The New Novel Update #4

I’m posting this today because it occurs to me I should present this at this time.

I’m going to be vague about certain things, but bear with me. Eventually, perhaps several months down the road, it will make sense.

I began my new novel, according to my notes, on 9/30/2020.

By 5/12/21 I had the first draft finished and began the second.

These dates are important, at least for me, to remember.

Why?

Well… I can’t go into it because doing so would spoil the novel and essentially make it pointless to continue working on it.

As much as I’m enjoying writing this novel, there are forces outside my control which have made me for the very first time I can remember consider giving up on a work after spending so much time (some eight months!!) devoted to it.

However, after giving it a lot of thought this past week, I’ve decided to go ahead and finish it up. I’m roughly 2/3rds or so into the second draft and feel the book is worth continuing despite these reservations.

I’ll explain it all in the book itself, I promise, and I’m sorry for being so vague.

If nothing else, its important for me to set this marker down on this particular date.

Again, my apologies for being so vague!

New Ancient Greek Dictionary…

…not for the meek!

Over on theguardian.com Alison Flood offers the following fascinating article about a new Ancient Greek language translation, which this time does away with many of the Victorian niceties.

Yup, this time we get to read what the Ancient Greeks actually wrote without the veil of polite then modern Victorian society’s attempt to sanitize it. Read on…!

English Dictionary of Ancient Greek “Spare No Blushes” With Fresh Look At Crudity

Perhaps the key paragraph from the article is this one (pardon the language!):

The new dictionary’s editors “spare no blushes”, (Professor James) Diggle said, when it comes to the words that “brought a blush to Victorian cheeks”. The verb χέζω (chezo), translated by Liddell and Scott as “ease oneself, do one’s need”, is defined in the new dictionary as “to defecate” and translated as “to shit”; βινέω (bineo) is no longer “inire, coire, of illicit intercourse”, but “fuck”; λαικάζω (laikazo), in the 19th-century dictionary translated as “to wench”, is now defined as “perform fellatio” and translated as “suck cocks”.

It’s fascinating to look at these ancient cultures and realize much of what we seen nowadays has indeed been sanitized. Views of sex in ancient times would appear to have been far more open/tolerant than what the Victorians -who did this earlier translation of the Greek language- were willing to accept and present to the public at large.

Even today there are examples -plentiful!- of art that is highly erotic which has been either held back or not presented to the public at large because of concerns regarding the subject matter.

Just doing a rudimentary Google search and putting in the line “Ancient Greek (or if you’re curious, Roman or Indian or Chinese or Japanese or Mayan, etc.) sex art” will certainly open your eyes when you look at images of artwork and statues depicting various sexual practices, some very much frowned upon today. Among the examples you may find are depictions or orgies, pedophilia, bestiality, homosexuality, and, of course, the more “vanilla” -yet sexually charged!- depictions of sex between a man and a woman.

Again, in these cases it was a very different time and some of these presented sexual practices, rightfully frowned upon today -especially when it comes to pedophilia and bestiality- weren’t viewed, one guesses, quite that way back then.

Regardless, it’s all there and at least to me its fascinating to look upon these ancient cultures as they actually were, in all their gleaming glory and, yes, extremely dark decadence, versus filtered through the veil of our more polite society.

Coronavirus Diaries 36

With Memorial Day just about upon us, it’s been announced that 50% of U.S. adults have now gotten the full vaccine for COVID-19. Further to that, vaccines are being now administered to children.

Then there’s this great news, from abcnews.go.com and written by Dr. Deepak Ramanathan:

COVID-19 infections are exceedingly rare after full vaccination: CDC

The upshot of the article is that studies have found that if you are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the odds of you catching the virus is exceedingly rare. From the article:

The new CDC report shows that such breakthrough infections may occur in just 0.01% of all fully vaccinated people.

Not only are the odds very rare for catching COVID-19, those who do get it are likely to get far less scary symptoms.

The news is terrific and, as I’ve written many times ’round here: Go get vaccinated!

