Sweep out the old

Worldwide (Map) 
February 17, 2022 - 417,702,100 confirmed infections; 5,837,900 deaths
February 18, 2021 - 109,885,600 confirmed infections; 2,430,000 deaths
Total vaccinations to date: 10,257,109,700

Track Covid vaccinations worldwide >> 

US (Map) 
February 17, 78,171,300 confirmed infections; 928,500 deaths
February 18, 2021 - 27,824,660 confirmed infections; 490,450 deaths
Interactive: rank Covid deaths by US state >> 

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
February 17, 2022 - 3,649,000 confirmed infections; 97,520 deaths
February 2021 - 27,824,660 confirmed infections; 490,450 deaths

News blues

While the actual (unconfirmed) “excess deaths” due to American Covid-19 is assumed to number more than 1 million, the official number, according to Johns Hopkins  has yet to reach 1 million. Many expected the official 1 million toll to be reach a week ago. Does that is has not yet reached that milestone mean Covid’s lethality is slowing. Let’s hope so….
Ranking Covid deaths by state tells a story, too.

Interactive: rank Covid deaths by US state >> 

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Pfizer/BioNTech's Covid-19 mRNA vaccine is said to provide an added layer of protection against reinfection for people who have been previously infected with the novel virus. It also is said to increase immune durability over time, according to two studies published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine >> 

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The Lincoln Project:
Clown Show  (1:04 mins)
Putin’s Allies  (1:40 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

February 15, the White House unveiled a slew of policies aimed at overhauling the U.S. industrial sector  in order to reduce its planet-warming carbon pollution. Many of the policies have bipartisan backing—they were authorized in last year’s infrastructure bill.  These policies are a big deal because they could help solve one of decarbonization’s thorniest problems: how to make steel, concrete, chemicals, and other major industrial products in a zero-carbon way. These products typically rely on fossil fuels to generate intense heat or provide a raw-material input, which is part of why the industrial sector is responsible for more than 20 percent of global emissions.
However crucial these policies are for the planet, they are arguably even more important as a matter of political economy. They signal a profound and bipartisan change in how the federal government presides over the economy

Read “ The White House Is Going After One of Climate Change’s Thorniest Problems” >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

With South Africa’s official unemployment rate at 35 percent and the unofficial rate much higher,  , people scramble to afford basic food and housing. One young local man apples maximum creativity to earn a living: he sweeps debris back into potholes.
I’d noticed this young man standing near a four-way intersection offering what I assumed was a bunch of herbs to sell. He’s manned his post everyday over the past 10 days holding the same vegetation. Yesterday, I saw him using the flora to sweep small, loose stones back into a nearby pothole and tidy up loose debris.
I assume he’s working for tips although it has taken me 10 days to figure it out. Perhaps he needs signage: Sweeping for Rands?
It is heartbreaking to see so many people - young and old - so desperate.

***

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:42am
Sunset: 6:44pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:56am
Sunset: 5:50pm

"Normalcy" ahead?

The Lincoln Project:
Twilight Struggle  (0:55 mins)
Last Week in the Republican Party - February 15, 2022  (1:58 mins)
Last week in the Republican Party - February 9, 2022  (1:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

First it was PCBs, now it’s PFAS – harmful toxic pollutants that do not biodegrade - that are affecting ecosystems around the globe

[When] the north Atlantic archipelago, that include remote Faroe Islands - between Iceland and the northern tip of Scotland - had unusually high concentrations of toxic industrial chemicals in their breast milk, it seemed a surprising discovery … so far from sources of industrial or chemical pollution. And the chemicals that the 2005 Stockholm University study measured, which included polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), had already been phased out in many countries.
So how did this happen?
The chemicals were coming from the ocean or, more specifically, from the pilot whales that make up an important part of the islanders’ diet.

Read more >> 

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Humans are taking carbon out of the ground by burning fossil fuels deposited millions of years ago and putting it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The current rate of new fossil fuel formation is very low. Instead, the main geological (long-term) mechanism of carbon storage today is the formation of seashells that become preserved as sediment on the ocean floor.

Read “Oceans are better at storing carbon than trees…"  >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Jet lag is (almost) a thing of the recent past and I’m feeling energized. More so now that a garden clean-up crew finished day 1 of a 3-day effort. The garden is slowly returning to its former glory – despite the former hired “gardeners’” overuse of power tools and the demise of many cherished plants. On that topic, neighborhood scuttlebutt reports that, once the business owner fell out with one of her employees – also an extended family member – she began enlisting men from the streets to garden. She offered no oversight nor any direction on expectations to those temporary workers. This explains not only the massacre of my plants but the mounds of weeds lying all over the garden. Moreover, hiring day labor off the streets is a huge security risk.
I’m looking forward to the restored garden in 3 days - if predicted rain defies the weather forecasts. It has done that for the last 3 days so here’s hopin’.

***

Have yet to see any warthogs but the impala and zebra are present in a nearby estate.

Impala

Healthy zebra

Expect the unexpected

News blues

“At this rate, dead people are slowly poisoning those who are alive.”

