Mortality rate backlog

News blues

Covid-19: South Africa records 3 more deaths, but there may be mortality rate backlog. 
South Africa and Covid-19: what’s up with National State of Disaster?  (5:34 mins)

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A new, hybrid variant on the horizon? 

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I get that we'd all rather talk about anything than Covid at this point, but it's still surprising how little coverage the spike in cases in Asia is getting at the moment.  Read more >> 

 On War:

Photos from Ukraine >> 

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Last Sunday, U.N. agencies warned that the escalation of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, including attacks on health care facilities, could prolong the pandemic.

“Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has already put health systems and health care workers under enormous strain, such attacks have the potential to be even more devastating for the civilian population,” reads a joint statement issued by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the United Nations Population Fund.
The statement cited 31 attacks that destroyed or damaged health care facilities since the beginning of the Russian invasion, curtailing Ukrainians’ access to services, including vaccinations against COVID-19.

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project: Brent Renaud  (1:00 mins)
Putin’s Puppet  (1:00 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Take a climate pledge. 
The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions but rolling them out with great speed. 

Read some reasons to be hopeful >> 

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Another bad idea whose time has come - and gone? Was cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a bad idea? Scientists worry that flashy efforts to clean plastic from the ocean do more harm than good.
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Painting, painting, painting. I’ve painted a bedroom and I’m almost finished painting a large living room. I prefer walking and swimming as exercise, but several hours of painting each day is a decent workout.
The best part of painting? Cleaning and putting away tools – brushes, rollers, paint trays, paint cloths – then inspecting the finished product. Sometimes inspecting the finished product, however, reveals yet another coat of paint is required. Grrr. In that case, finishing a third coat provides a form of bliss I’ve seldom encountered.

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The saga of the block culverts continues. This is what happens after 6 years of trying, unsuccessfully, to get the appropriate department to maintain their tax-supported responsibilities in the community.
Heavy rainfall has nowhere to go and dams up behind the blocked culverts. 

Blocked culverts mean water cannot drain ...

Believe it or not: two culverts hidden within this overgrown, muddy, debris-filled zone...
The problem now? Mid-right: Water borne silt pouring into the already over-silted area.
That silt is now more than 1 meter/3 feet deep - and hardening by the day.
One would assume this circumstance would bring out a team of workers to alleviate the problem.
Here? Nope. Despite 10 years of paying property taxes ("rates") and six years of asking for 
assistance, this is the state of affairs. Distressing.

Year 3 of the Covid Era

December 12, 2019: a cluster of patients in Wuhan, China’s Hubei Providence, begin to experience shortness of breath and fever.
Early 2020, after the December 2019 outbreak, the World Health Organization identified a new type of coronavirus: SARS-CoV-2. 

SARS-CoV-2, triggering what doctors call a respiratory tract infection, quickly spread around the world.

CDC Timeline for Covid, from 2019 to present 

Below, today’s Covid numbers compared to numbers this time last year : 

Worldwide (Map) 
December 9, 2021 – 268,100,000 confirmed infections; 5,283,715 deaths
December 10, 2020 – 68,849,000 confirmed infections; 1,568,750 deaths
Total doses of vaccine administered: 8,246,30,377

US (Map) 
December 9, 2021 – 49,547,400 confirmed infections; 793,350 deaths
December 10, 2020 – 15,385,00 confirmed infections; 289,500 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
December 9, 2021 – 3,071,100 confirmed infections; 90,100 deaths
December 10, 2020 – 829,600 confirmed infections; 22,580 deaths

News blues

SA passes grim Covid-19 milestone as 90,000 official deaths are recorded. SA's NICD reported this week that the official death toll was 90,002 after the latest data was released by the national health department. 
We don’t know how severe Omicron is, but we do know it’s spreading very fast.

If you’re in the mood for detail, WHO obliges with a technical brief, “Enhancing Readiness for Omicron (B.1.1.529).” This reviews priority actions and “main uncertainties” for member states, including:

(1) how transmissible the variant is and whether any increases are related to immune escape, intrinsic increased transmissibility, or both; (2) how well vaccines protect against infection, transmission, clinical disease of different degrees of severity and death; and (3) does the variant present with a different severity profile. Public health advice is based on current information and will be tailored as more evidence emerges around those key questions.

Download the pdf (8 pages) >> 

The Lincoln Project:
Last week in the Republican Party  (1:45 mins)
Road map  (0:26 mins)
Meidas Touch: Politics Girl  (2:43 mins)
Want more Politics Girl? Check her out >> (1:22 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Life: a force that adapts and evolves. Take, as example, the many coastal species living miles from their usual habitats finding affordable housing on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, halfway between the coast of California and Hawaii.

Plants and animals, including anemones, tiny marine bugs, molluscs and crabs, found on 90% of the [Patch] debris.
[A recent study] examined plastic items more than 5cm (2in) in diameter gathered from a gyre - an area where circulating currents cause floating debris to accumulate - in the Pacific.

Neopelagic communities are composed of pelagic species, evolved to live on floating marine substrates and marine animals, and coastal species, once assumed incapable of surviving long periods of time on the high seas. The emergence of a persistent neopelagic community in the open ocean is due to the vast supply of durable and highly buoyant plastic pollution as suitable habitat for both pelagic and coastal rafting species. Examples of pelagic rafting species are: (a) gooseneck barnacle Lepas anatifera,(b) flotsam crab Planes major, and (c) bryozoan Jellyella tuberculata. Examples of coastal rafting species commonly found on floating plastic debris on the high seas include: (d) podded hydroid Aglaophenia pluma,(e) Asian anemones Anthopleura sp. , and (f) amphipod Stenothoe gallensis.
Illustrated by © 2021 Alex Boersma.

