Living with Coronavirus
(SARS-CoV-2)
Sunday July 4th, 2021
6:00 AM

The numbers are up for infections and down for hospitalizations and deaths.  This appears to be the impact of vaccinations.  There have been many infections of fully vaccinated people with the Delta strain, but very few serious cases of disease.  This illustrates that the vaccines are working at disease prevention but not very effective at stopping the spread of the virus.

It would be advisable for the vaccinated to mask in public indoor spaces as they may catch the virus and share it with unvaccinated people and people whose immune system did not react strongly to the vaccination, the vulnerable.  As it stands numbers are down in the states, but that does not reflect the on the ground reality.  Numbers may be way down in one place and much higher elsewhere.  We are beginning to see “hot spots” in areas which are less vaccinated.  Many of those areas are red states and strong Trump supporters.

Unvaccinated areas and under vaccinated areas will continue to give the viral enemy room to spread and mutate even further. Going forward each individual will have to be pro-active in their personal viral response. For instance you may be a little or no risk in your town or city, but the city next door might be in bloom. Anyone traveling would be wise to investigate the current trends where they are going and observe masking procedures in unknown public settings. No one wants this news, but if we want to prevent the Delta Strain from mutating into something worse yet again, we would be well advised be cautious. Each of us will need to know the viral threat at your home and at where you’re going to use forethought and viral protections as you see fit, situation to situation.

The Pandemic continues amid unusual and dramatic weather conditions nationwide.  As the west roasts under a heat dome shattering records all the way from the Mexico border to the arctic circle, the north east is uncommonly cool and a new hurricane is targeting Florida and the east coast.  Day by day the heat dome drifts further east and more and more records fall.  The heat sparks dry lightning which in turn spark fires in that excessive heat.

The gulf stream is not operating as it always has.  All my life it ran up the east coast of America, then across to England where it mixed with colder waters and sank, forming the deep return current to Africa where heated equatorial waters start the loop all over again.  Yesterday however I noted that the current seems to be breaking up into eddies long before it reaches England.  Greenland researchers have warned of this very effect.

We are off the map now in climate shift I think, where there be dragons.  Methane releases from melting permafrost have recently been recorded as 400 times higher than expectations from the models.  All of us will need to prepare for the unexpected.  The equatorial heat band now extends thousands of miles further than it used to.  The other day the heat record was set for a small town in British Columbia, at 121 F.  That heat dome sparked 770,000 dry lightning strikes, which sparked multiple wildfires, which in turn burned that little town out of existence.  Nothing is left.

We humans did not design our world for the weather we now face.  We designed it for the old model, one where Carbon was under 350 PPM, and now we are at 415.  As such repercussions take place, like the streetcar’s connections melting, like roads buckling, and like the wildfires being hot enough to create their own weather and create more dry lightning.  A feedback loop, one of many now.

Happy Independence Day.

Global Infected      180,862,494                                   183,505,842                       
Increase             2,643,348
7-day average        377,621 infections diagnosed daily –UP

Global Dead          3,918,516                                                          3,971,956
Increase             53,440
7-day average        7,634 deaths daily –DOWN

USA Infected         33,622,105                                                       33,713,912
Increase             91,807
7-day average        13,115 infections diagnosed daily –UP

USA C-19 deaths      603,891                                                         605,493
Increase             1,602
7-day average        228 deaths daily –DOWN

Maine Infected       68,963                                                             69,099  
Increase             136
7-day average        19 infections diagnosed daily –DOWN

Maine deaths         858                                                    860
Increase             2
7-day average        0.2857 deaths daily –DOWN

As I stayed in my retreat another 53,440 died of Covid-19, of those 1,602 were my fellow Americans, and 2 were my fellow Mainers.