The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 23 (523)

I'll try not to pad this post too much, but my pandemic notes are scant. I spent a good two-plus hours this morning with my oldest friend here. I used to feel funny about calling her my "oldest" friend, at least until I realized that she is the person here that I have known for the longest time and, at 86, she really is the oldest non-family person I consider a friend. I spent time this afternoon with an even-older woman who happens to be my mom. We watched golf and chatted about the state of the golf, the world, and the two flocks of Canada geese that live around her facility and who do not seem to get along at all. I got home and found The Professor getting ready to take a walk, so I went along. 

Three more senators have tested positive for covid. All were fully vaccinated, and all have minor symptoms. This brings the Congressional covid count to 11 senators and over 50 representatives. I have not seen a similar count for governors, but Virginia's governor had it as does Texas's.

Philosophical and potentially legal question: Does a primary care physician have the right to refuse to see a patient who is unvaccinated? In other words, if I were not vaccinated, could my family doc refuse to see me for my annual physical? What I read suggested that legally it might be okay, but ethically?

Baptist Health hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida currently have over 500 covid patients. This is more than twice the number they had at the peak of the July 2020 covid surge. A church in that area with 6,000 members, primarily African American, had six members die in a 10-day span. None had been vaccinated. Now, the church has medical experts available after services not to give vaccinations, but to answer questions about the vaccines. The church has also hosted two vaccination drives at which over 1,000 shots were given.

Over one million doses of vaccine were administered yesterday. This was the first time since early July that vaccinations topped one million in a single day. The overall rate of vaccinations is over 70 percent higher than one month ago. The Culver City Unified School District, a small district in Los Angeles, will require students over the age of 12 to be vaccinated. This is the first such requirement in California and possibly in the nation as a whole. Proof of vaccination is due on November 19.

The Texas Education Agency has suspended enforcement of the ban on mask mandates, and the Texas State Supreme Court said that school districts may require masks after all. Both decisions are temporary. A Florida district that does not require masks had to quarantine 440 students two days into the school year.

Finally, a few tidbits on the non-covid side. Rattlesnakes change the frequency of their rattle the closer humans get to them. The frequency changes from 40 Hertz to 60 to 100 Hertz. The higher frequency made people in a simulation study believe that the snake was closer to them than it really was. The frequency change may be a survival technique for the rattlesnake. My question is whose survival? The snake's or ours?

And in the at-least-we-don't-have-that-disease-here-too category, Ivory Coast has Ebola cases, Guinea has cases of Marburg (Marburg's first appearance in West Africa), and Uganda has polio cases. In other words, we may have it easier here than we thought.