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 5.7 million lives worldwide. Funeral homes, mass burial grounds, and crematoriums remain overwhelmed and pushed beyond capacity. Last April, gravediggers in São Paulo had to exhume old graves in a cemetery and relocate corpses’ remains in a desperate attempt to bury thousands of daily COVID.
Researchers argue that cemeteries are one of the most neglected and insidious sources of metal contamination in the soil. As the COVID pandemic drags on, metal pollution in cemeteries and surrounding areas could reach staggeringly high levels—further aggravating the risk of groundwater contamination.

Read “COVID-19 is overcrowding cemeteries and causing heavy metal pollution” >> 

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Even as my mug of once-per-day coffee tangled in my mosquito net and crashed to the floor at 5:00am this morning, I’m happy to have and enjoy coffee. Turns out, I’m on the right track as there’s a link between drinking coffee and a lowered risk of COVID-19. A new study points to other dietary intake data and the odds of getting the virus, too >> 

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The Lincoln Project:
Vote while it counts  (0:55 mins)
Randy Rainbow on Marjorie Taylor Greene  (4:30 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Wondering how animals and plants are adapting – or not - to our ever-warming, increasingly polluted world? A new database reveals how much humans are messing with evolution >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My mother’s long-term (35 years) domestic worker, Martha, met me in the kitchen at 5am. She happily reported she’d dreamed of my mother. (My mother died July 12 last year – amid KZN’s calamitous protest/riots.) Martha happily described my mom as joyous, surrounded by her many dogs – Benji, Freckles, Daisy , too many to name here - Mike, her partner, and Keith, her handyman. Martha even described the clothing each was wearing in the dream.
It’s not easy to lose a parent, particularly amid a pandemic that's sealed off the Care Center from visitors, a violent protest, and me in California. 
Martha’s dream touched my heart. I'll ask her to relate it when the family gathers for my mom's memorial. She'd been planning this event for years and gathered dozens of fancy boxes containing dogs' ashes - each solid wood box adorned with the dog's name etched on a brass-plate. 

My instruction? 

Place all the ashes, including hers, Mike's and Keith's - in a large container then bury them together on the property where she'd spent 6 decades running a country "guest farm". 

Problem? 

That property has been sold. I'm not about to trespass on someone else's property with a large box of cremains. We'll do the memorial in a nearby (rural) valley where my maternal grandfather's ashes are scattered. She'll like that, not as  much as being spread on her beloved former property but.... 

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From 90F degree weather yesterday, to 72F weather and rain predicted today. We shall see. Around here, weather predictions are as reliable as Eskom’s load-shedding schedule. A wait and see attitude is de rigueur.

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:39am
Sunset: 6:46pm
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:00am
Sunset: 5:47pm

Chillin'

News blues

Oh oh! COVID will affect cardiovascular health, health care for years to come >>

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Whither South Africa? President Ramaphosa and State of the Nation (SONA) address  (1:45 hrs)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Still adjusting to the hot, muggy weather: 91F/33C today. 

Phew! 

The kind of weather that demands taking the day off and chillin’

Say what?

News blues

COVID-19 in SA:  Fifth wave likely to hit SA in winter  (7:45 mins)

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In the era of “alternative facts”, what data can “thinking people” apply to make sense of what’s happening out there, vis a vis the pandemic? Is it almost over? Or is a fifth wave coming? To mask or not to mask, that is one question.
Read “While awaiting updated CDC guidance, here's the data states are using to lift Covid-19 restrictions”>> 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Olympic (0;55 mins)
Trump v Toilets  (0:44 mins)
Vernon Jones  (0:35 mins)
Last Week in the Republican Party (Feb 9)  (1:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

There’s a growing trend of climate litigation around the world. Here’s a look at the Australian cases likely to make headlines this year >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Slowing overcoming jet lag and feeling energetic and ready to tackle a mountain of decision-making and a mountain of catch up on house maintenance before putting the property back on the market. From getting it properly evaluated to finding another gardener (former gardener, Elson, we miss you! ) to approaching the municipality – again on clearing the culverts. The latter task is daunting – as I’ve discovered over 5 or 6 years to trying…  Indeed, the culverts shown in that post look almost quaint in comparison to the culverts of today. Photos pending….
Another big hurdle: adjusting to the hot, muggy weather. I wear lightweight dress and I’m still covered in light sweat all day. Ugh!
Once adjusted, I plan to pull out my camera and capture the wonderful birdlife all around.

