Tag: Sharp Little Pencil

I was compelled to write one last damn COVID post this year. And it’s a function of an error on my part. A good friend of mine asked me an Ask Roger Anything question and I failed to reply.

I have a swollen tonsil, probably allergies, but it’s been hanging on. Contacted my doctor’s office. Nurse called me back and said, “It sounds like Covid. Go get tested ASAP.”

I had gotten a test (negative) two days before bc I had been to visit The [Adult] Child.

I’m thinking the automatic Covid test recommendations are a form of CYA (Cover Your Ass) for doctors’ offices. That would skew the aggregate for reporting positive cases, no? Would love your opinion.

The question might be different now. And the truth is that I’ve been quite unclear what the US policy has been in the past two years about testing. It seems to operate in fits and starts. It is now abundantly clear now that as we focused on the stubbornly unvaxxed, we spent way too little effort on finding out who’s already infected.

The plan, scuttled

Vanity Fair reported that Biden’s White House “rejected an October plan by COVID-19 testing experts to put some 732 million at-home tests in the hands of the public.” I certainly can’t buy one from my local drug store.

“Authored by the COVID Collaborative, a group of several COVID testing expert organizations said the country needed a ‘bold’ plan to send out some 732 million tests per month for the disease before the holiday season to reduce family gathering outbreaks.

The story notes that “The plan, in effect, was a blueprint for how to avoid what is happening at this very moment — endless lines of desperate Americans clamoring for tests in order to safeguard holiday gatherings, just as COVID-19 is exploding again.”

Not that is the reality for some people. The Weekly Sift guy describes The Emotional Roots of Political Polarization. “In South Carolina, we bought the instant Covid tests that no CVS back in Massachusetts could keep in stock. When we asked about a limit on how many we could buy, the clerk looked at us strangely, as if we didn’t understand that the whole point of retail is to sell as much as you can.”

15th letter of the Greek alphabet

Omicron: we can’t even agree on the damn pronunciation. Pretty much the only new people in the US who’ll get the jab – Boris Johnson’s favorite term for the COVID vaccine – will be people getting ill with the disease.

The head of the World Health Organization has again noted that getting a third shot – or a fourth, which Israel has proposed – will only lengthen the pandemic. Certain news media, Newsmax, e.g., have spun that to suggest that getting the shot itself is bad for the recipient. The point is that if an Israeli gets a fourth jab, and someone from, say, Burkina Faso, which has 2.1% of the population with one vax, and only 1.6% with two as of December 15, the disease will continue to spread and almost certainly mutate.

Faux News hosts have compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to someone perpetrating the actual Holocaust and recommended his assassination. Oy. And, oh dear, Trump got HIS third shot. He confounds me; after helping to create the vital vaccines, he seems to lead the opposition to them.

A Los Angeles Times story – COVID stole the heart of my family. It also divided it – is behind a paywall. “The death of [reporter Brittny Mejia’s] grandmother from COVID-19 this month made her reflect on the personal toll the virus has had on her family. ‘My grandma was not vaccinated – not of her own will – and I fear it is a decision that will haunt my family and evoke anger for years.”

I’m REALLY hoping I can stop writing about the topic. It’s boring me with the too same narrative. Some hospitals are at or above capacity. Didn’t we see that movie already? Or does this one finally have a happier ending?