Thursday, February 4th, 2021
A few weeks ago, I received a fresh delivery of firewood. Just in time as I was running out. This is a new vendor. I was hoping the wood would really be aged and nice and dry. It is not of course. The fact that the logs are very large does not help to get them burning. As a result, my nightly fire is rather measle and requires a lot of attention. Hence, I find myself getting up to fan the embers every few minutes, which is rather tiresome and messy as the ashes spread with each fanning of the flames. Given there is no Jennifer I find myself sweeping around the fireplace almost daily. But most annoying is that it just takes forever to get started. On evenings such as to night this is doubly annoying as I shall presumably head to bed just as it is catching. Given practice had moved from Tuesday to today I did not even begin to start the fire until 21:00 or so, after I came home from the park and unloaded the car.
For tomorrows BBQ I have procured serious fire starters as well as plenty of wine and bread rolls. Sadly, Trader Joes did not have the ones I wanted – sold out. I am not sure what is going on as the fresh produce shelves also looked ransacked. At least the weather appears to cooperate. The forecast has change from rain to cloudy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon to make way for a clear frosty night. I, as will everyone else I expect, will dress warmly and get the two fires going, so we should all be fine. There is still plenty of snow on the lawn and the foliage which will make for a pretty setting. I might even light the Contiki torches, if they cooperate that is! Beverages will include beer, which courtesy of the weather will not need to be chilled, hot, spiced white wine and red wine. I have taken tomorrow afternoon of to have enough time to set up, marinade the meat, make sweet potato fries and prepare the condiments. I think it will be fun, despite the evil virus circulating.
Numbers in the US are a little up from yesterday with 121k new cases reported today to bring the US total to 27.2 million. At least measures imposed to curb the spread of Corona have had positive side effects. Most respiratory diseases normally spreading during winter have seen a significant decline. There have been almost no cases of flu as more people got shots, wore masks and maintained their distance.
The UK is embarking on an interesting experiment. They are testing mixing vaccines, with the first shot of one and the second shot of a different vaccine twelve weeks later. Notable, the two shots use different technologies. The Oxford vaccine is based on messenger DNA while the BioNTech vaccine uses messenger RNA. I do not think I would want to be part of this particular trial.
The US media is dominated by discussions of vaccine passports, a discussion which seems absurd, given that almost every European has a vaccine passport. Main issues are how to organize vaccine passports and a number of tech firms are offering solutions, which open up the question of equity – what about people without smartphones? I find this such a strange conversation. There is a standard immunization booklet issued by the WHO which in Germany each child is issued at birth to track all the shots a it has received. This includes all the shots mandatory for school children in the US for example such as polio, mumps, measles and rubella. It also helps to understand when booster shots for instance for Tetanus are necessary.
As vaccine shots remain in short supply people are developing significant criminal energy and are getting creative to skip the line and get a shot before it is their turn.
Sadly, Maryland is one of the worst States when it comes to rolling out the vaccine (30th). Apparently, each state receives the same number of doses, regardless of population size. That is simply insane! Surely vaccines should be distributed by population size, with more allocated to densely populated areas, and not the number of Senators as State fields.