COVID-19 Update

Yesterday, August 9th, 2021

8,047 people were killed by COVID-19

99.996% of them were not fully vaccinated

World

New Cases:   527,341 (⬆︎ .26%)
New Deaths:      8,047 (⬆︎ .19%)

USA

New Cases:   102,375 (⬆︎ .28%)
New Deaths:         326 (⬆︎ .05%)

USA Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations: 195.2 million (58.8%)
Fully Vaccinated:    166.7 million (50.2%)

I've decided to bail on my 50-year high school reunion scheduled for next month.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I'm not going to risk adding to the problem.

And most of those people I don't care to reune with anyway, he said in his usual curmudgeonly manner.

WaPo:

Should you cancel travel plans because of the coronavirus’s delta variant? Ask these questions.

For a blissful few weeks this spring, a summer of semi-normal travel seemed not just possible, but almost certain. Flights were booked, hotel reservations were made and vacation time was requested as those with wanderlust or pent-up desire to see loved ones organized their long-awaited excursions.

But the hyper-transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus has now forced some would-be travelers to cancel trips and others to consider whether it’s safe to follow through with their plans. As hospitalizations surge across much of the country — mostly among the unvaccinated — Americans are trying to adapt on the fly.

Asking yourself a few questions can help you decide whether to keep your travel arrangements.

Is everyone in your group of travelers vaccinated? Is anyone immunocompromised?

If you haven’t gotten vaccinated against the coronavirus, you should strongly consider staying home, experts said. Travel is much safer if at least two weeks have passed since your last dose. But if you have a weakened immune system, you may want to reconsider traveling, even if you have been vaccinated.

“If they have issues with their immune system or are immunocompromised, I would say now is probably not a great time to travel, because there are so many things that are outside of your control,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.

The status of anyone you’re going to visit also matters. Safdar said she would wear a mask around immunocompromised family members or friends, even in private settings where everyone has been vaccinated.

For unvaccinated people who must travel, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests taking a coronavirus test one to three days beforehand, staying away from crowds and remaining masked. You should also take another virus test three to five days after returning and self-quarantine for seven days. Also, keep in mind that some countries or venues might require children who are too young for vaccination to test negative for the virus.

How do you plan to travel?

To avoid contracting or transmitting the virus, the fewer fellow travelers you come into contact with, the better. For that reason, traveling by car is generally safer than taking a train, bus or airplane. Try to make as few stops as possible, because rest stops and gas stations will probably put you in proximity to many other travelers.

If you travel by air, you have a particularly high likelihood of ending up in a crowd. Although the virus doesn’t seem to spread easily on flights, you’ll probably be among hundreds or thousands of other passengers at an airport terminal or while in line for a security check.

How to cancel your flights, Airbnbs and more because of the delta variant

Remember that face masks are required on all public transportation and at transportation hubs such as airports. You should make sure the mask you bring meets your airline’s requirements, said Alvin Tran, an assistant professor of public health at the University of New Haven’s School of Health Sciences. Bandannas, scarves, balaclavas and face shields are often considered insufficient.

Before boarding an international flight, you may have to take a coronavirus test at your own expense and show proof of a negative result, said Lin Chen, director of the Travel Medicine Center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass.

Masks and covid-19: Explaining the latest guidance from the CDC and other experts

What’s the transmission rate at your destination?

The CDC maintains a map showing which regions of the United States have low, moderate, substantial and high rates of virus transmission at a given time. A separate guide tracks coronavirus prevalence in various countries and offers recommendations associated with each level of transmission. Travelers should avoid visiting areas with a “very high” degree of transmission, per the CDC’s guidelines.

Although it can be helpful to consult that data, Safdar suggested keeping in mind that regions can move quickly from one transmission category to another. So what looks like a low-risk destination when you’re planning may not be quite as safe by the time you arrive. For example, on Aug. 2, the CDC and the State Department added 16 destinations — including Ireland, Greece and the U.S. Virgin Islands — to their highest travel advisory category for the coronavirus.

A region’s immunization rate and the status of its hospitals also matter. There is probably more virus circulating in low-vaccination areas, and overwhelmed hospitals may mean you’ll have less access to medical care if you get sick or injured — with covid-19 or any other malady.

