More lockdown

News blues

As a cohort of Zuma-supporters and hangers-on, predominantly Zulus – Zuma is Zulu – protest Zuma’s incarceration, President Ramaphosa addressed the nation on extended lockdown.  (28:09 mins)
Takeaways:
With the current delta variant third wave worse than first two waves, SA cabinet decided:
Adjusted Alert Level 4 for another 14 days
Gatherings prohibited
Curfew from 9pm to 4am
Sale of alcohol prohibited
Schools closed until July 26
Compulsory to wear masks over nose and mouth in public
Adjustments:
Restaurants able to operate while observing health protocols (50 people or 50% of normal capacity. Gyms, animal and game auctions, can operate with the usual safety protocols.
We know:
Reducing instances of close proximity helps contain infections and that the virus spreads at funerals, office, parties, taverns/restaurants. Therefore, we are prohibiting social and religious gatherings
Gauteng, with high levels of movement into/out of area, will be and limited
Prohibiting alcohol takes pressure off hospitals and frees up health care facilities to deal with Covid cases.
Vax program expanding at “reasonably rapid pace” – more than doubled in last 7 days
Govt and private sectors working to vax many people each day
After July 15, over 35-year-olds can register for vax in August
Encourage all eligible SA to register and get vaccinated.
Message: “vaccines do work and are effective”
Challenge: availability of vax doses.
AU and EU agree to improve supply to Africa. SA company will deliver 17 million doses as of July to SA and the rest of Africa. After October, the vaccine stock will double. J&J will adapt current arrangement to use vaccine in SA under license rather than under contract (more control for SA). Later, it may be produced in SA.
SA should have a pipeline of vaccine sufficient to meet targets.
It is the pandemic that poses greatest threat to economy than restrictions, but restrictions have consequences. We are doing all we can do to mitigate challenges posed.
Expired business licenses valid until 31 December, 2022.
And protests: “These acts endanger lives of people and our work to build the economy….Never any justification for violent, destructive actions…” “Ethnic mobilizations” must be condemned at all costs… All people of South Africa are equal before the law… rule of law safeguards against the misuse of power…. As a nation, we will not tolerate acts of vandalism and criminality – those doing so will be arrested and prosecuted… “
“Misuse of old video on social media rile up people… “ “We’re building up, not shutting down, not destroying, saving lives, rebuilding economy and creating jobs…

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After months of data collection, scientists agree: The delta variant is the most contagious version of the coronavirus worldwide. It spreads about 225% faster than the original version of the virus, and it's currently dominating the outbreak in the United States.
A new study, published online…  sheds light on why. It finds that the variant grows more rapidly inside people's respiratory tracts and to much higher levels, researchers at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Read “The Delta Variant Isn't Just Hyper-Contagious. It Also Grows More Rapidly Inside You” >> 

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The pandemic has hit Indigenous communities disproportionately hard, compounded by generations of historical trauma and mistrust. According to an independent study done by the APM Research Lab published in March 2021, Indigenous Americans have the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide, accounting for 256 per 100,000 deaths in the United States.

Read “How Indigenous leaders are pushing to vaccinate their hard-hit communities” >> 

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Tracking coronavirus vaccinations around the world >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

KZN is aflame. Watching from afar – this time –  and concerned for family and friends there. Brought to you courtesy of Jacob Zuma, the guy who gave away South Africa’s needed financial resources to the Gupta brothers. Oh, and by the way, none of this ‘unrest’ reported on US/California television news.

Still hot here. More fires starting up again in California - earlier than ever.  Drought. 

Not good news for the future.

Hold on to your bibles!

News blues

After US Prez Biden suggested a program to go “door to door” to encourage vax hesitant to get the jab, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.) warned,

…health care workers coming to homes to vaccinate people could also be out to grab Americans’ guns and Bibles.
“Now they’re talking about going door-to-door to take vaccines to the people,” Cawthorn complained… adding that the plan would require a “massive” operation.
“Then think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” Cawthorn darkly warned. “They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”

Oh my. Will the whackidoodle-itude never end?

