Time for my “every so often” update on the always exciting world of industrial distribution. For those interested, you can check it out after the jump.
COVID-19
The Othering
So I heard today that Bill DeBlasio (since he’s so smart and has done such a great job) is only letting people who can produce some sort of proof of vaccination into certain places like a gym or a bar. Other cities are probably doing the same or will before too long. Outside of instantly making business owners some sort of arbiters/law enforcement officials, having to decide what is proof and what is not, etc., this is just preposterous. What a stick in the eye to a person who actually has a religious belief that they shouldn’t get vaccinated. Or someone with a medical condition where this type of thing isn’t the best idea. Or someone who just says “hey, I don’t want it”.
I’m thinking that this is the point where actual guns may begin to come out and we will see things get a little “physical”. I’m hoping not but I can’t see any way around this. I’m vaccinated but won’t be patronizing any business that voluntarily does this.
Some Random Unscientific Observations About Covid
The press is in full ramp up mode to sell ads and clicks with the new and improved delta variant of the commie crud (copyright Sgt. Mom on that term). Many localities are making people bring out the masks again. Here in beautiful Dane County, Wisconsin we have as of yesterday a “recommendation” that everyone wear a mask in a public place. Naturally, this is the first step to a new mandate. Same thing in Chicago and IL.
While cases are up here, hospitalizations, the key metric to me, are flat. From the Dane County commie crud dashboard, you can see that hospitalizations (as of this writing) sit at 23 people. It has been around there for many months now – sometimes under 20, sometimes it gets up to around 25. I check every day.
We have had one death due to covid in Dane county in the last two months. For those number geeks like me, that is eighteen ten thousandths of the population of Dane County that have died due to covid this Summer (so far).
If people aren’t in the hospital, why is everyone getting tested and causing the positivity rate to move up? All of the local big testing centers closed long ago. The only thing I can imagine is that people who are in for other things like a physical, or a knee replacement or something else are getting covid tested and coming up positive. And that would prove that most people, as many have been saying all along, are going to be just fine, even if they get the commie crud.
I decided to look at some stats for Los Angeles county to see what all the hubbub was about. Around eight hundred as of this writing are hospitalized with commie crud. Sounds like a lot, but still below the 14 day average. And far below January when there were 8,000 people in the hospital. Four people died yesterday, which is one one millionth of one percent of the population. I’m fairly certain that covid accounted for fewer deaths than traffic, crime, overdose, or any of a number of other ways to die in LA. So this is the deadly delta variant? Color me unimpressed.
And remember that a lot of these stats are probably wrongly recorded, as the old saying goes people dying with covid vs. from covid. But the data is the data. And still, (even with the cooked books) the number of people, for all of the yelling and screaming, that seem to be affected seems ridiculously low.
Keep calm and carry on.
To Vax or Not To Vax…
That is indeed the question, and against all urging and advice, a fair number of Americans are saying ‘not’; for valid and wholly understandable reasons, after having made a carefully considered decision. Such be the case of the Daughter Unit and I. The Daughter Unit spent most of last year being pregnant and did not want to risk anything that would possibly damage Wee Jamie in utero. Her medical team did not do anything more than make a pro forma suggestion; that they did not mention it after she declined likely hints at their own doubts about the safety. We both had to get yearly flu shots when we were on active military duty, and honestly, I would routinely get sicker from the shot than I usually did from the flu itself. Towards the end of my active-duty time there was a great push to get all active duty to be vaccinated against anthrax, and I was in two minds over having to get that vaccine, before my retirement rendered the point moot. I remembered very well how so many of those deployed for the first Gulf War later developed serious health problems, problems that it was speculated, might have been because of the array of vaccinations they were given, in combination with exposure to various environmental hazards and contaminants. (I’ve always thought that the Gulf War Syndrome was a kind of multiple chemical sensitivity/allergy, caused by exposure to a range of triggering compounds or combinations, to which some people were more vulnerable than others. Not a medical or sciency-person; just my own opinion from what I have read and knowing veterans who were affected by deployment in that war. But that’s a whole ‘nother rabbit hole.) To get to the point, it was not entirely unknown for reluctant military personnel to be ordered to take vaccines, over their own doubts and objections.
Just this week, the Daughter Unit received a form letter from the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, addressed to Dear Veteran:
The segregation of Citizen COVID
France brings out a SARS-CoV variant of leprostigma by fiat. Now where did I put my clapper and bell?
You know that funny feeling when the head of State addresses the nation and declares that you and some of your fellow citizens shall be treated as outcasts and arbitrarily deprived of your rights?
Or perhaps you don’t.
I know I didn’t until Emmanuel “Jupiter” Macron, President of Le Pays des Droits de l’Homme the “nation of human rights”, as some French like to call this country, appeared in the idiot box and announced, right on the eve of Bastille Day, that:
Our choice is simple: to put the restrictions on the unvaccinated rather than on all.
Restrictions being Macron’s byword for segregation, to be implemented on people who have not been covaxxed into submission—whatever the reason we have, of which there are many, ranging from the borderline insane conspiracy theories to informed common sense and caution.