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.

…
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.

***

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

Socially distanced

News blues

Update on Omicron in US and in SA  (7:00 mins)
Dr Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and former co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, speaks to the latest developments in the data regarding the Omicron variant's spread in South Africa >>  (1:28 mins)

 
An analysis by NPR shows  that since the vaccine rollout, US counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump have had more than twice the COVID mortality rates of those that voted for Joe Biden. 

Editorial comment: Gosh! How surprising! Hmmm, maybe residents should try vaccine instead of cultish ideology?

Healthy planet, anyone?

Another foray into the life and times of bees: Honeybees survived for weeks under volcano ash after Canary Islands eruption: For roughly 50 days, thousands of honeybees sealed themselves in their hives, away from deadly gas, and feasted on honey. To humans this “is a very empowering story,” To bees? It’s business as usual. Eating honey, after all, is why bees make honey.  

Editorial comment: Hmmm, maybe humans could learn from bees to take better care of ourselves and our planet. Instead, we gamble when the stakes clearly are beyond our capacity to handle the outcomes – as in ignoring that:

Coal ash, an umbrella term for the residue that’s left over when utilities burn coal, one of the United States’ largest kinds of industrial waste. Coal ash contains metals — including lead, mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium and arsenic — that never biodegrade.
…John Howard, who lives in Mobile County and has been fishing in southern Alabama for decades, said, “We’ve got an A-bomb up the river. It’s just waiting to happen.” Past environmental calamity spills include immediate fallout with ash blanketing up to 400 acres, killing hundreds of fish, damaging more than a dozen homes and polluting nearby waterways. That clean-up took years and cost more than $1 billion.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Cold outside today so I entertain myself with culinary experimentation.
Despite being more interested in simplicity than in owing more kitchen gadgets, I fell in love with a friend’s air fryer. After many delicious and easy to make meals made with said air fryer, I splurged and purchased my own. The outcome? My love life has expanded: I love my own small, easy to use air fryer, perhaps more than I loved his air fryer.
My air frying learning curve includes making my own falafel – a dish I never made at home in the past due to antipathy toward frying food. Now? Delicious falafel that involves no frying comes out of the gadget.

Today’s culinary experimentation: homemade potato cakes made from “real” potatoes – Yukon Golds (potato cakes aka aloo tikki). I’ll freeze most and pull them out when I make my easy version of chole aloo tikki chaat.
I also made cilantro pesto and tzatziki.

Perhaps it’s the holiday season (SA dubs it the “festive season”) or perhaps the cold weather, but experimental cooking is on my daily agenda. 

After not making a cheese cake in decades, last week I made my version of cheese cake that uses plain yogurt instead of sour cream and includes a layer of lemon curd.
Roll on, festive season!

***

Working to ameliorate the isolation of social distancing, I became obsessed over tracking my cell phone’s battery usage.  

The reward of an ISP contract is a cell phone battery that last longer, sometimes twice as long, than a phone not logged onto a private wireless network.

Battery charge durations illustrated.
(Left) 2 short durations. (Right) 1 long - + 24 hour - duration.

With Covid’s social distancing keeping me home, I “twiddle my thumbs” making assorted “designs” with battery charging colors. Shown above, left, design created with short charge cycle pre-ISP contract - compared, right, to long charge post-ISP contract.
I pray the ISP contract relieves me of this obsession with battery charging .

Silver linings

News blues

Update on Omicron in US and in SA (7:00 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Reality check for naïve, out-of-touch me! Or the silver lining: expect the unexpected - and love the results.
Yesterday, I assumed my “free” TV box offered “free” access to news.  Today, with “assume” having made an ass out of me, I’m older and wiser – and more satisfied. While I’ve NO free access to TV news (comes only with a subscription that I’ve no intention of purchasing) I discovered something more generative, less demanding and anxiety-provoking, more soothing and relaxing, and that also demands less fraught attention than the news. I’ve discovered free music – and lots of it.
I log onto YouTube (free) and, using the voice activated remote, I search for, say, “acoustic blues,” and I’m served hours of astonishingly terrific music and film footage from way back – y’know, the 60s: young Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter. Way, way better than today’s news.
Bring on the music.

***

A sunset walk along the beach presented:

Night heron

Stilt

Greater and Lesser Egrets with coots

Brown pelicans' feeding frenzy.