***

Meanwhile, in California’s LA County, new coronavirus cases are up 165% compared to last week, all involving the delta variant of the coronavirus. Health authorities are on high alert and again and urge residents to wear masks when they’re inside public spaces.

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Five under vaccinated clusters could put the entire United States at risk as new data analysis identifies clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States. These areas are vulnerable to surges in Covid-19 cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly Covid-19 variants. 

***

After The Lincoln Project aired Toyota, that company decided that (at least for now, while the public is watching) it “… will No Longer Donate To Republicans Who Voted To Overturn 2020 Election. 
Toyota reversed course hours after the Lincoln Project released a damning video attacking the company for backing lawmakers who refused to certify the election.”
Way to go, The Lincoln Project!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Another day of overwhelming heat: 111F today, up on the river. I’m sheltering 25 miles away in my friend’s apartment, with air con! Drove up to the marina to water my plants yesterday – 106F – and to retrieve my small outboard motor from the person who’d serviced it. Plants – sun gold and beefsteak tomatoes, cucumber, parsley (more nutritious and hardier than lettuce), mint, and basil – appreciated my efforts. Also set up slow drip water bottles in the pots and laid wet dish towels over the soil surface. I mentioned to the plants that temps continue to soar and to sip slowly but regularly. 

Temp tomorrow: 106F.
I’ll stay in air con until Monday, then return to enjoy cool 97F heat – and wind gusts. Perfect fire weather? Don’t mention that dreaded possibility!

***

News from South Africa is not good. Big picture: Zuma supporters burn and pillage to protest the jailing of their hero.
Small picture: my mother is exhausted, weak, and abed. Since the Care Center is under tight lock down again, due to soaring rates of Delta variant, I’ve asked staff please, please, if it looks as if she’s “failing to thrive”, give my brother permission to visit. She adores him and seeing him in her final moments would give her a sense of peace.

Refugees

Worldwide (Map) 
July 8, 2021: 185,236,000 confirmed infections; 4,005,000 deaths
July 30, 2020: 17,096,000 confirmed infections; 668,590 deaths

 
US (Map) 
July 8, 2021: 33,772,700 confirmed infections; 606,230 deaths
July 30, 2020: 4,451,000 confirmed infections; 151,270 deaths

 
SA (Coronavirus portal) 
July 8, 2021: 2,112,340 confirmed infections; 63,100 deaths
July 30, 2020: 471,125 confirmed infections; 7,498 deaths

 
Spotlight on India – fast approaching US Covid statistics:
July 8, 2021: 30,709,600 confirmed infections; 405,100 deaths

News blues

Fifteen months later…and the pandemic is still raging. Few experts guessed that by this point, the world would have not one vaccine but many, with 3 billion doses already delivered. At the same time, the coronavirus has evolved into super-transmissible variants that spread more easily. The clash between these variables will define the coming months and seasons. Here, then, are three simple principles to understand how they interact.

1. The vaccines are still beating the variants.
2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.
3. The longer Principle No. 2 continues, the less likely No. 1 will hold.

Read “The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta” >> 

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Coronavirus Pandemic Hits New Milestone: 4 Million DeadAnd that is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment. 

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Scandal-Plagued Brazil Could Soon Become The Global Leader In COVID-19 Deaths. Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is facing allegations of corruption, official investigations and mass protests as Brazil’s death toll continues to climb. 

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Hardcopy reading: Reading on my cell phone these days, I seldom read hardcopy books, journals, and magazines anymore. Moreover, I’ve barely time to keep abreast with online current thinking, news, and writing, never mind find then read what’s published in what I now consider “heavy to hold” print matter. But… I thoroughly enjoy my visits with a friend - a pacifist researcher, writer, and speaker focused on nuclear weaponry – whose home is chock-a-block with print matter. Most recently, I read the current issue of Foreign Affairs. I recommend the following essays and reviews from the July/August 2021 issue:
Essay: The Forever Virus: A Strategy for the Long Fight Against COVID-19 
Essay: The Threat Reflex: Why Some Societies Respond to Danger Better than Others 
And, a thought-provoking review: “Spies Like Us: The Promise and Peril of Crowdsourced Intelligence” 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Remember  (3:12 mins)
Toyota  (0:56 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

There is now so much ocean plastic that it has become a route for invasive species, threatening native animals with extinction.

