Over half the respondents in a May survey done by Monmouth University said that they are not too or not at all concerned with the coronavirus right now. Interestingly, the covid rate right now is five times higher than it was last Memorial Day. Some people thought Memorial Day 2021 was the beginning of the end of the pandemic. "In retrospect, I was far too optimistic," says a University of Iowa epidemiologist. He added, "If you believe we're at a point where we would call this endemic, it's not a place we'd want to be." With travel approaching pre-pandemic levels, the next couple of weeks could be very interesting.
Cases are rising again in North Korea and continuing to drop in China. Areas in China with no new cases for at least the last seven days will see libraries, museums, theaters, and gyms reopening. The Shanghai lockdown is set to end on Wednesday. They take zero-covid seriously. A man in his early 40s is being investigated for criminal charges. He had entered a risk area and told to isolate at home. The government says that he left isolation "many times" and moved about in the community. He and his wife tested positive five days after he was supposed to have begun isolating. In response, the government sent 258 people who lived in his building to a government quarantine center, and told over 5,000 people living in the same residential community to stay at home. No word on what the criminal penalty(ies) might be.
I mentioned a while back that some sports teams playing in Toronto would takes buses to Buffalo, New York because no negative-test documentation was required for crossing the border on land. Individuals who test positive overseas are eating airline change fees and booking flights to Canada or Mexico for test-free entry. Part of the risk of their doing this is which variant they might be bringing in. I don't know whether there is a penalty on the US side of the border, but misrepresenting yourself entering Canada can carry a penalty of up to six months in prison, 750,000 Canadian dollars ($586,000 USD) in fines, or both.
There is the possibility of a meteor storm tonight with 1,000 meteors per hour. It is supposed to be clear here, so The Professor and I may very well get up around 1:00 am to see what we can see. I figure for people our age, this may be a once-in-a-lifetime event. You know, kind of like the pandemic.
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I checked the teaching hospital visiting arrangements, I said right at the start that I knew it would be over when that went back to normal because they didn't have a political agenda. You need to wear a mask but that's it, no test, no appointment. The screens haven't come down at store checkouts but that looks normal after two years of looking at it.
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