Saturday, January 23rd, 2021
Winter has truly arrived. Temperatures hover around 0C and this morning even some snowflakes made their way down from the heavens above. It is a crispy dry cold. Most of the day we had blue skies with a freezing wind blowing straight down from the Rocky Mountains making for a chill factor despite the bright sun. Without the wind it was pleasantly warm in the sun. Amazing how strong it is even in the midst of winter.
The day started with coffee and the news and the remains of the Christmas cookies before Monica arrived to do a much needed clean of the house. I will need to have a word with her though about picking things of the floor and cleaning underneath! Anyhow, I left her to her devices and headed to practice in the park.
I am not sure why, but during warm-ups my fingers regularly freeze. I have now tried four different pairs of gloves and it is always the same, the tips of my fingers go completely numb. I have rediscovered a pair of fingerlings. They will be my last resort on Tuesday.
Strangely enough though when we commence with the partner practice the cold toes and fingertips miraculously disappear. Why, I wonder, is that?
We did something entirely different to the past six months and it had to do with shapes and I forever found myself off distance for reasons I need yet to figure out. Maybe Tuesday will provide a solution to the mystery. I have a notion it has something to do with the size of my movements and where I move – the steps may just be too big. Despite the icy wind it was fun.
From the park I rushed home to defrost for about five minutes. Changed coats, grabbed the Tulips and packed EM before heading out to our German-Turkish friends in Potomac for brunch. The sun was shining like there was no tomorrow, but the chilly wind persisted.
We sat in the sun, under a heater around their outside fireplace and enjoyed burger bowls paired with mulled wine. It was – as always – very entertaining and we survived a fun three hours outside, watching the Christmas tree burn.
With this experience I have now made up my mind to have BBQ to celebrate 54 on February 5th, outside of course. The only thing which would prevent me from hosting, would be a snowstorm.
Given all of today’s activities I did not make it to the pool, and I have only managed to book a lane for 16:45 tomorrow. I shall check in the morning to see if anything has freed up earlier in the day as I have plans to meet my friend D for a visit of the farmers market, which is nice, but in no way comparable to markets in France or Germany – sadly.
Tonight, was spend on advisory calls. A colleague from Istanbul times had questions about the IB program and universities in Europe. I was glad to provide insights from our experience which will hopefully come in useful for her Sophomore as he needs to decide on whether or not to pursue the full IB and which subjects to choose. As she put it, barely 16 year-olds have to now decide what their path will be until age 22, as the choice of subjects for the final two years in high school determine what they can study at university (at least if they want to attend university in Europe that is). Unlike the US studying in Europe requires choosing a major which is career defining. To get into these majors though one will have to have taken relevant course n high school. One can, for instance, not apply to an engineering major without having taken math or other sciences as higher-level subjects. This in essences means an eleventh grader needs to know what he wants to study.
My second call was with my friend D talking through career options. I find it is so much easier to give advice to others than decide one’s own career path. I am certain that in six months from now the sides will be reversed and I will ask her what I should do given potential options. I sincerely hope my thoughts are helpful to her decision-making processes. I know they were sound, but ultimately, she must come to a decision as to what it is, she wants. I now understand people counseling me and their frustrations in doing so, so much better. Like D, I am utterly undecided about my future as I am not sure what I want; though I certainly do not want to walk away leaving anything on the table. A busy day and fun day for us.
Not quite as much fun on the virus front. Numbers in the USA are back on the rise after a week of decline the last three days have seen increases again. Today 195k new cases were added to the tally, so the US now reports 25.5 million cases to continue to account for roughly a quarter of the global total (96.2 million).
This in no small part is due to most of America ignoring all public health advice. Yesterday I wrote about an article by a journalist who took a road trip across six US States. The lessons from his COVID Vaccine road trip across American are truly discouraging. S/he found that almost no one across the country wears masks, never mind maintaining social distance. Hence the virus is freely spreading. This is so different from my daily experience.
Everyone I know or see in my neighborhood wears a mask when they leave the house and cannot maintain at least a six-foot distance. Some people even wear a mask regardless of anyone being around or not. Certainly, EVERYONE is masked-up inside any venues. Few people dine inside. If at all, they opt for outdoor dining. We do not gather inside people’s houses. We do not gather in crowds. Maybe this behavior is contained to the reasonably affluent and educated people. Or is it a democrat thing? I have no idea, but not getting with the program does not appear to be helpful.