Chen said to also consider how you would manage if you tested positive for the coronavirus while at your destination. You should be prepared to self-quarantine there until you’ve recovered.

What travel restrictions are in place where you’re going?

Although some destinations are loosening restrictions to encourage visitors, others are tightening them in response to the delta variant. On Aug. 3, Israel said it would require visitors from the United States and 17 other countries to quarantine upon arrival, regardless of their vaccination status. Grenada now requires full vaccination for entry. Australia’s most populous city, Sydney, has been locked down for weeks.

On Aug. 9, the CDC added countries to its list of Level 4 — or very high — travel risk. France, Iceland, Israel and Thailand are included in the countries that the agency urges people to avoid.

Some countries, including France and Italy, are beginning to require proof of inoculation, documentation of immunity or a recent negative coronavirus test for entry to certain establishments. Chen cautioned that some foreign venues may not accept a CDC vaccination card as proof of immunization.

In the United States, many restaurants and bars also have said they’ll require vaccination. If you haven’t gotten your shots, consider whether the rules of the businesses you want to visit would prohibit you from going.

What you need to know about the highly contagious delta variant

Will you spend most of your trip indoors or outdoors?

It has been clear for months that the coronavirus spreads more easily inside than outside, so where you’ll be spending most of your trip should be a consideration in whether to go through with it. Hiking in a national park, for example, is low on the spectrum of risk. But Tran cautioned that he would still wear a mask while in line for an outdoor attraction, where social distancing is difficult.

If you’ll mostly be visiting museums, historic buildings and shops, on the other hand, you should consider the fact that the CDC is urging indoor mask-wearing in areas with substantial or high coronavirus transmission. And some jurisdictions, such as Nevada, D.C., Los Angeles County, St. Louis and others, are issuing mask mandates for indoor public spaces on their own. So, depending on your destination, you may need to wear a face covering for hours at a time. Jurisdictions may also have rules regarding social distancing and the hours that different types of venues can be open.

If you’re partaking in indoor activities, Safdar suggested keeping a low threshold for donning a face covering. And she said she would avoid indoor dining at any destination.

Can you get your money back if your travel plans change?

Your calculus for determining whether to go on a planned trip may depend in part on whether you can reschedule or cancel without losing money. Most travel insurance will reimburse you if you get the coronavirus before or during a trip but won’t help if you want to cancel out of nervousness about the delta surge, Megan Moncrief, a spokeswoman for travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth, previously told The Washington Post. She said you’d have to buy pricier “Cancel for Any Reason” coverage to account for that scenario.

What you should know about indoor dining amid the delta variant

How much risk and inconvenience are you willing to endure?

In this pandemic, there’s no such thing as a trip with zero chance of contracting the coronavirus. Whether it’s worth it to travel depends largely on your comfort level with risk. In a high-transmission area, Safdar said, it will be very hard to avoid the virus entirely.

Traveling right now also requires more preparation than usual. You’ll have to stay on top of evolving requirements and restrictions, even while at your destination, and adapt accordingly. You also may need to budget extra time and money to compensate. If you can afford to do so, working with a reputable travel agency can help you work through those challenges, Chen said.

“If somebody is prepared to face all those additional challenges, they might be okay and want to go anyway,” she said. “But I think for a lot of people, it might not be worth all the extra efforts.”

PLEASE NOTE: Potential travelers should take local and national public health directives regarding the pandemic into consideration before planning any trips. Travel health notice information can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s interactive map showing travel recommendations by destination and the CDC’s travel health notice webpage.

It's The Climate Change, Stoopid

I know, I know - one thing at a time. We have a problem with maintaining American democracy - without that, we have no hope of doing anything else.

I wish we had the luxury of one thing at a time. We don't.

Here's the really shitty thought about all that: Sociologists and Political Science nerds have shown how Climate Change drives us towards authoritarian rule (in times of crisis, people want action at the expense of process). The people in charge of our economy are largely unwilling to do anything to arrest our nearly headlong rush into environmental catastrophe, because they're the ones who benefit most from a top-down authoritarian system.

Plutocracy, thy name is Republican.

