The View from the Hermitage, Day 496

I'm not sure how coherent and connected this post will be. Lots of things to do in preparation for tomorrow; some have been done, while others haven't. My mind is all over the place.

In a survey conducted before some Republican governors and elected bigwigs advised getting vaccinated, 35 percent of the unvaccinated people said that they probably would not get vaccinated. If that sounds bad, 45 percent said that they definitely would not get vaccinated. Three percent said that they definitely would get vaccinated, with ten percent saying that they probably would. Some 64 percent said that they had little or no confident that the shots are effective. Probably not unexpectedly, 86 percent of the vaccinated have at least some confidence in the vaccines.

More attention is being given to the Lambda variant amid speculation that it could be more transmissible than Delta while having increased resistance to vaccines. Better we learn that before than after it starts to take hold. Senior government officials expect people 65 and older or who have compromised immune systems will most likely need a third shot of Pfizer or Moderna. Having turned 65 at the start of the month, I can tag along with The Professor when he goes for his shot.

The covid case count at the Olympics is up to at least 127, 14 of whom are athletes. The Czech women's beach volleyball team could not play due to infection and forfeited to Japan. A Dutch rower became the first athlete to test positive after competing. He tested positive after heats but before the finals (I do not know if he had qualified for the finals). There is concern that this event may call the whole testing system into question. 

One report from the Olympics noted that lots of people were wearing their masks below their noses and different teams were sharing buses, something that wasn't supposed to happen. One journalist's take on how things are going: "The precautions look more performative than protective. Now that we're here, we're forced to share crowded indoor spaces, including buses to various venues, hotels, and the main press center." If all that wasn't enough, a tropical storm that could become a typhoon is on the way.

US experts are looking at various models to predict covid in the near future The worst case scenario has more than 200,000 new cases daily in the fall. A bit of good news to offset that: One single day this week saw more than 500,000 vaccinations in the US. If that were to keep up, the worst case might remain a model and not become a reality.

It's been a rough two days, and I don't want there to be any truth in some things including death coming in threes. One house in the subdivision has seemed empty, with the yard getting overgrown. We knew that an elderly lady lived there with her daughter and son-in-law as caregivers. We figured that perhaps she had gone into assisted living or a nursing home and the "kids" had moved back to their own house. Nope. As treasurer of the Home Owners' Association, I got an email from her nephew yesterday telling me she had passed and asking for some information in order to put the house on the market once it's been fixed up a bit. We learned today that someone we know had been taken off life support to pass in peace. He was the husband of my friend of 43 years. He was in his 80s and had lived a good life. The Professor and I will both miss him, and wish we'd gotten around to the post-vaccination dinner my friend and I had talked about but not scheduled. So, if I go out and squish a bug, can that count as the third death?