Is the new Space race everyone against Elon Musk.

 Yahoonews Dec6:

Elon Musk is "making the rules" in space, European Space Agency boss told the Financial Times.

The ESA boss urged European countries to stop enabling Musk to dominate the space industry.

Governments in Europe should give equal opportunities to internet providers, he told the FT.

Rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is letting CEO Elon Musk make the rules in the sector, the head of the European Space Agency said.,

You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. That's quite amazing...

then you have this: China is also upset: from the South China Morning Post (which was independent and owned by AliBaba until China took over Hong Kong and is started censoring stories):

 

China / Military Why China reacted so strongly to its Tiangong space station’s near-misses with Elon Musk’s satellites The two incidents this year involving satellites from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX prompted a complaint to the UN and calls on the US to act

China is worried America wants to dominate space and some observers believe the tech entrepreneur’s company may serve that ambition

AP gives out the Chinese side of the story but of course doesn't question if it is true. Mustn't upset our Chinese masters (who lie all the time). 

The backstory can be found at BehindTheBlack, a space blog:

 

The story became news today because there was suddenly a flurry of outrage against SpaceX on Chinese social media, responding to Lijian’s statement, with much of it very likely astroturf posts prompted by the Chinese government itself.

ya think?  

but BTB notes it is so China can deflect criticism for it's own 

This announcement likely signals that China is getting ready to launch the next module to that station. During that launch the large core stage of the Long March 5B rocket will reach orbit, but only for a few days. It will then crash uncontrolled somewhere on Earth. The Chinese government knows it is going to get a lot of bad press because of this fact, and is likely making this complaint to try to excuse its own bad actions....

The crash of the Long March 5B core stage however is due entirely to a bad design that does not allow for any controlled maneuvers. Once the stage’s engines shut down after delivering the station module into orbit, they cannot be restarted, as designed. The stage must fall to Earth in an unpredictable manner, threatening every spot it flies over during that orbital decay.

 Italics mine. 

So what about their claim of the dangerous satellites?

The two issues however are not the same. Satellite orbits are very predictable, and any maneuvers required by China to avoid Starlink satellites were very routine. Moreover, if necessary SpaceX can adjust its own satellite orbits to avoid a collusion.

and by the way, Russia is also busy launching oodles of satellites.for ONEWEB. 

not a lot about that in the news, or if Musk's Starlink project is their rival. (which they deny, but hey, who wants to check if they might be lying about this and sending money to folks to slow down Musk.)

--------- 

the Green lobby in the USA govt is doing their best to screw up Musk's spaceport by using the excuse they need to do an "environmental" evaluation. Even though the Florida site is on the edge of the American space facility that has been there for 50 years.

BTB notes:

In fact, this is beginning to look like the situation in Hawaii with the Thirty Meter Telescope. There protesters blocked the start of construction, and the government, controlled by Democrats, worked with those protesters to step by step keep that obstruction active and working. If so, SpaceX faces a very dangerous situation, as it appears the Biden administration is about to do the same thing to it.

 Reminds me of how the rich elites (with a few locals) tried to block an observatory on an Arizona Apache reservation because the mountain was "sacred"....At the time I was working at another Apache reservation, where the tribe put a casino/resort and ski area on their "sacred mountain". Because jobs for the locals was an important issue, and the locals had plenty of mountain left for them to do the ceremonies.

Environmentalists are also blocking of the SpaceX tower in Texas. 

as Spiked notes: a lot of the luddites who lament modern progress have never gotten their hands dirty or faced famine.

 Not surprisingly, nations like India and China, whose populations haven’t yet reached such a luxurious level of development that they can sit around for days on end bemoaning the eco-impact of human extravagance, were not so keen on this neo-colonial attempt by Western elites to virtually criminalise certain forms of energy.

China figures a bit of pollution and smog is a small price to pay for prosperity.

But are they also manipulating the powerful "green"lobby to eliminate and discourage their rivals?

Given the silence of the green environmental movement on China's destruction of the ecosystem in the West Philippine Sea, I suspect so.

But China's ultimate goal is to take over the world, so they are pushing on many fronts to do this, including pushing environmental regulations to slow the economies of the US and Europe.

