I survived my first of 14 stints working as an election official for early voting. We even had two people come in and vote. The morning shift had seven. Evidently, early voting rocked leading up to the November 2020 Presidential election, with a steady stream of voters coming in all day long. A one-party primary for three state offices? Not so steady. I can't complain, though. I got some reading and crossword puzzles done and got paid in the process. I have yet to find out just how much we get paid, but it's like found money.
New York City is primed to lift all covid restrictions by July 1, while one quarter of American adults say they won't even try to get vaccinated. I'm not sure how many of those live in New York City. The most entrenched vaccine resistance in the US is in rural, overwhelmingly Republican, 95 percent White communities, in other words anything but New York City. Try Tennessee. As a state, it has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, far below the national average of 55 percent reported by the CDC. Some people in smaller towns there are afraid to admit they've been vaccinated. In an interesting twist, some people decline to socialize with people who have been vaccinated. Some of the vaccine-resistant folks accept that they might get covid and die, and see this as a win-win. Because they are faithful Christians, they are guaranteed eternal life in heaven.
Vaccine resistance aside, the spring covid wave appears to be slowing in the US. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have reported lower caseloads in the past two weeks. Nationally, cases are the lowest since October. The seven-day average for new cases is currently 52,009. That certainly sounds good, though Dr. Fauci has cautioned that restrictions should not be lifted until new cases are down to 10,000 per day.
Ten thousand new cases in one day. How about India's new daily record of almost 383,000 cases on Friday. The global count for cases now exceeds 150 million. One covid sufferer in New Delhi, who had a mild case with only a loss of taste and smell, described the situation in India. "It's like a horror movie. ...It's like a shot glass trying to bail out the Titanic." People at times have to obtain their own medications, if they can even find them. As I've written before, the cases reported likely fall very short of the true number. One woman whose whole family developed symptoms said everyone tested negative despite her father's oxygen levels dropping to 83. She said she would not be surprised if the numbers reported are one tenth of the true numbers.
To end on a brighter note, are you afraid of heights? The world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge just opened in Portugal. For a mere 12 Euros, you can experience the 516 meter bridge. The crossing takes 10 minutes if you want to take in the scenery. If you just want to say a prayer and run across, it takes about four minutes. Personally, running across would scare me more than walking. Given that I managed to make it through the canopy walk of an Amazon rain forest, I'd definitely give this a try. If the 516 meters seems too long, the previous record holder in Switzerland is a mere 494 meters long.
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