Killing ‘em softly

© Tom the Dancing Bug
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South Africa remains at Lockdown Level 2. My small sampling of local peoples’ infection mitigation efforts: compliance with wearing masks. 

America never locked down and Americans show spotty compliance with wearing masks. (No incentives – other than staying alive - and no repercussions for failing to do so.) 

Some Americans protect themselves and others by wearing masks, others refuse to wear masks (it “infringes on our freedoms”).
Residents of both countries, however, appear subliminally to agree: “been there, done that.” 

Widespread perception? The pandemic as almost over. 

It is not. 

***

Compare today’s numbers with those of a month ago: 

Worldwide (Map)
September 3 – 26,940,000 confirmed infections; 861,870 deaths
August 6 – 18,753,000 confirmed infections; 706,800 deaths
US (Map)
September 3 – 6,114,000 confirmed infections; 185,710 deaths
August 6 – 4,824,000 confirmed infections; 158,250 deaths
SA (Coronavirus portal)
September 3 – 630,596 confirmed infections; 14,390 deaths
August 6 – 529,900 confirmed infections; 9,298 deaths

News blues…

While KwaZulu Natal now has the second highest rates of infection in South Africa – 113,237 or 18 percent of all confirmed infections: 

Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced on Monday night that [countrywide] 1,985 new infections had been recorded in the past 24 hours. This is after 2,505 new cases were confirmed on Sunday night and 2,418 on Saturday night.

***

Remember all the Trumpie finger-pointing at China (“Chayna”) as the source of America’s Covid-19 problems? Not so. Majority of cases in the US have “viral lineages …in Europe”.
A new study, “Phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in the Boston area highlights the role of recurrent importation and superspreading events” claims a Biogen conference held in Boston, MA on 26 February 2020

... turned into a superspreading event, seeding infections that would affect tens of thousands of people across the United States and in countries as far as Singapore and Australia.
The study ... gives an unprecedented look at how far the coronavirus can spread given the right opportunities. …Researchers analyzed the genetic material of the viruses infecting the patients’ cells. …All told, the scientists analyzed the viral genomes of 772 people with Covid-19 between January and May…. Most of the viral lineages in Boston have a genetic fingerprint linking them to earlier cases in Europe. Some travelers brought the virus directly from Europe in February and March, whereas others may have picked up the European lineage elsewhere in the northeastern United States.

Read “One Meeting in Boston Seeded Tens of Thousands of Infections, Study Finds.”  

Hmmm, maybe it came from … Norway?  (lily white, forest raking…). 

***

Meanwhile, reports from the White House suggest Trump and aides are resigned to, and okay with, the virus’ inevitable spread. 

Internal struggles among medical advisers have divided the White House [with] …resistance from the top down. Now, with two months to go until the election, the White House is focused on reopening the economy and mitigating the virus to a limited extent, or just enough to keep hospitals from being completely overwhelmed.
They're doing it with the imprimatur of newcomer adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose voice within the White House is drowning out task force members the public had come to know and trust. Task force meetings are growing more infrequent, ostensibly because its head, Vice President Mike Pence, is often out of town on campaign trips.
… The internal goal is to keep things just under control until a vaccine comes out, two senior administration officials said. "You can't stop it!" one senior official said of the internal thinking on the virus. 

***

The political ads keep coming…
The Lincoln Project: Ratings  (0:55 mins)
Meidas Touch:

