More of the same

News blues

One hundred weeks and 700 days of posts tracking Covid-19. This count may not be statistically accurate as I flitted from southern to northern to southern hemispheres during this pandemic. It’s a pretty good approximation of the trajectory of the pandemic, from discovery of the virus, to the initial devastation it wrought, to the creation and manufacture of vaccines, to where we are today. On this note, a report finds that, for all its flaws, the Covid-19 vaccination rollout has been a historic win for humanity.>> 
Surrounded as I am by vax skeptics and misinformation, I’m totally grateful for science and scientists. (Yes, I understand science/scientists – and politicians, marketing experts, supporters of wars, even family members, etc. – can – and do - manipulate data to derive desired results. That’s life in the modern world. And I remain a fan of Covid vaccine.
On that note, here’s a guide to coronavirus and Covid-19 >> 

***

MeidasTouch 

Trump is guilty  (1:10 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…

An ivermectin-skeptic, I found myself in a conversation with two fully-convinced-ivermectin-takers. One, a young funeral director, swallows ivermectin each week to ward off a second bout of Covid. (His first dose of Covid was life-threatening.) The other man is simply a full-on believer, just because…. In such conversations, I simply ask the question, “Why take an anti-bacterial medication for a viral disease?” and leave it at that. I’m curious about the responses, but I’m uninterested in going down the ivermectin rabbit hole, particularly as South Africa is chock-a-block with ivermectin swallowers. Two days after that conversation, another article stating, again, that according to the study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the antiparasitic drug ivermectin doesn't prevent severe disease from Covid-19 any more effectively than symptom management and close observation by medical professionals. >> 
I thought, very briefly, of sending the study’s link to the ivermectin fans. But why bother? Belief in ivermectin falls, in my opinion, into the same ideology as Trump is the Best Human President in the World. I ain’t gonna change that mindset with logic or data. I’d rather shift dirt/soil uphill with a spade.
One more comment on South Africa’s conspiracy theorists. Recently, I enjoyed meeting up with two friends at a local coffee shop. The male of the couple has been vaccinated and always wears his mask. My friend, his wife, is a vax skeptic who dons her mask amid much muttering about mask-uselessness. During out conversation, she also informed me that “studies prove” many, many more Covid deaths have occurred amongst the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Hmmmm
My sheer incredulity that I’m actually hearing such drivel generally renders me speechless. The best response I can come up with in the moment is, “That’s not at all true and I don’t believe it.” Then I try to change the subject. The problem with my response? Conspiracy theorists expect this response. It is, after all, exactly their response to their facts: always suspect the “mainstream” narrative: “they” are just trying to “'take over'….”
Indeed, there are times when “the public” is offered convenient – and money saving - bundles of BS. I’ve not spent more than a decade on a community board dealing with the US military’s so called “clean-up” of toxic waste generated during it sojourn in my California town not to understand this. 

Discernment is key: work toward understanding with discernment.
Moreover, wearing masks and accepting vaccine is about more than one individual. It’s about our entire community of humans the world over. Thinking beyond one’s immediate nose and self-interest is a requirement for living in today’s world.

***

Last night was the first time in three weeks that I slept for more than seven hours. And I fell asleep as a crashing thunderstorm raged overhead. I chalk up this good sleep to good old fashioned hard physical labor.
Between regular bouts clearing the pool filter and repositioning the filter’s “creepy, yesterday’s labor included trimming overgrown hedges and plants with manual hedge clippers and raking the debris into piles for easy removal to the dump. I also spaded the garden’s dirt/soil level. This property slopes downhill and heavy rainfall shifts loose dirt/silt downhill. If I want a decent garden – and I do – then I must replace dirt/soil. A spade does the job, albeit a job tough on the human body. (Try pushing an old wheelbarrow packed with dirt uphill.) I unlocked old outside cabinets, cleared them of years-old debris, and piled that up for later removal to the dump. Serendipitously, I also rescued two Pool Kits that will allow me to test pool water for PH and acidity levels.
Today, Sunday? After last night’s thunderstorm, the day is clear, clean, and bright. And hot.
On today’s agenda? More of the same hard physical labor.
A mechanical hedge clipper sure sounds nice. Unfortunately, it’s a luxury I’m not sure I can afford. Then again, perhaps it is a luxury I cannot not afford. The questions: How resilient is my human body? Is my health and welfare not worth one stinky mechanical hedge clipper?
Hmmm.

