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 >> 

***

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.”>> 

***

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

Time out

News blues

Today, we have a time out from pandemic news, Omicron news, mask mandate-or-not news….and go directly to The Lincoln Project:
Bloodlines  (2:15 mins)
Last week in the Republican Party  (2:20 mins)

***

As the walls close in on Trump and the Trumplets – that trio The Donald refers to in the media as his “children” – as if they’re 12-year-olds rather than 40-something-year-olds. (This, after his ongoing, global harassment of Hunter Biden, Joe’s “child.” See one of many examples >>  (3:00 mins) and his horrific detention of actual children on the border >> )
These days, We the People learn of Trump’s slowly-being-revealed plot to have the US military seize voting machines after the recent presidential election went against Trump’s re-election. Knowing, however, that there are constitutional “guardrails” for deploying the US military in the US – can’t happen – Trump, true Banana-Republic-like, formed his own military. Here are the head honchos: 

Head Honcho on top….
(Thanks to Trevor Noah for this >>)

Next in Line, General M.Y. Pillow.
(c) Stephen Colbert, the Late Show.

Healthy planet, anyone?

Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at ETH Zurich, says, “We should be angry about climate change and the destruction of ecosystems. But without optimism, that outrage goes nowhere…”.
Last summer, he launched Restor, an evolving mapping tool  that hopes to show where in the world people are doing optimistic things to restore or conserve ecosystems. Think of it as the “nature is healing” meme from the early days of the pandemic, but serious.

“We’ve never known where all the conservation and restoration is happening on our planet,” Crowther said. “It’s the first time we can begin to visualize a global restoration movement.”

Learn more about where nature could be healing >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Taxes done! One day after tax season opens, I filled out then put my state and fed forms into USPS. Sure, the IRS would prefer I file online but that online technology is, in my opinion, in the clunky stage. (I filed online last year whilst under lockdown in South Africa and it was not easy or convenient…
With taxes done, it was time for a stroll along the beach.
High low tide today. 

Happy waterfowl, happy humans. 

Wigeons.

One of hundreds of Canada geese....

Beware, Greeks…

News blues

Beware Greeks bearing letters...

The World Health Organization has been using letters of the Greek alphabet, in order, to name coronavirus variants. Delta was the most dominant one, followed by eight others - including Epsilon, Iota and Lambda
…
…[Read the story of] how this latest coronavirus variant became named Omicron.
And if even newer variants emerge, there are nine more letters in the Greek alphabet. The next one is Pi.

***

Last week, a loved one was diagnosed with Omicron. His wife’s had it, too. Both work in hospitals in Texas and report many, many staff have or have had it. Their kids have had it. None, thank the gods, have had bad cases, so hospitalizations unnecessary (adults have been jabbed, small kids not).
Multiple episodes of Covid are not uncommon. A student nurse in UK, for example, has suffered 4 doses of Covid >> 

Anecdotal reports of Covid reinfection in the UK are growing, including people testing positive just weeks apart in December and January, or having had the virus three or even four times. Children are also being seen with reinfections. We take a look at the science behind catching Covid multiple times.

Read "How likely are you to catch Covid multiple times  >> 

***

An alphabet, a pandemic, isolation… Now? A game: Covid Simulator. Here’s a promo >>  (1:25 mins)
Read an announcement about the game and when to expect it >> This simulator aims to allow users to visualize how quickly Covid-19 spreads, becoming a disaster. The game is an open sandbox for you to enjoy!

***

The Lincoln Project:
What are they for?  (0:24 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Due to obsessively isolating to avoid Omicron, I’ve watched a lot more Netflix than usual. I delved into the stories of assorted serial killers before stumbling onto the many facets of the story of The Unabomber, aka Unabom, aka Ted Kaczynski. I’ve watched dramatized versions from the point of view of the FBI (“Manhunt”), the man himself, his family, and the media (“Unabomber, in his own words”). Even watched the Saturday Night Live version >>  (4:06 mins). And listened to a series theme song, “The Worst – Man” >> (2:01 mins – beware, it could worm its way into your head).

***

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Last week, our planned trip to a Pt Reyes beach was delayed due to ill health. A friend and I did that trip yesterday: a perfect sunny, crisp, and clear winter day.

I assumed my friend and I would easily negotiate the steep, even treacherous path to the beach. After all, I’ve done it many times before. (Back in the day, when I needed a break from civilization, I’d pack my sleeping bag and a bottle of water and make for the cliffs. There, I’d scope out a cleft in the cliffside - a spot where no one with malicious intent could easily approach without waking me -  climb into the bag, and spend a moonlit night in awe of our world’s natural beauty.) Yesterday, alas, I realized my friend has a bad knee and attempting to reach the beach was unwise. 

I missed not collecting assorted beach debris and making a beach sculpture, but a healthy knee was preferable.
As they say, “chit happens….

Weekender

News blues

Who knew? “Face masks can make you more attractive"  (2:12 mins)
Maybe promoting these study results in the US would persuade anti-makers to mask up? Perhaps promote on online dating sites? Worth a try....

***

When Covid-19 hit SA and stigmatisation was at its peak, many healthcare workers were shunned in their communities due to fear of the virus.
So when two Cape Town clinics started doing home visits to patients with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) — those most at risk of Covid-19 complications — some were reluctant to take part.
But thanks to healthcare workers’ perseverance, the crisis-management strategies they introduced to accommodate these patients has paid off.
According to a new study by the University of Cape Town (UCT), managing stable NCD patients at home rather than at clinics, is the future and should be retained even after pandemic.

Read more >> 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Trump’s Judges  (0:40 mins)
Package deal  (0:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Stretching along the ocean floor for nearly 2 miles and
covered with rose-shaped coral, the reef is one of the largest
such discoveries at depths of more than 30 metres.
© Guardian News. Photograph: Alexis Rosenfeld/AP

The good news:

A huge coral reef has been discovered off the coast of Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean’s “twilight zone”, offering hope that more pristine ecosystems are waiting to be discovered at unexplored depths.
Stretching along the ocean floor for nearly 2 miles, the reef, covered in rose-shaped corals, is one of the largest such discoveries at depths of more than 30 metres, where sunlight levels are much lower.

Read more >> 
Least you forget: the bad news on coral reefs >> 

The view from Comb Ridge in Utah’s Bears Ears national monument.
Biden’s announcement served as a key victory for
environmental and Indigenous groups.
© Guardian News. Photograph: Reuters.

More good news, this time on restored environmental protections

Joe Biden restored environmental protections [back in October 2021] to three national monuments and their vast expanse of vital ecosystems and sacred Indigenous spaces, reversing cuts made by Donald Trump.
“These protections provide a bridge to our past, but they also build a bridge to a safer and more sustainable future,” said Biden. “One where we strengthen our economy and pass on a healthy planet to our children and our grandchildren.”
Biden signed three proclamations that increased the boundaries of Bears Ears to 1.36m acres, while restoring the Grand Staircase-Escalante to 1.87m acres – both spanning large swaths of southern Utah. He also reinstated protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine, about 130 miles off the coast of New England, and extended limits on commercial fishing. The proclamations unraveled moves made by Trump, in which he slashed 85% of Bears Ears, leaving wide swaths of the site vulnerable to mining and other commercial activities.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Trip to the beach delayed last week due to ill health will take place tomorrow. Looking forward to sharing photos.

***

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:19am
Sunset: 5:21pm
Minutes of daylight increase each day. Hooray! Yet, in what ought to be wet winters in California, fires burn >> 

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:20am
Sunset: 7:00pm