But this doesn't explain why so many others are trying to stop Musk.

How dare he do something that the governments didn't do!

LINK:

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

50 China
31 SpaceX
23 Russia
7 Europe (Arianespace)

So NASA used the European Arianespace rocket to launch the Webb telescope from French Guiana. 

oh well: He could always move to French Guiana

when you read such stories, the rule used to be "follow the money" and "cui bono" ("who benefits").

There is a long history of how China is manipulating/funding environmental groups to push it's agenda (2018 story)

This past week, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations wrote a six-page letter to the president of a major environmental group — the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) — asking for information regarding its relationship with the Chinese government. The letter noted; “While national discourse about undue foreign influence in the United States has largely centered around Russia, recent media accounts also highlight China’s ‘vast influence machine.’”

And they are using everything, including the covid epidemic. to weaken the west.

as Austin Bay writes:

China's pervasive and interconnected covert campaign of military and industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices and political infiltration (often lubricated with economic bribes) is an immediate threat that exploits patience.

sigh. 

-------------------

update: The problem of uncontrolled reentry of discarded rocket parts is not limited to the Chinese Long March Rocket.

From InsideOuterSpace:

Heads Up: Incoming Russian Payload – Uncontrolled Reentry

Covid cases up: the confusing data in a complicated picture.

Headline in the Phil Inquirer says:

 

COVID-19 positivity rate increases despite decrease in testing – Duque.....

According to Duque, the positivity rate increased from the 0.9 % recorded from Dec. 12 to 18 to the 1.9% recorded from Dec. 19 to 25.“We are also seeing a decline in the demand for testing and our daily testing output, which is currently at 26,356 tests per day,” he said in Filipino. 

 He also noted that testing output drastically decreased on Christmas Day and on Dec. 26 as many laboratories were closed for the holidays. 

well, duh.

 On top of that, he said demand for testing in the previous week also saw a decline. 

Again: Well, duh. People have a life and it's Christmas season: Time to party and visit relatives. 

But the article didn't note: Who is being tested? I mean in the past our drivers needed a routine test to deliver rice in Manila. So the low (1percent) number suggests that these routine tests are not being done. 

So the data is not valid.

And remember, half of the Visayas are building back after the typhoon, so what is going on there with the virus, especially given that  a lot of people are crowded in shelters or in the homes of family or friends whose houses survived.

As for the rest of the country: so if you have cold symptoms and are not too sick, will you try to figure out where to get tested for covid, especially knowing if it is positive you will have to go into quarantine? 

Joy has been going to a lot of meetings and got a cold that lasted two days. No she didn't get tested, because she got better quickly. But now many cases of the Omnicron cause mild cold symptoms that go away in a few days  and are not being tested?

But I am reading of long lines to get tested in the USA, and ER's being filled with people who tested positive but have few symptoms but went to the ER because they are worried.

Maybe because the headlines shout the sky if falling, but without putting it into context.

 A lot of "fog of war" out there in the reporting, and of course the Inquirer has an editorial noting the western countries are again pushing covid porn:

  Bracing for omnicron . 

And just like that, countries and borders and establishments are shutting down once again in many parts of the world as cases of the new COVID-19 variant Omicron surge across populations. Europe and the US, which had relaxed most pandemic restrictions following a vast head start in mass-vaccinating their citizens, are now back to using grim, cataclysmic language to describe the threat of Omicron: Both Washington and London have warned about a “tidal wave” of new cases arising from the fleet-footed variant. 

https://opinion.inquirer.net/147984/bracing-for-omicron

The PhilStar has a similar "The sky is falling" article about the 49% increase in cases in the Manila area.

which sounds terrible until you search for how many people are actually sick:

 According to OCTA, the seven-day average of new cases in Metro Manila increased to 116 from December 20 to 26 after not breaching the 100-mark since the first week of December.

Except there are maybe 13 million people in the Manila area.

Dr. Campbell update on the Omnicron laments the confusion in the news... Omnicron is weaker, you are less likely to get really really sick... but it spreads faster, and you come down with it quicker than in the past.

and he is commenting on the non vaccinated in the USA: this is a weaponized headline to blacken Trump supporters, even though Trump said to get the shot. And the real danger is that the non vaccinated rate in minorities is high because they just don't trust the system.