Politicization of the virus continues as mask wearing mandates are still fought along partisan lines. President Biden issued executive orders mandating masks in all Federal buildings and lands as well as on all modes of public transportation. He is also asking every American to wear a mask for his first 100 days in office. Yet all those Republicans rallying around the cry for unity have nothing better to do than file law suits against these executive orders; claiming overreach of government.
This is another case in point of “individualism” versus "equitable society". All the Republicans know the research showing mask wearing reduces the spread. Basically those fighting masks are contributing to rising death numbers and in my mind should be held accountable for the increasing death toll. But of course, they are firmly putting the blame on the incoming administration, when the outgoing administration spend a year doing exactly nothing to contain the spread. Quite the contrary, the WH hosted a series of super spreader events resulting in a significant number of staffers and guests contracting COVID. Given vaccine shortages, I suggest that vaccines are rolled out first to states with compliant people when it comes to mask wearing, as a reward for being good citizens so to speak! As the GOP does not give care about equity, they surely should not mind such an approach.
Scientists are reasonably certain that the virus is here to stay, and we will need to live with it. Mask wearing, and social distancing will remain critical in reducing the spread and the evolution of the virus; likely becoming part of our lives for many years to come. While vaccinations will increase immunity and reduce spreads there will for years be – hopefully containable - pockets. Frequent and rapid testing may be critical in containing these spreads. Towards this end easy rapid test which can be conducted at home several times a week may become a critical success factor in managing the spread and returning to normalcy; as will mask wearing and testing until at least 70% of the world population have been immunized. If I could have a stash of these at home, I would test us two to three times a week; and maybe we could have some of our old life back, like partner practice in the dojo. Just imagine everyone would take a test upon arrival and we could all practice together safely.
Even without the virus poverty has always been a concern in the USA. 11.8% of the population live in poverty (2018) compared to for instance 0.5% (2016) considered poor in Germany. Unlike in developing nations though poor does not mean being unable to feed, house or cloth oneself in Germany. It means one lives below a state defined poverty line of US 5.5/ day/ person. Shocking to me is that over 30 million Americans go hungry.The richest country in the world! These numbers have increased with the pandemic.
Largely this is due to America’s individualism, driven by the firm believe that here is no role for government in the creation of an equitable society. This has been the big dispute between the Democrats and Republicans over past centuries. Democrats believe the central government has a role to play in achieving equality, not in the communist sense - where all assets are nationalized - as the GOP likes to make out, but by imposing taxes on all (federal taxes) to provide education, infrastructure, health care and a social safety net thus facilitating equal opportunities and a minimal amount of social unity for all citizens of the country. It goes back to the introduction of Federal taxes after the civil war by Hamilton, where such taxes were used to build schools for former slaves. The landowning class (or slave owners) considered this a redistribution of wealth and have been fighting against taxes to do something for the society as a whole ever since. Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters by an American” has repeatedly discussed this theme and how history continues to shape modern day America. They are a great read, putting today’s action into a historical context.
Most recent news from the vaccine front is another indicator of rampant capitalism with disregard for a greater public good. A stark difference in attitude between different vaccine makers was already clear early on in the game, when Oxford/ AstraZeneca announced they would not seek to make a profit of their vaccine, initially, recognizing that the quick development and ramp up of production facilities was largely possible to generous investments by governments during the research and development phase, and Pfizer priced their vaccine to profit. The capitalist greed is now exposed. After receiving billions of US (and European} tax dollars to ramp up production facilities for a potential vaccine, Pfizer is now requesting an extra USD 360 million from the US government to pay for the vaccine in the vials delivered to date, claiming the government needs to pay for the sixth dose which can be extracted from what Pfizer has delivered. Abusing their near monopolistic position in the market, being one of two licensed vaccine manufacturers, they are threatening to reduce delivery of doses if the government does not pay up. And that at a time when the virus rages and there is a race between vaccinating and uncontrolled spread due to more infectious new variants.
This I believe is normally called blackmail, and in this case in disregard of American lives. It is an outrageous attitude and maybe the US government should in this case demand the billions of taxpayer monies invested to be repaid immediately.
Given this is a life and death situation there is no time to play hard ball though. The FDA would be well advised to immediately license the Oxford vaccine for emergency use and get as many of those shots as possible; even if it may mean building government owned production facilities at warp speed, just to reduce Pfizer’s market power.
Once shots are in people’s arms Pfizer should be sued for murder!