Yesterday I was talking with a few people I knew. One of them just got their second Pfizer shot and I noted that in a matter of two weeks he may not have to wear the mask as much as he has and that we can finally talk to each other without masks.

He stated that even with the full efficacy of the vaccine, he was still going to take things easy and wasn’t quite ready to give up the mask, even after two weeks.

I agreed with him.

Hell, I’ve had both vaccines for a while now and I continue to go to stores or any areas where there are larger groups of people with a mask on.

Another person we were talking to told me he has a Doctor who told him they were leery of the vaccine and, frankly, that set me off.

I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

I can understand people who aren’t “professionals” in the medical field getting influenced by the bullshit you find the internet and/or questionable talk shows/”news” programs.

But to be a medical doctor and actually seeing clients -real flesh and blood human beings!- and professing skepticism about vaccines and the ways to keep one safe…

Just wow.

I noted a few days back that I had a similar experience, talking to someone in the medical field who also stated something similar and refused to vaccinate.

With stories like the above, I can’t help but shake my head.

Almost everyone has relied on medications at some point in their life. Whether it be to help with a cold or anti-biotics to deal with an infection, most of us don’t question their need in certain situations.

Reports like the one above show us the real world results of vaccination and, frankly, they’re incredibly encouraging. They point us directly toward the path to the end of this pandemic and yet…

…and yet there are still people out there who either refuse to vaccinate or seem to discount the seriousness of the virus.

Hopefully, news like this will start to turn minds.

If nothing else, its becoming crystal clear that with the rise of the vaccines we’ve seen a definite drop in COVID cases.

What more does one need to know?

The New 2021 Novel Update #3

Don’t have a ton to update at this moment yet, nonetheless, enough to warrant this post.

Basically I’m still at the novel’s first act, rewriting/revising the material as I’m going along.

What is very fascinating about going over something you’ve written already is that you start adding stuff to it and, often, it proves to be exactly what’s needed and probably should have been there to begin with.

I can’t get into details as that would be SPOILERY and, also, we’re so early into the writing of this book that even if I did state what I’ve come up with, its possible things might change in the later parts of the book and/or in a future draft.

Having said that, I’m very pleased with what I’m doing here.

I just hope I can get it done well before the end of the year and release it!

I’m genuinely excited about what its about and feel it works wonderfully with these bizarre times.

I’ll say no more!

Army of the Dead (2021) a (Right On Time!) Review… Now With Bonus Comments!

Have to say… I was looking forward to seeing this film.

While I’m one of those nut-cases that defended -and continue to defend- Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman despite so many hate-hate-hating the film, I kinda loved it, especially in its Extended/Director’s Cut (truly, that version made the theatrical cut unnecessary).

Having said that, I’m not a Zack Snyder uber-fan. In total and before seeing the above film, I’ve seen a grand total of two of his films start to end: Dawn of the Dead and Batman v Superman. I’m well aware of his other films, including Man of Steel, the film that led to BvS, as well as the very recently released Zack Snyder’s Justice League, his version of the infamous film which has received quite good reviews. I intend to see that later film as soon as possible.

Regardless, I was a little more curious to see Army of the Dead and, voila!, that’s what I’ve done.

Army of the Dead, a Netflix exclusive film, was released yesterday and I wound up seeing it in two sittings. It is a long film and, frankly, with one hour of it left yesterday, my poor (increasingly) old body wasn’t up to catching the full thing as night was closing in and I was very tired.

Lest you think otherwise, though, I would have sat through the whole thing if I had the energy.

It was quite good!

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

Army of the Dead brings director Zack Snyder back to the “zombie” genre he had so much success with in his first feature film, the remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

I recall when word came out that he was remaking it people thought it sacrilege: How could anyone dare to remake what is probably the all time best zombie film ever made? (I know, I know… there are those who think Night of the Living Dead, George Romero’s first zombie film, is his best… I think it, along with Day of the Dead, are both incredibly good, but Dawn IMHO is his very best)

Incredibly, Zack Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn (yes, the very same James Gunn that would go on to make Guardians of the Galaxy and the upcoming Suicide Squad film) did the near impossible: Create a film that touches upon George Romero’s classic -at least with regard to the movie’s setting- yet goes down its own fascinating path.

