The Pandemic Blog

  I’m still wearing my mask most of the time when I’m indoors with other people and I’m still reluctant to do much traveling - although I make an exception for visiting my grandkids! But I’m not doing this because I’m afraid of catching Covid and dying in a hospital. Rather, it’s that I’ll catch Covid (and I never have so far), “recover” from it after a bad week or two, but then have lingering effects that never go away. My reason for this attitude is entirely due to my work. Almost everything I do for work involves writing in some way (including writing a book on cybersecurity, which I hope to finish in the near future), and the rest requires paying close attention during online meetings. I’ve heard from people who have had (or are having) Covid that the worst part for them was the “Covid fog” (as one person put it), that doesn’t allow them to concentrate or think straight. Frankly, that frightens me more than anything else, since, being independently employed, I will have no inco

Joe Biden’s ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks have damaged him since the beginning of his political career and he seems to have done it again, with his recent remark on “60 minutes” that the pandemic is over. On Monday, Leanna Wen of WaPo surprised me by agreeing with him, although a WaPo editorial the same day said Biden shouldn’t have said what he did. Here’s the deal: 1.       In this week last year, daily new reported Covid cases were about twice as much as today. However, last year there was very little at-home testing, whereas now it’s ubiquitous. It’s certain that total new cases this year are at least equal to total cases last year, and probably much more. 2.       Deaths in this week last year were about 2300 per day, while last week they were 370. That’s a big difference, but deaths were on their way up last year, after being as low as 234 per day in early July. So there’s no assurance at all that, as winter kicks in and we’re all indoors more – but not at all af