The View from the Hermitage, Day 440

Remember the Idaho lieutenant governor who banned mask mandates while the governor was at a conference? As I expected, the governor returned and repealed the ban, calling it “an irresponsible, self-serving political stunt.” The governor noted that he opposes mask mandates because he thinks government should not tell people what to do, but he does not want to undermine separately elected officials. In case you were wondering how the two officials, both Republicans, could be in such disagreement, candidates for the two positions do not run as a ticket as in the presidential election. 

I think I mentioned a couple of days ago that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was looking into whether employers could require employees to be vaccinated and offer them rewards for getting vaccinated. The answers are affirmative in both cases. Employers can require employees to be vaccinated and can also offer incentives, including cash, to help persuade them to get that way.

When my mom got her covid vaccination, she said that pretty much all the residents at her assisted living facility were getting vaccinated, but only about a third of the staff were. About the same time, March, nearly half of frontline health care workers had not been vaccinated despite being in the first groups eligible for the vaccine. The problem persists. At a nursing home in Kentucky, an unvaccinated worker contracted covid and set off an outbreak that rose to 22 cases among residents and staff who had been fully vaccinated. One of the 22 died.

In Mexico, many doctors, dentists, and medical workers in private medicine would like to be vaccinated but can’t be. Even though more health workers have died in Mexico than any other Western hemisphere country, health workers are not high on the vaccine priority list. Teachers from both public and private schools are higher priority than private-sector physicians. “Teachers” includes bureaucrats in public education and support staff at universities. Even reporters and editors at school media outlets get vaccinated before doctors. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Mexico’s death toll exceeds 600,000, nearly triple the official figure, and the country has spent less than one percent of their Gross Domestic Product on their response to covid.

Melbourne is experiencing another outbreak; cases currently total 35. Four of those cases were linked to a food distribution driver. Midway through a four-day lockdown, they performed 56,624 test on Saturday and 47, 462 on Friday. Right now, there are over 15,000 primary and secondary contacts self-isolating. In the same hemisphere, Vietnam has warned of a new variant that spreads very quickly by air and is a combination of the India and UK variants. They’ve seen over 6,700 cases including 47 deaths, most of which have occurred since April.

Totally apart from the coronavirus, have you heard that Unidentified Flying Objects are now Unidentified Aerial Phenomena? Since UFO in QuiltLand stands for UnFinished Object, I’m open to suggestions on what UAP should stand for there.