And that opening sequence…!

Fast forward to yesterday and, as I said, Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is released and once again we’re back to those darn zombies.

First though: Army of the Dead (let’s call it AotD from now on, ok?) is not a direct sequel to Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.

While it does feature zombies, the cause of their appearance and the setting is vastly different from the end of the world scenario presented in Dawn of the Dead.

AotD’s plot goes like this: Las Vegas gets a zombie infection, is closed off (a la Escape From New York) and, maybe a few years later (or a little less), a very rich Japanese businessman approaches Scott Ward (Dave Bautista, quite good) one of the “heroes” of the Las Vegas evacuation who helped save many others, including a VIP right as it was closing off, to “break into” Las Vegas (again, a la Escape From New York) to get to a vault in one of the city’s buildings and steal back some 200 million dollars in it. He stands to claim $50 million of it and split it however he wants with his crew.

Tempting though the offer is, Ward, who turns out to be suffering PTSD from the events of the evacuation of Las Vegas and has nightmares and visions, including the death of his wife, of that time, isn’t willing to say yes right away. Though he’s working in a greasy hamburger joint and is estranged from his daughter and could use the money, it takes him a full day to agree to the job and gets his old crew together for it.

But Ward is no amateur: He knows there’s more here than meets the eye and doesn’t trust his employer at all.

Among the old group he gets together are Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), safecracker Dieter (Mathias Shweighofer), and helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro). But as the group is about to leave, they’re thrown a curve: the billionaire who hired them insists one of his security men, Martin (Garrett Dillahunt), accompany them.

Further complicating things a little later on is that Ward needs his estranged daughter, Kate’s (Ella Purnell) help to get them into Las Vegas because she’s a volunteer at a shelter just outside the city and that, in turns, leads them to Lilly the Coyote (Nora Amezeder) who knows just how to do this but may not have the group’s best intentions in mind.

Each and every one of the actors are damn good in their respective roles and a further note should be made regarding the ingenuity of Zack Snyder with regard to Tig Notaro’s role.

For those unaware, the film was completely shot with comedian Chris D’Elia in the helicopter pilot role. However, after the filming was complete serious sexual misconduct accusations were leveled against Mr. D’Elia and Zack Snyder chose to scrub the comedian from the film. He was digitally replaced, in post production, with Tig Notaro (you can read more about that here).

While the end product isn’t completely seamless, it is damn close and Notaro’s interactions with the cast -which she never had!- work an incredible 99% of the time. In fact, there was only one occasion where I felt it was obvious she and the others weren’t acting against each other and that was the very first scene where Ward and Maria Cruz meet and recruit Notaro’s Marianne Peters. That was the one, and only scene, where it felt obvious their performances were pierced together.

Incredible end result, truly!

So the various characters eventually make their moves and more intrigue forces compromises -I won’t spoil everything!- to their group. Once they do make their entry into Las Vegas, the zombie plague they expected to find isn’t quite what many thought it would be and the zombies may not be completely brainless murderers after all.

AotD, to its great credit, doesn’t fully take itself seriously. There’s plenty of tongue in cheek elements and humorous interplay along with the serious -and at times gory- elements. The last hour/climax of the film, in particular, left me pretty breathless but that worked so well because the buildup made me care for what happened to the various characters in the end.

Still, there were little things here and there that annoyed me, particularly Mr. Snyder’s use of out of focus frames here and there. I know he gets a lot of grief for using too much slow motion -he really didn’t do so here- but this time around he seemed enamored with doing these hazy out of focus shots and, at times, they were perhaps a little too much.

The film is also quite long, clocking in at 2 and a half hours and maybe some might consider that a little too much. There’s a CODA as well that, for me, maybe was better left either on the cutting room floor or after the credits rather than in the film proper.

But that’s just me!

Regardless, if you’re in the mood for some good action/suspense and aren’t too burned out with the zombie genre, AotD is a perfect time killer.

