Tag Archives: COVID

Happy pandemic ‘anniversary’

Gosh, it’s been two years since the global killer virus pandemic arrived in North Texas, which is what the TV news anchors are telling us today.

Do I wish everyone a “happy anniversary”? Nah. I’ll pass on that one.

I will take note of the date the media are marking by stating that it has taken us two full years since the virus struck its first victim in this part of the world to get it under control … at least that is everyone’s hope.

The World Health Organization (which we have since rejoined since Joe Biden became president), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United Nations and a slew of other medical experts are saying the “pandemic” has given way to an “endemic.” I think that is their way of saying that the coronavirus — aka COVID 19 — is here to stay, possibly forever, but that we’re going to have deal with it the way we deal with the flu and other common infectious diseases.

It will be my sincere hope that in the future we can wish ourselves a “happy anniversary” to mark the date that the COVID 19 virus is deemed no longer crucial to the way we conduct our lives.

I’m all for celebrating that day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

No return to ‘normal’ … yet

Have we arrived at that place I will refer to as Post-Pandemic Nirvana? I am not yet willing to kick up my heels, break out into a song and shout from the roof of my North Texas home that we’re there … at least not yet.

Several states have declared their intention to lift mandates on masks in indoor places. One of them — my home state of Oregon — has caused a lifted eyebrow or two, given that state’s political climate and the aggressive nature of Gov. Kate Brown’s desire to impose mandates.

Texas isn’t one of the states to lift any mandates. Why is that? Because we haven’t had any mandates. I am sure Gov. Greg Abbott is going to take credit for the declining infection and hospitalization rate from the COVID-19 virus. Save it, governor. I am going to credit the vaccines and Texans’ willingness to adhere to mask “requests” along with social distancing recommendations.

I am going to continue to mask up for the foreseeable future. I don’t trust total strangers’ vaccine status. Nor do I trust their hygiene habits or their willingness to stay the hell away from me in closed locations.

I will join the rest of the country in cheering the decline in infection rates from the Omicron variant and the various sub-variants that haven’t yet been branded with a name. However, we shouldn’t yet return to what we used to define as “normal” behavior.

I am keeping my masks handy.

And you?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

COVID cases falling everywhere except …

U.S. health officials report good news on the fight to curb infection, hospitalization and death from the COVID-19 pandemic virus.

It is that infection rates are falling in 49 of the 50 American states. Which state is the anomaly? Alabama. Oh, there’s also this: Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate of any state in the Union.

Hmm. What does that tell you? It tells me that vaccines are doing their job. It tells me that those who refuse to be vaccinated are putting themselves, their loved ones and their friends at potentially dire peril from the virus.

I have several good friends in Alabama, so I am going to send good thoughts to them and their families. As for those who refuse to heed the wisdom passed down by the medical experts about the efficacy of the vaccines, well, I hope they don’t get unduly sickened by a preventable disease.

The nation is beginning to reap the reward of vaccines that were fast-tracked in 2020 and that are now establishing their value against a virus that has killed nearly 900,000 Americans.

There might never be a day when the COVID-19 virus is eradicated. At the very least we are going to have to learn to live with it, deal with it and protect ourselves and our loved ones against its infection.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Pandemic paranoia?

Paranoia is no fun when you are dealing with a deadly disease and the potential — no matter how remote it might seem — of being sickened by it.

I now shall explain.

I came down three days ago with a head cold. Classic symptoms: a little scratchy throat, a bit of a cough, runny nose, sneezing. You know, the usual. But wait! My mind started racing. Was it COVID-19, the virus that is still making people sick, sending them to the hospital, forcing medical personnel to roll out the ventilators, putting people into medically induced comas?

No. It wasn’t that. I sought to get a test. I couldn’t find a place to obtain one immediately. So, I waited it out. I’m well now. I am back to my usual effervescent self.

This is one of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic that is annoying me to no end. I know what a head cold feels like. I’ve been getting ’em for, oh, more than seven decades. 