King tides... the ebb tide

All photos (c) S. Galleymore

Downtime

The weekend downtime from Covid news. Instead, enjoy The Lincoln Project’s Work  (0:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Between an ideal and an oil can? After shabby treatment during which I was refused a refund for the portion of my airfare impacted by flights cancelled due to Covid lockdown in SA, I cannot bring myself to purchase another long-haul flight with FlyUs or British Air. Alas, British Air is taking steps at least to try to address pollution associated with air travel. (Hmmm, I feel a dilemma of principle coming on.) 

British Airways has signed a deal for aircraft fuel made from recycled cooking oils and other household waste to be produced at scale in the UK and to be in use as early as 2022 to help power its flights….[purchasing] thousands of tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which it said would add up to the equivalent of 700 transatlantic flights on a Boeing 787 with net zero carbon emissions.
BA has committed to power 10% of its flights with SAFs by 2030, and has forged partnerships with US fuel suppliers as well as invested in a future waste-to-fuel plant to be constructed in the north-east of England.

Read more >> 

On the plastics’ front: 

Companies rethink recycling as costs increase

For retailers and shipping companies, the holiday season is the time for delivery. All those millions of tons of cardboard boxes will need to be recycled, along with the plastic and glass bottles and metals that make up half of the 292 million tons of waste we produce each year. The mountain of waste we generate has prompted new ways to think about how we recycle – and who pays for it. Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Television? Not a fan. Not a fan of a TV blaring in my living space. Not a fan of being forced to watch TV ads (ever listen to the “fine print” accompanying the many, many of the ads on American that push prescription drugs?). Not a fan of fiddling with controls, remote or not. 

However....

I am a fan of the Internet. And my recent purchase of a contract for Internet came with a “free” TV “box” and “free” access to “free” TV programs via the Internet. 

I’d placed this box in storage, expecting it to live there for the duration of the ISP's contact.
Truth is stranger than fiction: that still packaged TV box began to niggle. I like to watch TV news…and "free" TV comes with the contract... and I'm not forced into buying any more gear, cables, or "boxes"....
On an off chance  and never expecting success, I suggested a friend check the thrift stores in his area for a small, cheap TV. (This friend owns a large TV with all the bells and whistles. He has patience with and understands the intricacies of television and television set up, including how to use a remote.) Amazingly, he found a small TV – at about 22 inches it’s perfect for me – that cost $25, discounted down to $18. Great balls of fire! 

Change is afoot! I last owned a TV in the 20th century, before the move to cable, the kind of TV that required aerials and rabbit ears. 

Could this TV, now resident in my home, signal a shift in how I perceive the half of me that’s American?
The other half. The half of me that is not American is floored by the headline, “Over 100 Michigan School Districts Closed Due to Threats After Deadly Shooting. More than 60 schools closed earlier in the week due to copycat threats.”
Say what?
Surely, no sane country would normalize the day-to-day reality of children (and adults) killing children in schools. Yet the US has done just that.
How many shootings in 2021? “… at least 144 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 28 deaths and 86 injuries nationally." 
With a TV in my house and in my life, I’ll regularly confront the insanity that is life in contemporary America. Can I survive it? Time to buckle up for a wild ride.

***

This sunlit tree caught my attention as I sat on the patio of a local taqueria. 

Fiat lux!

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!

Déjà déjà vu

As Omicron variant takes hold around the world, infections rise precipitously in countries with early warnings (note SA numbers, below).
Worldwide (Map) 
December 2, 2021 – 263,714,700 confirmed infections; 5,228,300 deaths
November 25, 2021 – 259,820,000 confirmed infections; 5,180,150 deaths
Total vaccine doses administered to date: 8,065,253,309
US (Map) 

December 2, 2021 – 48,696,400 confirmed infections; 782,120 deaths
November 25, 2021 –48,107,120 confirmed infections; 775,630 deaths
SA (Coronavirus portal) 
December 2, 2021 – 2,976,615 confirmed infections; 89,871 deaths
November 25, 2021 – 2,950,035 confirmed infections; 89,660 deaths
New cases in 28 days: 53,878

News blues

SA: new Covid cases double in 24 hours  and facts and figures....
US: President Biden addresses Americans on Omicron (14:44 mins) Summarize: get your shot if you haven’t yet or get your booster if you have….
First case of Omicron in US found in San Francisco >> 
Germany: as infection rates increase, Germany second on highest cases list, right behind the US with 1,314,558 cases in 28 days; 6,014,334 infections and 102,257 deaths. “Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholzspoke with state leaders and agreed on new measures to curb a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases.”  The result? “Germany to impose lockdown on unvaccinated: Merkel says unvaccinated to be excluded from non-essential shops and venues, jabs could be mandatory from February.” 
UK: while the UK has suffered with Covid overall, numbers of new infections rise. UK Covid restrictions change >> 

Overall? Don’t panic. Practice safety protocols – vaccination, masks, social distance, wash hands – stay in touch with friends and family, and keep abreast of the latest news. WHO states, “It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta. 
One reason for optimism on Omicron variant: our immune systems are not blank slates. People with some immune protections may avoid the worst of what Covid infections can do to immunologically naïve people.