***

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:38am
Sunset: 6:48pm
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:02am
Sunset: 5:45pm

Learn to live with it

Worldwide (Map)
February 10, 2022 - 403,000,000 confirmed infections; 5,776,000 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 107,324,00 confirmed infections; 2,354,000 deaths
Total vaccinations to date: 10,118,400,000

US (Map) February 10, 2022 - 77,265,150 confirmed infections; 912,300 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 27,285,150 confirmed infections; 471,450 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) February 10, 2022 - 3,631,644 confirmed infections; 96,502 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 1,482,412 confirmed infections; 47,145 deaths

Optimistic post from a year ago, Looking ahead >> 

News blues

Polls and surveys taken in the US on Covid-19, even as the Omicron variant crested across much of the United States, indicate the public is getting tired of the pandemic and its resolve to combat the coronavirus is wavering if not outright waning.
Read more and see results of surveys >> 
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat who has taken a strict approach to pandemic protocols, recently said “We have to learn how to live with Covid as we move from a pandemic to the endemic phase of this virus."
This is the trend in the US now, with blue state governors and state health officials, once vigorously embracing pandemic restrictions, pivot toward loosening restrictions and shifting responsibility to the public.
Read more >> 
Even as the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stands by the agency's mask guidelines, emphasizing that now is not the time to change the recommendations or loosen restrictions aimed at preventing Covid-19  the CDC weighs updating its messaging around transmission and masking.
Meanwhile, South Africa remains on Alert Level 1 – the least restrictive level. A cloth face mask or “homemade item that covers the nose and mouth” is required when in public places. South Africans, like Americans, however, are getting tired of the pandemic and items covering the nose and mouth are no longer much in evidence. Read more >>

***

The Lincoln Project:
Pence v Trump  (0:42 mins)
McCarthy v McConnell  (0:48 mins)
Anti-American  (1:10 mins)
And, Randy Rainbow is back: the Tango Vaccine (4:05 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

“Ambitious and concrete commitments”?

Up to 40 world leaders are due to make “ambitious and concrete commitments” towards combating illegal fishing, decarbonising shipping and reducing plastic pollution at what is billed as the first high-level summit dedicated to the ocean.
One Ocean summit, which opens on Wednesday in the French port of Brest, aims to mobilise “unprecedented international political engagement” for a wide range of pressing maritime issues, said its chief organiser, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor.
“It is essential,” Poivre d’Arvor said. “The climate has its Cop process but there is no equivalent for the ocean, at a time when man’s relationship with the marine world has become more and more toxic, and global heating is causing extreme change.”

Read more about the summit >> 

Maybe I’m too cynical, but I wish Poivre d’Arvor had not likened this effort to the “Cop process” … a model for how to get world leaders to draw out and prolong the agony of “do-nothingness” in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe.

Let’s hope the “ambitious and concrete commitments” for preserving the ocean includes attention to climate change causing more frequent marine heatwaves worldwide. 

Why? 

Because corals have adapted to live in a specific temperature range. This means when ocean temperatures are too hot for a prolonged period, corals can bleach and die.
New research  published in the journal PLOS Climate found that the future of tropical ecosystems – thought to harbour more species than any other – is probably worse than anticipated.
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

(c) Zapiro

Back in the land of Eskom and loadshedding  . Grrr!
Backstory: South Africa’s parastatal power company, Eskom, began scheduling mandatory loadshedding back in April 2008. Loadshedding – power switched off for up to 2.5 hour increments according to neighborhoods across the nation - is “designed” to allow maintenance periods for power generators, as well as to recover coal stockpiles before the winter (when need for electricity usage surges).
Fourteen years later and whaddya get? 

More loadshedding.
Enough already!

***

Jet lag’s a bummer!

***

Daylight hours are topsy-turvy right now. I hear it is warm and somewhat muggy in the San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:04am
Sunset: 5:43pm

It’s hot, sunny, and muggy in KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:36am
Sunset: 6:50pm

Breathe

The Lincoln Project:
Legitimate Political Discourse 1 (1:50 mins)

Legitimate Political Discourse 2  (2:10 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Second trip to the more urban bank did the trick and I'm now the owner of a reissued bank card. Yay!
I was nervous I’d face the same lack-of-customer-service service on my second try at a bank to obtain a functional debit card. Indeed, my stress level was high: if the second bank refused to reissue my cards, I’d have to use creative financing along the lines of … borrowing … money from friends. Horrors! Being a control freak, I’d figured out a way to do it: using the online banking features to transfer funds from my account to my friend’s account and my friend giving me cash. Workable once; twice? That could get burdensome.

Happy to report a conversation with a teller remarkably different from yesterday's conversation.    
Today's teller, I’m happy to report, hardly blinked at my lack of ID card. No need for me to use any expletives ("American English") to communicate my frustration as I'd done yesterday. 

Today's teller not only issued a debit card, she also issued the bank’s reward card – I’d accumulated significant rewards to apply to certain purchases (when and if I get around to desiring something I’d like to purchase.)
My mood and outlook changed so much for the better after this meeting that I understood how much the situation had affected me. On a choppy/static-y, frustrating call to family and friend in the US this morning I’d expressed feelings of extreme vulnerability in this country. The calls made clear, too, how much I depend on decent wireless connection.
On that topic, I’m happy to report that, yes, indeed, I’m back online. Paid up for this month’s connection and expressed the intention to pay for the next two months' service, too.
Life is way better with connections….
I can breathe again. 

Tomorrow, we return to our regularly scheduled reportage on year three of the Covid era.