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Year 2 - Day 123...
Working from home today, so took the opportunity to get my laundry out of the way. I'm off to visit my brother and his family on Friday, a nice little three day weekend. I'm coming back on Sunday, because Doctor's appointment on Monday.
Crazy Workplace attempted to schedule not one but two Teams Meetings with me on Friday. I declined both - was quite happy to do so actually. Didn't see a pressing need to be at either. They can hold those meetings without me. If not, they can reschedule.
Crazy Workplace can be nuts on their own for a few days without any help from me.
**
Father is slightly better and more lucid today. Although they had to switch meds, since the previous one wasn't working. My mother didn't think it would, so wasn't all that surprised. He told her today that companionship was important, and she felt depressed - because they are losing that or appear to be. Then she said, I most likely worried about not having it too. I told her that I tried not to think about it. I honestly have no clue what the future is going to bring my way. I'm trying to stay rooted in the present at the moment. Plus, it's not like there are lots of dangerous things multiplying outside ready to kill me.
Asked bro if I needed a swimsuit for my brief visit. He didn't think so, unless I wanted to swim in the lake (I don't), and he was too scared to do the waterfall due to all the rain we've had. (If my brother is afraid to do the waterfall - that's enough to give me pause, right there. The boy is a daredevil.) But he did say it would be interesting to check it out.
He told mother that living with niece was akin to living with a 1940s or 30s comedienne. Someone like Hepburn or Carol Lombard. I thinking witty banter with ill-timed pratfalls?
***
COVID
Mother: You're brother's not sure that your niece is going to make it to the UK this fall. Apparently they are in the RED Zone and there's travel advisory's blocking folks from traveling to and from the UK right now - due to a sizable uptick in the virus. They have over 50,000 cases.
ME: Yeah, I know. I've been wondering if she can make it to London this fall myself. Following it on my interactive correspondence journal - I've all these Brits on it. And they've been talking about how there's a new lockdown in place, and how Boris's stupidity has led them to be cut off from the rest of the world - yet again. Apparently Boris opened up the UK to India a while back - which flooded the UK with the Delta Variant, and he opened it up 100% before it was ready to be opened up...
Mother: Oh god.
Me: Yep.
Mother: the Dow went down several point because of the pandemic and rise in cases across the country and globally.
Me: Niece told me she thought the pandemic would be over in the fall of 2021, actually she thought it would be over by fall of 2020. Then amended to 2021. I told no, she needs to read her history. But she said, surely with all our technological and scientific advancements...being sixteen at the time, she didn't factor in how stupid people are. A year, later, she admitted I was right - she'd forgotten how dumb folks are about things.
I keep telling people - it's a pandemic. It's not going to just go away like some storm. Viruses are living organisms that hang around until people build up an immunity to them and they've no where to go, and become dormant. The Spanish Flu last from 1918 to 1922. That is about four-five years. And the HIV pandemic is still kind of going on.
The reason there's an uptick in cases across the US - is people aren't getting vaccinated. Lots of poor, uneducated folks refuse the vaccine along with others, mainly young people. It's mostly the under 25 set that is getting sick with the Delta.
People are still wearing masks inside the apartment complex and laundry room. I did today. And one man who wasn't doing it early on in the pandemic, does it now.
By the numbers or per the Governor's Email (it's really the NY Depart of Health and Human Services Email...but whatever)...
1. COVID hospitalizations are at 378. Of the 69,665 tests reported yesterday, 823, or 1.18 percent, were positive. The 7-day positivity average was 1.26 percent. There were 70 patients in ICU yesterday. Of them, 30 are intubated. Sadly, we lost three New Yorkers to the virus. [NY's positivity rate went up, but my area's went down - we have about 141 cases out of 23,240 tests. Keep in mind - I live in an area with 3 million people and a city of 12 million. Also three dead is better than the numbers we had all through 2020 and until June of 2021.]
2. As of 11am this morning, 73.9 percent of adult New Yorkers have received at least one vaccine dose, per the CDC. Over the past 24 hours, 22,627 total doses have been administered. To date, New York has administered 21,812,432 total doses with 67.4 percent of adult New Yorkers completing their vaccine series. See additional data on the State's Vaccine Tracker.[ Woo-Hoo - 67% - closer and closer to 70% fully vaccinated. I want 70-80% before I step foot in a movie theater.)
3. The Canadian border will reopen to fully vaccinated U.S. citizens on August 9. The Canadian government is finally reopening its borders and an open border with our neighbors to the North means families will be reunited once again and much-needed relief to our border communities that depends on cross-border trade and supply chains. [Yes! I might be able to take a trip to Canada this fall!]