Recommended.

POSTSCRIPT:

I’ve been intrigued to see the various comments from people regarding this film, mostly very negative.

Over on rottentomatoes.com, Army of the Dead is currently earning a very good 70% positive among critics and a 76% positive among audiences.

And yet… I see plenty of online posts in the various blogs and places I visit with people quite literally wondering why anyone would like the film.

One of the bigger criticisms I see involves the character of Martin who joins the team at the last minute and works for the billionaire who hired them originally. To everyone -including the members of the team- he clearly has an agenda of his own, and later in the film we find out that the money the billionaire claims to want to recover is not as important as getting the head/blood of one of the uber-zombies.

Later in the film he, along with the “Coyote”, capture the female uber-zombie and he decapitates her, taking her head with him at that point.

However, these people point out, early in the film they first encounter the female zombie and her companion, and he could have captured her then and taken off, leaving the others to get the money on their own.

I suppose… but…

This was early in the film and Martin had yet to have any interaction with the Coyote character and, like everyone else, wasn’t as sure of the so-called “lay of the land” within Las Vegas. Because of that, attacking her at that point might have resulted in a really big attack on them.

So, yes, I can see why he didn’t act at that point and it wasn’t such a huge plot hole to me as some feel it is.

Regardless, there are those who feel the film was terrible even without this particular issue. They feel the film was either too slow or too long. Both criticisms, IMHO, are certainly valid to these individuals. The film is 2 and 1/2 hours long and I can certainly see people becoming anxious for it to move along. For me, this too wasn’t such a big bother.

Another criticism is that the movie’s ending is too much of a downer, that (SPOILERS!!!!!) all these characters die out so quickly at the very end.

This I kinda don’t understand.

Zombie films, especially those by George Romero, tend to end on a very downbeat nature and with most of the main cast annihilated. Thus, people we’ve come to like generally tend to not make it to the end. Further, this is also a heist film, and if you’ve seen many of them, they don’t always follow the lighthearted pattern of an Ocean’s 11 (the original or remake). In fact, more often than not these films are about not only the heist, but the disintegration of the team after said heist. Often, characters are double crossed or captured and/or killed before they can spend their ill-gotten gains.

I’m talking about films like The Anderson Tapes or The Killing or The Brinks Job.

So, again, not much of an issue for me.

Elsewhere, I found it interesting when I interacted with someone over on i09.com and s/he noted that perhaps because we are dealing with a Zack Snyder film, there is a certain amount of baggage inherent in people’s reaction to it, not unlike they have a certain reaction to the works of J. J. Abrams or Michael Bay.

It seems to me this may be a valid issue, at least with some people’s reactions out there, but I doubt it has to do with the vast majority of the negative reviews I spotted.

Understand: To me, people’s opinions are just that. What may work for me may not for you and vice versa and therefore I take people’s criticisms at face value and try not to look beyond it at possible agendas that may -or may not!- be there.

Still, its intriguing how many people had a very negative reaction to what I thought was a decent action/suspense film!

William Shatner At 90…

Absolutely fascinating interview with actor/director/writer William Shatner by Hadley Freeman and presented on theguardian.com:

“Take it easy, nothing matters in the end”: William Shatner at 90 on love, loss, and Leonard Nimoy

There are few actors alive today who I can say have been a big part of my awareness from pretty much the moment I first got into film/TV shows back in the very, very early 1970’s and through today.

William Shatner is one of them, certainly, and its always fascinating to read interviews with him.

Of course, Mr. Shatner, the man, has an equally long history, sometimes not so good. Cast members of his biggest hit, the original Star Trek and the subsequent movies made with them, have been at times very harsh toward Mr. Shatner. Several of them felt slighted by Mr. Shatner and accusations of being a diva on set while demanding the spotlight are a near constant accusation.

I suppose it could be much worse but, then again, I never worked with him so I don’t know how accurate these stories are… though their consistency lends a certain credence to these stories.

Regarding this interview, Mr. Shatner sure does come across as one expects: He’s at times flamboyant, humorous, and nonsensical… and yet at other times offers profound statements as befitting someone who has lived as long as he has.

