Category Archives: Corona Virus/Pandemic

Annals of Inequality, Corona Virus/Pandemic, Fire This Time, Signs of the Times

Quote of the Week: The Pandemic Is not — repeat NOT — over

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In the past month, two near family members were sick with COVID,  despite shots, boosters & masks.

Both are recovering, but one — a working single mother ineligible for sick leave — lost two weeks pay as well. Other relatives suffered mild cases and bounced back; yet another relative had it last winter, and is still struggling with debilitating “long COVID” effects.

I seem to have dodged it so far, had the third booster shot this week, and came up negative on two COVID tests. But I am still nervous. So, while I’m overall very grateful that Joe Biden is in the White House, his gaffe about the end of the pandemic was not trivial. Past the peak, it seems, yes; but . . . .

Reporter Ed Yong, whose writing on the pandemic won a Pulitzer prize, memorably summed up my outlook:

Recently, after a week in which 2,789 Americans died of COVID-19, President Joe Biden proclaimed that “the pandemic is over.”

Anthony Fauci described the controversy around the proclamation as a matter of “semantics,” but the facts we are living with can speak for themselves.

COVID still kills roughly as many Americans every week as died on 9/11. It is on track to kill at least 100,000 a year—triple the typical toll of the flu. Despite gross undercounting, more than 50,000 infections are being recorded every day. The CDC estimates that 19 million adults have long COVID. Continue reading Quote of the Week: The Pandemic Is not — repeat NOT — over →

Corona Virus/Pandemic, Current Affairs, Sedition Watch, Signs of the Times, Weird & Peculiar

Quotes to Start the Week, On Election Integrity & Consequences

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In Otero County, New Mexico, there was a local primary election on June 7. Republicans were elected to every office on the ballot but two.

One exception was a Democrat for one of the three County Commissioner seats. For a second commissioner seat, a near tie of 801 votes to 790, may go to a recount — but both those candidates are Republicans too.

New Mexico. Otero county is in purple in the bottom tier.

Not much excitement, or news here, initially. But then the incumbent commissioners made headlines last week, by refusing to certify the results.

There were no charges of any irregularities, but the county had used Dominion voting machines, which MAGA Republicans falsely assert are actively wired for fraud, and that was enough: the Commission voted unanimously not to certify.

Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin

New Mexico’s Secretary of State went to the state supreme court, which ordered the Otero commissioners, lacking any evidence of fraud, to certify the vote by week’s end. On Friday, two of the members met. But the third, Couy Griffin, was absent. Continue reading Quotes to Start the Week, On Election Integrity & Consequences →

Corona Virus/Pandemic, Current Affairs, Pandemic, Signs of the Times

White House Protected Big Profits for Big Pork & Big Poultry While Big Waves of Pandemic took down thousands of Unprotected plant Workers

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NOTE: Much of the public, after two-plus grueling years of Covid, seems determined to forget all that as rapidly as possible. My hat is off to ProPublica for staying on one of the big buried scandals of this period: how Trump officials colluded with corporate lobbyists from Big Meat to minimize worker protection while maximizing their bottom line.

ProPublica: The Plot to Keep Meatpacking Plants Open During COVID-19

Michael Grabell — May 14, 2022

As hundreds of meatpacking workers fell sick from the coronavirus that was spreading through their plants and into their communities in April 2020, the CEO of Tyson Foods reached out to the head of another major meatpacker, Smithfield Foods, with a proposal.

Smithfield’s pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, had been hit particularly hard, and state and local officials were pressuring the company to shut it down.

“Anything we can do to help?” Tyson CEO Noel White asked in an email.

Smithfield’s CEO Ken Sullivan replied that he wished there was.

But White had an idea. Would Sullivan like to discuss the possibility of getting President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to keep meatpacking plants open?

So began a high-pressure lobbying campaign by the meat industry, according to a report released Thursday by congressional investigators, leading to one of the most consequential moments in the nation’s COVID-19 response: a presidential order that effectively thwarted efforts by local health officials to shut plants down and slow the spread of COVID-19. Continue reading White House Protected Big Profits for Big Pork & Big Poultry While Big Waves of Pandemic took down thousands of Unprotected plant Workers →

Corona Virus/Pandemic, Current Affairs, Fire This Time, Hard-Core Quaker, Pandemic, Signs of the Times

Covid at 1 Million U.S. Deaths: A Special Scourge in the South

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Reported Covid Deaths by U. S. Region:

Northeast  – 211,923 deaths
Midwest  – 211,648 deaths
West – 189,805 deaths
South – 378,472 deaths

RANDOLPH SEALS, 39, WAS elected the coroner for Bolivar County, in rural western Mississippi, in 2015. But the relentlessness of the deaths linked to Covid, and his personal ties to so many who were dying, brought him to the brink of quitting in the fall of 2020.

By early 2021, when the South’s death rate spiked again, he wished he had. Then came the Delta variant, and the Omicron wave, and it just got worse.

“It was a disaster that was coming back and back and back,” Mr. Seals said.

As hospitals overflowed, many residents died in their homes. The ripple effect of the pandemic was evident, too, as Mr. Seals began recording the deaths of people with heart or kidney disease for whom there were no hospital beds. Now, he said, he is handling the deaths of people who had Covid and never quite recovered. Continue reading Covid at 1 Million U.S. Deaths: A Special Scourge in the South →

Corona Virus/Pandemic, Current Affairs, Fire This Time, Pandemic, Signs of the Times

A Special Scourge of the South: Covid at 1 Million Deaths

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Reported Covid Deaths by U. S. Region:

Northeast  – 211,923 deaths
Midwest  – 211,648 deaths
West – 189,805 deaths
South – 378,472 deaths

RANDOLPH SEALS, 39, WAS elected the coroner for Bolivar County, in rural western Mississippi, in 2015. But the relentlessness of the deaths linked to Covid, and his personal ties to so many who were dying, brought him to the brink of quitting in the fall of 2020.

By early 2021, when the South’s death rate spiked again, he wished he had. Then came the Delta variant, and the Omicron wave, and it just got worse.

“It was a disaster that was coming back and back and back,” Mr. Seals said.

As hospitals overflowed, many residents died in their homes. The ripple effect of the pandemic was evident, too, as Mr. Seals began recording the deaths of people with heart or kidney disease for whom there were no hospital beds. Now, he said, he is handling the deaths of people who had Covid and never quite recovered. Continue reading A Special Scourge of the South: Covid at 1 Million Deaths →