Lead researcher Dr Linsey Haram, who carried out the work at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre, said: "Plastics are more permanent than many of the natural debris that you previously have seen in the open ocean. They're creating a more permanent habitat in this area."

[The downside?] Scientists are concerned that plastic may help transport invasive species.

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The world has at least five plastic-infested gyres. This one is thought to hold the most floating plastic - an estimated 79,000 tonnes in a region of more than 610,000 square miles (1.6m sq km).
"All sorts of stuff ends up out there," said Dr Haram. "It's not an island of plastic, but there's definitely a large amount of plastic corralled there."
Much of that is micro-plastic is very difficult to see with the naked eye. But there are also larger items, including abandoned fishing nets, buoys and even vessels that have been floating in the gyre since the Japanese tsunami in 2011.
The researchers, who reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications,  initially embarked on the investigation following that devastating tsunami. The disaster caused tonnes of debris to be ejected into the Pacific ocean, and hundreds of coastal Japanese marine species were found alive on items that landed on the shores of the North American Pacific coast and the Hawaiian Islands. 

Read more >> 
What can you do? It’s depressing to see the hows and whys of our unique planet’s slow succumbing to humans’ abuse via refusal to address and end the reign of plastics, fossil fuels, manufacture of toxics, etc. One can easily feel disempowered by the enormous complexity and apparent lack of effective action. Yet, We the People can take small steps to address our complicity. Here’s one small swap that can make a difference: Switch to bar soap for… everything 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

During my daily walk I noticed a familiar tree blossom. Close attention revealed a coral tree, native to SA and KZN. 

I know coral trees grow in the hotter Los Angeles, but I’ve not seen such a large specimen in my San Francisco Bay Area town. 

In KZN, coral trees blossom after leaves fall, bare limbs acting as frames for spectacular displays. This local tree displays both leaves and blossoms simultaneously. 

Turns out coral trees – Erythrina  with approximately 112 different species – also are found in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, Asia, Australia, and Hawaii.

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Here, days are colder and daylight shorter (sun rose at 7:13am today and will set at 4:49pm). Time to remember KZN’s summer birds:

Wooly necked stork dries its wings.

Masked bishop.
Photos (c) S.Galleymore

Reincarnate

News blues…

COVID-19 has killed nearly 5 million people — that we know of and have recorded - and the pandemic is far from over.
As the world confronts another tragic milestone, experts say the death toll and collateral damage will rise unless vaccines are delivered swiftly.  (Includes an aerial view of a COVID-19 victims' burial ground at Rorotan Public Cemetery in Cilincing, North Jakarta, Indonesia on July 21, 2021. Sobering.)

Within the next few days, COVID-19 will have killed more than five million people worldwide. It is yet another grim milestone in a seemingly endless stream of them. In many countries, including the United States, COVID-19 is now a leading cause of death, alongside heart disease and stroke. And yet experts say the pandemic’s true toll is likely much higher.
“It’s quite possible that the number of deaths is double what we see,” says Amber D’Souza, professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “But five million is such a staggering number on its own. No country has been able to escape it.”

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Critical election coming up on Tuesday next week. The Lincoln Project offers a perspective:
What’s on the ballot (0:25 mins)
Critical race card  (0:55 mins)
And, at COP 26, a dinosaur tells UN 'don't choose extinction' as part of new climate campaign  (2:31 mins)
Get the Don't Choose Extinction toolkit.

Stephen Colbert’s humorous view of Dr Horsey promoting Ivermectin. © The Late Show.

Healthy planet, anyone?

Jenny, a half-mile long trash-trapping system, hauled in more than 63,000 pounds of waste from the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  And Jenny wasn’t even fully operational….

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Always a treat to watch US House Rep. Katie Porter, Democrat of southern California, address congress. Yesterday, she did her usual exceptional job, this time schooling fossil fuel executives – and the rest of us, too. Read the article and do watch the vid >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

With almost 5 million recorded deaths from Covid-19, titling this post “Reincarnate”- “to undergo rebirth in another body” or “reborn in another body”- may seems tasteless when applied to my lowly laptop.
Yesterday’s post, RIP, referred to my suspicion that my laptop – only two years old – was kaput. That was before I met Vladimir, the kaput laptop reviver. Vladimir removed 44 viruses, replaced the bum hard-drive (itself replaced while I was in South Africa last year), installed affordable anti-virus software (Wetroot, $25/year as opposed to McAfee, $160/year) and sent me on my way, laptop happily breathing a sigh of relief at its reprieve. Reincarnated, indeed. Thank you, Vladimir!

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I dropped into my friendly grocery store’s pharmacy today to explore the possibility of getting my Covid booster earlier than the six month wait period. This, because I expect to return to South Africa before the six month window. (While SA is no longer on the UK’s countries red listed for travel to the UK, the CDC still cautions travelers.)
My thinking? I’d be just two or three weeks under the completion date. Surely, surely, I could wangle a jab. Yes, of course, I’d do my pre-flight Covid test, but I’d like to have the booster before I leave, too. So far, pharmacists’ responses are unequivocal: “No… you must wait until you are fully over the 6-month period. Not even a day earlier than the due date.”
The pharmacist was happy to jab me with Fluzone so I am vaxed against at least a subset of this year’s flu viruses.
Even as I know many the world over who want the jab are still trying for their first dose, I hanker for a third... 
Crazy times!