The Chinese government is reacting to the single covid case in Beijing by stopping the sale of Olympics tickets to the general public. The rationale is "to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators." Select, targeted groups will be allowed to attend; there will still be strict regulations such as no shouting. The government is also urging citizens not to order anything from abroad. The one patient in Beijing is said to have received a parcel from Canada four days before covid was detected. Science has shown that covid transmission is not about surfaces; it is an airborne virus. I expect that other covid cases will soon be found in Beijing; what effect they might have on the Olympics, I do not know.
CBS News and YouGov polled 2,094 people January 12 to 14, following up on a similar survey in July 2021. In the current survey, only 30 percent of respondents say that US efforts to deal with the pandemic are "going well." In July, 66 percent of respondents approved of POTUS's management of the pandemic, a percentage that dropped to 49 in January. Of those who approved of POTUS's handling of the virus, 78 percent self-identified as liberal. Of those who disapproved, 83 percent self-identified as conservative. Finally, 35 percent of respondents felt that administration policies were making things better, while 40 percent felt the policies were making things worse.
The FDA commissioner recently said that "most people" will get covid, while Dr. Fauci said "just about everybody" will. Others say that those take it a bit far, that if you are vaccinated, boosted, wear good-quality masks, avoid indoor crowds, and do things outdoors whenever possible, you can greatly lower your chance of getting it. As for trying to get infected as with the old chicken-pox parties, don't. Getting infected is nothing to play around with. As for Omicron being "milder" for people who have been vaccinated and boosted, some experts say that a better term is "less severe."
I read an interesting take on the hospitalization "for covid" versus "with covid" distinction. The writer held that cases in which routine pre-op checkups or treatment for an accident reveals covid are actually not very common. More likely, covid exacerbates another condition or causes a different illness to emerge. Think diabetes, renal failure, asthma or other respiratory ailments. A doc at an infectious diseases hospital notes, "This virus does things no other respiratory virus does. You can have strokes, heart attack, kidney disease, liver disease, and then whatever long covid is."
On the day on which we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I cannot help but wonder what he would say seeing our nation today or whether we would have gotten to this point had he been alive in these troubled times. I am pessimistic that we will ever heal some of the divisions that have arisen. At the same time, I wonder if the disturbances of the last few years could have been addressed through some nonviolent action such as a sit-in. A month before the infamous conflict that took away my need to add "Virginia" to "Charlottesville," there was a smaller demonstration centered on one of the two since-removed statues. I thought that a better response than gathering to confront those protesting any removal of the statues would have been for people to walk up to the fence then turn their backs to the protesters, effectively telling them their actions were not worthy of a response. I know, too simplistic and open to misinterpretation.
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