Who do you trust? 

who do you believe when the institutions that used to be trusted are now being taken over by the woke religion, where science and logic is being seen as racist and cool headed discussion of pros and cons of disease are being replaced by propaganda?

I mean, the AMA is now "woke" and trying to reeducate docs on racism,  (repent harlequin said the ticktock man) never mind that one quarter of docs are foreign medical graduates and these FMG tend to work in areas with fewer doctors (like my husband, who worked with poor white coal miners) and who know the frustration of treating people whose health is affected by their individual (bad) behavior?

AustinBay discusses this propaganda war to promote division in the USA and points out how this fits in with bot Sun Tzu and Stalin's manipulation of his useful idiots in the cold war.

As for the low rate of Covid in Africa: I googled for the Strategypage article about the genetic reason behind this: LINK

 Chinese researchers discovered that Africans are less likely to catch covid19 because they have one fifth as many cellular receptors in their lungs than Chinese. That difference enables covid19 to cause breathing problems more, or less, readily. ...By April Africa, with 18 percent of the world population, has only suffered about 0.3 percent of the covid19 infections.

Africans are not immune, just less likely to get infected or suffer the breathing problems that cause most covid10 related deaths.

as for the rest of the world, he notes:

 Other researchers found that this genetic difference was most helpful for Africans and most harmful for East Asians. People in other parts of the world have less resistance to covid19 than Africans. Lung damage is the most frequent cause of death among covid19 victims. 

Dr. C wonders if the high rate of covid cases and deaths in the black populations in the USA and the UK are due to low levels of Vitamin D. and has discussed this in several of his videos, noting that Ireland is giving out Vit D to their people.

Vitamin D is made by the body from sunlight.

Darker skins block the suns rays that let the body make vitamin D, and of course, no one gets a lot of skin exposure in the winter in northern climates. And one does wonder if the Hijab is making some Muslim women more vulnerable to the virus in warmer climates.

-----------------------------

update: Via Instapundit:

 Experts Say Covid 19 Cases Don’t Tell The Whole Story.

For nearly two years, Americans have looked carefully at coronavirus case numbers in the country and in their local states and towns to judge the risk of the disease.

Surging case numbers signaled growing dangers, while falling case numbers were a relief and a signal to let one’s guard down in terms of gathering with friends and families and taking part in all kinds of events.

But with much of the nation’s population vaccinated and boosted and the country dealing with a new COVID-19 surge from omicron — a highly contagious variant that some studies suggest may not be as severe as previous variants — public health officials are debating whether the nation needs to shift its thinking. . . . As a result, hospitalizations and deaths are the markers that government officials need to monitor carefully to ensure the safety of communities as the nation learns to live with COVID-19.

Do tell.

Related: US records 151,915 new COVID infections thanks to Omicron surge – just 39,000 fewer than Christmas Day 2020 – but deaths have dropped by 72%.

-------------------

update from Instapundit:

ICYMI: LETTER FROM “PUBLIC HEALTH” EXPERTS URGING PFIZER TO HOLD THE VACCINE UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION: 

“I didn’t even remember this but wow. I doubt the same letter would have been sent had 2020 not been an election year or had a Democrat been in office.” That’s Nate Silver I just quoted.

Yes, I noticed this in July 2020, when the protection numbers showed it worked with few side effects.

Usually if a disease is killing people, they release the vaccine to high risk groups, because the cost/benefit ratio is good. 

But hey, an election is more important than people's lives.

/sarcasm.

Don't look up cackle cackle

Netflix offers new movies: I thought the star studded Don't Look Up would be good, but instead of a movie about good people trying to save the earth and the people on the earth in a time of crisis, it's mainly a satire on the media and social media in the USA...

In other words, another "belly button gazing" movie from the narcissists of Hollywood who hate American culture and want to put the USA into a bad light.

The UKGuardian didn't like it so it's not just me.

There are just too many stupid parts of the movie: I mean, could you just try to be a little bit realistic in your film?

So no one else saw the comet? and instead of emailing it the information, they had to go personally to the president?  and then get intereviewed to try to get the cable news programs to take the threat seriously?

