Wear a mask!

Worldwide (Map)  
December 10 – 68,849,000 confirmed infections; 1,568,750 deaths
November 12 – 52,070,000 confirmed infections; 1,274,000 deaths
October 15 – 38,426,375 confirmed infections; 1,091,250 deaths

US (Map) 
December 10 – 15,385,00 confirmed infections; 289,500 deaths
November 12 – 10,258,100 confirmed infections; 239,700 deaths
October 15 – 7,911,500 confirmed infections; 216,860 deaths

Deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to more than 2,200 a day on average, matching the frightening peak reached last April, and cases per day have eclipsed 200,000 on average for the first time on record, with the crisis all but certain to get worse because of the fallout from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
Virtually every state is reporting surges just as a vaccine appears days away from getting the go-ahead in the U.S. 

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
December 10 – 829,600 confirmed infections; 22,580 deaths
November 12 – 740,255 confirmed infections; 19,951 deaths
October 15 – 696,420 confirmed infections; 18,155 deaths
Covid-19 infections have surpassed the 4,400 mark daily for the past three days in SA.
Mkhize: Expect faster rise in COVID-19 cases in second wave 

Stay safe – wear a mask, any mask, just cover your mouth and nose and try to protect yourself and your fellow humans…

News blues…

Global Home Care Services Market to Reach $1.8 Trillion by 2027 

***

Yesterday, I happened to pick up an unfamiliar local weekly print paper. The solitary Letter to the Editor caught my eye: it was a pro-Trump misinformation screed.
My first reaction? Counter the lies with my own Letter to the Editor.
Years of being attacked as a “socialist,” a “radical,” and someone who ought “to kill myself out of shame,” while volunteering a GI Rights counselor and an anti-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-war activist, urged caution.
I asked a local friend if she knew or had heard of the Letter’s author. She had: he’s an elected official of a local chapter of a predominantly white rightwing political party. Freedom Front Plus, is the fifth largest in the country with 2.38 percent of the national vote, up 0.9 percent since 2014.

Remember when, back in 2018, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump suddenly began, briefly, talking about “land seizures” and “white farmer murders” in South Africa?
That was Trump complying with the FF Plus’s request that Trump highlight the issue. Since the issue suited Trump’s divide-and-conquer tactics, he dived “into controversy over South Africa's land policies and farmer killings.” (9:00 mins)

South African politicians rebutted Trump’s tactic. 
Nary a word about that from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. 

When reality and facts do not match ideology, toss out reality.

It would have been nice to rebut misinformation in the local rag, I’m glad I resisted. 

Note: yes, South African farmers, white and black, are murdered. That the majority of murder victims are white lies in the reality that whites are the majority of owners of large farms.

Healthy planet, anyone?

Human-made materials now outweigh Earth's entire biomass. Production of concrete, metal, plastic, bricks and asphalt greater than mass of living matter on planet. 

… research shows that human activity including production of concrete, metal, plastic, bricks and asphalt has brought the world to a crossover point where human-made mass – driven mostly by enhanced consumption and urban development – exceeds the overall living biomass on Earth.
The amount of plastic alone is greater in mass than all land animals and marine creatures combined….
On average, every person in the world is responsible for the creation of human-made matter equal to more than their bodyweight each week [according to] the paper published in Nature. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After much drama, uncertainty, and arguing with lawyers, I was handed keys to my new, small home. From now on, I spread my finite energy between selling my mother’s large house and continuing to manage her affairs, visiting and caring for her, and moving into my new home, extending the small garden, and admiring the wild animals.
How long before I’ve normalized this idyll and begin to complain about those darned zebra, impala, warthogs, and birds eating my plants? Or bemoaning the lack of monkeys?