Good man

News blues

You can’t keep a good man down!

“After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field,” Dr Anthony Fauci said in a statement. “I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats.”

Joe Biden, [79 years old] in a statement recognizing Fauci’s coming departure, hailed [Fauci, 81 years old] as a “dedicated public servant, and a steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades at the forefront of some of our most dangerous and challenging public health crises.” 

Read more >> 
Watch interview with Dr Fauci on his announcement and his views on zoonotic diseases, and the current atmosphere of hate and anger in the US >>  (11:53 mins)

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A quick review of recent history – Covid and US response

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, on Sunday said the U.S. should not have had to rely on COVID data from Europe to protect Americans in the early days of the pandemic.
“In March of 2020, all of our data that I used to warn Americans of who was at risk for severe disease, hospitalization, and deaths came from our European colleagues,” Birx told CBS’ “Face the Nation. “That in itself should be an indictment of our system.”

Read more >> 

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On war and culture war

Russian soldier speaks out… ‘I don’t see justice in this war’: Russian soldier exposes rot at core of Ukraine invasion >> 
Watch interview with this Russian soldier >> (5:33 mins)

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The Lincoln Project:
Fire the Feds  (1:05 mins)
Receipts  (0:25 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Nurdles, nurdles everywhere but none that we can capture…

Maritime authorities are considering stricter controls on the ocean transport of billions of plastic pellets known as nurdles after a series of spillages around the world.
Campaigners warn that nurdles are one of the most common micro-plastic pollutants in the seas, washing up on beaches from New Zealand to Cornwall. The multicoloured pellets produced by petrochemical companies are used as building blocks for plastic products, from bags to bottles and piping.

So, the UN seeks a plan to beat plastic nurdles?
Here’s a plan: NO more manufacture and use of plastic bags. No, not allow consumers off the hook simply by paying 10 cents, or 15 cents, or 20 cents per plastic bag. NO more plastic bags produced at all.
Let ‘em use cloth bring-your-own bags… or use up the plastic bags already littering the planet, dispose of them carefully, then bring their own bags….
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Mary is amazing. She’s determined to quit her oxycodone use asap… Yesterday, she was down to 5mg every 8-plus hours. Today? She bit the small, white 5mg pill in half and plans to gauge her pain threshold accordingly. So far, so good. She says it is not “pain” she experiences as she fights this good fight, it’s more the feeling that her chest is “boxed in” and “squeezed”.

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Yesterday, Mary accompanied me and a friend to the Sacramento Delta where I’m looking at purchasing another liveaboard boat. Yes, liveaboard is in my future, again.
It was a lovely day in the Delta; hot, hot…

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Time, again, to track the change of seasons:
SF Bay Area:
Sunrise: 6:33am
Sunset: 7:49pm

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:23am
Sunset: 5:40pm

Squirrely

News blues

Another week, another variant. This one, Omicron, seems to carry higher Covid reinfection risk. Scientists warn of higher rate of repeat infections but say vaccines appear to protect against serious illness.

With the World Health Organization warning that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus poses a "very high" global risk  - it appears to spread more easily and might resist vaccines and immunity in people who were infected with previous strains – the variant arrives in the US. New York and Hawaii are the latest to announce infections, and officials in both states said there is evidence of “community spread.” Cases have also been detected in California, Minnesota, Colorado, New York, and Hawaii. The Minnesota patient recently attended a New York City convention that drew thousands of people. 

Read more >> 
Meanwhile,

…Omicron’s effect on the course of the pandemic will be determined by three factors: its transmissibility; the degree to which it evades our existing immune defenses; and its virulence, or the severity of the disease that it causes. If Omicron turns out to jump between hosts with ease, blow past our neutralizing antibodies, and cause unusually dangerous complications, we’ll all be in deep trouble. But it could also turn out to do a lot of other things, with more subtle implications. If Omicron ends up being super contagious, for example, but mild in its symptoms, that might even be a good thing.
At this point, living with the coronavirus for years to come is all but inevitable. In many countries that have had vaccines in hand for the better part of a year, inoculation rates still aren’t close to 100 percent. Even if every human on Earth gained a degree of immunity from vaccination or infection, the virus could retreat into its many animal hosts, only to reenter the human population in a slightly different form. “There’s no reasonable person, I think, in public health now who thinks that eradication or elimination or having zero COVID is a realistic goal,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Read “Omicron’s Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios” >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of: Billions of tiny plastic pellets – “nurdles,” a colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets” – a toxic waste that floats in the ocean, cause as much damage as oil spills. Nurdles, however, are still not classified as hazardous 

…the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets - - nurdles – in May 2021, have been washing up in their billions along hundreds of miles of the Sri Lanka’s coastline, and are expected to make landfall across Indian Ocean coastlines from Indonesia and Malaysia to Somalia. In some places they are up to 2 metres deep. They have been found in the bodies of dead dolphins and the mouths of fish. About 1,680 tonnes of nurdles were released into the ocean. It is the largest plastic spill in history, according to the UN report.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

With the Biden administration's new, stricter Covid-19 testing requirements for all travelers taking effect this coming Monday, my return to South Africa in December looks less and less likely. Moreover, while I am a US citizen and could – legally and medically – return, at least in theory, reality suggests flights may not be available. I simply cannot afford to be locked down in South Africa or locked out from the US, for months again.
This means many more photos of amazing critters as I visit the beach near my California home. Not a bad scenario. A look at today’s denizens welcomes great egrets - Ardea alba. Adult great egrets range in size from 37 to 41 inches in length and have a wingspan of 51 inches. Moreover, the elegance!

 

All photos (c) S. Galleymore

Ground squirrels – never before mentioned here in a post - are ubiquitous along the beach and on the lawns. Members of the squirrel family of rodents - Sciuridae – they burrow into the ground rather than nest trees. Western gray squirrels – tree critters - live in the park's oak, cedar, and sycamore trees, too. Indeed, many visit my patio to plant nuts, seeds, and acorns in pots. 

Viva creatures of the air and the earth!