But what really annoyed me is the idea that only the USA was able to try to destroy it? Don't tell China or Russia... 

or Elon Musk. As Behind the Black notes:

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

49 China
31 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

Well never mind.

at least they got the NASA patch correct, even if Space. com notes the satire is about people not believing in science of covid or global warming and how these crises are trivialized.

In fact, the same patch not only appears in the movie, but it is highlighted on screen to emphasize that it is indeed real — one of only a few real-life details that are not stretched to the point of (hopeful) ridiculousness to serve the film's tone and multi-level message.

italics mine. 

(Image credit: Netflix/collectSPACE.com)

Actually I gave up watching half way through after the self centered clueless blond president with a cackling laugh interviewed them. Meryl Streep should be ashamed. Usually blond presidents are Hillary Clinton clones, but Hillary would have been more pragmatic and is able to take things seriously (sometimes too seriously).  

Which made me wonder: Maybe the president isn't supposed to be Hillary: So what other clueless self centered female politician with a cackling laugh who might become president in the near future did they have in mind when they wrote this character? 

Presumably the world ended but the important story was about the ratings war. 

But in a globalized world, it seems to be a script written by and for the US Media elites who are embedded into the matrix bubble of fantasy, where the rest of the world doesn't exist or doesn't matter

So goodbye Bruce Willis and hello nihilism.

Ironically, China has it's own movie about this, and guess who saves the day?

Joseph: the oft forgotten man at the manger

BBC writer Brian Sibley (best known for his BBC series on the LOTR link) ponders about St. Joseph, who is alas too often left out of the Christmas scenes. 

He was inspired by this depiction on a tapestry: where Joseph is on the side bringing in wood to warm the mother and child, but who is easily overlooked by those viewing the scene.

Sibley write:

What struck me was that Joseph was left out of the central action of the scene: was on the periphery of the tableau: an attendant, but minor, figure in the drama. So began my slow discovery that, again and again, in images from great art to all manner of popular depictions – including nativity plays and Christmas cards – Joseph's fate is almost always on the fringes of an event of cataclysmic timelessness...

this inspired him to write a book about Joseph, as told by the Angel Gabriel: and he provides links to the BBC version of the story.for your listening pleasure.

-----------------

You know, the Vatican has proclaimed last year the year of Joseph, but since covid restrictions limited the number who could go inside, (and I was unwilling to stand outside in the parking lot to listen to the service) I have no idea what this was about. No pondering about it on the Catholic blogosphere, which seems to be more interested in debating the mites in their brother's eye instead of the plank in their own.

So who was Joseph? The protector of Jesus and Mary. Who when the paranoid Herod sent soldiers to kill the child, fled with him to Egypt, probably to Alexandria, which had a huge Jewish population where he could find family and a job to support him.

The point is that he took responsibility for his family. And he was a carpenter, which in those days meant not just making furniture, but yokes for oxen, and building houses (some speculate he worked in the nearby Greek city of Sepphoris as what we would call a construction worker).

In a modern world, where masculine virtues are being attacked daily by the PC and where promiscuity without responsibility is pushed as normal and good, one wonders why no one is talking about Joseph, who did take responsibility and protect those under his care.

Ironically, the best film depiction of Joseph is in Anne Rice (Yes, that Anne Rice) story the Young Messiah, which is based on the ancient but non biblical stories of Jesus as a child. 

Many theological problems with the movie, but the characters were believable, (without the schizoid like staring eyes that film makers usually show in their characters as if schizophrenia was a sign of holiness)...

but you know, I usually shudder at "religious" movies, and this one I actually liked: Because it shows one view of the Holy Family as ordinary people, by an author who likes Him. (Rice once claimed when doing her research she noticed that most of the modern biblical scholars seemed to hate Jesus, which says a lot about modern Biblical scholarship).

this scene shows Joseph with Jesus.

full movie here:

Childbirth in a stable. Not the poetic stuff of most picture: but at least it was private and clean straw was available for Mary. 

I've delivered lots of babies as a GP, and each birth is a miracle: when after the pain the child comes out and starts to cry.

as an antidote to all those Hallmark movies on line, let Linus remind you what Christmas is really about.

