Just when I thought I'd figured out what to write here--or at least how to start today's post--a news notification pops up that Texas governor Greg Abbott is removing the mask mandate and, as if that was not enough, opening everything 100 percent effective March 10. His exact words were "It is now time to open Texas 100%. COVID has not suddenly disappeared. But it is clear from the recoveries, from the vaccinations, from the reduced hospitalizations, and from the safe practices that Texans are using, that state mandates are no longer needed." He did leave a loophole that if hospitalization rates exceed 15 percent hospital bed capacity for seven days, county judges may add local mitigation measures, but it is not clear that reinstating mandates would be required or just optional.
Like, wow! Really? I guess he didn't read yesterday's blog post with comments from the CDC and WHO directors that we should not reopen things prematurely. He may be one of the CPAC attendees who gave South Dakota governor Kristi Noem a standing ovation when she mentioned the many times Dr. Fauci had been wrong. Are the safe measures he mentioned the reasons why all those rates have gone down? If that's the case, what's going to happen in April or May after several weeks of unsafe practices?
A new poll shows Americans as more hopeful and less frustrated, stressed, or worried than a year ago. Another poll suggests that the most vaccine-hesitant demographic is white Republicans. Neither of those findings surprises me. I wonder, though, if many of those white Republicans will be less vaccine-hesitant now that their leader, XPot, has admitted to having been vaccinated. Anything that gets more people willing to be vaccinated is fine by me.
China and Russia are practicing vaccine diplomacy that I don't think we are at least not yet. China has provided vaccines to 20 countries in South America and Africa and plans to send them to at least 40 more. Even so, the Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that more that 85 poor countries will not see widespread immunization until 2023. The WHO's emergency services director has said that it is "premature" and "unrealistic" to hope that the virus ends in 2021, though vaccines could help us "accelerate toward controlling the pandemic." If we can get those vaccines to where they need to be, that is.
I've read various reports of what has been called long covid, a condition in which some symptoms or aftereffects of covid don't stop. It evidently affects children as well as adults, which to me is pretty frightening. The article I read said that in the UK, 13 percent of kids under the age of 11 and 15 percent of kids aged 12 to 16 reported at least one symptom five weeks after a confirmed covid infection. In one case a 45-year-old fitness instructor and her daughter are still experiencing multiple symptoms since getting infected a year ago. One support group, Long Covid Kids, reports 1,700 kids with long-term symptoms.
Moving away from covid to political correctness, six Dr. Seuss books are no longer being published because they contain racist imagery. Of the six, I've only heard of two and may well have copies on the basement bookcase holding most of the kid books. Those two would be And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo. I'll have to clear the boxes from in front of the bookcase and see if I can find them. The four unfamiliar ones are McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer.
2 comments:
We had Scrambled Eggs Super and I'm grateful to say that the contents are erased from my memory. At the time I was word perfect on all of them because my wannabe early reader wanted them reading to him all of the time. As soon as he could read them he ditched them for something else.
We did a Texas in the summer - hurrah, it's ok now, let's get back to work and eating out. Look how well that went for us. That was with restaurants operating at partial capacity, masks indoors other than when eating and no mass gatherings for sports. Hopefully there will be a different outcome as it's going hand in hand with vaccination.
Post viral fatigue has always been a thing, it has a new name for these new times.
Texas will again "lead the way" but the wrong way, I think (~6% vaccinated). Florida may be along with it.
We have/had all but Mulberry Street when I was a kid, and we all loved the big Seuss books when we were little (me especially, I think, with all the wordplay, rhymes, and invented words). McElligott's Pool, Scrambled Eggs Super, and Happy Birthday to You are on a shelf in the guest room now. I think If I Ran the Zoo (and ...Circus) and On Beyond Zebra are with the grands.
I do not think the offensive caricatures affected me one way or the other (likely because of my membership in the for-now-dominant social class), although I'd likely look askance at them now, but I could see some other ethnic groups feeling put off by them.
I also own a copy of Disney's Uncle Remus stories, a gift to my kids from my mother, I think, who loved them for some reason. I don't think we read that one much. I think I could sense when I was younger that they were "slanted."
Post a Comment