The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 1 (501)

I said I might change things up for the second 500, and so I am. While I am still being probably more careful than I need to be, the doors to the hermitage now swing both ways. While I might not go into a retail establishment, movie theater, or other crowded establishment, I will now occasionally leave the hermitage if I need to. At the same time, we continue as a country and world to wade or otherwise muddle through the pandemic. The new name for this blog comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. It may also have been used in The Hobbit as the walking song from which it is taken, “The Road Goes Ever On,” was supposedly written by Bilbo Baggins.

 The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

I’ve liked this passage since I first read it, and used it on a quilted wall hanging. I thought it appropriate here because I know not when or how the pandemic will end, just that for now it is very ongoing.

I did mark the writing of the 500^th post yesterday. The Professor and I popped a bottle of champagne before dinner. First, though, we availed ourselves of a wee bit of one of my birthday presents. Fellow Virginians know that a previously controlled substance became legal for personal use in Virginia on July 1. The 500^th post seemed like a reason to use a wee bit of it, the first time in some 40ish years that I’ve used any form of it. Talk about memories flooding back. I do still have photos of 1975 or 76’s Ultimate Taco …

The Office of Attending Physician has issued a mask mandate for the House of Representatives. Masks must be worn in the Capitol complex unless a rep is alone. Inside meeting and conference rooms, everyone must be masked. Needless to say, the Republican reps are not happy. The Minority Leader tweeted that the decision was not based on science but was a political decision by the Democrats. In response, the Speaker of the House, said, “He’s such a moron.”

More businesses and even the federal government will be issuing or have issued vaccine mandates. Two federal courts have already ruled such mandates are legal and enforceable. Remember the French needing to be vaccinated to eat inside a café? Five hundred San Francisco bars will ask patrons to show proof of vaccination in order to enter.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary says that “we have never experienced the expansion of the infections of this magnitude.” Covid cases are soaring not just in Tokyo but countrywide. Several new prefectures have asked to be put under states of emergency. The case rate in Tokyo is now 88 per 100,000 people. For comparison, the US rate is 18.5 per 100,000 people. While the Olympics might be thought of as the cause of the latest growth in cases, there is so far no evidence of Olympic to general public transmission. I’m finding slightly different numbers in different sources in terms of the number of athletes and Olympic personnel who have tested positive. One report noted that there were two athletes hospitalized. Evidently, the US team has had more positive tests than any other team, but the US has more athletes there than any other country.

Sydney just saw a record in the number of new cases in any single day. The military has been called in to help enforce the lockdown. Thailand has turned a cargo warehouse at Bangkok’s airport into an 1,800- bed field hospital. It is designed for patients with moderate symptoms. There is a separate field hospital for patients with deteriorating conditions. Thailand had 30,000 cases at the start of April. They now have over 540,000, and limited testing means that the true number of cases is likely much higher. Just over five percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.