The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 98 (598)

I've been using coronavirus news to try to block out the results of yesteday's state election contests. It hasn't really helped. Even foreign countries were viewing the Virginia gubernatorial race as a portent of what the 2022 and 2024 national elections might hold. I have informed The Professor that he should retire as soon as possible so that we can start looking at property in the Canadian Maritimes. The undercurrents of our state results and what may well happen in 2022 and 2024 are not the country in which I want to live. I was hoping that the 2020 elections would help improve things, but they have not. I would say that today's Republican Party is not my father's, but had my father still been alive, we would have become estranged about the time XPot threw his hat into the 2016 campaign. He would be part of the right-wing extremes of the Republican Party, and I would not have wanted to acknowledge being related to him. 

The election was brutal in terms of turnout. For the first time ever, our precinct was not given enough ballots and had to request more. The 730 they thought we needed (30 were for a machine designed to assist voters with visual or manual difficulties) turned into 900, of which we used over 800. I managed to keep my mouth shut (people who have known me a long time know how difficult this would have been for me) when the one election official who identifies as Republican (we do not register by party in Virginia, but election officials have to designate with which party they identify) wore a mask proclaiming "Let's pretend this is useful." When our former precinct chair came to vote, he told the current precinct chair (his wife) to tell her to remove it and wear a plain mask. I left as it became clear the current chief did not agree with the former. 

So now I look at 2022 and see the Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives (they regained control of our state analog yesterday) and Senate and clearing the way for an even more conservative Supreme Court than we now have. As for 2024, I don't even want to go there, so I won't.

One the coronavirus front, the CDC yesterday approved the Pfizer vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11, and those vaccinations began this morning in some places. This was most welcome news for the under 30 percent of parents who had said they would get their children vaccinated as soon as approval had been granted. I know several parents who have been home-schooling their children while awaiting vaccine approval. POTUS calls the approval of the pediatric vaccine "a turning point in our battle against Covid-29."

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has tested positive for covid, meaning he will miss this weekend's game against his State-Farm-ad best buddy Patrick Mahomes. I was really looking forward to watching that. The earliest Rodgers could be back would be November 13, the day before the game against the Seattle Seahawks if he remains asymptomatic. According to NFL protocol, he must sit out for 10 days and test negative twice with 24 hours between tests. His vaccination status is unclear. He has said he was "immunized," but the NFL Network reports he has not gotten the covid vaccine. 

The Netherlands is expanding some mitigation measures including requiring more mask wearing. Masks have been required on public transport; they will now be required in stores, university libraries, and hallways. Museums, gyms, and some other places will not require masks but will require proof of vaccination, recovery from covid, or a negative test result. Residents are being urged to keep socially distant, work from home, and limit domestic travel. According to the Prime Minister, "In this phase, everything depends on our own behavior." Last week, there were 54,000 new cases, a 39 percent increase from the previous week. The number of patients hospitalized showed a 31 percent increase over the same period. In regard to hospitalizations, the Dutch health minister says, "The inconvenient truth is that most of these patients would not have needed to be there if they had been vaccinated." 

Vaccination status and Thanksgiving could be a bad mixture. The dinner conversation adage of avoiding sex, death, and politics may best be amended to include vaccination status. A professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in health behaviors describes the situation as "People who get vaccinated can also be self-righteous, and some people who haven't been vaccinated can be belligerent. That could really be a combustible mix." The CDC's holiday guidance is that people should protect others ineligible for vaccines such as young children (this may not really apply any longer), by getting vaccinated and urging others to do the same. They might also encourage guests to be vaccinated. Multiple households gathering from different parts of the country might want to consider covid tests beforehand. 

Given that this is a somewhat longer post, I should issue a warning that I see my hand doctor Friday. The cortisone injection in my right thumb three weeks ago didn't offer any lasting relief, so I need to see what else might help. I do know that surgery is one option, but that sounds even more onerous than a knee replacement was--four weeks in a spline, four weeks in a cast, four to six months of rehab. I'm hoping there's an in-between option up for grabs. After my right rotator cuff repair, I spent some weeks able to type with only my left hand. The results were not pretty when I re-read emails from that period.  Stay tuned for details.