Coronavirus Diaries 23

Another “lost” weekend, I suppose, of doing not all that much and hanging around the house.

We did go out to do some shopping, but that’s quick and done and over with well before noon. As always, we take great precautions, wearing masks and keeping our distance from others though, because of the early hour we go out, we generally don’t see too many others around us.

In the news, “President” Trump seems determined to ignore reality and the fact that he’s lost the election. I wonder -and that’s all I can do- if this might be related to other things, like a fear that once President-elect Biden’s people start looking in on what Trump has left them and/or done (but managed to hide from the public) during his four years might not just bite him, hard.

I wonder if maybe there’s a great effort going on by those in the Trump cabinet to clean up whatever they can, any sort of potentially uncomfortable or incriminating memos or emails, and that may be in part why Trump doesn’t want Biden’s team in.

I could be waaaaay off here, I admit, and the fact that Trump loathes being called a “loser” may have just as much to do with this as anything else.

Regardless, as many have expected, Trump seems determined to mess as much things up as he cans on his way out the door.

Over the weekend a bunch of Trumpistas showed up to march on Washington, stating they would have their own version of the “one million man” march but coming up rather short. Some 11,000 people showed up, no doubt the hardest core of the hardest core, including members of the Proud Boys. If you have no idea what they are, look ’em up and try not to feel sad that such a group feels embolden to march in the open.

There was, though, good news as well: Pfizer announced their vaccine was a little above 90% effective against COVID-19 and, this morning, we had even better news, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is reportedly 94.5% effective (you can read all about it in this article by Elizabeth Cohen and presented on CNN).

The bottom line is that despite the grind of these past months, starting toward the end of March, things are looking up for the future.

There is, according to Dr. Fauci, a real possibility that the vaccines -whether through Pfizer or Moderna or some other companies- will start to be released by December, first to the first responders and elderly, and then next year to the common citizens.

It’s going to be quite a task. It will likely require the military to mobilize and offer the vaccines to poorer neighborhoods without access to the “big” drug stores while others with access to these stores will likely be swamped with people looking for the vaccine.

And, to make matters a little more complicated, it appears the vaccine requires two separate injections, so it will take a bit to get those who want to be vaccinated (yeah, I suppose the “anti-vaxers” will be protesting).

Boy, the problems the spread of misinformation causes nowadays.

Anyway, I’m optimistic nonetheless that at this time next year we may, just may, be looking in the rear-view mirror at the COVID-19 situation.

Dr. Fauci himself noted that by April we might just be back to normal.

Man, I hope so.