We'll have to do both. We have to understand that without Democrats in office, we stand almost no chance at all to make the changes we have to make in order to have a shot at avoiding the worst of a climate disaster we're already living in right now.

science alert:

Key Findings You MUST Know From Just-Released IPCC Climate Change Report

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first major scientific assessment since 2014, released Monday, shows unequivocally that global warming is unfolding more quickly than feared and that humanity is almost entirely to blame.

Here is a rundown of some of its key findings from the IPCC Working Group 1 report on physical science:

Goodbye 1.5 °C, hello overshoot

Earth's average surface temperature is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels around 2030 in all five of the greenhouse gas emissions scenarios - ranging from highly optimistic to reckless - considered by the report. That's a full decade earlier than the IPCC predicted just three years ago.

By mid-century, the 1.5 °C threshold will have been breached across the board, by a tenth of a degree along the most ambitious pathway, and by nearly a full degree at the opposite extreme.

There is a silver lining: in the most ambitious if-we-do-everything-right scenario, global temperatures - after "overshooting" the 1.5 °C target - fall back to 1.4 °C by 2100.

Natural climate allies weakening

Since about 1960, forests, soil and oceans have absorbed 56 percent of all the CO2 humanity has chucked into the atmosphere - even as those emissions have increased by half. Without nature's help, Earth would already be a much hotter and less hospitable place.

But these allies in our fight against global heating - known in this role as carbon sinks - are showing signs of becoming saturated, and the percentage of human-induced carbon they soak up is likely to decline as the century unfolds.

Yes, climate change is to blame

The report highlights the stunning progress of a new field, attribution science, in quantifying the extent to which human-induced global heating increases the intensity and/or likelihood of a specific extreme weather event such as a heatwave, a hurricane or a wildfire.

Within weeks, for example, scientists established that the record-shattering heatwave that devastated British Columbia in June would have been "virtually impossible" without the influence of climate change.

More generally, the 2021 IPCC report includes many more findings reached with "high confidence" than before.

Sea rising higher, more quickly

Global oceans have risen about 20 centimetres (eight inches) since 1900, and the rate of increase has nearly tripled in the last decade. Crumbling and melting ice sheets atop Antarctica and especially Greenland have replaced glacier melt as the main driver.

If global warming is capped at 2 °C, the ocean watermark will go up about half a metre over the 21st century. It will continue rising to nearly two metres by 2300 - twice the amount predicted by the IPCC in 2019.

Because of uncertainty over ice sheets, scientists cannot rule out a total rise of two metres by 2100 in a worst-case emissions scenario.

Dire warnings from the deep past

Major advances in paleoclimatology - the science of natural climate in Earth's past - have delivered sobering warnings.

For example, the last time the planet's atmosphere was as warm as today, about 125,000 years ago, global sea levels were likely 5-10 meters higher - a level that would put many major coastal cities under water.

Three million years ago, when atmospheric CO2 concentrations matched today's levels and temperatures were 2.5 C to 4 °C higher, sea levels were up to 25 metres higher.

Methane in the spotlight

The report includes more data than ever before on methane (CH4), the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2, and warns that failure to curb emissions could undermine Paris Agreement goals.

Human-induced sources are roughly divided between leaks from natural gas production, coal mining and landfills on one side, and livestock and manure handling on the other.

CH4 lingers in the atmosphere only a fraction as long as CO2, but is far more efficient at trapping heat. CH4 levels are their highest in at least 800,000 years.

A focus on regional differences

Although all parts of the planet - from the oceans to the land to the air we breathe - are warming, some areas are heating faster than others. In the Arctic, for example, the average temperature of the coldest days is projected to increase at about triple the rate of global warming across the planet as a whole.

Sea levels are rising everywhere, but will likely increase up to 20 percent above the global average along many coastlines.

Tipping points = abrupt change

The IPCC warns against abrupt, "low likelihood, high impact" shifts in the climate system that, when irreversible, are called tipping points. Disintegrating ice sheets holding enough water to raise seas a dozen metres; the melting of permafrost laden with billions of tons of carbon; the transition of the Amazon from tropical forest to savannah - are all examples.

"Abrupt responses and tipping points of the climate system... cannot be ruled out," the report says.