Regarding Leonard Nimoy -and at the risk of spoiling the interview- Mr. Shatner seems sad that their relationship, toward the end of Mr. Nimoy’s life, was at a low ebb and confused as to how it got there.

I wonder, though, how much of this is due to Mr. Shatner’s lack of self-awareness.

I’ve noted before elsewhere that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, considered by almost everyone the worst of the original cast Star Trek films, is also the only one of the Star Trek films Mr. Shatner directed. Many point their fingers at Mr. Shatner and his direction for the film’s failure, but the reality is that he didn’t do a bad job, IMHO, directing. What led to the film’s failure was a studio that kept cutting the film’s budget -the shoddy effects in that film are easily the nadir of Star Trek features- and the story, also by Mr. Shatner, was perhaps a little too ambitious and needed more polishing.

However, if there is one really big failure William Shatner, director, had with Star Trek V it was, again IMHO, in not getting any sort of decent performance out of Leonard Nimoy as Spock. In fact, it felt to me like that was the worst performance Mr. Nimoy ever gave of his beloved Spock character.

Why is that?

In part, one has to remember that at that time –Star Trek V was released in 1989- Leonard Nimoy was on a roll as a director himself.

Thanks to the shocking ending and stunning success of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the studios were forced to offer Leonard Nimoy more to return to the franchise. One of the lures was that he be allowed to direct the next Star Trek film.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Leonard Nimoy’s directing debut, was a success and Mr. Nimoy then directed its follow up, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. That film turned out to be perhaps the biggest critical success of the franchise, mixing humor and suspense and delivering a delightful experience to fans of the franchise as well as those who knew little to nothing about it.

So successful was Mr. Nimoy that he would go on to direct Three Men and a Baby, a non-Trek comedy, and it too was a HUGE success. Quite suddenly, Mr. Nimoy was in high demand as a director.

However, Mr. Shatner, seeing how Mr. Nimoy was able to get to direct, also used his clout to get a clause in his contract which would allow him to direct Star Trek V and he came to do just that… just as Mr. Nimoy was enjoying all his considerable successes.

I can’t help but wonder, given how poor Mr. Nimoy’s performance -again IMHO!- in Star Trek V was, whether his poor acting in that film was due to petulance, disinterest, or just plain unhappiness about working under Mr. Shatner.

Worth noting is that the next Star Trek film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last featuring the original cast, would feature a story where Nimoy’s Spock and Shatner’s Kirk were kept apart for the bulk of the film.

Was this done on purpose? Was Nimoy essentially done with Shatner by that point and no longer cared to engage with him?

I don’t know though its hard to read the above interview and subscribe entirely to Shatner’s view that their friendship had simply cooled down with Shatner having no clear idea why.

I recall William Shatner was interviewed not too long after Mr. Nimoy’s passing in 2015 on the Howard Stern radio show and he was asked if he attended the man’s funeral. Mr. Shatner said he didn’t and I got the impression that he didn’t really want to be there, either. If memory serves, Mr. Stern then noted that just because people were close in their film/TV appearances, it didn’t mean they were equally close in real life.

I don’t recall Mr. Shatner dispelling that notion in the interview, but I could be mis-remembering.

Regardless, the above interview is a fascinating one and the title of the interview, in particular, really hits home for me as the years pass:

Take it easy, nothing matters in the end.

It’s a particularly heady statement, one that resonates and saddens me because of how true it is. But, it’s not the full quote. Here it is:

I’m glad I didn’t know because what you know at 90 is: take it easy, nothing matters in the end, what goes up must come down. If I’d known that at 20, I wouldn’t have done anything!

An interesting notion and a paradox of sorts. While its true that we have only so many years to “make our mark”, and its equally true that in perhaps a hundred years whatever we have done with our lives may not “matter” as Mr. Shatner puts it, we nonetheless must feel like it does matter or else we “wouldn’t have done anything.”

Fascinating stuff.