4. Get digital proof of your vaccination with Excelsior Pass. Excelsior Pass is a free and voluntary platform for businesses & individuals that can be used to easily access secure proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test. Learn more about Excelsior Pass. [Except it expires on 9/15/21, do I need to get a new vaccine? It would be nice to know?]
5. The pop-up vaccine sites at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal have been extended. Individuals who get vaccinated at either of these pop-up sites can receive a free MetroCard or two one-way Metro-North or LIRR tickets.
The Doomed Olympic Games in Tokyo, which are supposed to start this month are having issues.
* A coronavirus cluster has overshadowed the run-up to the Games, as a U.S. gymnast tested positive.
* Toyota pulled its Olympics television ads.
* The beds at the Tokyo Olympics are cardboard. Counter to rumors, that’s not a Covid precaution against sex. [Apparently the rumor was debunked by an Irish athlete - who jumped up and down on one of the beds and posted it on Twitter. The Olympic Committee thanked him. I don't know about anyone else, but I found this tid-bit to be hilarious.]
More on the Doomed or possibly Cursed Tokyo Olympics..
An outbreak of coronavirus cases threatens to overshadow Friday’s opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics.
About 20,000 athletes, coaches, referees and other officials have poured into Japan in recent days. More than two dozen of them have tested positive for the virus, including three cases within the Olympic Village.
Tokyo is under a state of emergency, and daily case counts in Japan have exceeded 1,000 for several days for the first time since mid-May. Toyota, a prime corporate sponsor, pulled its Olympic-themed television advertisements in Japan, a symbolic vote of no confidence.
The Games begin at 9 a.m. Tokyo time on Wednesday (8 p.m. Eastern tomorrow) when Australia and Japan play the first game of a softball tripleheader. The Summer Olympics are expected to be the hottest on record.
We'll see how this works out. I'm not feeling overly optimistic.
And about the stock market diving again over worrying pandemic news.
For months, investors had been behaving as if they expected a full, smooth rebound from the Covid crisis. From January through June, stocks rose 14 percent, one of the best first-half performances since the late 1990s.
But the virus’s potential to upend life all over again caught up with investors, as a spate of worrying news — in particular, new outbreaks involving the highly contagious Delta variant among unvaccinated people — led to a big sell-off on Monday. The S&P 500 stock-market index had its worst decline since May, sliding more than 2 percent during the day before closing down 1.6 percent. The Dow fell 2.1 percent, its biggest one-day loss this year. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 2.3 percent.
“The impact of Covid on the stock market isn’t over yet,” said Lori Calvasina, head of U.S. equity strategy with RBC Capital Markets in New York. “We’re not saying it’s going to derail the recovery. We don’t think that, but we do think it could cause some additional bumps.”
Investors were forced to reckon with troubling signs from around the globe.
New cases in the United States have more than doubled over the last 14 days to an average of 31,745 a day, driven mainly by infections among the unvaccinated. With just 49 percent of the country fully vaccinated, the Biden administration is scrambling to persuade more people to seek out shots so that the U.S. can achieve herd immunity.
Canada is actually doing better than everyone else is at the moment, it surpassed the US in vaccinated. As previously noted, the UK is being stupid again...Nightclubs across England threw open their doors at midnight as the country ended nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions. But the long-delayed milestone was marred by risk and confusion as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to quarantine because of exposure to the coronavirus, and cases surged to more than 50,000 a day.
But the UK is still better off than Indonesia, which had been doing okay last year at this time, but is now - this year, at the epicenter of the pandemic. Why? Indonesia has relied heavily on the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, which has proved less effective than other shots. At least 20 Indonesian doctors who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac have died from the virus. Meanwhile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are also facing their largest outbreaks to date. [The pattern appears to be which vaccine you got, and how many got it?]
France decided to take the polar opposite approach of the UK, and ruled that without proof of a vaccine, you can't do anything at all. And I do mean pretty much anything - no public transportation, nightclubs, dinners out, etc. Thousands protested of course - stating it was a dictatorship and a violation of their rights. However - it did result in the desired effect of getting more folks vaccinated - apparently people flocked to get vaccinated ahead of the ruling going into effect. New York keeps flirting with the idea - but backs off, most likely because our court system wouldn't uphold it.
