Culture shock

Worldwide (Map) 
February 3, 2022 - 386,005,000 confirmed infections; 5,704,100 deaths
February 4 – 104,367,000 confirmed infections; 2,268,000 deaths
Total vaccinations to date: 10,009,975,000

US (Map) 
February 3, 2022 - 75,702,000 confirmed infections; 894,570 deaths
February 4 – 26,555,000 confirmed infections; 450,680 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
February 3, 2022 - 3,613,000 confirmed infections; 95,465 deaths
February 4 – 1,463,016 confirmed infections; 45,344 deaths

News blues

One Million Deaths: The Hole the Pandemic Made in U.S. SocietyCovid-19 has been directly responsible for most of the fatalities, but the disease is also unraveling families and communities in subtler ways 

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On January 15, the Pacific islands of Tonga experienced a massive trauma when an underwater volcano exploded. For days, Tonga was cut off from the rest of the world with international communication networks out of commission. Dust and debris from the explosion and subsequent tsunami hindered rescue operations.
After the pandemic took hold of the world, Tonga had locked down and, by doing so, managed to keep Covid-19 at bay. That all changed after the volcanic eruption. Tongan officials worried that the arrival of aid could bring an outbreak of the virus, something that could represent a bigger danger to Tonga than the tsunami. Indeed, they were right to worry.

• Tonga will go into lockdown after recording two Covid-19 cases among port workers helping distribute international aid….
• The cases seem to confirm fears among Tongan officials that the arrival of aid could bring an outbreak of the virus….
• The prime minister, Siaosi Sovaleni, said the lockdown, which begins at 6pm on Wednesday, will be open-ended, but will last for at least 48 hours, at which point it will be reviewed.
• The nationwide lockdown will require people to stay at home, with only essential services allowed to operate. Since the lockdown was announced, people have been scrambling to get supplies, with photographs emerging of queues down the street outside banks and shops, as people seek to get cash and food.

Read more >> 

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Why do some people get Covid when others don't? Here’s what we know so far An increasing amount of research is being devoted to the reasons why some people never seem to get Covid — a so-called never Covid cohort. 

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project:
Amanda Gorman reminds US/us  (5:45 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

The bad news: Meet the people being paid to kill our planet >> Video series about the methods in which we produce, distribute, eat and dispose of our foods. They’re spectacularly flawed, and we hope this series offers clarity on some of the many changes — from policies to diets — that we need to consider. 
The great news: loving cockatiel sings a baby to sleep  (0:59 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Pre-flight test for Covid done yesterday. Results pending. It was easy-peasy: drove up, waited in my vehicle, sent a text message to the company with my contact details, and had my nostrils scoured. Now I await results.
Meanwhile,

The Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (Fedhasa) urges the SA government to remove the compulsory PCR test required  for inbound international and returning South African travellers who are fully vaccinated.

Hmmm, given SA’s reputation for bungled bureaucracy, I doubt compulsory PCR test requirement will be ditched before I arrive there. Could be a LONG wait….

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As per my desire back in November when I lacked time for an in-depth tour of the East Bay towns of Berkeley, Albany, etc., yesterday I took time out to visit that once-lovely city.
Culture shock!
So much has changed! 

Here’s a sample.
Only in Berkeley.

Despite its promising name, alas, Mad Monk Center for Anachronistic Media - 
located 2454 Telegraph Ave. on Feb. 25, 2018, 
closed suddenly after two years of operation.

A‘Moorish-Tudor fever dream’ is unveiled on Telegraph Avenue

I call it the Hobbit House although it’s
also been described as a cave dwelling, a wizard’s house
and a Moorish palace. A recently unveiled building
to house UC Berkeley students has been a long time coming
— and its unusual design is causing a stir.

Top Dog fighting for relevance in today's Berkeley.

Back in the day... Top Dog was the place for after midnight eats. 
Not much of a hot dog lover, this Top Dog offered -
still offers - the best dogs in the Bay Area.
It also offers a political perspectives - in posted flyers -
that once tended toward socialist, now tends towards Libertarian. (Groan!)  

Like many places on Telegraph, this Environmental Progress office
"Nature and Prosperity for All" is defunct.