Global ocean 'conveyor belt'

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) - a large system of ocean currents that regulates the global transfer of heat from the tropics into the northern hemisphere - is slowing down, a trend "very likely" to continue throughout the 21st century.

Scientists have only "medium confidence" that the AMOC will not stall altogether, as it has in the past. If it did, European winters would become much harsher, monsoon seasons would likely be disrupted, and sea levels in the north Atlantic basin could rise substantially.

Observation

War Sucks

No matter what it's for, what's at stake, how it starts, how it's conducted, or even how it's ended - war sucks. Top to bottom. Side to side. Front to back.

World War II effectively "ended" at 2:47 PM Nagasaki time on this day in 1945, when USAmerica Inc dropped the second of two nuclear bombs on Japan.

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

In the final year of World War II, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign that devastated 67 Japanese cities. The war in Europe concluded when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War. By July 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs: "Fat Man", a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon; and "Little Boy", an enriched uranium gun-type fission weapon. The 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was trained and equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, and deployed to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. The Allies called for the unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945, the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". Japan ignored the ultimatum.

The consent of the United Kingdom was obtained for the bombing, as was required by the Quebec Agreement, and orders were issued on 25 July for atomic bombs to be used against Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki. These targets were chosen because they were large urban areas that also held militarily significant facilities. On 6 August, a Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, to which Prime Minister Suzuki reiterated the Japanese government's commitment to ignore the Allies' demands and fight on. Three days later, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. Over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half occurred on the first day. For months afterward, large numbers of people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. Most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison.

Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the Soviet Union's declaration of war and the bombing of Nagasaki. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war. Scholars have extensively studied the effects of the bombings on the social and political character of subsequent world history and popular culture, and there is still much debate concerning the ethical and legal justification for the bombings. Supporters believe that the atomic bombings were necessary to bring a swift end to the war with minimal casualties, while critics argue that the Japanese government could have been brought to surrender through other means, while highlighting the moral and ethical implications of nuclear weapons and the deaths caused to civilians.

(with apologies to George Will):

War and football are both perfectly suited to what has become the American character - frequent regular outbreaks of violence punctuated by committee meetings, and the occasional public outcry over the wasteful brutality of it all.

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough, and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

Ernest Hemingway

Today's Tweet

It’s as if Covid came along just in time to demoralize us about the chances that politicians would ever muster the courage to address climate change.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 9, 2021

COVID-19 Update

Yesterday, August 8, 2021

8,033 people were killed by COVID-19

99.996 % of them were not fully vaccinated

World

New Cases:   473,194 (⬆︎ .23%)
New Deaths:      9,033 (⬆︎ .19%)

USA

New Cases:   24,390 (⬆︎ .07%)
New Deaths:       129 (⬆︎ .02%)

USA Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations: 194.9 million (58.7%)
Fully Vaccinated:    165.5 million (50.1%)

One the thing I try to remember when I'm sorting through any kind of policy question is this: I'm not just making decisions that effect how my kids will live - I'm making decisions that could determine how they die.

Such things require considerable thought.

NYT: (pay wall)

‘This Is Really Scary’: Kids Struggle With Long Covid

Lingering physical, mental and neurological symptoms are affecting children as well as adults, including many who had mild reactions to the initial coronavirus infection.

Will Grogan stared blankly at his ninth-grade biology classwork. It was material he had mastered the day before, but it looked utterly unfamiliar.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted. His teacher and classmates reminded him how adeptly he’d answered questions about the topic during the previous class. “I’ve never seen this before,” he insisted, becoming so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse.

The episode, earlier this year, was one of numerous cognitive mix-ups that plagued Will, 15, after he contracted the coronavirus in October, along with issues like fatigue and severe leg pain.

As young people across the country prepare to return to school, many are struggling to recover from lingering post-Covid neurological, physical or psychiatric symptoms. Often called “long Covid,” the symptoms and their duration vary, as does the severity.

Studies estimate long Covid may affect between 10 percent and 30 percent of adults infected with the coronavirus. Estimates from the handful of studies of children so far range widely. At an April congressional hearing, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, cited one study suggesting that between 11 percent and 15 percent of infected youths might “end up with this long-term consequence, which can be pretty devastating in terms of things like school performance.”