Every child is a sign of hope: And the greatest sin in the USA (and one that horrifies people in African and Asian villages) is the propaganda that sees the child not as a symbol of hope, but as an enemy to be eliminated in the name of freedom.

Sigh.

And behind that lie is the lie that men have nothing to do with the children they beget, and that the sexual act has no moral dimension to it. 

Sigh.

Jesus was born in a stable because the rich world had no place for him and his parents.

Sound familiar?

But for refugees, and the third world homeless, the modern equivalent might not be a stable but a garage, as painted by Joey Velasco:

Sigh.

say a prayer and maybe send a donation to help those made homeless by the latest typhoon here in the Philippines.

Red Cross link

https://opinion.inquirer.net/147921/editorial-cartoon-december-25-2021

the Mark of the Dog

 the latest hysteria about covid is a Swedish story that a man has invented a micro chip so you can let your hand be scanned to show you have had your vaccine.

the Swedes seem to have no problem with being tracked by their government or by big corporations, because it is just so convenient.

Aside from the overblown hysteria over covid vaccine from both sides, (and the irony that the same folks who want you to have a covid passport are also against ID cards to verify who you are so you can vote), one can almost hear the hysteria about the Mark of the Beast.

But of course, one does not have to be a fundamentalist Christian to worry about the privacy implications if you are marked on your body and your private information is put on someone's database.

Americans have traditionally disliked ID cards  because of a dislike of the government snooping and telling you what to do: which is why, to get on a plane etc. if you don't have a passport (which most folks don't) you use your drivers' license: because hey everyone drives a car.

and marking an arm or hand has other echoes of tyranny:

Heck, I am old enough to remember when one of our medical school teachers showed us his concentration camp tattoo.

But, anyway, chipping is not a new technology: it has long been done for horses and valuable dogs (even our vet offers the service since cute little dogs are frequently dognapped and resold.. Ruby lost her shih tzu that way).

But that is a voluntary chip.

But can a government mandate a chip?

Place paranoid conspiracy theory here.

What few Yanks know is that dogs in the UK are required to have a chip:

The quick overview for pet owners about the new compulsory microchipping legislation is that:

•  All dogs must be microchipped by the age of 8 weeks, or before first transfer if younger
•  Breeders must microchip a dog before you purchase it
•  You must ensure that your contact details are up-to-date on the MicroChip database
•  If your dog is not microchipped and registered on a compliant MicroChip database you could be served with a notice requiring this to happen. Failure to comply could result in a fine of upto £500

and hey, if it's good enough for Fido, it's good enough for you, you inferior peasants. /s

 

Seeing Christ as our neighbor

 Joey Velasco's paintings are of the common people of the poorer areas of the Philippines.

 

Song: Responsibility: by Jamie Rivera

Walang sinuman ang nabubuhay

Para sa sarili lamang

Walang sinuman and namamatay

Para sa sarili lamang

Tayong lahat ay may pananagutan sa isa't isa

Tayong lahat ay tinipon ng Diyos

Na kapiling nya

Sa ating pag mamahalan at panglilingkod

Sa kanino man

Tayo ay magdadala ng balita na kaligtasan

Tayong lahat ay may pananagutan sa isa't isa

Tayong lahat ay tinipon ng Diyos

Na kapiling nya

Sabay sabay mag aawitan

Ang mga bansa

Tayo tinuring na panginoon bilang mga anak

Tayong lahat ay may pananagutan sa isa't isa

Tayong lahat ay tinipon ng Diyos na kapiling nya

Tayong lahat ay tinipon ng Diyos

Na kapiling nya

No one lives Just for myself 

No one is dying Just for myself 

We are all responsible to each other 

God has gathered us all T

hat he was with her 

In our love and service To whomever 

We will bring the news of salvation 

We are all responsible to each other

 God has gathered us all  

That he was with her

 In our love and service 

To whomever 

We will bring the news of salvation 

We are all responsible to each other 

God has gathered us all 

That he was with her 

Sing together 

The countries 

We are considered lords as children

 We are all responsible to each other 

God has gathered us all to be with him 

God has gathered us all 

That he was with her

Family news

 I went Christmas shopping today.

