Pandemic Report
CDC still hasn't updated its macro statistics page since late September. The regional charts have somewhat shifted with California and Texas increasing and the upper East, especially in the Great Lakes region.:
The latest from The Sick Times:
The anti-vax leaning rogue Trump CDC continues its agenda in a couple of ways, contributing to vaccine hesitancy: (1) they are expanding their dubious alleged COVID vaccine deaths to children to other age groups; (2) they are considering issuing a rare black box warning to said vaccines. Celebrity infections include a U.S. figure skater.
Other notable COVID news items of interest:
- "CDC study says Covid shots continue to protect healthy kids from severe illness. Researchers found that Covid vaccines reduced the risk of emergency room and urgent care visits by 56% to 76%."
- "Massive four-year study finds no increase in deaths linked to COVID-19 mRNA vaccination"
- "74 million in US eligible for vaccine but remain unvaccinated"
- "COVID hospitalization tied to 69% higher risk of death for up to 2 years"
- "Stanford Study Offers Clue to Rare Myocarditis After COVID Vaccination"
- Prosecutors continue to pursue COVID relief fraud or other crimes:
- "Woman pleads guilty to conspiring with Nevadans on $1.4 million COVID-19 fraud"
- "Shelton man gets 21 months in prison for stealing $145k in COVID-19 relief funds"
- "A timeline of the ‘largest COVID-19 fraud scheme' in the United States"
- "Illinois woman pleads guilty to $3.5M COVID-19 tax fraud scheme in Nevada"
- "$2.2M COVID relief fraud scheme: 10 Floridians among 11 indicted"
- "Milford MA business owner accused of misusing COVID-19 relief loan"
- "York tax preparer pleads guilty to submitting false PPP loan applications during COVID-19 pandemic"
- Political/legal issues:
- "Cornyn pleads for better testing as COVID-19 surges across Texas"
- "NJ court rules on teachers as essential workers for COVID compensation"
- "Los Angeles school district settles with parents who sued over distance learning"
Other Notes
The blog continues to attract inflated pageviews. It was a big week for the blog, passing 400 posts, and I published my 3 annual traditional posts. I'm continuing to work on a one-off post on Trump. On X/Twitter I lost about 20% of my followers from about 250 to somewhat below 200 Not sure what happened, but X often talks about purging bots and for some reason Musk-theme accounts seem obsessed with my feed.
We're in the middle of Christmas season. It's different this year, my first without Mom. The last few years were difficult for reasons I'm not ready to write about yet. One complication was that Mom's home had been sold, which complicated arrangements for staying in the San Antonio area. Four of my 6 siblings live in Texas, but 3 of them live in the extended Dallas area. I had also changed cable providers, keeping only the signature Hallmark channel. I haven't seen many new Hallmark holiday movies this season that I like; there was a sequel in the highly popular "Three Wise Men" Brenner brother trilogy, and the Hallmark queen Lacey Chabert starred in a "naughty or nice list" fantasy. I do like a touch of fantasy I was hoping to see another installment in the "Five More Minutes" theme or any in a string of favorites, in particular "Angels and Ornaments," which I had licensed a copy through Google some time back.
I just watched it (crying again) this afternoon; for the reader who doesn't know, Corrine is an aspiring singer and employee of Dave, a music store owner, a former Corrine high school classmate and largely unknown to Corrine, has been secretly in love with the sweet girl. Corrine, unfortunately, has been attracted to the wrong type of men. Harold is sort of a twist on the angel Clarence ("It's a Wonderful Life"), unknown to either, Harold is Corrine's grandfather who died in WWII, leaving a pregnant widow Emily. Corrine's mother has given her a glass ornament of Harold as a caroler, and Corrine wishes for true love with the ornament. Harold's mission is to get Corrine and Dave together. Part of the story focuses on an unfinished love composition Harold had written for Emily. I don't want to give away the plot, but you have to believe Dave will somehow win Corinne's heart, and the charming melody written by Harold plays a critical part. It's not clear why Harold has been waiting on earth until now to reunite with his beloved Emily in the afterlife.
As I write. I'm watching WWE John Cena's final WWE match tonight. Saturday Night's Main Event had recently been revived as an NBC special to a remaining Peacock exclusive. Not a PLE--there was no preshow. (I have not subscribed to ESPN's expensive PLE subscription ) I've probably seen most of Cena's TV matches. and really never watched a PPV/PLE until WWE created its $10/month subscription business. I was never really a fan of Cena's boring perpetual babyface character and predictable finishers; his "you can't see me" hand shake was personally irritating. And the last few years he had been perpetually losing PLE matches trying to give other wrestlers the rub. I was actually intrigued when he turned heel for the first time this year. But WWE never figured how to script it correctly
It was inevitable that Cena tonight tapped out to Gunther to give him the rub.