The challenges facing young patients come as pediatric Covid-19 cases rise sharply, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant and the fact that well under half of 12-to-17-year-olds are fully vaccinated and children under 12 are still ineligible for vaccines.

Doctors say even youths with mild or asymptomatic initial infections may experience long Covid: confounding, sometimes debilitating issues that disrupt their schooling, sleep, extracurricular activities and other aspects of life.

“The potential impact is huge,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, chief of infections of the nervous system at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “I mean, they’re in their formative years. Once you start falling behind, it’s very hard because the kids lose their own self-confidence too. It’s a downward spiral.”

Will, an Eagle Scout, a talented tennis player and a highly motivated student who loves studying languages so much that he takes both French and Arabic, said he used to feel “taking naps is a waste of sunlight.”

But Covid made him so fatigued that he could barely leave his bed for 35 days, and he was so dizzy that he had to sit to keep from fainting in the shower. When he returned to his Dallas high school classes, brain fog caused him to see “numbers floating off the page” in math, to forget to turn in a history paper on Japanese Samurai he’d written days earlier and to insert fragments of French into an English assignment.

“I handed it to my teacher, and she was like ‘Will, is this your scratch notes?’” said Will, adding that he worried: “Am I going to be able to be a good student ever again? Because this is really scary.”

‘We don’t have any sort of magic treatment’

Nearly 4.2 million young people in the United States have had Covid-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Relatively small percentages have been hospitalized for initial infections or developed a condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) that can emerge several weeks later. Doctors expect considerably more will experience long Covid.

At Boston Children’s Hospital, where a program draws long Covid patients from across the country, “we’re seeing things like fatigue, headaches, brain fog, memory and concentration difficulties, sleep disturbances, ongoing change in smell and taste,” said Dr. Molly Wilson-Murphy, a neuroinfectious diseases specialist there. She said most patients were “kids who had Covid and weren’t hospitalized, recovered at home, and then they have symptoms that just never go away — or they seem to get totally better and then a couple of weeks or a month or so after, they develop symptoms.”

Dr. Amanda Morrow, co-director of the pediatric post-Covid-19 clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, said getting treatment early might help recovery. Post-Covid clinics find they need multiple specialists and approaches including exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, sleep modification and medication for issues such as respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.

“We don’t yet have any sort of good predictors of who will be affected, how much they’ll be affected and how quickly they’ll recover,” Dr. Wilson-Murphy said, adding “We don’t have any sort of magic treatment.”

Much about long Covid remains mysterious. Some symptoms resemble aftereffects of concussions and other brain injuries. Some, like post-exertional malaise — when physical or mental exertion increases exhaustion — echo symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, experts say.

Some patients develop Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS, which involves lightheadedness and racing heart rates upon standing up.

Some studies report higher proportions of older children with long-term issues. That might be because adolescents find some symptoms more disruptive or because after puberty, hormones might amplify immune responses, Dr. Nath said.

An April study by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that 9.8 percent of 2-to-11-year-olds and 13 percent of 12-to-16-year-olds infected with the coronavirus reported continuing symptoms five weeks later. After 12 weeks, rates remained significant: 7.4 percent in the younger group and 8.2 percent in the older group.

In another U.K. study, 4.4 percent of 1,734 children had symptoms more than four weeks post-Covid, over four times as high as the percentage with symptoms four weeks after non-Covid illnesses like flu. About 2 percent of Covid patients had symptoms after eight weeks.

Many young patients were previously healthy, said Dr. Laura Malone, co-director of Kennedy Krieger’s program. Some doctors have seen some youths with long Covid who had previous issues like migraines or anxiety, but it’s unclear whether there’s any connection.

Before the pandemic, Sierra Trudeau was diagnosed with anxiety after her parents’ divorce, said her mother, Heather Trudeau. In May, six months after contracting the coronavirus, Sierra’s long Covid symptoms remained worrisome enough to make a 50-mile trip to Boston Children’s Hospital.

In an interview this spring, Sierra, 12, and her mother described Sierra’s fatigue, headaches, forgetfulness and other symptoms. Her mother asked Sierra: “Do you feel like it’s been worse for your anxiety, and like your mental health, like your emotions?”