Meanwhile Pfizer is pushing the US officials for a Booster Shot. The gist - is that there is no evidence that it is required, and all eyes are on Israel. Israel has done the best job of administrating the vaccine and has the best data to date on it. They've been administrating the booster.
***
Other News..
Last week, or at least I think it was just last week - the US told Russia to put a stop to the Russian hacking, this week it's China.
The Biden administration formally accused China of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies, governments and military contractors.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that China’s Ministry of State Security “has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain.”
The U.S. was joined by a broad group of allies, including all NATO members, to condemn Beijing for cyberattacks around the world. But the announcement lacked sanctions similar to ones that the White House imposed on Russia in April, when it blamed the country for the SolarWinds attack.
Over the past decade, China reorganized its hacking operations, turning into a sophisticated and mature adversary.
I kind of knew about this - since I work for a government agency and we keep having issues with email servers etc due to hackers.
While my neighborhood chat thread on Next-Door Neighbor site, got busy fighting over bicycles again. It was original about bicycles on sidewalks - and how this is illegal and they shouldn't do it, to bicycles vs. cars, and bicycle docks taking up motor vehicle parking spaces.
Personally, I don't think people should drive in NYC unless absolutely necessary. Or if they are in areas that absolutely require a car. Otherwise no. My area does NOT require a car. I also think NYC drivers are insane, and most can't drive safely and are just one step away from killing themselves. And, bikes do not belong on sidewalks and should be relegated to the perfectly nice bike lanes they've gone to a lot of effort to put in.
But not everyone agrees with me. Sigh. Enug to make you just want to smack them.
There was also a post on FB - from someone in Japan or China, with three Golden Retrivers who yanked a poor tabby cat to sit for pet photos. The cat did not want to sit for those photos, and was refusing to look at the camera or sit still. The dogs kept pushing the cat into position, or pushing it to look.
People responded regarding how they wanted the dogs. While I wanted the cat, I wanted to rescue the cat from the dogs. Poor cat, I completely understood it's dilemma.
Anyhow, enuf - I'm starting to go to sleep as I type this. Methinks I'm tired.
Back to the office again tomorrow, then two days remote from home, then off to see brother and his family.
Crazy Workplace attempted to schedule not one but two Teams Meetings with me on Friday. I declined both - was quite happy to do so actually. Didn't see a pressing need to be at either. They can hold those meetings without me. If not, they can reschedule.
Crazy Workplace can be nuts on their own for a few days without any help from me.
**
Father is slightly better and more lucid today. Although they had to switch meds, since the previous one wasn't working. My mother didn't think it would, so wasn't all that surprised. He told her today that companionship was important, and she felt depressed - because they are losing that or appear to be. Then she said, I most likely worried about not having it too. I told her that I tried not to think about it. I honestly have no clue what the future is going to bring my way. I'm trying to stay rooted in the present at the moment. Plus, it's not like there are lots of dangerous things multiplying outside ready to kill me.
Asked bro if I needed a swimsuit for my brief visit. He didn't think so, unless I wanted to swim in the lake (I don't), and he was too scared to do the waterfall due to all the rain we've had. (If my brother is afraid to do the waterfall - that's enough to give me pause, right there. The boy is a daredevil.) But he did say it would be interesting to check it out.
He told mother that living with niece was akin to living with a 1940s or 30s comedienne. Someone like Hepburn or Carol Lombard. I thinking witty banter with ill-timed pratfalls?
***
COVID
Mother: You're brother's not sure that your niece is going to make it to the UK this fall. Apparently they are in the RED Zone and there's travel advisory's blocking folks from traveling to and from the UK right now - due to a sizable uptick in the virus. They have over 50,000 cases.
ME: Yeah, I know. I've been wondering if she can make it to London this fall myself. Following it on my interactive correspondence journal - I've all these Brits on it. And they've been talking about how there's a new lockdown in place, and how Boris's stupidity has led them to be cut off from the rest of the world - yet again. Apparently Boris opened up the UK to India a while back - which flooded the UK with the Delta Variant, and he opened it up 100% before it was ready to be opened up...
Mother: Oh god.
Me: Yep.
Mother: the Dow went down several point because of the pandemic and rise in cases across the country and globally.
Me: Niece told me she thought the pandemic would be over in the fall of 2021, actually she thought it would be over by fall of 2020. Then amended to 2021. I told no, she needs to read her history. But she said, surely with all our technological and scientific advancements...being sixteen at the time, she didn't factor in how stupid people are. A year, later, she admitted I was right - she'd forgotten how dumb folks are about things.
