The pandemic has wreaked havoc with travel and tourism. As a result, there are cities that will pay you to come be a tourist. Payment is typically in the form of "money" that can be spent at local businesses, though one city, Santa Maria Valley, California, is giving out straight $100 Visa gift cards. Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft, offers $100 in Geek Out Gold that can be spent within Redmond. In similar fashion, Glenwood Springs, Colorado offers $100 in Glenwood Gold, again spendable with the city. That alone would not motivate me to fly across the country, but if someplace more local were offering such a deal, I'd at least think about it.
Forecasters are predicting another overactive hurricane season, with 17 named storms, four of which will be major as defined by Category 3 or higher. And just for yucks, here are the 21 basic names for this year's storms. Numbers 22 and over will get names from a supplemental list. The 21: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Julian, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam Teresa, Victor, Wanda.
The Norwegian prime minister has been fined for breaking coronavirus rules when she organized a family birthday party for 13 people when the limit on such gatherings was 10. She was fined 20,000 Norwegian kroner or $2345.83 in US dollars.
The Brazil variant has now been identified in at least 15 countries in the Americas. There are actually two Brazil variants, P1 and P2. P1 is the more problematic. It has three mutations to the spike protein rather than the one that P2 has. It is P1 that is capable of re-infecting people who had had covid and thought they had natural immunity. March was Brazil's deadliest month since the pandemic began, and the variants are a large part of that.
Mississippi yesterday had 73,000 slots open for coronavirus vaccinations, but can't get enough people to sign up to fill all the slots. Right now, 25 percent of Mississippians have gotten at least one dose compared to the national 33 percent. Other Southern states such as Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia show similarly low vaccination rates. For Mississippi, demographics are a big part of the problem. It is a reliably Republican state, and Republicans are more apt to be vaccine hesitant or resistant. It also has a large Black community, and Blacks nationwide have been slower to get vaccinated than whites. One Mississippi statistic that jumped out at me was that 55 percent of college-educated Republican women under the age of 49 will not get vaccinated. I have to wonder just what courses their colleges required, especially science and history ones.
There has been a large drop in the number of doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine delivered this week. Last week, 1.9 million doses were distributed; this week, only 700,000. The federal government divided doses between states based on each state's adult population. For example, California received 572,700 doses last week but will get only 67,600 this week. Perhaps more troubling, the European Medicines Agency is looking into the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after reports it was linked to blood clots. First, AstraZeneca, and now Johnson & Johnson. I must admit that it makes me glad I got the Pfizer vaccine.
Back to scanning slides and strolling Memory Lane. As for the Lane, here's me in 1976, at the top of Mt. Katahdin in the state of Maine. I'm not sure I could do the hike/climb to the top now at age 64, but it was no problem for the 20-year-old me.
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