***

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:44am
Sunset: 6:41pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:52am
Sunset: 5:53pm

100 Weeks

News blues

One hundred weeks of Covid-19 and some level of Lockdown in South Africa. I arrived here in January 2020, a month or two after the novel coronavirus sought refuge in the first of its human hosts. I began these pandemic-centric blog posts on April 9, 2020 (see the complete list of posts) and, 100 weeks later, I’m still at it. Fully vaxed, I don’t take ivermectin, and, so far, haven’t contracted Covid. Happy Days!
One hundred weeks later:
Coronavirus restrictions ease across Europe despite high case rates 
…and…
As California prepares to live with Covid, laying out plan to fight future surges, it aims to pick up rising viral transmission early and sequence new variants to determine whether vaccines and therapeutics are still effective. 
The millions of people stuck in pandemic limbo: what does society owe immunocompromised people? 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Uh oh, Donald  (1:04 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

“How better animal welfare could stop millions of people dying,” by Damian Carrington for Down to Earth  presented here as it encapsulates the essential issue of our time: how to live cooperatively and simply on our planet to ensure survival for all living creatures.

Spanish flu, bird flu, Marburg virus, Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, Nipah, West Nile, Sars, Chikungunya, Zika and Covid-19. That is just a partial history of the viruses that have spilled over from animals to humans in the last century. The outbreaks are coming more frequently, as humanity’s growing population drives its destructive path further into wild areas. An average of 3 million people a year die from these zoonotic diseases.
But the world’s focus on preventing the next pandemic has so far been confined to boosting the detection of new diseases after they have infected humans and speeding the development and rollout of vaccines. That is of course necessary, but it is not sufficient.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, there have been repeated warnings that action to stop spillovers at source is also vital, and extremely cost-effective. That means ending the destruction of forests that brings people and wildlife into contact, and a crackdown on the wildlife trade. Inaction has left the world playing an “ill-fated game of Russian roulette with pathogens”, experts say, and protecting nature is vital to escape an “era of pandemics”.
But tacking spillover is not mentioned in reports and strategies from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a joint initiative of the World Bank and the World Health Organization, or from a G20 high-level panel on financing for pandemic preparedness.
A new report from experts at the International Union for Conservation of Nature provides another angle on the issue. While all zoonotic diseases ultimately come from wildlife, the IUCN report says few spillover into people directly. More commonly the diseases transfer via livestock, or animals like rats that thrive in places despoiled by humans.
So culling wildlife could not be justified, and could perversely make viruses spread more rapidly and animals flee. The IUCN report also says its examination of the scientific evidence suggests that tougher rules, or a ban, on the trade in wildlife would not have much impact on preventing future epidemics. Such moves could also harm the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities, unless alternative ways to make a living are provided.
But the IUCN report comes to the same broad conclusion as the previous reports: preventing increasing rates of outbreaks is feasible, especially if “primordial prevention issues, rather than just preparedness and rapid response” are addressed. “The challenge rests in better understanding how our domesticated animals and human-dominated landscapes create opportunities for the emergence of infectious diseases,” says Jon Paul Rodríguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.
So what is the livestock industry doing to cut pandemic risk? Not nearly enough, according to another new report, which rates two-thirds of 60 major meat, dairy and fish companies as “high risk”. The analysis is based on seven, criteria including welfare conditions for both animals and workers, waste management and deforestation.
“Intensive farming environments, housing most of the 70 billion farm animals reared every year, are a known breeding ground for disease,” says Jeremy Coller, chair of the FAIRR Initiative, which produced the report and is backed by investors managing $48 trillion of assets.
“Aggravating factors like low genetic diversity, cramped enclosures and poor conditions for workers that do not offer adequate sick pay amplify [the pandemic] risk many times over,” he said. “It’s time for meat companies and policymakers to learn from Covid-19 and to invest in preventing the next pandemic.”
Another take on pandemic risk is on its way from Bill Gates in his new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic. “The plan is three elements,” he says. “First is to constantly improve health systems. The second is to build a global pathogen surveillance capacity so that no matter which country it shows up in, we can apply resources and understand what’s going on very quickly. And finally, innovation across diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that will get us far better tools far quicker than we did this time.”
“I think it’s exciting that we have this opportunity to use our best ideas to stop pandemics for good,” Gates concludes. But there’s no mention of what is to my mind the very best idea of all – trying to stop pandemics at the source. The same was already true of reports from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a joint initiative of the World Bank and the World Health Organization, and from a G20 high-level panel on financing for pandemic preparedness.
Tackling the root of the issue by protecting forests and wildlife would cost just a tiny fraction of the terrible losses caused by pandemics, and such action is of course already vital for ending both the climate and biodiversity emergencies. “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity,” said Albert Einstein. But the world has yet to grasp the opportunity presented by Covid-19.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

With South Africa’s official unemployment rate at 35 percent and the actual 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.

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 >> 

***

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 >> 

***

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 >> 

***

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” >> 

***

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 >> 

***

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.... 

***

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 >>

***

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)

***

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