Good afternoon folks.
On the personal front yesterday was another enjoyable family get together without any nonsense about masks or social distancing or vaccine passes. I had a chance to talk with my two older grandsons about which movies we would watch next week when they stay over. We decided that Iron Man (the first installment) was probably the best of the bunch. We decided to add Thor: Ragnorak just because I never saw it and they said it wasn’t the worst. Camera Girl is beginning her holiday food planning. Soon sacks of flour and barrels of sugar and butter will be delivered to the loading dock by petty dwarves and elvish butchers will transport cured hams and legs of lamb. She also brought my attention that the grackles are beginning to swarm around the fields. Remarkably, hundreds of these black birds will swirl down like a black tornado and cover the ground and the branches of the surrounding trees and find and eat every single grass seed and insect on the ground. And then as if by magic the whole flock will fill the air and shoot off to a new spot and repeat the whole thing again. I’ll have to try and get a photo of them taking off.
Some fairly interesting information on the “omicron variant.” The data coming out of South Africa, which seems to be ground zero for this new strain continues to be extremely positive. The transmisability of omicron is off the charts” meaning it is infecting people at a phenomenal rate. The testing of the populations shows that 25% of the population has already been infected. But the death rate is miniscule. Since the beginning of the surge the daily death rate for the whole country is about 25 deaths a day. Compare this to the earlier waves like the delta variant when the daily death rate was 500 to 600 deaths a day. If the variant continues at this rate, the entire population of South Africa will have been exposed to it in a couple more weeks. If the spike ends there without a serious death rate that will go a long way to convincing rational people that herd immunity to a weakened endemic strain has been reached there and soon worldwide. At that point it will be prudent to dump your Pfizer stock.
This week saw a large number of articles out there about the growing anger over the abolition of law and order in the blue cities and states. Reports from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York and especially Chicago range in tone from disbelief and fear to outrage and anger. The escalating severity of the crime epidemic is finally registering with the people who are responsible for its existence. Of course, they won’t do anything to fix the problem so my sympathy is basically nonexistent. As I’ve stated they’ll get my attention when cannibalism is formalized in San Francisco. Hopefully that will be before Pelosi emigrates to Florida so she can be the main ingredient for a really lousy soup.
Well, things appear to be hotting up. Dementia Joe has ordered the media to declare that inflation is not a problem. For some reason the public has its doubts. The courts have halted all his vaccine mandates and if the omicron variant fizzles by January Dopey Joe may have to declare victory against COVID again. I don’t expect that to get him much applause.
So the prospects for a Merry Christmas are encouraging and if Manchin hangs tough on Build Back Better a Happy New Year is looking more possible. Have a nice Sunday and I’ll post whatever seems interesting.