Trump’s Mental Unhealth with Bandy Lee  (2:25 mins)
I’m voting for Joe  (1:00 mins)
Vote Vets – Losing  (1:20 mins)
Really American: In Trump’s America  (0:50 mins)
Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT): Vietnam Vet and Counterterrorism Official Knows Trump is Not Good for the Military or our Country  (6:00 mins)
The Daily Show: How Holy Is Donald Trump? (4:44 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The apricot tree shows signs of spring with a sprinkling of pink blossoms.
Masked weaver birds are in full nest-building mode.
With some decisions made and confirmed – Care Center’s deposit and first month’s rent paid – next big step: euthanizing three old dogs. These dogs are old, obese, and incontinent. They haven’t a hope in hell of being “re-homed.” Moreover, my mother’s plan for her dogs? Rather than rehome them with people she doesn’t know and wouldn’t trust to care “properly” for her dogs, she’ll euthanize, cremate, and save the ashes until she passes. At that point, yours truly is instructed to combine my mom’s and the ashes of dozens of former dogs and transport them to her previous rural home. That the land now belongs to a corporation is a minor issue. I’m instructed to “just dig a hole and slip the bag into the ground.” I balked at euthanizing the two younger, healthy, continent dogs. I’ll seek new homes for them. 

How hard can it be?

Then and now…

News blues…

With all the Trump craziness, it’s easy to forget: 

California’s fire woes continue…. 
Ramaphosa’s political woes continue…  
Zuma rears his head…. 
Coronavirus still has the upper hand… 

***

The Lincoln Project: Ratings (0:55 mins)
Meidas Touch:

Trump’s Mental Unhealth with Bandy Lee  (2:25 mins)
Trump Terrorism (1:00 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The US Embassy published another series of repatriation flights, one or two for almost every day of September. 

For details contact: 

https://za.usembassy.gov/ 

Tel: 012-431-4000 (outside South Africa: +27-12-431-4000) 

Johannesburgacsmessage@state.gov 

***

I’m taking to heart Kate Murphy’s essay “We’re All Socially Awkward Now” as she tackles an overlooked side effect of the pandemic: awkwardness. She writes: 

Social skills are a muscle, and right now they’re atrophying. Our personalities are getting flabby.
“The signs are everywhere… people oversharing on Zoom, overreacting or misconstruing one another’s behavior, longing for but then not really enjoying contact with others.”
Kate takes an everyday interaction and breaks it down into countless decisions — each decision a chance to get it wrong, each one an atom of anxiety. “Social interplay is one of the most complicated things we ask our brains to do.” You’ve got to “get the timing and pacing right, as well as titrate” — I love the choice of that word — “how much to share and with whom.”

Definition of titrate:
In chemistry: ascertain the amount of a constituent in (a solution) by measuring the volume of a known concentration of reagent required to complete a reaction with it, typically using an indicator.
In medicine: continuously measure and adjust the balance of (a physiological function or drug dosage). Example: “each patient received intravenous diazepam and pethidine, the doses being titrated according to the response"
A few years ago, Kate wrote a popular essay about attachment theory that began:

We humans are an exquisitely social species … thriving in good company and suffering in isolation. More than anything else, our intimate relationships, or lack thereof, shape and define our lives.”
Intimacy is on the rocks right now. Kate’s advice is to cut one another — and ourselves — some slack. And she has guidance to share from people who’ve survived much more extreme bouts of isolation, like in polar outposts and solitary confinement.

Kate Murray’s column resonates as isolated, locked down, implementing huge changes in the life of my elderly mother, I reached out for advice and support, not from family, but from professionals and new acquaintances … and “share” (over-share?) via this blog.
As I’ve intimated elsewhere in this blog, I left South Africa at 19 and since then, apart from the last 8 months, have never again lived here.
Looking back, I understand that my youth made me determined to grow as an adult, and to do it elsewhere.
My real home in South Africa was the wonderfully rural and relatively safe outdoors of the Valley of a Thousand Hills. The people I grew up with – aka “family” - was a collection of 2 adults and three children who shared DNA, not a nurturing, emotional support system.
Along with the stress and turmoil of my current life in South African, a great gift is the opportunity to look back and understand the context of “then” and “now.” The day by day posts shared in the blog allow me to share multiple perspectives, grope through the past with the present as context, maintain level-headedness despite fear, stress, longing – and respect my mother’s humanity as equal to my own.
It’s fascinating, humbling, frustrating, and very human.
I accept the challenge and intend to do it justice.

