The View from the Hermitage, Day 335

The impeachment vote was held a wee bit ago. Needless to say, Xpot was acquitted. The most positive comment that comes to mind is that at least a seventh Republican saw the light and turned from the dark side. I'm sure that Xpot is no longer screaming at his television but is instead gloating and planning his comeback. I just hope that the comeback does not include revenge, suggesting to his "followers" that those who were not with him are against him and should be punished. I would not put that past him at all. I expect there will soon be a pro-Xpot rally, perhaps even on President's Day. As if catching covid-19 is not scary enough, we now have a lunatic with potentially violent followers to fear.

So let's see how scared I can be from the coronavirus notes I wrote while not thinking about the pending impeachment vote. Some health people are cautioning that unless the first-world, developed countries get with the program of ensuring that all nations get the vaccines in "a fast and fair manner," it could be years before the coronavirus is under control at a global level. "Vaccine nationalism" will only prolong the pandemic. Moderna, for example, has given no doses to COVAX, the global vaccine effort, nor have they made any deals to provide vaccine to low-income nations.

While we here in the US have vaccine, many logistical hurdles remain in terms of getting it into people's arms. Not getting our act together will most likely mean that many Americans who want to be vaccinated will still not be vaccinated by the end of the summer. And what percent of people refuse to be vaccinated is still not known with any degree of certainty, but it is likely large enough to make herd immunity difficult if not impossible to achieve. 

My mom got her second vaccine injection on Thursday. She felt more physical effects from the second shot than she did from the first. Another friend who just got her second shot said the same thing. I guess the second dose ups the number of antibodies to a point where more or stronger effects can be felt. Maybe in a few months I'll be able to comment first-hand. Every now and again when I read articles or hear about people complaining about how difficult it is to make vaccination appointments or how the system must be broken because they haven't heard anything after registering, I wonder if my sitting back and saying I'll get an appointment when someone says it's my turn makes me stranger than I may already be. The Professor has said that he doesn't want to get vaccinated until K-12 teachers or child-care workers or other more-essential workers have been vaccinated. While working from home is by no means ideal, it lets him limit his potential exposure and, by extension, mine. 

It's after 5:00 pm here which means I can investigate the alcohol options available without resorting to the "somewhere in the world it is after 5:00 pm" copout. I'm thinking that watching the news tonight would be a bad thing.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 324

My normal early morning read-through of news sources got sidelined when I came across an article in The Guardian about Virginia's being on the brink of becoming the first southern, formerly Confederate state to abolish the death penalty and the 23rd state nationwide. I learned more about the history and practice of capital punishment in Virginia from an English newspaper as opposed to a home-grown one. Or perhaps it's easier for a foreign source to lay bare the bad side of the death penalty Virginia style. As might be expected given historic settlement patterns, the first execution in what is now the United States occurred in Jamestown in 1608. Again perhaps because of history, Virginia has carried out more executions than any other state, 1,390. There is a definite racial bias in Virginia's capital punishment history. Between 1800 and 1920, Virginia executed 625 black people and only 58 white people. Again looking historically, formerly Confederate states account for 80 percent of all executions. 

Besides all the above issues, what other evidence is there in favor of abolishing the death penalty? Try that 4 percent of all capital prosecutions are estimated to end in wrongful convictions. A sentence of life with no chance of parole can, if found to be mistaken, be reversed. The wrongfully convicted person can at least get some of their life back. The wrongfully executed person has no life to reclaim. 

Some bad news on the coronavirus front is that the monoclonal antibodies that have been used to treat the original covid-19 appear not to work against the variants. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed, so we can hope the researchers got it wrong, but I'm betting they didn't. If I were into writing science fiction, I could imagine an intelligent virus that consciously mutates to block treatments and/or vaccines. The US, while leading the world in many of the bad aspects of the virus, is woefully behind in terms of tracking viral mutations. We have shared the genetic sequence of only 0.3 percent of our covid-19 cases, not 3 percent, but 0.3 percent. That puts us 30th in the world behind such countries as Portugal, Latvia, and Sierra Leone. I wonder if Sierra Leone was one of the blank-hole countries Xpot was ranting about in a past life. 

