The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 5 (505)

Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill...and The Professor and I are home from a nice week away. I did manage to mess up my right lower back on the second day there (it still hurts) and tried but failed to break a little toe this morning (it's going to be fine), but other than that the trip was quite uneventful. The Professor did have to explore the cabin's crawl space when the water stopped unexpectedly, but the only casualty was his sweatpants succumbing to the dirt.

Germany will start giving covid booster shots to older people and people with underlying conditions starting in September. This was announced after a top EU official criticized the EU as falling far short of the doses it had promised to Africa and Latin America. He warned that China is filling the vacuum created by the EU's failure and this will have "geopolitical consequences." Israel started vaccine boosters for people over 60 last week. The senior vaccines policy advisor for Doctors Without Borders warns, "Wealthy countries shouldn't be prioritizing giving third doses when much of the developing world hasn't even yet had the chance to get their first covid-19 shots."

While vaccines have made it to some African countries, not all of those vaccines have been administered. In June, 100,000 doses of Pfizer arrived in Chad. Over the next five weeks, only 6,000 of those were given. Benin managed to give 267 shots per day before their 110,000 doses of AstraZeneca expired. 

Here in the US, covid cases have increased by 149 percent in the last 14 days. Deaths have increased by 14 percent over the same time period. The governor of New York has mandated that Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers must get vaccinated or face weekly testing. The order also applies to the Port Authority, which runs LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark airports; bridges; tunnels; and seaports, and is effective as of Labor Day.

Companies are shifting plans in light of the changing covid landscape. Companies that are delaying their return to the office include Lyft, Google, Apple, Uber, Twitter, The New York Times, and Endeavor, the parent company of the William Morris Endeavor talent agency. Companies that have instituted vaccine requirements include luxury fitness company Equinox, Walmart (corporate level only), The Washington Post, Netflix, and Facebook. Companies adding mask requirements include Walmart in areas with substantial to high transmission rates, Publix, and Apple. Publix, a Florida-based grocery chain, will require all employees regardless of vaccination status to wear masks. Apple will determine which stores are affected by the case rate in their area; they anticipate this will affect more than half their stores. All employees will wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.