I keep telling people - it's a pandemic. It's not going to just go away like some storm. Viruses are living organisms that hang around until people build up an immunity to them and they've no where to go, and become dormant. The Spanish Flu last from 1918 to 1922. That is about four-five years. And the HIV pandemic is still kind of going on.
The reason there's an uptick in cases across the US - is people aren't getting vaccinated. Lots of poor, uneducated folks refuse the vaccine along with others, mainly young people. It's mostly the under 25 set that is getting sick with the Delta.
People are still wearing masks inside the apartment complex and laundry room. I did today. And one man who wasn't doing it early on in the pandemic, does it now.
By the numbers or per the Governor's Email (it's really the NY Depart of Health and Human Services Email...but whatever)...
1. COVID hospitalizations are at 378. Of the 69,665 tests reported yesterday, 823, or 1.18 percent, were positive. The 7-day positivity average was 1.26 percent. There were 70 patients in ICU yesterday. Of them, 30 are intubated. Sadly, we lost three New Yorkers to the virus. [NY's positivity rate went up, but my area's went down - we have about 141 cases out of 23,240 tests. Keep in mind - I live in an area with 3 million people and a city of 12 million. Also three dead is better than the numbers we had all through 2020 and until June of 2021.]
2. As of 11am this morning, 73.9 percent of adult New Yorkers have received at least one vaccine dose, per the CDC. Over the past 24 hours, 22,627 total doses have been administered. To date, New York has administered 21,812,432 total doses with 67.4 percent of adult New Yorkers completing their vaccine series. See additional data on the State's Vaccine Tracker.[ Woo-Hoo - 67% - closer and closer to 70% fully vaccinated. I want 70-80% before I step foot in a movie theater.)
3. The Canadian border will reopen to fully vaccinated U.S. citizens on August 9. The Canadian government is finally reopening its borders and an open border with our neighbors to the North means families will be reunited once again and much-needed relief to our border communities that depends on cross-border trade and supply chains. [Yes! I might be able to take a trip to Canada this fall!]
4. Get digital proof of your vaccination with Excelsior Pass. Excelsior Pass is a free and voluntary platform for businesses & individuals that can be used to easily access secure proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test. Learn more about Excelsior Pass. [Except it expires on 9/15/21, do I need to get a new vaccine? It would be nice to know?]
5. The pop-up vaccine sites at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal have been extended. Individuals who get vaccinated at either of these pop-up sites can receive a free MetroCard or two one-way Metro-North or LIRR tickets.
The Doomed Olympic Games in Tokyo, which are supposed to start this month are having issues.
* A coronavirus cluster has overshadowed the run-up to the Games, as a U.S. gymnast tested positive.
* Toyota pulled its Olympics television ads.
* The beds at the Tokyo Olympics are cardboard. Counter to rumors, that’s not a Covid precaution against sex. [Apparently the rumor was debunked by an Irish athlete - who jumped up and down on one of the beds and posted it on Twitter. The Olympic Committee thanked him. I don't know about anyone else, but I found this tid-bit to be hilarious.]
More on the Doomed or possibly Cursed Tokyo Olympics..
An outbreak of coronavirus cases threatens to overshadow Friday’s opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics.
About 20,000 athletes, coaches, referees and other officials have poured into Japan in recent days. More than two dozen of them have tested positive for the virus, including three cases within the Olympic Village.
Tokyo is under a state of emergency, and daily case counts in Japan have exceeded 1,000 for several days for the first time since mid-May. Toyota, a prime corporate sponsor, pulled its Olympic-themed television advertisements in Japan, a symbolic vote of no confidence.
The Games begin at 9 a.m. Tokyo time on Wednesday (8 p.m. Eastern tomorrow) when Australia and Japan play the first game of a softball tripleheader. The Summer Olympics are expected to be the hottest on record.
We'll see how this works out. I'm not feeling overly optimistic.
And about the stock market diving again over worrying pandemic news.
For months, investors had been behaving as if they expected a full, smooth rebound from the Covid crisis. From January through June, stocks rose 14 percent, one of the best first-half performances since the late 1990s.
But the virus’s potential to upend life all over again caught up with investors, as a spate of worrying news — in particular, new outbreaks involving the highly contagious Delta variant among unvaccinated people — led to a big sell-off on Monday. The S&P 500 stock-market index had its worst decline since May, sliding more than 2 percent during the day before closing down 1.6 percent. The Dow fell 2.1 percent, its biggest one-day loss this year. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 2.3 percent.