Lots of crowds in the open air shops and in Besco, the department store next door that sells lots of cheap Chinese stuff that doesn't last long but hey, it's cheap. (for good quality, you pay more at the mall).

I also got some used polo type shirts for Kuya: He is XL men, and that means either spending a fortune or keeping an eye on the used clothes stores here to find one his size. Not a lot of XL men (or XL Women for me) in the regular stores.

Internet was out last night (fixing the line since it popped back on at 8am

The typhoon missed us but I gave some money to the cook, whose family in the Visayas lost their house. I haven't heard if Joy's family there had damage: They lost their house in a typhoon a couple years ago.

December typhoons are not common, but they do occur, as the US Navy found out in 1944.

and no, it's not global warming.

Deadliest Pacific typhoons

Rank	Typhoon	Season	Fatalities	Ref.
1	Nina	1975	229,000	[5]
2	July 1780 Typhoon	1780	100,000	[6]
3	July 1862 Typhoon	1862	80,000	[7]
4	"Swatow"	1922	60,000	[5]
5	"China"	1912	50,000	[5]
6	"Haiphong"	1881	23,000	[8][9][10]
7	"Hong Kong"	1937	10,000	[5]
8	Joan	1964	7,000	[11]
9	Haiyan	2013	6,352	[12]
10	Vera	1959	>5,000	[5]

Joy went to Bulacan for a feeding program/giveaway in the morning and then plans to go to Manila to try to get my renewed ID card. Well, at least they aren't asking me to travel down there to pick it up as they did before covid.

Cozy mysteries: We haz them

 at the end of the day, we watch TV, but usually stream stuff from netflix or Asian streaming sites or Youtube.

Some of our favorites are what is known as "cozy mysteries"/

Here is a list of the best:

yes, Agatha Christie is there, both Miss Marple and Poirot. You can sometimes find them on Youtube.

They get taken off periodically, but we found a Lebanese guy was posting Poirot with Arab subtitles, and so have watched most of them. Thanks Fadi!

 

But now Brit TV has reposted them.

But one series I stumbled across but hadn't heard about before was two middle aged ladies: Rosemary and Thyme.

Heh, like Miss Marple, middle age ladies who look like... middle age ladies.

One that has been removed from youtube is the wonderful Murder She wrote series, with Angela Lansbury.... which I luckily downloaded before the copyright cops took it away from us.

the article mentions the Miss Fisher series from Australia, and we saw some of these, but personally I didn't like the main character, who was a bit strident.

And of course, there are the Hallmark and Nancy Drew mysteries, which I watch but tend to dislike becuase all the characters look alike, and the middle age ladies look like they are trying to stay 20 years old, not aging gracefully, like Jessica Fletcher.

I tend to dislike a lot of the modern romance films because the main characters are rich and have few family ties, and the emphasis is on romance, as if you marry and live happily ever after, not as if you marry and join a family and have kids and worry about making ends meet.

Contrast the Hallmark romances with a lot of the K dramas, and you can see what I mean. And in K dramas, there are religious references and references to adoption and references to the men doing their military service (I am old enough to remember the draft, where men actually did serve their country for two years.)

Netflix is showing them to US audiences, but here we have them on various TV stations, or we use local streaming services.

these series include sci fi, fantasy, horror, and family dramas

but my favorites are the wonderful historical dramas. With wonderful costumes and melodrama:

Youtube is now posting more British series, and there are also a lot of older classic movies run here on the local Asian tv stations.

So we don't have to watch the latest sadistic serial murderer being the hero of the latest HBO movie every evening.

Do they make movies like they used to? Yes, but not too many. Finch was a low key SciFi movie about the need for companionship, even if you only have a dog and robot to keep you company.

and I'm sure there are more recent movies out there that we watched but I just can't remember which ones I actually enjoyed. 

except maybe the hitman's wife's bodyguard which as I mentioned in a previous post had me ROTFL.

