One tray of slides to go! Today one of the trays I scanned was from before The Professor and I were married. Wow, did we look different then! Younger, thinner, and, in my case, blonder. There were also a few from Son #2's last day of preschool, though I'm not sure if it was the last day of his last year of preschool. Talk about blonder! And what a smile! I can't say I will be sorry to be done with this once I get all the photos sorted and backed up. It's been a major undertaking, but it will no longer be one of those "I really should" tasks that are so easy to put off.
I'm still feeling tired from Tuesday's shot. I may have been running a low-grade fever overnight. At least I don't usually have chills overnight. Son #1 was feeling fatigue this morning from his shot yesterday. The Professor hits the magic "two weeks from second shot" tomorrow, so he'll be good to "do" the world if he wants to. And he no longer needs to stop for a covid test before setting foot on the local university's campus. That will save him some time when he goes in to meet with his grad students.
Today would have been the day on which The Professor would finish and submit the federal tax forms. With the new deadline being May 17, I expect he'll get started on May 12 or 13. At least he e-files now and not making an evening rush to the post office.
As an update on the chances we'll make herd immunity or not, a Monmouth University poll found that 21 percent of Americans will "likely never" get vaccinated. And in a Quinnipiac University poll, 45 percent of Republicans say they will not get vaccinated. That's a lot of people, especially if those adults then keep their kids from getting vaccinated once vaccines are approved for all ages. More universities will be requiring vaccinations for fall. Rutgers was first but since then Brown, Cornell, and Nova Southeastern Florida among others have hopped on the bandwagon. It's not totally clear to me if a university or employer can require a vaccination that has only been approved under an emergency authorization. Universities already require proof of vaccination for things such as meningitis; they can also offer medical or religious exemption. Of course, there is always a flip side. Dickinson State University in North Dakota won't require masks in the fall. Infected if you do; infected if you don't?
A wave of new infections and hospitalizations is wreaking havoc in 38 states. Michigan continues to be the hot spot. The state reported an average of 46 daily deaths yesterday, 30 more than one month ago. Many states are joining with Michigan in relying on vaccines to control the spread of the virus. They're abandoning mitigation measures in part because they may very well not be followed. While vaccinations will likely make a new surge less deadly, the extra time will give the virus a chance to mutate even more, possibly into variants that could be troublesome.
A senior member of Japan's ruling political party has gone public in saying that the Olympics might need to be canceled. He noted that there were many issues yet to be resolved, saying, "If it seems impossible, it needs to be stopped." One report I read over a month ago suggested that the deadline for canceling the Games would be in the third week of March, or about a month ago. There might be a solution, though. The International Olympic Committee has said that they will not delay the Games a second time; they will only cancel them. Pressure is growing, though, for countries to boycott the Winter Game scheduled for Beijing in 2022. How about those Games get canceled, and the Tokyo Games held then? Just one of the random thoughts that surfaced as I was scanning slides earlier.
The temporary hold on administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is likely to last for seven to 10 days. Two new cases have been reported, bringing the US total clot sufferers to seven women and one man. I'm not sure how I would feel if I'd gotten that vaccine. All the people affected so far developed the clotting problem within two weeks of having been vaccinated. Whether that means anyone having gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine more than two weeks ago can rest easy, I do not know. The one in a million chances of developing the problem are better than the chances for winning the lottery. All things considered, though, I'd rather win the lottery.
In non-pandemic news, the French are taking the front of one submarine and welding it to the back of another. That's cheaper than building a new one. It seems that a fire destroyed the front part of one sub. A sister sub that had been retired in 2019 had not yet been dismantled. They're cutting the front off that one to attach to the back of the other. It's cheaper than a new sub but will require100,000 hours of engineering studies and 250,000 hours industrial work by 300 people. This is not the first time two halves have made a whole; the US evidently did something similar in 2005.
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