The emergence of a new Covid-19 variant with a startlingly large constellation of mutations has countries around the world sounding alarms. While the concerns are understandable, experts in immunology say people need to remember a critical fact: Two years and 8 billion vaccine doses into the pandemic, many immune systems are no longer blank slates when it comes to SARS-CoV-2.
“Dealing with naïve [never vaccinated] people is never the same as if you have some memory. It’s never like [being back at] square one,” Ali Ellebedy, according to associate professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “The virus is going to not find it as easy compared to the situation in January 2020 or December 2019. It’s just completely different now.”
Read more >> 

Where did Omicron come from?

…some scientists have an alternative theory for where the latest variant of concern, Omicron, may have acquired the unusual mutations that stud its spike protein.
They speculate the virus could have evolved in another animal species.
The theory goes that some type of animal, potentially rodents, was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus sometime in mid-2020. In this new species, the virus evolved, accumulating roughly 50 mutations on the spike protein before spilling back over into people.
Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute, is among those who has been raising the idea that Omicron may have emerged from a reverse zoonotic event.
Read more >> 

***

The Lincoln Project Last week in the Republican Party  (1:45 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Time for a dash  of good news:

The Farne Islands are home to one of England’s largest grey seal colonies and have the longest history of seal pup counting. This week National Trust rangers – helped for the first time by thermal imagery technology – were completing a crucial count, which did not take place last year because of the pandemic.
In 1956 there were 751 pups counted. In 2019 there were 2,823. This year, the expectation is that there will be many more, making it a record year for grey seals on the islands.
“It is looking that way,” said Bevan, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. “Some of the outer island groups look incredibly dense.”
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Pelicans doing well in my neck of the beach…

All photos (c) S. Galleymore

Bees knees

News blues

South Africa’s President Ramaphosa updates the nation on Covid’s Omicron variant. To summarize, for now we stay at Lockdown Level 1, continue to socially distance and mask, we stay with curfew from midnight to 4am, and, most importantly, we step up for vaccinations. (30:25 mins)

The three most important things that can be done now are to be vaccinated, to be vaccinated, and to be vaccinated, especially if you're older than 50, have a comorbidity or have a compromised immune system.

What we know so far:

The first South African Omicron infections were found in Gauteng [Johannesburg is the most populated city in that province].
South Africa’s national laboratory informed the World Health Organization on 24 November that it had identified the new variant.
Symptoms of the variant have been mild, but experts warn there is not enough information yet to say exactly how Omicron compares with other variants.
Omicron appears to be more transmissible than other variants.

***

The Lincoln Project runs into more resistance 
The Project responds, lays out their Roadmap (0:30 mins), and invites you to “get in the fight” 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Earlier posts express my admiration and fascination with bees. Indeed, bees are the bees’ knees.
Meet two bee brokers who agree that one never stops learning about bees and that bees are “just incredible” 
Admiration presents all the more reason to understand the perils facing our planet’s bees through exposure to insecticides.
As for honey, look carefully at just what might be in that cheap jar of honey. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The glorious crisp, clear fall weather continues in the San Francisco Bay Area. No rain predicted for the near future. Hmmm, ominous. Indeed, last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom

…declared a drought emergency for the entire state of California, as conservation efforts continue to fall far short of state targets. He authorized California’s water regulators to ban wasteful water use, such as spraying down public sidewalks, and directed his Office of Emergency Services to fund drinking water as needed. But he stopped short of issuing any statewide conservation mandates.
“As the western U.S. faces a potential third year of drought, it’s critical that Californians across the state redouble our efforts to save water in every way possible,” 

The apparent good news? Waterfowl and shore birds appear to enjoy what they have: good weather, tidal ebbs and flows that provide abundant pickings along the shores, the ponds, and the lawns. On the other hand, who knows what goes on in the minds of our avian friends? What might they know that We the People are blissfully unaware of and they keep us simply continuing to do what we do? If what we do adversely affects the birds and the bees… well, as too many of us believe, “man has dominion over animals.”
Therein lies the rub.
Just sayin’