“The impact of Covid on the stock market isn’t over yet,” said Lori Calvasina, head of U.S. equity strategy with RBC Capital Markets in New York. “We’re not saying it’s going to derail the recovery. We don’t think that, but we do think it could cause some additional bumps.”
Investors were forced to reckon with troubling signs from around the globe.
New cases in the United States have more than doubled over the last 14 days to an average of 31,745 a day, driven mainly by infections among the unvaccinated. With just 49 percent of the country fully vaccinated, the Biden administration is scrambling to persuade more people to seek out shots so that the U.S. can achieve herd immunity.
Canada is actually doing better than everyone else is at the moment, it surpassed the US in vaccinated. As previously noted, the UK is being stupid again...Nightclubs across England threw open their doors at midnight as the country ended nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions. But the long-delayed milestone was marred by risk and confusion as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to quarantine because of exposure to the coronavirus, and cases surged to more than 50,000 a day.
But the UK is still better off than Indonesia, which had been doing okay last year at this time, but is now - this year, at the epicenter of the pandemic. Why? Indonesia has relied heavily on the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, which has proved less effective than other shots. At least 20 Indonesian doctors who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac have died from the virus. Meanwhile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are also facing their largest outbreaks to date. [The pattern appears to be which vaccine you got, and how many got it?]
France decided to take the polar opposite approach of the UK, and ruled that without proof of a vaccine, you can't do anything at all. And I do mean pretty much anything - no public transportation, nightclubs, dinners out, etc. Thousands protested of course - stating it was a dictatorship and a violation of their rights. However - it did result in the desired effect of getting more folks vaccinated - apparently people flocked to get vaccinated ahead of the ruling going into effect. New York keeps flirting with the idea - but backs off, most likely because our court system wouldn't uphold it.
Meanwhile Pfizer is pushing the US officials for a Booster Shot. The gist - is that there is no evidence that it is required, and all eyes are on Israel. Israel has done the best job of administrating the vaccine and has the best data to date on it. They've been administrating the booster.
***
Other News..
Last week, or at least I think it was just last week - the US told Russia to put a stop to the Russian hacking, this week it's China.
The Biden administration formally accused China of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies, governments and military contractors.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that China’s Ministry of State Security “has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain.”
The U.S. was joined by a broad group of allies, including all NATO members, to condemn Beijing for cyberattacks around the world. But the announcement lacked sanctions similar to ones that the White House imposed on Russia in April, when it blamed the country for the SolarWinds attack.
Over the past decade, China reorganized its hacking operations, turning into a sophisticated and mature adversary.
I kind of knew about this - since I work for a government agency and we keep having issues with email servers etc due to hackers.
While my neighborhood chat thread on Next-Door Neighbor site, got busy fighting over bicycles again. It was original about bicycles on sidewalks - and how this is illegal and they shouldn't do it, to bicycles vs. cars, and bicycle docks taking up motor vehicle parking spaces.
Personally, I don't think people should drive in NYC unless absolutely necessary. Or if they are in areas that absolutely require a car. Otherwise no. My area does NOT require a car. I also think NYC drivers are insane, and most can't drive safely and are just one step away from killing themselves. And, bikes do not belong on sidewalks and should be relegated to the perfectly nice bike lanes they've gone to a lot of effort to put in.
But not everyone agrees with me. Sigh. Enug to make you just want to smack them.
There was also a post on FB - from someone in Japan or China, with three Golden Retrivers who yanked a poor tabby cat to sit for pet photos. The cat did not want to sit for those photos, and was refusing to look at the camera or sit still. The dogs kept pushing the cat into position, or pushing it to look.
People responded regarding how they wanted the dogs. While I wanted the cat, I wanted to rescue the cat from the dogs. Poor cat, I completely understood it's dilemma.
Anyhow, enuf - I'm starting to go to sleep as I type this. Methinks I'm tired.
Back to the office again tomorrow, then two days remote from home, then off to see brother and his family.
no subject
France has the right idea. And the stock market has finally read the obvious signs that saying the pandemic is over is not the same as it being anything of the kind. Some people are getting the message. A friend told me about how a co-worker was able to convince a family to get vaccinated after she talked about the loss of her husband to it when they both came down with it last Christmas. And she also told me about how a 24 year old nurse in their hospital gave it to her entire family and died of it herself a few weeks ago. As she said, patients coming for treatment have a right to expect that their providers aren't going to infect them so more hospitals are insisting on vaccinations or else those employees are fired.