Family news

 My granddaughter just returned to the US to her college. So we've been busy all week.

The newest outbreak of covid has shut down much of Luzon: We are still in partial shutdown but are seeing more cases. 

There is also a lot of sick toddlers. Probably RSV, not covid (it is toddlers, not older school kids who are more exposed to covid). Sigh.

but some good news: The Mayor is back;:

I have no opinion on Afghanistan except that they should have seen it coming and gotten folks out earlier. Heck, the folks should have gotten out earlier when they read the news. But when the bad guys win, they are ruthless, and Biden has a woke military and politicized intelligence system.

Iran and Turkey have interests, and this is peripheral to the Middle East wars.

and of course Covid doesn't take sides: the latest outbreak is world wide and with the Taliban taking over, the aid workers will leave and hospital supplies won't come in (two Filipinos evacuated was with Doctors without borders, meaning that even they are leaving).

Sigh. Been there, done that, although I was told to go home when things pointed to anarchy. But when you know that the patients will die without you, some folks will stay, and of course, those with families are sort of stuck if they all can't leave together.

and both African countries where I worked had overthrows of corrupt/racist governments that worked, and were replaced by ignoramuses who couldn't run things and ruined the place: infrastructure collapse, the best educated emigrating to find jobs or just to get out of there, aid workers left behind harassed or worse, and epidemics of both diseases that could have been stopped with decent sanitation and/or routine immunizations and made worse by malnutrition because the economy collapsed.

Sigh.

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FYI: follow the science, yes. But where is the science?

it's almost enough to make you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right.

(but this is about an mRNA vaccine, not the adenovirus vaccines, i.e. sputnik, AZ and J&J)

the conspiracy theorists are saying this is political, not scientific, to push vaccine passports, which mean you have a national ID card that can be tracked, which really upsets the paranoid.

But if it is about spreading infection, why is post infection immunity being ignored? Shouldn't we just test for antibodies/immunity?

Don't ask me: We are still way behind with giving vaccine, and as a foreigner, I am already on the gov't computer, and since China hacked my OPM file, I'm on their computer too.