Japan’s 2011 tsunami was catastrophic, killing nearly 16,000 people, destroying homes and infrastructure, and sweeping an estimated 5m tons of debris out to sea.
That debris did not disappear, however. Some of it drifted all the way across the Pacific, reaching the shores of Hawaii, Alaska and California – and with it came hitchhikers.
Nearly 300 different non-native species caught a lift across the ocean in what can be thought of as a “mass rafting” event. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in 2017 counted 289 Japanese marine species that were carried to distant shores after the tsunami, including sea snails, sea anemones and isopods, a type of crustacean.

Read “Plastic rafting: the invasive species hitching a ride on ocean litter” >> 

Plastic is, indeed, a major environmental contaminant – so is invasive rafting… but… gulp, are you ready for vanillin made from plastic? Logically, not voluntarily eating substances made from plastic may, perhaps, be a little precious? After all, reliable research now shows that tiny bits of plastic already are in our food, drinking water, the air we breathe, and, yes, inside our bodies. ... Research calculates that the average American eats, drinks, and breathes in more than 74,000 microplastic particles every year.  Now, however…

…Plastic bottles have been converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria, the first time a valuable chemical has been brewed from waste plastic. …
Stephen Wallace, also of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Our work challenges the perception of plastic being a problematic waste and instead demonstrates its use as a new carbon resource from which high value products can be made.”
About 1m plastic bottles are sold every minute around the world and just 14% are recycled. Currently even those bottles that are recycled can only be turned into opaque fibres for clothing or carpets.
The research, published in the journal Green Chemistry , used engineered E coli bacteria to transform TA into vanillin. The scientists warmed a microbial broth to 37C for a day, the same conditions as for brewing beer, Wallace said. This converted 79% of the TA into vanillin.
Next the scientists will further tweak the bacteria to increase the conversion rate further, he said: “We think we can do that pretty quickly. We have an amazing roboticised DNA assembly facility here.” They will also work on scaling up the process to convert larger amounts of plastic. Other valuable molecules could also be brewed from TA, such as some used in perfumes.
Ellis Crawford, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “This is a really interesting use of microbial science to improve sustainability. Using microbes to turn waste plastics, which are harmful to the environment, into an important commodity is a beautiful demonstration of green chemistry.”

Hmmm. “Green chemistry.” Now we gotta be even more careful of what we’re eating… I hope “green chemistry” is so labeled.

***

More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says. Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people…[with] researchers predicting up to 4.7 billion more people could be threatened by the world’s two most prominent mosquito-borne diseases, compared with 1970-99 figures.
The figures are based on projections of a population growth of about 4.5 billion over the same period, and a temperature rise of about 3.7C by 2100.
The study, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine  (LSHTM) and published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal, found that if emission levels continue to rise at current rates, the effect on global temperatures could lengthen transmission seasons by more than a month for malaria and four months for dengue over the next 50 years.

Read “Climate crisis ‘may put 8bn at risk of malaria and dengue’ “ >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Feeding off rafts of invasives? 

Canada geese do it, too.
Living in the “inner bay” – directly on shores of San Francisco Bay – brings one into close contact with Canada geese. Until recently, my impression of Canada geese tended to the unfavorable: noisy, poopy, poopy, and noisy…
Then, small flocks on Canada geese arrived on Old River – in front of my houseboat. They’ve settled in … and I’ve fallen in love with them. Old River brings out the best in Canada geese. Unlike their habits along the bay, where they’re noisy and intrusive, on the river they’re quiet, and communal. Here, a small flock cruises down the marina’s slow channel with dignity and aplomb.

 

Recently, visiting Canada geese demonstrate keen gustatory pleasure with water hyacinth  – an invasive’s invasive.
Further posts on invasive plants - in the Delta  , and in South Africa)

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Climate refugee? I’ve departed my houseboat twice in the five weeks since I returned to California – due to excessive heat. Over the next few days, temperatures are predicted to reach 103F, 104F, 109F, and 111F, before dropping into the “cooler” upper 90s.
The upside? I’m privileged enough to have a place of refuge….