“Yeah,” Sierra said softly.

“Everything makes her cry and that is not her,” Ms. Trudeau said. “It’s just been so hard.”

During that May appointment, which The New York Times observed, Dr. Jane Newburger, a vice chair of cardiology, told Sierra: “Part of what can happen is you feel rotten and so, you know, you sit all day. You get deconditioned, and you get into a little bit of a cycle where it’s hard to pull out.”

Still, Dr. Newburger said, “You can’t throw someone back into exercise because you’ll take one step forward and two backward.”

She said examinations of Sierra’s heart and other tests showed no notable physiological problems, similar to many post-Covid pediatric patients.

Dr. Nath said some issues might be caused by inflammation that damages blood vessels, including in the brain.

He said another theory was that “the immune system somehow gets deranged and then it’s hard to shut down,” or that residual virus or genetic fragments keep immune responses activated. “It’s like the song is gone, but the music lingers on,” he said.

One optimistic sign for Sierra was that her smell and taste returned this spring.

In late July, Ms. Trudeau said Sierra’s symptoms had improved, partly because of new antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications, although “her energy level still varies from day to day.”

‘Nothing like that has ever happened to me’

“Dang, why am I always so sick?” Messiah Rodriguez, 17, asked himself. Before getting Covid around Thanksgiving, he never had health problems, he and his mother, Kimmie Ezeike, said.

An energetic point guard and shooting guard on school and travel basketball teams, Messiah had to stop playing after running off the court and vomiting in his backpack during two games.

“Nothing like that has ever happened to me, and I’ve been playing sports my whole life,” he said. He tried basketball again recently, but experienced back pain and an orthopedist advised him to take another break.

“Messiah is probably one of the more affected kids I’ve seen,” said Dr. Alexandra Yonts, director of the Covid-19 Longitudinal Care Clinic at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Messiah has also developed mental health issues post-Covid and is taking medications for depression and anxiety and seeing a psychologist weekly.

“It’s kind of like social anxiety,” Messiah said. He used to be comfortable talking and socializing, but after Covid, he said, “I avoided people so I wouldn’t have to make conversation.”

He’s been diagnosed with adjustment disorder, a condition that Dr. Yonts described as the development of depression, anxiety or other psychiatric issues in response to major life events. In Messiah’s case, the trigger “might be Covid and the massive immune response that happens,” she said.

Eight months later, some of Messiah’s symptoms have eased. Others, like shortness of breath while climbing stairs, linger, his mother said.

In classes, Messiah, an honors student, said “my mind would kind of feel like it was going somewhere else.”

In a June appointment at Children’s National that the Times observed, Dr. Abigail Bosk, a rheumatologist, told him his post-Covid fatigue was more debilitating than simple tiredness. His athleticism, she said, should help recovery, but “it’s really not something you can push through.”

Dr. Yonts said Messiah’s treatment plan, including physical therapy,resembles concussion treatment. For the summer, she recommended “trying to give his brain a break, but also slowly build up the stamina for learning and thinking again.”

Messiah has maintained at least two hobbies: playing piano and writing poetry.

“I don’t want to float my boat, but I feel like I’m a pretty good writer,” he said. “I can still write. It’s just sometimes I’ve got to think harder than I usually had to.”

An excruciating cycle

Sometimes, Miya Walker feels like her old self. But after about four to six weeks, extreme fatigue and concentration difficulties strike again.

This roller coaster has lasted over a year. When she contracted Covid in June 2020, Miya, of Crofton, Md., was 14. In late August, she’ll turn 16.

Each time, “we thought, It’s going to be over,” her mother, Maisha Walker, said. “Then it just came again, and it was just so disappointing for her.”

“For some patients, we are seeing that the symptoms can be more cyclical,” said Dr. Malone of the Kennedy Krieger Institute. “With others, we’re seeing a slow gradual improvement over time.”

Since January, Miya has been a patient at Kennedy Krieger, which her mother said has provided “a big relief that we weren’t alone in this and this wasn’t in our head.”

Miya received tutoring and accommodations from teachers, but “her G.P.A. went drastically down” from her usual As and Bs, her mother said. In class, “it’s way easier to just space out when you’re exhausted,” said Miya, who also becomes “very dizzy, really easily.”