It kinda reminds me of when someone cuts me off on the street. My initial instinct used to be to lay on my horn, possibly shout a bad word or two and maybe offer an obscene gesture. No more, man! This is Texas! You never know who’s got a firearm with him. Too many damn road-rage episodes are being reported and too many of them are ending tragically.

Am I paranoid when I drive my truck? Not really … but I could get that way.

No, I am not paranoid because I caught a three-day head cold. It’s just that the killer virus has given me pause.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Apology accepted, RFK Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has just learned a lesson that I think should be spread throughout the world as it grapples with the issues of the day.

It is that no one ever should compare whatever discomfort one is enduring in the moment to what occurred during the dark, horrible era of The Holocaust. RFK Jr. uttered a most despicable comparison the other day at an anti-COVID 19 vaccine rally in which he bellowed that people who are forced to be vaccinated against a killer virus are enduring trauma similar to what Anne Frank suffered while she was hiding out in her apartment in Amsterdam during World War II.

Kennedy has apologized for his remarks. I accept his apology. I also hope he — nor any other public figure — makes the same hideous analogy ever again.

Anne Frank died at the age of 15 at the hands of her Nazi captors after she and her family were taken from that apartment and sent to a death camp. She was one of about 6 million European Jews who died during The Holocaust, which was the most unspeakable act committed during the 20th century … or perhaps in all of human history.

Kennedy sought to make some odious comparison between what governments are doing now in ordering vaccines to what the Nazis did to Europeans. Good God in Almighty heaven!

I want to add a personal point of privilege. My wife and I saw the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam in 2016 and were moved to tears at the tale of horror it told of the suffering she and her family endured while they hid from their Nazi captors.

The Holocaust stands alone and should never — not ever! — be held up as something to which one can compare other controversial acts.

Lesson learned, RFK Jr.? I damn sure hope so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Don’t politicize pandemic!

Never would I have imagined that a worldwide medical crisis would produce the kind of political division in the world’s most prosperous nation that we have seen erupt in the United States of America.

Did you see the video of that woman in Virginia threaten her local school board if it requires children to wear masks in school? She said she would scarf up any firearm she could find and … do something with them, presumably to harm other human beings. Why? Because they might order students to wear masks to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

It’s happening everywhere, man! Blue states and red states have become battlegrounds among Americans who are fighting with each other — and threatening public officials — because of masks, vaccines, social distancing.

Good grief! What in the world has happened to us?

I am just one American patriot, so I can speak only for my little ol’ self. If the government tells me I have to do something, like wear a fu**ing mask to prevent the spread of potentially fatal virus spores, then I am going to follow the government’s lead.

I served in the Army for a time more than 50 years ago and was told then I had to follow “lawful orders.” Failure to follow such orders would result in me being punished for insubordination. I haven’t heard an unlawful order yet coming from the feds about how we should conduct ourselves if we are dedicated to getting rid of the killer virus.

Too many of my fellow Americans have determined that these mandates are unlawful and so they have decided to disobey them. They are courting disaster and tragedy, not just for themselves but for everyone around them.

They are politicizing a quintessentially non-political issue. Our public health is way beyond the realm of cheap politics.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

News gets tiresome

My name is John and I am a news-a-holic. With that introduction, I am declaring a certain addiction I have to the consumption of information about my world. I cannot help myself. It is who I am.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I want to declare my news fatigue over the reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic, the coronavirus crisis and all the assorted variants of the disease that have sprung up around the world.

They have exploded in India, South Africa and have traveled around the world in — snap! — just like that. The disease and its variants have consumed broadcast, cable and streaming networks, not to mention the printed pages of newspapers, magazines and assorted journals.

I cannot quite put my arms around this story. I haven’t yet grown tired of the congressional hearings examining the 1/6 insurrection, which I consider to be an existential threat to the very government I and others cherish.

The pandemic coverage is becoming tiresome.

I say that knowing that members of my family have contracted the disease. One family member was in serious condition in a hospital for a month; we could have lost her. Several friends of mine have died from the disease. I have skin in this game.

However, I am weary of hearing so much about the disease. Yes, some of the news of the past few days has been heartening to some extent, with reports of cases diminishing and projections from health experts that we might be able to live with the disease the way we live with, say, the flu or the common cold.