Reprieve

News blues

Covid-19: Eight common questions answered about the Delta variant 

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Fauci: Delta Variant Will Soon Be Dominant U.S. Strain. Get Vaccinated. The White House’s chief medical adviser urged unvaccinated Americans to get shots as a far more serious and transmissible variant of the coronavirus spreads. 

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If you’re American (or interested) see how vaccinations are going in your state and county

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Africa. As the more contagious delta variant starts to spread across the least-vaccinated continent, cases are rising, hospitals are being overrun and deaths are mounting. With little prospect of a significant proportion of Africans being vaccinated in coming months as rich nations continue to hoard shots, epidemiologists expect another wave of disease will follow before the end of the year. That carries the risk of more vaccine-resistant variants developing, endangering not just Africans but also the rest of the world.
“This third wave is going to be devastating because in Africa and South Africa we couldn’t get access to vaccines when we needed them most,” said Tulio de Oliveira, director of Krisp, a South African genetic-sequencing institute. “If we don’t get vaccines in the next couple of months we risk another devastating wave, not only in numbers but in lives.”
Africa remains woefully under-vaccinated, with only 1.1% of the continent’s 1.2 billion people having gotten a jab compared with about 50% of the populations of the U.S. and the U.K. that are fully inoculated. Only 50 million of the more than 3 billion doses of vaccines that have been administered globally have been in Africa, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the effects of that are becoming apparent.

Read more >> 

***

The Lincoln Project honors Independence Day  (0:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Every human being on earth is caught in the repercussions from the over-use-of-plastics. There’s little effective will from those over-producing plastics to cut back. Now, there’s a call for a global treaty to end production of ‘virgin’ plastic by 2040.

Perhaps such a treaty will work. After all, this survey suggests a small majority believe there is still time to avert climate disaster… 

***

Our World in Data: “The world is making progress on clean water and sanitation, but is far behind its target to ensure universal access by 2030.” 

Here’s hopin’ ….

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

A developing ritual: early each morning me and my feather duster circumnavigate the boat and discourage spiders. During spring, summer, and fall, local spiders work hard at replicating the species and its up to us – me and my feather duster – to maintain balance. 

I admire spiders’ dedicated persistence, but I prefer my water-bound days free of entanglements with sticky webs. Removing webs from the boat – exterior and interior - the plants – tomato, cucumber, parley, mint, and an array of succulents – and furniture – chaise longue, table, BBQ equipment – calms.
Moreover, clearing spider web requires I present an assertive physical presence on the finger pier between my boat and that of my starboard neighbor. He’s turned into the rundown marina equivalent of a “get off my lawn” sub-urbanite. Well, a suburbanite expect for the frequent aggressively loud rap music and wafts of ‘herb’. And verbal abuse. The verbal abuse is new, and hurled at me from his mosquito netted enclosed bow.
His abuse included the useful information that, “no one here has got your back…” This is something I already know for, in essence, he means, “you’re in a predominantly male environment, you/your independence pisses us off, and no man here has got your back.”
Naturally, as a woman who has learned to look out for herself, I wrote up a summary of the incident and the background and emailed it to a friend, explaining, “This email labeled Record 1 as I expect more such incidents. Those will be labeled Record 2, Record 3, etc., as required.
Be prepared. That’s my motto, ironically echoed by Boy Scouts of America. Y’know, the lads who too often grow up to be men like my neighbor.

***

On the other hand, this dragonfly – probably a male - resting on the inflatable today, is an example of glorious nature. 

Dragon fly on, my hearty! You’re a nice start to the day. 

Today is another holiday day, a holiday day in lieu of yesterday’s holiday day that fell on a Sunday. American workers, often over-workers, have fewer vacation days and fewer days off from work than workers in the workplaces of any other Western countries. 

I say, enjoy! One day of reprieve from work is better than no day of reprieve from work.