Socially distanced

News blues

Update on Omicron in US and in SA  (7:00 mins)
Dr Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and former co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, speaks to the latest developments in the data regarding the Omicron variant's spread in South Africa >>  (1:28 mins)

 
An analysis by NPR shows  that since the vaccine rollout, US counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump have had more than twice the COVID mortality rates of those that voted for Joe Biden. 

Editorial comment: Gosh! How surprising! Hmmm, maybe residents should try vaccine instead of cultish ideology?

Healthy planet, anyone?

Another foray into the life and times of bees: Honeybees survived for weeks under volcano ash after Canary Islands eruption: For roughly 50 days, thousands of honeybees sealed themselves in their hives, away from deadly gas, and feasted on honey. To humans this “is a very empowering story,” To bees? It’s business as usual. Eating honey, after all, is why bees make honey.  

Editorial comment: Hmmm, maybe humans could learn from bees to take better care of ourselves and our planet. Instead, we gamble when the stakes clearly are beyond our capacity to handle the outcomes – as in ignoring that:

Coal ash, an umbrella term for the residue that’s left over when utilities burn coal, one of the United States’ largest kinds of industrial waste. Coal ash contains metals — including lead, mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium and arsenic — that never biodegrade.
…John Howard, who lives in Mobile County and has been fishing in southern Alabama for decades, said, “We’ve got an A-bomb up the river. It’s just waiting to happen.” Past environmental calamity spills include immediate fallout with ash blanketing up to 400 acres, killing hundreds of fish, damaging more than a dozen homes and polluting nearby waterways. That clean-up took years and cost more than $1 billion.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Cold outside today so I entertain myself with culinary experimentation.
Despite being more interested in simplicity than in owing more kitchen gadgets, I fell in love with a friend’s air fryer. After many delicious and easy to make meals made with said air fryer, I splurged and purchased my own. The outcome? My love life has expanded: I love my own small, easy to use air fryer, perhaps more than I loved his air fryer.
My air frying learning curve includes making my own falafel – a dish I never made at home in the past due to antipathy toward frying food. Now? Delicious falafel that involves no frying comes out of the gadget.

Today’s culinary experimentation: homemade potato cakes made from “real” potatoes – Yukon Golds (potato cakes aka aloo tikki). I’ll freeze most and pull them out when I make my easy version of chole aloo tikki chaat.
I also made cilantro pesto and tzatziki.

Perhaps it’s the holiday season (SA dubs it the “festive season”) or perhaps the cold weather, but experimental cooking is on my daily agenda. 

After not making a cheese cake in decades, last week I made my version of cheese cake that uses plain yogurt instead of sour cream and includes a layer of lemon curd.
Roll on, festive season!

***

Working to ameliorate the isolation of social distancing, I became obsessed over tracking my cell phone’s battery usage.  

The reward of an ISP contract is a cell phone battery that last longer, sometimes twice as long, than a phone not logged onto a private wireless network.

Battery charge durations illustrated.
(Left) 2 short durations. (Right) 1 long - + 24 hour - duration.

With Covid’s social distancing keeping me home, I “twiddle my thumbs” making assorted “designs” with battery charging colors. Shown above, left, design created with short charge cycle pre-ISP contract - compared, right, to long charge post-ISP contract.
I pray the ISP contract relieves me of this obsession with battery charging .

“Work together”

Gary McCoy | Copyright 2021 Cagle Cartoons

News blues

These days in the US, it is risky to declare that “I APPRECIATE and RESPECT science and scientists.” Sharing that declaration is revolutionary. Join the revolution: listen to and take to hear the words of South Africa’s Dr Salim Abdool Karim: “We must work together"  (9:43 mins).
Dr. Karim is correct. But how to break through the mountains of prejudices burdening We the People?
Listen, too, to US’s Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, share the latest scientific information on Omicron (if impatient, skip to around minute 5:25 of this video clip (8:26 mins).
Advice: Don’t panic but be realistic about Omicron. Get the jabs, mask up, socially distance, go back to pandemic cautions of 2020. And urge your Congress person to ensure fresh vaccine is shared with Africa and Africans.

Healthy planet, anyone?

What, if any, links exist between Covid-19 and higher levels of pollution?

Scientists …looked for correlations between the disease and higher levels of pollution [and] found significant connections, but some worried that the available data, which averages groups of people, may hide other factors that were the true reason for the link.
So a new study this week  represents a major step forward. First, it used extensive individual data on almost 10,000 people in Catalonia and, second, it ran blood tests for coronavirus antibodies in about half of them. The testing is especially important as it identified people who had been infected but without symptoms. This group may have been missed in earlier studies.
The findings of this strongest study to date were striking: people exposed to moderately above-average levels of small particle pollution in the two years before the pandemic were 51% more likely to suffer severe Covid-19, meaning they were hospitalised. For those breathing higher levels of nitrogen dioxide, mostly produced by diesel vehicles, the increased risk was 26%.
This may well be because the dirty air had already damaged people’s immune systems or increased the level of heart and lung disease known to be a risk factor for severe Covid-19. Scientists can’t prove a causal link because, again, you can’t do harmful experiments on people.
Thanks to the blood tests, the researchers were able to show that air pollution did not significantly raise the chance of just being infected by coronavirus. It is likely that other factors such as social contacts, mask wearing and amount of travel are more important.
Read more >> 

***

(c) Oceana 

Our oceans make up more than 70% of our planet, and we have basically trashed them. The world dumps a jaw-dropping 17.6 billion pounds (8 billion kilograms) of new plastic into the oceans each year. Question: is cleaning up the oceans’ plastic an indisputably good idea…or is it more effective to stop making plastic? 

Read more >> 

Good news:

The number of monarch butterflies migrating to California
this winter after years of historic lows.
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The annual winter monarch butterfly migration, steeply declining in recent years, appears to be making a comeback. Biologists are encouraged and confused by the trend. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I continue to watch the news on Omicron and its effect on international travel. My intuition to wait before purchasing tickets was on the mark.
Last year, my agency and airline of choice – FlyUS and British Air – refused to refund the flights they cancelled due to Covid. Yes, I had travel insurance. Go figure. After a year of giving me the run around, they refused to refund me with a curt note. Live and learn: I’ll not fly using FlyUS or British Air again. I suggest you avoid them, too.
However, both airlines with whom I considered purchasing tickets this year are cancelling their flights to and from SA.
Giving thanks that I delayed purchasing tickets.

Watching and worrying about friends and family in SA (and US!)