I will continue to be an ardent consumer of news. I won’t apologize for that addiction. Nor will I say I’m sorry about growing weary of the bombardment about the pandemic.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

SCOTUS infected by animus, too?

What a revoltin’ development this is turning out to be. The U.S. Supreme Court’s two wings — the liberals and the conservatives — are at each other’s throats in the same way libs and cons are fighting in Congress and with the White House.

What’s more, we hear now that one of the court’s conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch, refuses to don a mask during court members’ meetings, despite the request issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, who wants to show respect for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who refuses to attend the hearings because of her diabetes.

You see, Sotomayor’s medical condition makes her susceptible to the COVID-19 virus. That doesn’t seem to bother Gorsuch.

Oh, then there’s this: Gorsuch is among the court’s conservative members; Sotomayor is one of the court liberals.

This is astonishing. What kind of pompous ass would behave in the manner that Gorsuch is behaving by refusing to mask up to help keep the virus away from one of his colleagues? Furthermore, why cannot the chief justice issue an order to all the justices to mask up in order for them to attend the weekly court conferences?

Neil Gorsuch defied a request from Chief Justice John Roberts to wear a mask out of respect for Sonia Sotomayor, a report says (msn.com)

We’re still in the middle of a killer pandemic, man! It is not an unreasonable thing for Chief Justice Roberts to insist that his fellow justices observe the protocols established by medical professionals to reduce the infection risk.

As for the animosity, media reports indicate that the court’s two wings are getting increasingly testy with each other as they grapple over how to decide critical court cases. With the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision hanging in the balance, for example, the court’s liberal wing is becoming alarmed — reportedly — over the prospect of the conservative court majority overturning or severely limiting a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.

I am alarmed at what is happening to our government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Laura shows her crassness

Laura Ingraham long has been considered part of the right-wing, nut-job cabal of talking heads who rose to infamy during the Donald Trump administration. Still, I didn’t actually realize she was capable of the kind of crassness she exhibited the other day when revealing that the nation’s top military leader had contracted the COVID-19 virus.

But she did.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has tested positive for the virus. The highly decorated, battle-tested Army general is exhibiting mild symptoms. He’ll be OK. Ingraham, though, applauded while telling her Fox News viewers of Gen. Milley’s condition.

Can you comprehend why someone such as Ingraham would do such a thing? When in the name of non-partisan defense policy did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff become a political punching bag?

Oh, I guess it’s because Milley expressed regret for taking part in that hideous photo op with Donald Trump the day Trump traipsed in front of the church to hold up a Bible. Or perhaps it was when Milley questioned Trump’s response to the 1/6 riot.

There was Ingraham, a COVID-19 denier and blowhard right-winger, cheering the notion that the Joint Chiefs chair is now afflicted with a disease that has the potential of inflicting some serious harm to the man’s heath.

Disgraceful. Then again, this is what I have learned to expect from the right-wing media corps of Trumpkins.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Give it up, Novak!

Maybe I’m just slow on the uptake. Perhaps I am not studying this issue as closely as I should before popping off.

Novak Djokovic, the best men’s tennis player on Earth, should just give up his quest for a 21st major championship and go home rather than defying Australia, the host country of the Australian Open that — by the way — has imposed strict protocols for entering the nation in this pandemic age with which we’re all coping.

Djokovic is not vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Moreover, he lied about where he was and what he did and with whom he did it. Australia has been in virtual lockdown for more than a year and has imposed strict entry requirements as the nation seeks to rid itself of the virus that is still killing people around the world.

What in the world gives Djokovic any additional latitude to enter the country and then compete against fellow tennis pros? Don’t tell me it has anything to do with his standing as the No. 1 men’s player in the world or that his next major championship would break the record held by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

I think Martina Navratilova, the former No. 1 women’s player in the world, has it right: It’s not worth it to the game, or the host country for Djokovic to keep fighting this issue. “Just suck it up and go home,” Navratilova said.

Yep. Go home, Novak. You’ve broken the rules and lied to the world.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com