Once a busy street offering street vendors a place to sell and interact with customers,
Telegraph is a sterile shadow of its former self. 
Disorienting to see.
Moreover, the best coffee shop on the street, Caffe Med, is gone, shuttered since 2018.

Tea shops proliferate on Telegraph these days - as do chain store. 
The times they have a-changed.

Un-Berkeley-like office space predominates between the campus and Shattuck Ave.

Pot is legal, so is signage for pot.

Groundhog Day

News blues

A groundhog, aka a woodchuck, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae
belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as
marmots and found mostly in eastern United States, across Canada and into Alaska.

Falling on 02-02-22 this year, Groundhog Day  in the US and Canada, is the day upon which the groundhog emerges – or not - from its burrow and foretells the weather for the next six weeks. 

If the weather is clear and the groundhog sees its shadow, it retreats to its burrow and winter persists for six more weeks. If the weather is cloudy and the groundhog does not see its shadow, spring is predicted to arrive early.
Other groundhog facts >> 
The day has its own intrigue, too, with mysterious rodent deaths and cover-ups plaguing ceremony”  >> 

and, the inevitable Groundhog Day cartoon - sign of the times

© 2021 Joe Heller - Hellertoon.com

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US: Still numbah one!
Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic. 

Cumulative U.S. Covid-19 deaths per capita are highest among other large, high-income countries. Several countries had higher per capita Covid-19 deaths earlier in the pandemic, but the U.S. death toll now exceeds that of peer nations.

Sources: New York Times database of reports from state
and local health agencies (U.S. deaths); The Center for Systems Science and Engineering
at Johns Hopkins University (world deaths); World Bank (world populations);
United States Census Bureau (U.S. population)
Note: Countries shown are those with the highest gross national income
per capita among countries with a population of more than 10 million people.

***

The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant >> 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Vote while it counts  (0:55 mins)
Last Week in the Republican Party  (1:53 mins)
Winter is coming  (0:55 mins)
Abbott’s Wall  (0:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Photo essay: Beachcombed sculptures made of ocean plastic >> 

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Scientists at University of Sydney found fish exposed to the industrial chemical BPA in warmer waters need more food to reach a given size.

Fish grow slower when exposed to higher temperatures and a common chemical in plastic. New research suggests that a combination of plastic pollution and global heating could have a concerning impact on marine populations.
Scientists at the University of Sydney have found that fish exposed to the industrial chemical bisphenol A – commonly known as BPA – require more energy to grow in high-temperature waters.
BPA is a common chemical used in plastics manufacturing and is known to disrupt hormone signalling, with impacts in marine animals on metabolism and growth. In humans, it has also been linked to reproductive and developmental dysfunction. Millions of tonnes of the compound are produced globally each year.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Low tide at the tidal walkway. 

Same walkway at high tide.

Unforgettable

News blues

“The pain of this pandemic is unforgettable, and we have a responsibility to make sure its lessons are unforgettable, too.”
- US Senator Patty Murray of Washington state.

Senator Murray refers to the Prevent Pandemics Act, a sweeping new bill with powerful bipartisan support in the US Senate. It includes a new Covid commission to inform the US response to future outbreaks as well as the current impact of the disease and lay the groundwork to enshrine new powers in federal health agencies. It will also establish an inquiry into the country’s Covid-19 response similar to the 9/11 Commission, among other provisions aimed at preventing the next pandemic.
Read more >> 

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After a recent special cabinet meeting, South Africa’s National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) and the President’s Co-ordinating Council (PCC) announced a number of new Covid measures:

• Those who test positive with no symptoms do not have to isolate;
• If you test positive with symptoms, the isolation period has been reduced from 10 to seven days;
• Contacts do not have to isolate unless they develop symptoms;
• Primary, secondary and special schools will return to daily attendance; and
• The regulatory provision for social distancing of 1m for pupils in schools has also been removed.

“The rationale for these amendments is informed by the proportion of people with immunity to Covid-19 which has risen substantially, exceeding 60% to 80% in several sero-surveys.
Government commends all South Africans who continue to observe Covid-19 regulations and protocols. We also remind those who are yet to get vaccinated to go for their Covid-19 vaccination and continue observing basic health protocols to prevent the transmission of the virus.”