Speaking of Xpot, the outline of his defense was provided to the Senate today. The principal argument is that he cannot be tried because he is no longer in office despite the fact that some other people have been. A secondary argument is that because he firmly believed he lost the election due to electoral fraud, his comments at the pre-riot rally were merely expressions of that belief and perfectly okay under the first amendment. I know what the outcome of the trial will be, but it will be interesting to see how those arguments fly and if Xpot has the nerve to appear as a witness.

The Super Bowl is this weekend. Back when The Sons lived in, the traditional Super Bowl dinner was chili or nachos. The Sons won't be here this year, but I can still make chili, this time using my Instant Pot. I also discovered a type of pie named after The Professor's favorite cookie, oatmeal raisin. The recommended crust is flaky cream cheese pie dough. This will be very interesting. I shall report the outcome of both resolutions on Monday.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 322

Forty-six weeks, and we're about to enter the month of some "lasts" for me. Last trip away from Virginia not to mention last trip via airplane: a gathering of my Internet quilt guild in San Antonio, Texas, February 19 to 24. Last dinner in a restaurant: February 28, to mark our 35th wedding anniversary. We ate at the inn at which we held our wedding reception in 1985. I think it's the fanciest restaurant at which I've ever eaten. February held the last times I've seen a couple of dear friends. March holds several more lasts, but March won't be here for four weeks. 

As for the pandemic that has caused all of us to have various lasts, transmission of the novel coronavirus appears to be slowing. The average number of new cases on January 29 was 40 percent lower than three weeks earlier. Covid hospitalizations are the lowest they've been in two months. Let's not get complacent, though, since we could see 100,000 to 150,000 more deaths in the coming two months. The British variant form of coronavirus could become the prominent strain in the US in a mere six to 14 weeks. When that happens, one infectious disease specialist says, "...we are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country."

As I said, we should not get complacent. We may now have multiple vaccines against the coronavirus, but we have few new treatments. All the attention and money went toward vaccine development rather than treatment such as antivirals to stop the disease early in its progression. Even after I get vaccinated, I plan to be obsessively careful. My knee replacement came about in large part because I fall into the 30 to 40 percent of people for whom hyaluronic acid will not work as an arthritis treatment. I really don't want to find out the hard way that I am also in the percentage of people in whom one coronavirus vaccine or another does not work. I'm living for the day there are decent treatments to go along with viable vaccines. 

Looking worldwide, I found a reference to an October 2019 document assessing the pandemic preparedness of 153 countries, Global Health Security Index: Building Collective Action and Accountability. You probably would not have been surprised to see that when the report came out, The US ranked first and the UK ranked second in terms of how prepared a nation was for a pandemic. Would it surprise you to learn that right now, only eight of the 153 countries have death rates worse than the US, and the UK is one of those? 

How did the pandemic get to the point it's now at? The two big factors (I am not coming up with these but borrowing them from today's Axios AM email) were the Chinese failure to contain the virus and their attempts to cover it up, and the failure of the US to take on a global leadership role. Perhaps Xpot's acknowledgement that the coronavirus was real and not likely to just disappear by April or any other time would have been a good starting point. Resistance to the notion that reopening the economy was more important than public health would have helped as well. New case rates were going in the right direction at least in the states where there was some nontrivial notion of a lockdown. Reopening even partway? We're in a worse place now than we were last spring. 

Finally as far as the pandemic goes, repeat after me: "No one is safe until everyone is safe." The US is not so far doing much to help vaccinate the third world. There have been reports that there may not be enough vaccine doses for true global coverage until 2023. I have no epidemiology training, but it seems to me that it would be harder for the first world to achieve herd immunity as long as a person with the virus is only a flight or a voyage away. I hope we don't get so involved in getting ourselves vaccinated that we make the third world wait until 2023, because we'd probably be waiting that long to be safe ourselves.

As for the current winner in the front page, above the fold contest, five of Xpot's lawyers for the second impeachment trial have quit, apparently over what strategy(ies) to use in his defense. One report cited Xpot's insistence on using only one argument, that he can't be impeached because he is no longer in office. Another report cited Xpot's insistence on using as a defense that he was the victim of a stolen election. Finally, just for chuckles, Xpot is supposed to have fumed in front of aides that the case is simple enough he could defend himself and save the money he'd have to pay lawyer(s). When the aides picked their jaws up off the floor, they apparently talked him out of this one for now ... they hope.