Coming to terms

Sixty-something days to the election and, to date, the 2020 election campaign cycle has racked up a bill close to US $10 billion.
Imagine if, instead of the awful Citizens United decision,  Americans outlawed outrageous spend on political campaigns and diverted that money - US$10 billion–and-growing - on making health care affordable, or addressing homelessness, or improving education, or offering free, mandatory classes on critical thinking to all Americans.

News blues…

In 2019, it was … unusual… for Speaker Pelosi, of the US House of Representatives, to disallow the president of the United States to deliver The State of the Union address.
That was then. 
Now, a governor of an American state begs an American president not to visit! And mayors of American cities throw down against a president for inciting violence… 

Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin urges Trump to “reconsider” his upcoming trip to meet with law enforcement and survey the damage following demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism. Evers writes, such a visit,

… “may only delay our work to overcome division and move forward…. Kenosha and communities across Wisconsin are enduring extraordinary grief, grappling with a Black man being shot seven times and the loss of two additional lives at the hands of an out-of-state armed militant. I along with other community leaders … are concerned about what your presence will mean for Kenosha and our state…[that] “your presence will only hinder our healing….” 

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said the timing is wrong for Trump’s visit on Tuesday. “I think that you have a community that’s in the process of trying to heal… It just seemed to me, and I think others, that it would be better for us to get them to actually heal up the process of what’s going on and start dealing with the concerns that we have that need to be addressed.”
He added that he could not comment on the details of President Trump’s visit because it was under the workings of law enforcement and not his office, but he said that this is not the time.

Portland Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler took on Trump in an impressively passionate rebuttal of Trump’s incitement.  (12:00 mins) 

So far, Trump’s ignoring these requests and said,

…he would go to the region,  even though he was unwelcome, in his latest effort to cast himself as the “law-and-order” president going into the November election. The White House has said he will use the visit to support local law enforcement and “survey” damage after anti-racist demonstrations, but the move mirrors his administration’s efforts to cast such protests as violent riots rather than calls for change.

Buckle up….

***

Trump’s latest election ploy? “Swift boating” Joe Biden. 
 

***

Reality raises inconvenient truths.
Remember: the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that gathered in South Dakota earlier this month? How cyclists scoffed at wearing masks?
So far, more than 100 attendees have tested positive for COVID-19 after they returned home to their respective states.

Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association, said it’s almost impossible to track the true impact of the rally in spreading the virus.  Many more unidentified positive cases likely exist for every confirmed positive, he told The Washington Post. Those unidentified positive individuals will likely proceed to infect others in their communities, but it’ll be impossible to trace the resulting community spread back to its ultimate source in Sturgis.
According to an analysis of anonymous cell phone activity shared with The Associated Press by Camber Systems, which specializes in aggregating cell data for health researchers, 61% of all the counties in the U.S. have been visited by someone who attended Sturgis.

Remember: the 2½-hour long final night of the Republican National Convention with Trump on the South Lawn of the White House, addressing an in-person audience of 1,500 largely maskless supporters?

Most attendees sat inches rather than feet apart and sweated profusely in the August heat as they clapped, whistled and chanted, “Four more years!”
The fervor was infectious at this potential super-spreader event, where supporters flouted CDC recommendations to hear Trump recite his dream list of successes, one of which was how wonderfully he’s combated the pandemic.

Remember:Reality is a hard task master.

*** 

Don Winslow Films: An Open Letter to Republicans   (2:20 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’m gear up for an emotionally taxing roller coaster ride: “retrenching” (“laying off”) my mother’s long time employees, accompanying my mother to euthanize three elderly, incontinent dogs and adding their cremains to her collection of cremains (at least two dozen dogs plus cremains of a few people), hiring someone to move big items to her new care center abode, setting up the place for her to move into, and settling her in. After that, packing up and disposing of her remaining goods (giving away, donating, and auctioning), cleaning, patching, painting before “staging” her house for sale, hosting potential buyers, and staying sane for the “3 to 4 months” it takes to process paperwork through a moribund bureaucracy further impeded by unanticipated shut-downs due to coronavirus. Then, it’ll be December – “the festive season” – an inauspicious time to purchase a ticket and fly back to California – mid-winter.
The good news? 

