Mothers Speak about War and Terror

Monday, March 22, 2021

Mixed metaphors

News blues…

Cresting the third wave between a rock and a hard place?

SA’s deputy health minister Joe Phaahla recently admitted the department would not meet its target of vaccinating 1.5-million health-care workers. Instead, he said it was likely that 700,000 would be vaccinated by the end of April.
Professor Glenda Gray, a co-lead investigator for the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine trial, predicted this week that 500,000 health-care workers would be vaccinated by the end of April - if there were no delays.
With fears of a third wave likely to erupt at the end of April, this means most of SA's health-care workers will still be unprotected.

American youth, meanwhile, parties on…”
Miami Beach Police fired pepper balls into crowds of partiers and arrested at least a dozen people late Saturday as the city took extraordinary measures to crack down on spring breakers who officials have said are out of control.

Saturday night, hundreds of mostly maskless people remained in the streets well after the 8 p.m. curfew. With sirens blaring, police opened fire with pepper balls - a chemical irritant similar to paint balls -- into the crowd, causing a stampede of people fleeing

India reports 46,951 new coronavirus cases, the highest single-day rise since November 12 and the sixth consecutive daily increase in infections….

The country has recorded a total of 11,646,081 cases, including 159,967 fatalities, since the beginning of the pandemic.
The jump in infections comes almost a year since India's first nationwide lockdown.

Brazil experiences a surge of Coronavirus cases with the country's health systems increasingly overwhelmed. In nearly every state across Brazil, occupancy rates in intensive care units (ICUs) are at or above 80%. Some of them are at or above 90%, and a few have have exceeded 100% occupancy, forcing them to turn some patients away.

State governors, city mayors and local medical personnel now say they are running out of supplies to treat even the Covid-19 patients who have been allocated precious ICU beds. Stocks of medicines that facilitate intubation could vanish in the next two weeks, according to a report from the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries. And Brazil's National Association of Private Hospitals (ANAHP) has predicted that private hospitals will run out of medicines necessary for intubating Covid-19 patients by Monday.

The president of the country advises Brazilians: “Enough fussing and whining. How much longer will the crying go on?”
And I thought Donald Trump was awful! (Hint: he was. Birds of a feather and all that...)

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Plotting my getaway. I’ve still have too little information to make a firm decision about returning to California next month, but I’m trying out various possibilities. One possibility is hiring a house-sitter. Another is offering free accommodation to a manager type person. This option is risky. Manager type people tend to not manage, or over manage, as soon as one’s back is turned. They tend also to refuse to depart when the agreed upon departure date arrives (claiming “squatters rights” is legitimate in SA).

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
March 20 was the formal southern hemisphere equinox.*

Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
• March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:06pm.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

New plan afoot

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Healthy planet, anyone?

Enjoy science photos of the year

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

This fifty-second week of lockdown in South Africa is an opportunity to reflect on the goal of this blog – and to modify my posting schedule.
Posting every day for 360 days has allowed a way to focus my mind and practice self-discipline. It’s kept me going during rough times.
A brief recap: I’d initially planned on visiting my mother for a couple of months, organizing her past and future affairs as I’ve done for the past decade, then returning to California to earn an income and live my life.
After the pandemic set in, South Africa locked down, and international flights were cancelled, I’m grateful that I started recording day-by-day events.
This unique opportunity allowed met to explore:

how local and international media presents information to Americans and South Africans
tools to understand the intersection between our increasingly over-populated planet and the stress it places on our natural environments
conclude that humans must collectively and coherently address our planet's ability holistically to support life.

I will continue to post every day until Day 365 – one full year. After that, I’ll post two or three times per week.
Thank you for following me on this journey.

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South African days getting shorter, nightfall last longer:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Still a ways to go...

A male houbara bustard dances to attract females for
mating in the United Arab Emirates’ al-Dhafra desert.
Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images.

Another wonderful photo essay below.

News blues…

In the US, the Covid-19 infection rate has begun to plateau rather than continue a downward trajectory. Dr Fauci warns this could indicate “a high risk that we’re going to get another resurgence. … We’ve seen that with previous surges. The other three that we’ve had in this country.” We “still have a ways to go….”

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Healthy planet, anyone?

© Our World in Data – whose mission is to make
data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible.

People are becoming increasingly aware that their diet comes with a climate cost. But just how much of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from food?
… The chart above groups emissions into comparable parts of the food chain:

Land use: this includes deforestation, peatland degradation and fires, and emissions from cultivated soils.
Agricultural production: this includes emissions from synthetic fertilizers (and the energy used to manufacture them); manure; methane emissions from livestock and rice; aquaculture; and fuel use from on-farm machinery.
Supply chain: this includes all emissions from food processing, packaging, transport, and retail, such as refrigeration.
Post-retail: this is all the energy used by consumers for food preparation, such as refrigeration and cooking at home. It also includes emissions from consumer food waste. …

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Photo essay: the week in wildlife

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

It’s official – my daughter arrives early April from San Francisco. Exciting! I’m dying to see her. Terrifying! All that virus floating around the planet.
Learned yesterday that the first people who made an offer on this house, ZAR200,000 less than the asking price, bought a place in the same town, different neighborhood. That much of a reduction seemed outrageous then. Now? Not so much. Had I accepted it, I could have planned and perhaps executed my getaway by now. Imagine: a purchased ticket for a seat next to my daughter on the return flight to SFO. Instead, here I am: doing the best for my mother’s investment in this property, but stuck, stuck, stuck! Grrrrr!

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

New year, new wave?

New strains (1.35 to 2:30 mins)

Another week and South Africans would have spent one full year under some form of Lockdown. This, as the tracking project reports a fourth coronavirus wave is likely under way in the US state of Michigan. It’s the clearest sign that the pandemic’s reprieve could be faltering >>

News blues…

Terms such as coronavirus mutation, strain, and variants are often used interchangeably, but what’s the difference?
Mutations are changes - basically typos - that occur in the genome of the virus as it makes copies of itself and moves from person to person.
Variants are a particular version of the virus that has a specific combination of mutations across its genome. A variant is of concern when we start to see it rising in frequency over the population, over a period of time. The variant first discovered in the U.K., the variant first discovered in South Africa, and the one found in Brazil. Reports now indicate that new variants have also been discovered in California and New York.
Read a basic breakdown on what we know so far about how these variants compare with each other ― as well as with the original version of the coronavirus >>

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COVID-19 has inflicted devastating losses. It has also delivered certain blessings. 3 Ways the Pandemic Has Made the World Better >>

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

One day of cool, wet weather… and we’re back to hot, humid weather.
Counteroffer made to one interested house purchasing party. If that’s accepted, the paperwork goes to the lawyer to sign. (My mother is currently incapable of signing the documents.
I continue to figure out how to load assorted items onto the Chana (truck) to deliver to the recycling center, or the dump, or somewhere else. I’m increasingly reluctant to take on more heavy work as an injury could set me back in untold ways. Moreover, I do not have medical insurance in this country. Actually, my medical insurance ran out in the California, too, which means I’m out of affordable and effecting medical care anywhere on this planet. (Best not to dwell on that reality.)

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