She recently enrolled in dance classes to resume her long-running passion for ballet, tap and other styles. But her doctors were concerned it might be too much for her body right now.

“It wasn’t a recommendation we took lightly because we know that dance gives her so much joy, which is also important to recovery,” Dr. Malone said.

Instead, she’s starting water physical therapy. “I really love dance a lot,” Miya said. “But I just can’t see myself bouncing back too quickly.”

‘A feeling of helplessness’

“The scariest part,” said Will, the Dallas teenager, was visiting doctors whose “answers were: ‘Hey, bud, take it easy. Go rest.’ I couldn’t blame them. That’s all they could tell me really.”

Will and his family puzzled and persisted.

“It’s so unknown, and it’s such a feeling of helplessness as a parent,” his mother, Whitney Grogan, said.

With some relaxed homework and testing requirements, Will maintained high grades. About six months post-infection, he made the varsity tennis team, but his typically excellent hand-eye coordination was off.

“I would just miss the ball completely,” he said. “And I’d be like, ‘Whoa, come on Will, what is happening?’”

His chest and left leg hurting, he visited Dr. Kathleen Bell, chairwoman of physical medicine and rehabilitation at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center. She recommended pushing enough but not too much. “We had to drag him back from over-practicing tennis,” she said.

Eventually, he played matches. His symptoms have largely improved, but he’s not yet 100 percent recovered.

“I’m not really a dramatic guy, but it’s turned me into much more of a worrier,” Will said. “My idea of Covid before I got it was, You know what, if I get it, I’ll get it over with and I’ll have the antibodies and I’ll be good. But oh, my gosh, I just never want to go through that again. Never.”

Overheard

Sometimes I get really pissed off because of the stoopid things people do, so I stop and ask myself - "what would god do?"

And then I try to drown them.

Jan6 Stuff

It just gets weirder and scarier how close they got to tipping it over and installing the plutocracy.

We all know there's never really an end to this kind of fuckery, but eventually, we'll come to the end of this particular outbreak and we'll know then: either our justice system works and there is this thing called The Rule Of Law, or we've managed again to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The insurrectionists only have to survive. And they'll try again.

Because this is an ongoing project. It's an insurrection in slow motion, being accomplished with pen and paper instead of with guns and ammo.

The attempted coup on Jan6 hasn't failed until we see a whole fucking battalion of high profile perps being frogged into prison yards.

Dana Bash on CNN:

NYT:

Former Acting Attorney General Testifies About Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Election

The testimony highlights the former president’s desire to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews.

Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday.

The investigations were opened after a New York Times article that detailed efforts by Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results. That prompted Mr. Trump to consider ousting Mr. Rosen and installing Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan.

Mr. Trump never fired Mr. Rosen, but the plot highlights the former president’s desire to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda.

Mr. Clark, who did not respond to requests for comment, said in January that all of his official communications with the White House “were consistent with law,” and that he had engaged in “a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president.”

Mr. Rosen did not respond to requests for comment. The inspector general’s spokesman declined to comment.
Mr. Rosen has emerged as a key witness in multiple investigations that focus on Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the election. He has publicly stated that the Justice Department did not find enough fraud to affect the outcome of the election.

On Friday Mr. Rosen told investigators from the inspector general’s office about five encounters with Mr. Clark, including one in late December during which his deputy admitted to meeting with Mr. Trump and pledged that he would not do so again, according to a person familiar with the interview.

Mr. Rosen also described subsequent exchanges with Mr. Clark, who continued to press colleagues to make statements about the election that they found to be untrue, according to a person familiar with the interview.

He also discovered that Mr. Clark had been engaging in unauthorized conversations with Mr. Trump about ways to have the Justice Department publicly cast doubt on President Biden’s victory, particularly in battleground states that Mr. Trump was fixated on, like Georgia. Mr. Clark drafted a letter that he asked Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators, wrongly asserting that they should void Mr. Biden’s victory because the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the state.

Such a letter would effectively undermine efforts by Mr. Clark’s colleagues to prevent the White House from overturning the election results, and Mr. Rosen and his top deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, rejected the proposal.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Mr. Rosen discussed previously reported episodes, including his interactions with Mr. Clark, with the Senate Judiciary Committee. He called Mr. Rosen’s account “dramatic evidence of how intent Trump was in overthrowing the election.”

