Saturday, April 10th, 2021
Today was the usual busy Saturday, starting with coffee and the news scan before heading to practice in the park and on to the pool from there.
Back home I fixed lunch for EM and I before she headed of to work and I proceeded to take a nap.
We had a plan to drive to Hagerstown tomorrow so she could get her vaccine at a walk-in clinic. After I heard that there was a seven (!) hour wait on the day they opened, I rethought the plan and asked her to call govaxmd and see if she could make an appointment, and she could! She will have her first shot on Tuesday and her second shot on May 4th, 2021. I am thankful that she will get her shots and I have six days to go before my second dose is administered. Two weeks on, I shall join the ranks of the invincible, she will be invincible by May 18th.
I spend the afternoon out in the garden as the sun came out and after this mornings rain it turned into beautiful and warm day. First, I tackled the Dandelions, which are just out of control. I dug out some 50 or so from the lawn. Second, I moved to my front lawn where a few years ago I planted on beautiful flower. Turns out it develops underground roots and the plant just takes over everything expanding across most of the lawn and just taking over, which is lovely as long as they are in bloom, but a wasteland in winter. Wearing white pants was probably not the smartest move as I had to sit on the grass given the slopes. When I was done it sort of looked as if I had pooped my pants. I do have a deep sense of satisfaction at having pulled most of the plant’s roots, hoping to contain it to where it is meant to live. I do suspect I will need to do a second round of eradication in a few weeks.
I am now listening to Frager Sensei and his experience of training with O’Sensei and the meaning of Aikido. It is rather an inspiring talk. This was interrupted by a call from one of my colleagues in Nairobi.
She called me at 2:00 her time – now that is dedication to work. In addition to discussing workload she said the nicest thing. She seems to not only enjoy working with me but is in appreciation of what I manage to get done. I blushed hearing all the compliments. I am so thankful for the opportunity to work with such dedicated and grateful people as her. And that is not because she was flattering me, it is because I felt really appreciated, which is nice after a year of shit from my Manager. I am thankful for the opportunity I have been given to work with a dedicated team.
So, all in all today was a good day.
Infections in the USA continue to rise as the UK variant B1.1.7 takes hold with 85k new infections reported over the past twenty-four hours to bring the US total to 31.8million. While the US is not doing so well India currently leads the world in new Covid cases. The Economist sees South Asia as the new hotspot with infections in India rising steeply for days and now Pakistan and Bangladesh also reporting rapid increases in new daily infections. Meanwhile, another neighbour of India’s, tiny Bhutan, vaccinated 85% of its adults against covid-19 in a week. Only Israel and the Seychelles have vaccinated a (slightly) higher proportion of their people, but both took months to do so. It might be worthwhile to note that all of Bhutan has less inhabitants than Tel Aviv or London by a few million.
Cuba may become the smallest country to make covid-19 vaccines. The country has only 11m people and is short of basic goods such as rice and paracetamol. But its long history of medical research has stood it in relatively good stead during the pandemic. Now the country is developing five potential covid-19 vaccines.
Also in Brazil the virus seems to be spiraling out of control with 4.000 people dying every single day. The ultra right wing government is not taking any measures to reduce the spread, no social distancing, no mask wearing, no lockdown. Neighbors are terrified that the more infectious and deadly Brazilian variant P1 will spread or worse, Brazil will become the breeding ground for new, more deadly variants. As a result, they have closed their borders to Brazil.
And finally some good news from Europe where vaccination speed is finally picking up. Still AstraZenca keeps failing to deliver on its promises. As a result France has now ramped up capacity to produce the shot developed by BioNTech to increase the EU’s independence. The facility can produce 250 million doses, basically one for each adult European.
Now we just need to make sure that lesser developed countries get enough vaccines and Cuba may just be the way to get ther. Go Cuba!