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project: Abbot Abased  (0:43 mins)
Trump's Texas speech in 90 seconds (1:28 mins)
Unlikely (1:20 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Globally, around 2.2 billion people and 27 percent of all food crop production is located near drying-out freshwater basins.
Less than 3 percent of Earth is covered in freshwater. And while that percentage has remained pretty constant, population growth has not. Only 1 percent of freshwater is accessible to the 7.7 billion people and counting.
Read more >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Record snowfall, moisture, and low temperatures along the east coast while the west coast enjoy crisp, sunny days with no rain forecasted. Scary.
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:11am
Sunset: 5:32pm
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:29am
Sunset: 6:56pm

Changes

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Always interested in how regions and communities change over time, I photographed changes afoot in a friend’s city neighborhood.
Background: Last year, while I was locked down in South Africa, the city's original library – traditional, with actual books on loan – was torn down to make room for yet another batch of cookie-cutter single-family homes. 
A new library, under construction across the road, will focus not on books, but on “community meeting spaces”. It will offer computers for members to access the Internet and online services, but the book section will shrink to less than a third of its former space – despite the new library being twice the size of the former building.
While I read a lot, I seldom read physical books anymore, nor would I want to revert to reading physical books. Instead, I download my reading matter from once-traditional now-online libraries. Reading on my cell phone in the dark at 2 o’clock in the morning is far easier than turning on the bedside lamp, sitting up to hold a heavy book, and reading pages of print. Yet, within my chest beats an incongruous  heart that objects to a “library” not offering physical books.
The “places” offering me downloadable books are still public libraries – those of the cities of Berkeley and San Francisco – and their downloadable offerings far outpace the number of books they can physically house. But they do house books which means they still fulfil the definition of “library” – derived from the Latin word liber, meaning "book.”
Perhaps, instead of calling the new building a “library” call it a “community center”, in Latin, a conventu elit, or in Spanish – to reflect 21st century California, centro Comunitario?

Constructing the new residences began this year. First, a model home was built for families to view and, if interested, to purchase a building site upon which to build the house. 

New homes are being built now.
Yesterday, I began a photographic record of this new growth.
I plan to follow up this record when I return from South Africa. 

Future community center aka "library"

Background right, behind pole: The model home upon which
the rest of the residences will be designed.

Future entryway to the community from the street.

Future residential community, formerly a library and parking lot.

 David Bowie: Changes (3:39 mins)

Uncertainty

News blues

Lungs on Covid
"This is what happened to a 54-year-old man's lung on COVID-19 (he later died).
HiP-CT scans show that in severe cases, the lungs’ blood vessels are severely damaged:
Here, airspaces are colored with cyan, open blood vessels are colored in red,
and blocked, damaged blood vessels are colored in yellow, Nat Geo reports. 
Researchers say images like this, created by the world’s brightest x-rays,
not only are helping scientists understand the virus—they are so scary that
they are prompting their friends to get boosted. See more images."

 © PHOTOGRAPH BY LUCA LOCATELLI AND ESRF, HUMAN ORGAN ATLAS

The FDA pauses monoclonal antibody treatments

The Food and Drug Administration announced that it would limit the use of two monoclonal antibody COVID-19 treatments, made by pharmaceutical companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly. Those treatments had been successful at keeping symptomatic patients out of the hospital in earlier waves, but did not work against Omicron, the agency said. A third, less common monoclonal treatment, called sotrovimab, can still be used.

Read more >> 

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Life with antibiotics: “When you deal with uncertainty, you err on the side of the prescribing, which is not necessarily the right thing to do,” says University of Maryland Medical Center infectious disease physician Jacqueline Bork.

… overuse of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic may be making the problem worse.
More than 750,000 people die from antibiotic-resistant infections annually, and that number is expected to reach 10 million by 2050. In the United States alone, antibiotic- resistant microbes cause more than 2.8 million infections and over 35,000 deaths annually.
… more than half of the nearly 5,000 patients hospitalized between February and July 2020 were prescribed at least one antibiotic within the first 48 hours of admission.
… Antibiotics only kill bacteria and not viruses like SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. But pneumonia can be caused by fungi, bacteria, or viruses, and figuring out which pathogen is responsible can take at least 48 hours, and sometimes include invasive procedures to confirm the cause of the infection. Sometimes the tests don’t identify the culprit. “Many of us were probably overprescribing a good amount of antibiotics.

