The road goes ever on and on ... Day 18 (518)

I descended from the upstairs this morning and checked my news feed only to see video of helicopters flying between the US embassy in Kabul and the airport and the news that the Taliban had surrounded the city. I can't get Saigon 1975 out of my mind. The helicopter on the roof of the US embassy leaving scores of Vietnamese behind. That news wasn't enough, though. There are schools going virtual after less than two weeks of in-person instruction. There's research coming out of Finland suggesting that fully vaccinated people can get and transmit covid even when fully masked. Finally, the Ivory Coast has confirmed its first Ebola case since 1994.

After the morning dog-walk, it was time to check out the local and the Washington papers. The day got even better (said sarcastically). Here are the headlines from pages 4 and 5 of the local paper:

• Were 20 years in Afghanistan worth it? / Many US lives were lost, but Taliban now poised to regain rule.
• Afghan women fear return to 'dark days'
• Taliban siege continues / Biden deploys 1,000 more troops to Kabul to aid in evacuation
• Death toll climbs to at least 57 / Authorities dispute social media reports of hundreds still missing (flooding in Turkey)
• At least 304 killed as 7.2 magnitude quake hits Haiti
• COVID-19 claiming more young victims
• 50 sent to hospitals in NY bus crash

There were also some short blurbs with no headlines. These concerned:

• Wildfires out west
• Heat wave in Europe
• School shooting in New Mexico
• Flooding in West Texas
• Storms in the Atlantic
• Attack on a wedding in Pakistan 

I wasn't sure I could handle any more bad news until I looked at the Outlook section of this morning's Washington Post. I won't say this article was good news, but it had me happily punching numbers into the calculator on my phone only to be telling The Professor that we really are fucked. I'm something of a numbers nerd, and this gave me something to play with. Remember R0 (arr-naught), the number of  new people one contagious person infects? Meet Re (arr-eee), the number of new people a single person infects accounting for precautions being taken and overall immunity levels. Here's the bad news about the Delta variant: Even with full 100 percent immunity (everyone is fully vaccinated) and using 85 percent effectiveness (what the drug manufacturers say holds against Delta), Re is still greater than one. Booster shots aren't worth it in terms of lowering Re under one. Using the current 50 percent of fully vaccinated people, Re approaches five. As the authors put it, "So with half the population in the United States vaccinated, the delta variant is still more infectious that the original variant was last year."

Have a good rest of the weekend. I plan to try to.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 201

Getting the news about HWSNBN and Melania before even a drop of morning coffee was something of a wake-up-now slap in the face. I've been expecting this from time to time but figured the staffers around HWSNBN would be keeping him as insulated as possible. But no, one source says that Hope Hicks flew on Marine One and Air Force One with HWSNBN even though it was known that she'd had a positive covid-19 test. I wonder if HWSNBN, feeling immortal, knew about her condition and okayed her presence. He's 74 years old and more than a little overweight, putting him in the high risk group. He is supposedly exhibiting "minor symptoms" now; I would imagine the concern is if or when they might become major symptoms. I don't think any head of state has yet died of covid-19; I know several have had it and recovered. 

In terms of the upcoming election, this is a hell of an October surprise! Will he send Pence out to rallies as a surrogate? Will he try to do something virtually? And how does this figure in the two remaining debates. Biden did get tested today, and his result was negative. Still, I'll feel better if he gets tested another couple of times in the near future. The 25th amendment would come into play were HWSNBN to not be able to discharge the duties of the presidency; VP Pence would function as president. He would also become president should HWSNBN die before the election. Were both HWSNBN and Pence unable to discharge presidential duties, the next in line is Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and, yes, a Democrat. And if the person at the top of the ticket dies before an election, does the VP nominee move up and then pick their own running mate? It's all very intriguing, but can you say, "constitutional crisis"? As I typed that, it occurred to me that such a scenario could be one more thing 2020 throws in our faces. For those out there who were thinking 2020 had had enough surprises and could not get any worse, think again!

I normally sit and read the front section of The Washington Post as I cool off from my morning walk. I sat down today, looked at the front page and realized that most of the stories there were altered given the news about HWSNBN. I did read the article on how covid-19 is affecting college towns, but that was about it. We live far enough away from Washington that we get one of the first editions printed if not the first. Sporting events are often described in captions as having "ended too late to be included here. For results, check our website."

It just occurred to me that I could have had CNN on TV all day as I flit back and forth tackling different little things related to unpacking and putting away. That would have been news overload. Things can only happen so fast, and I don't relish hearing news anchors repeat the same facts every 30 or 60 minutes. I will watch the network news later and possibly CNN as I am making dinner. There is so much that can't be known yet. The first five days are apparently critical though someone with covid-19 can take a turn from bad to worse even two to three weeks after initially testing positive. With the election a mere 32 or 33 days away, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Given today's news, who knows what news will greet us tomorrow morning and how it might affect the weekend. Honestly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this morning's bulletin.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 192

On this morning's walk, I thought about how the news has changed during the last six months. When I started daily blogging 192 days ago, the novel coronavirus was often the only topic on the front page of The Washington Post. It sometimes seemed to be the only topic covered on the NBC Nightly News (the network whose news we watch since it immediately follows the local news we watch). As that wore off, we read or watched about George Floyd, then Breonna Taylor, sequeing into Black Lives Matter in all-the-news all-the-time mode. The Western wildfires might have been the only news of the day, but there's an election about to happen. I expect we won't hear much about anything else for the next month or two. We might have distractions in terms of the sports happening or not, but those won't be on the front page or on the nightly national news. 

Dr. Fauci was asked about places we should not be going right now. He cited restaurants, bars, and gyms. I might have thought airplanes would be on the list, but they probably rank lower because a much smaller percentage of people will travel by air than want to eat out. I would not want to go to a movie theater right now, and it seems a whole lot of people feel the same way. I wonder if the coronavirus along with the growing popularity of streaming videos will permanently alter theater attendance. I don't think any of our mutual funds contain studio or theater stocks.

On the home front, yet another first-year dorm at the local university has students testing positive for covid-19. Last night, the university put up on social media (but did not send out via email) the president announcing tightened restrictions to start at 9:00 am this morning. The maximum group size has gone from 50 to 5 for indoor or outdoor activities. Students are encouraged (I don't know how they would require this) not to leave town nor have visitors from out of town. These will be in effect for at least two weeks. The comment I haven't figured out was that some students have already been put on interim suspension due to violations of covid-19 mitigation measures. What the hell is an "interim" suspension? How can you suspend someone temporarily? Is it keeping them from attending class for long enough that they will fail all their courses? Is it temporary in that it's for one semester only as opposed to being expelled forever and ever amen? If I learn what they mean or figure it out on my own, I'll let you know.

The university president said in his remarks that what has happened so far is what they expected would happen, that none of what has happened has surprised them. So did they know they were going to have to resort to more restrictive measures three or four weeks in? If so, why did they just not put them in effect at the outset and possibly keep the number of positive cases lower? And why post only on social media? I expect that kept a lot of faculty from learning about it until after it had gone into effect this morning.

Finally, the overall university numbers look good--emphasis on "look." They only include tests done at the university, which is likely why the positive tests that came out of the athletics department have not yet been added. They may very well have been done by an outside lab contracted by athletics. I see the exclusion of all non-university tests as a major flaw in what is being shown. The numbers given do not provide an accurate representation of covid-19 at the university.

I wonder if the local news tonight will include how the first day of the new restrictions went....