new guilty pleasure is watching these YouTube hour-long stories. There are multiple channels; there is a type of formula. I hesitate to summarize them into a singular formula because there are nuanced differences. It's like a twist on Horatio Alger stories. Typically the principal is a self-made male billionaire, often one from a disadvantaged background, without a current significant other, living a lonely empty life in an expensive penthouse, for example overlooking Central Park in NYC. Another common element is a young (4-8 year old) orphaned (?) girl, often involving multiple births like twins or triplets, sometimes with younger siblings like babies. often dependent on these precocious older siblings. These kids aren't beggars, and usually the story will involve the benefactor will find a way of allowing the child to retain her dignity, Usually the first meeting involves some sentimental hook. For example, in one story, triplets find a rich man outside a flower shop near a cemetery; they are trying to trade a beloved doll for a single white rose for their recently deceased mother's grave on her birthday; the rich man happens to be there for an arrangement for his beloved late wife's grave. In another story, a hungry child is trying to trade a favorite possession for something to eat at a bakery. The two parties are usually not related, but in one compelling story a young girl calls an executive walking through Central Park one day 'Daddy'. She is wearing a bracelet similar to his once close girlfriend's who had walked out on him years back, unknown to him pregnant. In one I'm currently listening to, a young philanthropist is visiting a school and is attracted to young twins eating alone, a spartan lunch; the girls turn out to be granddaughters of a janitor who had befriended him back in his schooldays, sharing her own lunch with him. a full circle moment. he had unknowingly been bringing them full lunches for  them. In this case, he ends up proposing to the janitor's daughter. . In other stories. the child desperately wants a stranger to be his guest at a school performance since his own parent with work commitments can't attend These stories are often overly long and detailed, but not always that obvious and predictable. You have to suspend reality a bit. For example, the daughter with the bracelet's mother had died in a fire at a shelter, never reconciling but aware of the father's success Yet we're supposed to believe she taught the girl if something ever happened to her, she should look up her estranged father not at his workplace but at a public park they had frequently visited together. You would expect she had left some legal contingency of guardianship with someone she trusted, not have left a child looking for a stranger in a public park on the chance he might walk through the park once he had made it professionally.

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