Community Theater Plague?

 Covid is playing havoc with community theater productions throughout the local area. One theater has stripped its schedule down to the bare minimum, canceling two productions outright and moving the shows set for its smaller "black-box" venue to the main stage. Another cancelled its annual "murder mystery" dinner theater production. A third just had to cancel a performance of its current production when one of the actors tested positive and plans--for now--to add an extra performance next weekend.

The show I'm working on has had a few scares, mostly handled just by re-arranging who is called for specific rehearsals. We're all hoping things will be much quieter, Covid-wise, by the time our performances begin in late March.

Vaccine Truths

 There has been a lot of panic news about the increase in COVID infections and hospitalizations since Thanksgiving, but I think the media are generally ignoring the real story. Every story reporting on this should include--in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence--that the vast majority of new infections and new hospitalizations have been among the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated patients make up about 90 percent of all new infections and about 99 percent of all hospitalizations.

Yes, most stories get that information in, but usually not until the third or fourth paragraph (and in a TV report, not until just before the end)--and, frankly, most readers never get that deep into a story.

As a medical expert bluntly said on MSNBC's Deadline: White House on Wednesday, these people are simply "stupid". And he repeated it. Yes, there is a very small percentage of adults for whom a vaccination might be life-threatening due to allergies or some underlying condition. But about 40 percent of Americans over the age of 18 are not vaccinated...and the number who have a true medical reason to skip vaccination is simply nowhere near that amount.

This is, for many of these people, a purely political statement. Recent data indicate that lack of vaccination is much more likely among Republicans than Democrats or independents; that it is far higher in counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. 

What does it get you to "own the libs" by risking your own health?

Boosted

 I got my Moderna covid booster yesterday. So far (almost 24 hours later) no ill effects other than the usual sore shoulder.

Misunderstanding Science

 What is it that causes anger over the COVID restrictions? I don't think it's the restrictions themselves, for the most part--they simply are not that onerous. (Of course, there is a part of the populace that will object to any attempt to control or police their behavior--there are still people who refuse to use seat belts in their cars!) No, I think it's confusion, caused by the constantly changing nature of the rules--especially when those rules seem to backtrack on themselves.

And that's because so many people do not understand the nature of scientific investigation. It's not something you do once and come up with a solution...it's an ongoing, ever-changing process. Want an example? The first polio vaccine was released to the public in 1954; by 1956 a better vaccine was created and released; an enhanced version was approved in 1987. With COVID, a virus that is far newer than polio was in the early 1950s, researchers are still discovering its effects and its development. Each new thing they learn can mean a change in the recommendations to the public.

We're far better off now than we were a year ago; the recommendations coming out now are a precaution against losing the successes of the past 12 months.

Is Vaccine Hesitancy Driven by Bigotry?

 I may take some flack for this, but it's been on my mind for a while.

I wonder if some part of the vaccine reluctance among the conservative population--particularly the rabid Trump supporters--is that a significant number of the experts (both governmental and private) are people of color. The Surgeon General is of South Asian heritage, as are quite a few of the medical experts frequently interviewed on the TV news. Although she is not a person of color, the head of the CDC is a woman and Jewish.

Is that enough to make some portion of the right-wing populace discount what they say? These are people who disparaged a previous president simply for his family heritage and who consider the current vice-president illegitimate, in part because of her background and gender (not to mention their attitude toward the Congressional representatives they call "the Squad").

I fear it may be.

COVID Freedom Day

 Jill and I got our second Moderna vaccine shots two weeks ago today so, as of this morning, we are both fully immunized (or at least as far as the current science came make us).

That means, if you are also vaccine-complete, should we meet in real life, we can all remove our masks, shake hands, hug, and act just as we would have 14 months ago. There are people reading this, I'm sure, who I can't wait to greet again as we once would have.

Vax to the Max

 Jill and I both got our second Moderna vaccine shots this morning. In two weeks, May 10, we will be fully immunized.

Vaccine Hypocrisy

 There's a columnist for my local paper, Christine Flowers, who seems to have but one hobby horse--abortion. Somehow, no matter what other subject she's writing about, abortion will be mentioned. This morning, she was writing about the COVID vaccines, and sure enough, there was her old wooden mount.

So, I decided a letter to the editor was in order, and here it is:

Christine Flowers' hypocrisy and fuzzy thinking were clearly on view in her column this morning. In one paragraph she says " I want abortion criminalized. I want it banned. I want it to be recognized as the single greatest act of inhumanity in recent times." And, then, just a few paragraphs later, she says " While we can never impose Catholic morality on secular law...." And yet that is precisely what she proposed doing in her earlier stated desire--to make the Catholic position on abortion the law of the land! Which is it, Ms. Flowers?

Later, she goes to great lengths to explore the morality of using cloned fetal tissue initially derived from abortions in developing the COVID vaccines...ultimately deciding that the time distance between the initial abortions in two vaccines makes them more acceptable than the third one, in which the fetal tissue was more recently acquired. This seems to me to be an odd distinction. If "abortion is murder," as Ms. Flowers so often declares, then the date of that event is immaterial--there is no statute of limitations on murder in state or federal law. Which is it, Ms. Flowers?

Finally, she has decided to get the vaccination--indeed, she already has--determining that the benefits of vaccine outweigh the problematic nature of its origins. It seems if research using fetal tissue benefits Ms. Flowers, all is well and good...but, as she has stated in the past, and as her Catholic morality holds, similar research into cures and treatments for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, MS, ALS, and a host of other musculo-neural ailments is anathema and must cease. Which is it, Ms. Flowers?