The New 2021 Novel UPdate #2

I’ve begun the process of putting the revisions I wrote in red ink on the first draft of my new novel and, so far, things are going pretty well.

As somewhat expected, I’ve begun to think of things to add to the book and, while I’m still in the opening act (page 18 of the single spaced, 10 point writing) I’ve already added one new segment and am about to add another.

It works, I feel, to help explain things that come later on in the book.

Of course, I’m being deliberately vague here and, who knows, maybe as I get into future drafts I cut down on some of that stuff because I figure out a better way of presenting it or get it presented later in the book without needing to elaborate at the beginning.

Am I making any sense?

I’ve grappled with metaphors to explain the writing process and the one that feels most apt is that writing a book is like doing an oil painting.

You start with some rough image you create on your canvas, perhaps in charcoal, then you add the broad brushstrokes to delineate the colors you’ll feature in your piece.

With oil, you can paint over an area, again and again, and merge colors to your heart’s content.

What starts out as a very rough work over time becomes refined and elaborate. Toward the end, you’re adding in those last flourishes/details.

I’m at the beginning still, but feel like I have a solid foundation to build up from.

We’ll see how it goes!

Finally…

I mentioned this before but I’ve been incredibly busy for something like 2 months now.

Over the past weekend, though, I’ve finally –finally– finished up the last of the things that have kept me so damn busy.

It started with a trip to Texas to deal with some issues regarding my eldest daughter and her car. She moved there a while before COVID-19 truly hit and the car she took was under my name. I needed to transfer the title to her name and get a new Texas license plate issued to the car but the wonderful pandemic pretty much halted all that for a year’s time.

It was difficult bordering on impossible to get to a title agency (for a while, one had to do appointments via the internet and months in advance) and even when I made my trip there close to two months ago I was unsure if I’d just made that trip for nothing… that’s how unsure I was as to whether I could get this done.

This is something about me that is bothersome: I worry. A lot. When I have something hanging over me, like getting the car issues settled, it gnaws at me and it was gnawing at me for a very long time.

Luckily, we figured out the tag/title quite literally the day I flew to Texas, though it might not have happened had I not asked the DMV people -who were not taking walk-ins!- if there was some place I could go that didn’t need appointments to get what I needed done.

The guy -so very unhelpful- first told me he couldn’t help me. I needed an appointment to get what I needed done through them and that appointment would be over the internet and, you guessed it, the first opening was well past when I would be gone.

The idea of wasting my time and money flying to Texas, and having to do this all over yet again to try to resolve these issues was like having a 100 pound weight on my shoulders.

So I told the guy my situation and practically begged him to tell me if there was some kind of alternate way to do this which did not involve getting some appointment over the internet for a month plus down the road.

And the guy, perhaps feeling a little sympathy, told me about a tag/title agency -which was pretty far away and which I didn’t know about- that allowed walk ups.

My head just about burst. I alternately wanted to profusely thank the DMV man while also wanting to strangle him.

Why couldn’t he just say this to begin with?! Why did I have to plead to get some alternate means to get what needed to be done?

Anyway, we resolved the issue and I got to enjoy the time with my daughter (only 3 days or so) before returning home.

The second big thing on my head was my other daughter’s apartment in Jacksonville.

With the lease set to expire this month and her formal studies done at college (though it was unnecessary for her to be up there because courses were given online this past year), we had to pack up the apartment, clean it up, and turn in the keys.

She lived there for some 4 years and had accumulated a lot of stuff.

It took us some 4 trips over the past month plus and immediately after taking care of the car issue. The last trip was done this past weekend and during all this time we slowly got everything, including furniture, beds, bedding, clothing, books, etc. etc. etc. out of there.

Yeah, taking care of this was weighing on my head as well.

We drove up there this past Friday -a nearly 5 hour trip by car- and were lucky to just miss the worst of the rush hour traffic heading north.

When we got up there we got some food and got to the apartment, which had almost no furniture at all left and plenty of cleaning material and a vacuum cleaner/Swiffer mop/broom/cleaning liquids.