==========

just a quick note: The typhoon missed us so we are okay.

update: Whoops. not quite. We were on the periphery but a huge rainstorm hit us last night. And the roof started leaking again. Sigh.

update: K dramas are popular in North Korea, where you can get executed for selling a copy of Squid game.

typhoons and earthquakes and covid, oh my (not to mention volcanoes)

 another day, another typhoon: due Tomorrow, but will probably will hit south of here.

preparations including evacuation of coastal towns in southern Luzon and the Visayas is being done.

we are far inland, but flooding from rain from the nearby typhoon is a danger, as is mudslides in some areas near here. We just fixed our roof after last year's typhoon, so we hope we won't lose it again.

from cnn

------------------------------------------

Like California, small earthquakes here are common: but our area was hit with a major quake 21 years ago.

most are in the south, but several small ones off the coast of Luzon south of Manila. A warning, or just normal shaking? No, I didn't feel any of these, but then often a low level quake just feels like a heavy truck going nearby, and our street has a lot of rice trucks going by since it is harvest time.

----------------------

although the low level of Covid cases should have allowed the lifting of all restrictions, because of the worry about the Omnicrom variant, most of the Manila area will remain under level two to stop the spread of covid.

and the really good news: 

The Cabinet Secretary also announced cockpit operations and cockfighting may resume under Alert Level 2, provided there's no objection from local government units (LGUs).

Cockfighting is a major sport here, and many people have a few roosters in their small gardens, and sometimes they leave them outside under a shell and tied to a rope so the roosters can scratch for bugs etc. 

although there are feral dogs, these roosters are mean, so the dogs tend to let them alone.

--------------------------
as for volcanoes: Manila has several dangerous volcanoes nearby, but we are north of that area so no problem.

But Mt Pinatubo just let off some steam 2 weeks ago, so we are hoping it won't erupt again.

--------------------------

We are well, and they had another party last night at the plaza, meaning we might have to hire someone to clean up the litter on the street outside our house/business compound again.

Kuya has a rice delivery in Manila today and left at 3am. During the epidemic, going there meant an expensive test for covid, and then later a vaccine card. We aren't sure what the drivers will need this week.

Herd Immunity? Where did the Covid go?

 I keep reading on the hysteria in western countries over covid, but here it seems to have disappeared.

.........

<

When I go outside, there are crowds everywhere in the Plaza and the outdoor markets.

 Maybe today I'll go to the mall and see how it is there.

More importantly, they are no longer requiring a face shield in the bank. Hmm....

they are talking about reopening face to face school instructions: which is why our maid, who was originally anti vax, had her son get the vaccine: they are working class, and education is the only hope for them to get out of low level jobs (most of the family are maids, cooks, or drive tricycles).

GMA reports only 235 cases in the country yesterday.

this is being seens as due to herd immunity. The country was slow in starting to give out vaccines, but now is giving out shots like crazy even to older school kids and boosters to high risk folk, but still less than half the country has gotten shots.

The hysteria about the religious objection to vaccines isn't big here, maybe because the Pfizer vaccine was originally turned down and only started to be given out later in 2020.

There was, however, an editorial in the Inquirer from a Chinese spokesman insisting that the Sinovax did not use aborted cells in manufacturing, so it was okay for Catholics to use.

and as we know, China never lies about such things. (/s). Sinovax uses an inactivated virus, so maybe it is true. But of course, when this was written it only had a fifty percent protection rate, and that was before the newer variants popped up.

As a doc, I know that using 20 year old cell lines from aborted fetuses, i.e. tissue that otherwise would have been thrown out, is not a big deal, but has some ethical taint, so it would be better to use other sources of stem cells. In other words, the bishops etc should have objected years ago but they didn't. So why object now that people are dying?

most of the objections in the USA seem to be about the mRNA vaccines, and since most of our vaccines are not the pfizer one, it's not a problem.

But it does make one wonder if China is pushing the anti vax stuff in order to encourage countries to use their vaccine that gives weaker protection than western vaccines.

But now with new variants, all the vaccines have a similar problem, so the hysteria pushing the vaccine seems a bit over the top.

One other thing: There are stories of side effects of the mRNA vaccine, some of which would be horrific if true. I figure they are exaggerated.

But it brings up a point: In January 2021, the Philippines was offered a huge amount of the Pfizer vaccine, but the government official just didn't get around the paperwork to let them be free of liability, so the deal fell through and the vaccine was shipped instead to Singapore. At the time, I wondered why the gov't official was so lax in doing what seemed to me to be routine paperwork. But now that the side effect kerfuffle is out there, it makes me wonder. After the Dengue vaccine problems, the DOH officials are sensitive to vaccine side effects.

