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Saturday, April 25, 2026

Post #7657 J

 Endemic Report

The latest CDC weekly stats:


The Sick Times: 


We see a continuing tailing trend from the winter surge, with COVID infections declining in most states, rising only in one, Colorado. The biggest news story has been Trump's vaccine-skeptic CDC suppressing publication showing ongoing COVID-19 vaccine shots linked to lower relevant hospitalization. There is some ongoing concern about warmer spring weather and the rapidly circulating Cicada variant triggering an early summer wave. 

COVID-19 news items:

Other Notes

Blog pageviews seem to be inflated, although recent daily posts barely break double-digit pageviews. I'm making progress on my Iran essay, which should be published before May. If so, I should reach my monthly target of 40 posts next week. My X/Twitter account continues to hover just over 200 followers. Not sure why I have lost 20-30 followers, but it's almost impossible to ignore my feed, which seems swollen with Trump Administration propaganda, Trumpkin rants, and Musk's own obsessive thoughts. It feels like I'm perpetually playing a game of Whac-a-Mole. I try to avoid personal insults and a disrespectful tone, but in some cases, I may respond to an aggressive tweet with reflexive dismissal.   I'm particularly annoyed by the SAVE Act (I've written a couple of essays against it). For some reason, libertarian-leaning politicians like Massie and Rand Paul are strong supporters; I don't get it: there is rare anecdotal, statistically irrelevant evidence of noncitizen voting. It isn't the federal government's role to administrate or regulate elections in our federal system; it violates the Constitution, and conservatives should support the principle of Subsidiarity. The idea that you have to present papers to exercise your right to vote is a weird inconsistency for people who often invoke the Fourth Amendment. I don't know if this is some sort of concession they made to maintain relevance in a Trumpkin-dominated party, but I'm not having any of it.

I've been a satisfied Amazon customer for decades. I've occasionally run into bad products (I remember buying and/or exchanging foreign-label external hard drives that never connected usefully to my PC). I had suspended my Prime membership after Amazon unexpectedly charged my card without notification. But I think I've only returned items a dozen times or fewer over the years. Oddly, I've had to do it twice over the past month. The earlier case was a cheap computer keyboard that mostly worked, except for the spacebar. I spent too much time searching for a fix on Google. I got the return approved, then went to the local UPS Store. I had the original packaging, except maybe needing tape over one end of the box. UPS refused to take it under its contract with Amazon. It seems they wanted it enclosed in a bigger taped box (which Amazon didn't send it in). There was a workaround; they could put it in a big bag for about $5. The bottom line: I did get the refund, but the UPS charge was almost half the cost of the bargain keyboard.

The more recent thing was an even rarer mistake by Amazon: they shipped the wrong item. This makes their refund process opaque, as it assumes the original item was delivered. I remember once ordering something like a low-carb blueberry muffin(?) mix. I don't recall what they shipped--it was a mix, but neither blueberry nor low-carb.  In this recent case, I had ordered a 3-pair unit of cleaning gloves. I ended up getting one pair — and there was a tag saying the pair was part of a set, not to be sold separately. I couldn't verify that the vendor was the same. I wasn't sure the return would be processed correctly. I didn't break the packaging. I think the price was $7-8. But getting 1 pair instead of 3 was a matter of principle. I would have preferred simply being shipped two other similar pairs, but that wasn't available. So I had to return them to Staples, which didn't replicate the UPS experience.

I give credit to Amazon for almost always resolving my issues

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