The wife and I -my youngest daughter, who used the apartment, was unable to come on this trip and help us out as she is now doing her internship and had a session on Saturday- spent that day finishing the apartment off, cleaning it while grabbing what little was left there and transferring it to our car.

By around 4 PM, with the front office closing at 5 PM (deadlines…! More pressure!) we got it all done and turned the key in. Luckily for us, we checked the front office hours and realized they weren’t open on Sunday so we had to finish everything off on Saturday.

We then spent a lovely 5 or so hours driving back home but were content with the knowledge that we were done.

I slept so damn heavily Saturday night and last night and today, Monday, I realize that next weekend, the first weekend in a very, very long time, I won’t have to do anything.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Coronavirus Diaries 35… This Is Big… Or A Big Problem?

A few days ago I wrote about the fact that the Centers For Disease Control released new guidance that those who are fully vaccinated and have are 3 or so weeks post final vaccine are able to go outdoors and indoors without masks. It was still recommended that one use masks in public transportation, but essentially it was their feeling that for many activities, those who are vaccinated can now go around without masks in many public activities.

While I felt the news incredibly positive, it also felt like they were being quite specific about who can go around without masks and where.

But some critics feel like the CDC wasn’t clear enough and have created problems.

Over on CNN.com, Christina Maxouris writes:

Coronavirus Experts are warning against unintended consequences of the CDC mask guidance

Quoting CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen:

“We’ve seen governors and mayors and business owners drop mask mandates, and as a result of that we’ve now made life much less safe for people who are unvaccinated, for immuno-compromised individuals and for young children who cannot yet be vaccinated.”

While I disagree that the CDC was vague or it was troublesome what they said -again, if you read their guidelines they’re pretty clear that they are ok with vaccinated people going maskless, not everyone– I do agree that some have taken the new guidelines and run with them much further than they should.

I genuinely hate to get political but I feel like once again we have people -often the ones on the right- who are using these new guidelines to go way above and beyond the recommendations offered.

Where I live, in Florida, we have a Governor who is very much a Trump acolyte, a deeply -IMHO- mistaken individual who has near constantly put down anything/everything regarding the dangers of COVID-19. If local politicians mandated mask wearing and tried to enforce it with fines, he was quick to nix any such rules, effectively overruling most and perhaps all (again IMHO) wise mask mandates from way at the beginning of this pandemic.

Ah well.

Regardless, now that children from 16 up are permitted to be vaccinated, I’m hopeful we’ll see the percentages of those vaccinated climb.

Locally, I was in a supermarket yesterday and found that there were only a few people waiting to get their COVID vaccine, which is both encouraging -hopefully it means that people in/around my area are mostly vaccinated- and somewhat worrying –are most of the people in/around my area mostly vaccinated?

I’ve stated this before: I’m fully vaccinated. Have been for a couple of months now and jumped on the very first opportunity to get vaccinated.

I had no major side-effects to either vaccine, other than perhaps some tiredness the day after the first shot and some pain in my shoulder where the injection was delivered.

Even the worst side-effects to the vaccine I’ve read about are nothing compared to what could happen should one get the worst of COVID-19.

So, again: Get vaccinated, people.

You want to get back to normal? You want to be able to really and truly walk around maskless?

Get vaccinated.

We have a very clear path back to normalcy.

Please: Take it!

Coronavirus Diaries 34… This is BIG!

Today the Centers For Disease Control issued a proclamation that many have been waiting for:

If you have received your full vaccination (ie two shots and the time for them to take effect) you may be maskless both inside and outside.

This is HUGE news and a HUGE change and if you’d like to read more about it, check out this article by Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield and presented on CNN:

People vaccinated against Covid-19 can go without masks indoors and outdoors, CDC says

From the article:

People fully vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors or outdoors, except under certain circumstances, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday.

What are the circumstances where one should continue wearing a mask?

Again from the article:

…people who are immune compromised should speak with their doctors before giving up their masks.

Further:

The requirement to wear masks during travel — on buses, trains, planes and public transportation — still stands

Regardless. we’re one step closer to normalcy.

Get your vaccinations, people!