Mr. Blumenthal was one of a handful of senators, including Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, and Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sat through most of Mr. Rosen’s more than six hours of testimony. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the committee; Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa; Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota; Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska; and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, attended parts of the interview.

Mr. Blumenthal said Mr. Rosen presented new facts and evidence that led him to believe that the committee would need to answer “profound and important questions” about the roles that individuals in Mr. Trump’s orbit played in the effort to undermine the peaceful transition of power, “which is what Trump tried to do, intently and concertedly.”

As details of Mr. Clark’s actions emerge, it is unclear what, if any, consequences he could face. The Justice Department’s inspector general could make a determination about whether Mr. Clark crossed the line into potentially criminal behavior. In that case, the inspector general could refer the matter to federal prosecutors.

Mr. Rosen has spent much of the year in discussions with the Justice Department over what information he could provide to investigators, given that decision-making conversations between administration officials are usually kept confidential.

Douglas A. Collins, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said last week that the former president would not seek to bar former Justice Department officials from speaking with investigators. But Mr. Collins said he might take some undisclosed legal action if congressional investigators sought “privileged information.”

Mr. Rosen quickly scheduled interviews with congressional investigators to get as much of his version of events on the record before any players could ask the courts to block the proceedings, according to two people familiar with those discussions who are not authorized to speak about continuing investigations.

He also reached out directly to Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and pledged to cooperate with his investigation, according to a person briefed on those talks.

One last thing - every time we turn around, some wingnut jagoff who seems intent on taking this democracy down floats out of the Federalist Society. Whether it's Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Barrett or Bill Barr or this latest asshole Jeff Clark - there's just too much shit coming out of that joint for them to have nice clean little noses.

Today's Tweet

Unfortunately, there's a lot of overlap between this issue and the guns issue, and we already know that the lives of children are less important to them than their political allegiance to the radical libertarian worldview.

We can still hope I guess.

if you watch one thing today please let it be this. pic.twitter.com/9ULtG6qOet

— Captain Jordy (@J_Mei21) August 6, 2021

Today's Eternal Sadness

We're getting some details on the killing of a Pentagon cop last Tuesday.

The murderer had a history of violence, apparently due to mental health problems, and yet nobody could quite figure out that he might be a danger to himself and others, and that maybe he shouldn't be walking around waiting for something to set him off?

That in itself is worth looking into, but the thing that chaps my ass is the fact that the cop was killed with his own gun.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Phillip Brent said he was awoken early one April morning by word someone had broken into his home in an upscale Atlanta suburb. He was away, so he quickly dialed up video from the home’s surveillance cameras on his phone.

Brent said the video showed a masked man smashing through a back door with a sledgehammer. The intruder, who appeared armed with a crowbar, eventually left and pulled off his mask. Brent said he instantly recognized the face on the video.

He said it was a neighbor, Austin Lanz, 27; the same man the FBI said killed a Pentagon police officer without warning or provocation Tuesday on a Metro bus platform outside the military headquarters. Lanz also was killed.

Brent said the April break-in, which resulted in Lanz’s arrest, was the culmination of a long campaign of harassment by Lanz against him and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells. The couple didn’t know Lanz personally and still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind his fixation on them.

Brent and Wells, both 23, said the encounters were by turns menacing and bizarre, offering a glimpse of the man who carried out such a confounding attack at the Pentagon. The two said they were fearful of Lanz, but also deeply concerned about him and his mental health.

What triggered his attack outside the Pentagon also remains unknown. In a statement released by Lanz’s family, his relatives offered condolences to the family of George Gonzalez, the slain Pentagon police officer, saying they were “sorry and heartbroken.” In an interview, the family’s attorney, Jimmy Berry, said the family knows of no motive for the attack.

It goes on - and gets creepier - but the point for me is that we're told over and over that having a gun is how you keep yourself safe. That officer had a gun. He was trained in how not to get shot with it. And he's unavailable for comment because he's fucking dead now.

Which brings me to this: Fuck the shooter - I don't wanna remember that prick. I don't wanna hear his name.

Officer George Gonzales