The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 86 (586)

Another day on which it has not been easy to find a wealth of coronavirus news, though there is some on the vaccine, mandate, and vaccine mandate fronts. Police unions nationwide continue to fight vaccine mandates despite the fact that in the period January 2020 to October 2021, covid killed more police officers, 483, than did gunfights, 101. A labor professor notes that the law favors the employer but predicts that lawsuits of police union versus city will likely end up in the Supreme Court. 

The local university has announced that in accordance with POTUS's order last month all employees must be vaccinated by December 8. The Professor has not reported seeing or hearing of any vaccine-hesitancy among his faculty colleagues, but he's sure there is some out there. As for The Professor, he made an appointment for this morning in order to get the Moderna booster approved yesterday by the CDC. When he got to the health department office, a staff member told him that they knew it had been approved, but until they got the all-holy make-it-so memo from higher up they could not administer it. So he has an appointment for same-time same-place tomorrow morning. Son #1 got his booster yesterday. I'll ask Son #2 and DiL= about their boosters tomorrow when they come for dinner with my brother who will be arriving later today.

Moscow is reacting to Russia's latest covid surge. The city is going under lockdown for at least 10 days. In my personal favorite mitigation measure, the mayor has ordered unvaccinated citizens over the age of 60 to stay home for four months. Huh? You! There! You're staying at home for four months; that's months, not weeks. I wonder how many of those over-60s don't have family to help them shop, get medicines, and complete other essential tasks. 

WHO estimates that between 80,000 and 180,000 healthcare workers may have been killed by covid between January 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. I wonder it they are including suicides in that count. I wonder because in the early days of the pandemic, an New York City physician who came from here committed suicide. Her family said that she'd been overwhelmed by the pandemic to the point of just plain giving up.

I can't end this post on suicide, but I can end it with some comments on the end of lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. That end was described by one resident as, "The plan is to drink all day." Another resident described it as "Today I'm just going to visit people, catch up, drink, eat, be merry, have fun...Everyone's just happy. Everyone's positive, everyone's got a smile on their face."

May you have a smile on your face this weekend.