Read “Superbugs were already on the rise. The pandemic likely made things worse.”>> 

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The Lincoln Project: This is Josh Mandel …running for US Senate seat from Ohio. (0:41 mins)
Music that captures the moment >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No sign of rain in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s warm and an early spring may be on its way….
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:14am
Sunset: 5:29pm

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:26am
Sunset: 6:57pm

Yet another?

News blues

Ten billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, according to , according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, 

…[this] milestone reflects the astonishing speed with which governments and drug companies have mobilized, allowing many nations to envision a near future in which their people coexist with the virus but aren’t confined by it.
The milestone… has not been arrived at equitably, even though 10 billion doses could theoretically have meant at least one shot for all of the world’s 7.9 billion people.
In the wealthiest countries, 77 percent of people have received at least one dose, whereas in low-income countries the figure is less than 10 percent. As North America and Europe race to overcome Omicron surges by offering boosters, with some nations even contemplating a fourth shot, more than one-third of the world’s people, many of them in Africa and poor pockets of Asia, are still waiting for a first dose. The United States has administered five times as many extra shots — about 85 million — as the total number of doses administered.

Read more >> 
Alas, vaccine and vaccinations follow new variants. Are we in for yet another round of mutated variant?

It's officially called "omicron BA.2," and this week scientists detected cases of it in several U.S. states, including California, Texas and Washington.
Although BA.2 is currently rare in the U.S., scientists expect it to spread in the country over the next month. There's growing evidence that it's just as contagious as — or possibly a bit more contagious than — the first omicron variant, called "omicron BA.1."
… Back in November, when scientists in South Africa and Botswana discovered omicron, they didn't find just one version. They found three, called BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 by the Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak Lineages at the University of Edinburgh.
… Over the past several weeks, omicron BA.2 has begun to surprise scientists. And it's starting to look like it can, in some countries, outcompete its sibling omicron BA.1 — and, really, any other variants.

Read “A second version of omicron is spreading. Here's why scientists are on alert” >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Last September, pushed by students, Harvard University stopped investing in fossil fuel companies and did not renew their investments – an endowment totaling $53 billion – in the energy sector. This was biggest win yet for the climate divestment movement that applied a popular anti-apartheid activist tactic to get colleges, banks, charitable foundations, and religious organizations to stop funding oil and gas firms.

Yet… there’s now an institutional backlash…. the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a Koch-linked nonprofit that helps state legislators craft right-wing policy—is writing model bills to protect fossil fuel investments, in essence making divestments like Harvard’s illegal. Their framework prohibits “discrimination” against fossil fuel companies by requiring state treasurers and comptrollers to withdraw government funds from banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and other financial institutions that “boycott” investing in oil and gas firms. …
[N]umerous institutions have already successfully disinvested in fossil fuels – up to $40 trillion from the industry’s reach so far. But if ALEC has its way, with the support of sympathetic red states and conservative legal scholars, it could strike a blow to one of the climate movement’s most effective tools.

Read an interview with Connor Chung, a Harvard Class of 2023 student who has been closely involved with Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard >> 

More good news (for reg’lar folks  promoting healthy living for a healthy planet): Federal judge Rudolph Contreras, US District Court for the District of Columbia, invalidated a massive oil and gas lease for 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. He ruled the lease sale was invalid because the Department of Interior's analysis did not fully take into account the climate impacts of the leases.
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Way back in the day, I spent several weeks living on the beach in a makeshift plastic tent on the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat. Back then, Sharm el-Sheikh housed nothing but a small dome-shaped dive shack. And a small cave where I spent my “honeymoon” with my new husband – and a hungry rat. (The rat came out at night to rummage through our backpacks for food while we slept outside under the amazing night sky and Milky Way.)
Back then, Sharm supported about half a dozen visitors at any one time. These days, Sharm el-Sheikh is an Egyptian beach resort town  with a population of 73,000.
Why am I riffing on the past?