1) While taxing and ultimately do-able, days will be graced by the beauties of emerging spring. 

2) An opportunity to grapple with who I am, where I came from, where I'm going, and how to make the most of what I learn to fully enjoy the rest of my days on planet earth.

Jitters

Some days it hits hard: what another four years of Trumpism would do to the US and to people across the world.
Prejudice. Corruption. Chaos. Violence. Unjust justice. Lack of leadership. Strong arm tactics. Increasing poverty of the majority juxtaposed with exorbitant wealth of a tiny minority .
Not to be dismissive, but … I’ve little faith that human beings in leadership positions have the desire or a clue as to how to pull out of our planet’s nosedive into tragedy. Nor do I have faith that We, the People, can work constructively together to change our trajectory.
(Sorry to begin your week on a downer.... Care to prove me wrong? I welcome it.)

News blues…

Quickie news bites:

A UN summit on biodiversity, scheduled to be held in New York next month, will be told by conservationists and biologists there is now clear evidence of a strong link between environmental destruction and the increased emergence of deadly new diseases such as Covid-19.
Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of farming and the building of mines in remote regions – as well as the exploitation of wild animals as sources of food, traditional medicines and exotic pets – are creating a “perfect storm” for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people, delegates will be told.
Almost a third of all emerging diseases have originated through the process of land use change, it is claimed. As a result, five or six new epidemics a year could soon affect Earth’s population.
“There are now a whole raft of activities – illegal logging, clearing and mining – with associated international trades in bushmeat and exotic pets that have created this crisis,” said Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation at Duke University. “In the case of Covid-19, it has cost the world trillions of dollars and already killed almost a million people, so clearly urgent action is needed.”  

***

Papua New Guinea’s battle against a climbing rate of Covid-19 infections is being hampered by the most basic of shortages – access to clean water –public health experts have warned.
Case numbers have jumped from just 11 cases two months ago to 424 on Friday, with four deaths. And efforts to contain escalating case numbers throughout the archipelago, and to prevent outbreaks across the Pacific region, are being hamstrung because thousands cannot access clean water for hand-washing and cleaning.
“The latest statistics indicate that 55% of people in the Pacific have access to basic drinking water … the lowest in the world,” said David Hebblethwaite, leader on water security and governance at the Pacific Community. “In terms of access to sanitation, we have crept just below sub-Saharan Africa … this is clearly a health issue related to hygiene and handwashing.” After an initial outbreak in the capita, Port Moresby – with cases centred on healthcare workers at the country’s largest hospital – infections have now been detected across PNG … The actual rate of infection is likely many times higher than the official figure: fewer than 16,000 tests have been conducted across the entire country since the pandemic began. 

Healthy futures, anyone?

Flying hundreds of feet above the ground in a motorized paraglider, George Steinmetz has photographed the world's most remote environments from the sky. Over the past four decades, Steinmetz has captured pictures from the mega dunes of the Namibian desert to rice paddies in Yunnan Province, southwest China.
Each location was unique, but the Steinmetz noticed a common theme - humans were changing the planet.
He could see how even the most isolated places had been damaged and their wildlife decimated as they were exploited for resources…
In 1997, Steinmetz purchased his first motorized paraglider and set off to take pictures of the Sahara Desert. After that, Steinmetz… spent some 15 years flying over every extreme desert in the world… [and] to survey and photograph forests, oceans, cities and farmland…

***

A view into “How anti-Trump Republicans are working to defeat him.” (5:11 mins)
The Lincoln Project: 

School  (0:25 mins)
Don  (1:25)
Trump Talks Trump  (0:55 min)
Meidas Touch: Tick Tock, Trump  (0:55 min)
End The Misery (The Misery Index)  (0:55 min)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Rain. And forecasts for rain off and on over the next week. Who knows whether the weather will play out according to the weatherperson, but spring is on the way – and welcome.
Cheers me up.