We know people who have died of covid, but none recently. So our town seems to be free of the virus. But now that there are all those stories of side effects in the US, I should note that we just haven't seen this. I only heard of one elderly person who had a heart attack a few days after the shot, but since we have quite a few heart attacks in the elderly due to diabetes or high blood pressure, I figure it was a coincidence. 

so now the question is if the Philippines has herd immunity.

And another question: what will happen if the omnicrom hits us.

It is Christmas season and one does doubt that you will be able to scare folks into not partying if they don't see people sick.

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the low numbers of cases is not limited to the Philippines.

a similar low number of cases has been reported in Japan: 79 new cases yesterday. and one death.

India is down to under 6000 cases a day (out of a population of one billion). and about 200 dying each day of covid.

so the numbers sound impressive until they are put into the context of the ordinary death rate and population numbers.

Space Inc

lots of jokes on the internet that the newest Time Magazine man of the year actually deserves the award. \

But of course, Time is doing it for PC reasons, not for the guy's revolutionary ideas and achievements... as Behind the Black, a space blog notes:

Musk deserves this kind of recognition, but not because he is wealthy, but because of how he became so, by actually creating businesses that fulfill needs and thus have customers pounding at the door to buy the product (Paypal, SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla). And along the way his creations have brought jobs and wealth to tens of thousands of people, and acted to rejuvenate whole industries. We need more people like Musk. The more the merrier. Only by eagerly embracing their original and creative ideas can we hope to recover the civilization we once had.

 He is most famous for SpaceX, but he has other ideas on society and AI. I don't agree with him in many things, but he is a deep thinker who needs to be part of the discussion of where the world is going.

 Here is Dan Carlin's podcast on Musk.

 

and the latest interview with a satire site, the Babylon Bee:

musical interlude for the day

the new minor illness replacing covid?

 

;;;;

 fast forward to 9 minutes. Most are not in the hospital with covid, but just tested positive.

Community surveys show a high rate of infection. Yet in third world countries people don't go to hospitals or clinics for every sniffle or aches and pains. This gives a background on why most cases diagnosed in the hospital are in folks who went there for other reasons.

it seems that covid has mutated with the help of a cold virus, and like most viruses is becoming more infectious but much milder.

if true, it might mean the end of the epidemic,  

or at least the end of the hysteria over the epidemic. Or maybe not: the hysteria in Europe and Australia seem to be more about autocratic control than about controlling the disease. 

Here, we were strict especially in Manila area, less so in our rural town. But now things are opening up, as I noted in a previous post.

Hopefully things will open up so people can go back to work again before the economy collapses and people start dying of hunger/malnutrition related diseases.

We are stopping travelers from high risk countries from coming into the Philippines again, and they are worried, but I wonder if it was here already and is the reason we have so few cases.

and one story says three Pfizer shots will stop it, except of course most people didn't get the Pfizer shot here. So will the Sinovax or AZ or Sputnik shots stop it?

I am double vaxxed, and as we open, they are continuing giving out the shot.

we are no longer in lockdown, only limited prevention mask and distancing inside. 

The maid noted there is an election coming up and suspects that is the reason. 

One other note: We bought Ivermectin to have on hand just in case via an on line pharmacy since our local pharmacies are out of stock. Now Joy said she can't reorder it since that pharmacy is also out of stock.

When we had a lot of covid in town we were taking it as a prevention just in case even though we were vaxxed. But I guess we are now out of luck.

as for Vitamin D: I guess I'd better restart sunbathing again. 

In the past, people were given sunlamp treatments, but it sort of went out of favor, mainly because vit D was added to milk. But here I drink local waterbuffalo milk, so probably it's not fortified with Vitamin D.

Oh well: I'm a doc and cynical. Whatever.

But the bad news is we are hearing of folks dying of cancer: Probably untreated or under treated because people were afraid of seeing a doctor 

Sigh.

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update: omnicrom virus spread

Oslo party spread to fully vaccinated, half got infected, but no one got very sick.