Today’s view from the beach – looking southwest across the bay towards South San Francisco at low, low tide – reminded me of sitting on the beach at Dahab and looking towards Jordan and of sitting on the reef at Sharm and looking across the Gulf towards Saudi Arabia.

 

Good times.

Turn, turn, turn

Worldwide (Map) 
January 27, 2022 - 363,582,100 confirmed infections; 5,630,850 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 100,920,100 confirmed infections; 2,175,500 deaths
Total vaccinations to date: 9,890,400,000

US (Map) 

January 27, 2022 - 72,991,900 confirmed infections; 876,800 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 25,600,000 confirmed infections; 429,160 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
January 27, 2022 - 3,590,400 confirmed infections; 94,495 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 1,430,650 confirmed infections; 42,550 deaths

News blues

More numbers:

The United States has donated more than 400m vaccine doses to 112 countries, marking a major milestone in the White House’s goal of donating 1.2bn vaccine doses under Joe Biden’s direction.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients, said the donation is four times larger than that of any other country.
Zients also revealed that the country hit another major milestone this week, with 70% of eligible seniors in the US having now received their booster shot. Half of all eligible adults in the country are now boosted.

Read more >> 

“Omicron was a preview of what would happen if an extremely contagious new virus emerged. …Most of those infections would have been incredibly costly to prevent, even if the virus had been deadly enough to warrant the most extreme measures we’re capable of taking.”

By some estimates, about 40 percent of the population of the United States will have been infected with the omicron variant of Covid-19 by the time the current wave fully subsides. The WHO estimates that half of Europe will have been infected as well. And nearly all of those infections will have occurred between mid-December and the beginning of February.
…there’s good reason to think that never before have so many people been infected with an emerging virus in such a short timespan. For most of history, diseases traveled much slower, carried by travelers on boats or horses.
…But now, thanks to our far more interconnected world, an incredibly contagious virus required only about two months to go from when it was first detected —November 11 in Botswana — to when likely more than 2 billion people had been infected.
…it’s hard to appreciate what a massive bullet we dodged: If omicron had been substantially more deadly, there is very little we could have done to stop the death toll.

Read “A disease can move much faster than we can” >> 
Update and numbers from around the world >> 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Never again  (1:30 mins)
Tucker Carlson Tonight – Moscow Edition  (0:34 mins)

Thanks to Stephen Colbert, the Late Show;
scroll to 8:10 mins in clip to see Comrade Pillow 
(FYI: This is a spoof of uber-Trumpie My Pillow Guy.)

Healthy planet, anyone?

The democracy emergency is closely linked to the climate crisis. Each is grounded in a big lie – that climate science is a hoax, that Trump won in 2020 – pushed by… rightwing politicians and propaganda “news” outlets and embraced with cult-like devotion…. Left untreated, each threatens disaster. If Trump’s forces do change enough electoral rules and personnel to guarantee victory in 2022 and beyond, there is zero chance the US government will take the strong climate action needed to avert global catastrophe.
Defusing the global climate emergency therefore depends on protecting democracy. … the US is not the only country where anti-democratic trends hamper climate progress. Most of the worst laggards at November’s Cop26 climate summit were countries where authoritarianism is either entrenched or on the rise: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, the US. But the collapse of US democracy would carry especially damaging climate consequences. Slashing global emissions in half by 2030, as science says is imperative, would be impossible if the world’s biggest economy and leading historical carbon emitter refuses to help.
How to defuse the democracy emergency is too big a question to answer briefly.

Read “We can’t solve the climate crisis with a broken democracy” >> 

***

Scenes from South Africa, photo essay >> 

Meet Ian Coppack of Cheshire, England and listen to his short ode to an oak tree >>  

Coppack co-founded Macclesfield Wild Network Trust.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No sign of rain in our future here in Northern California; intimations of more drought and more fires?

***

Protests in KZN, South Africa are way more confrontational than those we experience in the Bay Area. I expect to return to KZN “soon” and I’m not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling of welcome >> 
Unless war breaks out in Europe, or a new Covid variant appears, or airlines stop flying, or something else unanticipated happens, I’ll have to flip my winter/summer, day- night- biorhythm:
Today, in San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:16am
Sunset: 5:27pm
And in KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:24am
Sunset: 6:58pm