Ridley’s Believe It Or Not February 23, 2021
CV World Cases: The CV pandemic across the planet continues the new year with surging cases now past 112 million at 112,207,479 with 305,105 new cases (a .27% increase) 21,954,344 of which are active, 90,558,240 closed with 88,066,298 recoveries (97.25% and 97.24% yesterday) and 2,491,492 deaths (2.75% and 2.76% yesterday) to continue the trend of increased cases with increased recovery percentages and decreased death percentages with some plateaus.
CV USA Cases: Total cases now over 28 million at 28,867,562 with 63,397 new cases (a .22% increase) with 9,186,785 active cases of which 16,542 (.18% of active cases and a decrease now of 12,729 from a peak of 29,271 on December 31) are in serious or critical condition, 19,680,777 closures, 513,985 of which have been deaths (2.61% and 2.62% yesterday) and 19,166,792 of which have been recoveries (97.39% and 97.38% yesterday). Our death rate percentage continues to improve and after many months is now .14% lower than the world rate and now .04% lower than Canada which has the socialized type medicine Biden may well want to implement here and on a deaths per million population measurement on a steady climb to 1547 ranks behind Belgium (1886), UK (1781) which had passed us despite leading world in testing), Italy (1595), and Portugal (1581) and only slightly worse than Hungary (1498), Spain (1456), Bulgaria (1437), Mexico (1391), Peru (1361), France (1301), Sweden (1254) that never closed its economy down like we did but has recently been experiencing a rapid rise in deaths, Brazil (1158), Switzerland (1142), Argentina (1130), Poland (1122), Chile (1048), and Bolivia (974) and we have now conducted 350,656,908 tests (now at 1,055,379/M) compared to Russia at 750,813/M) as we are conducting more tests in number and on a per capital basis for all nations (other than those nations that contain small populations like Bahrain, Denmark, Israel, Malta, Singapore and UAE) other than the U.K. which remains off the testing charts with tests at 1,276,938/M.
US Vaccinations: In the U.S. as of 2/22/2021 64.2 million doses have been given, 1.37 million per day in the last week (sounds impressive but if the rate does not increase it will take us some 10 months to have 75% of the population vaccinated which many believe is necessary to develop herd immunity. In California 7,604,725 total doses have been given (up to 82.9% of doses received), but typical of Newsom’s ineptness and because more than 1.5 million recall signatures have been turned in, due to the power of growing signatures on his recall petition, California has moved down slightly to now at 36th out of 50 in terms of the percentage of doses administered as a percentage of doses delivered to the states. A long way to go to get herd immunity and little improvement relative to other states and a great reason to recall this inept governor. As of 2/23/2021 in California we have reduced hospitalizations to 7,165 with COVID-19 patients hospitalized occupying 12.0% of all hospital beds.
Non CV Case News: Tiger Woods was involved in a life threatening one car collision in his SUV near Palos Verdes and was undergoing surgery for two broken legs and a shattered ankle; Dr. Fauci is coming under renewed criticism over his disturbing flip flops on mask wearing, school and business reopening and vaccine levels needed for herd immunity leading to speculation that he is influenced by political winds coming from the White House or worse feeling the mental decline associated with his 80 years; Senator Murkowski must be having some impeachment remorse as she lashed out at Biden’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior for his going along with Biden’s targeting of Alaska for his executive order freeze on oil and gas leases in ANWR; CNN can’t help itself to take any opportunity to lash out at Trump after Trump quickly lauded Tiger Woods and expressed his thoughts and prayers for his speedy recovery following his automobile accident this morning which prompted CNN “sportscaster” Andy Scholes to speculate that Tiger’s past use of painkillers may have contributed to the accident (an inane speculation that he was forced to quickly walk back); Iranian dissidents having endured 8 years of Obama/Biden feckless policies toward the terrorist sponsoring mullahs of Iran are pleading with Biden to stand firm against the regime given its weakness today (sad but do not expect that to happen not with Kerry anywhere near Biden’s ear); resigned Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testified before a Senate Committee on the January 6, 2021 riots that Trump was supposedly inciting with his speech the same day that the riot was well planned in advance (when will the Senate start demanding the removal of troops from the Swamp that have made Washington, D.C. look more like Beirut under siege?); maybe New Yorkers have been numbed by the disaster of the nursing home deaths from COVID-19 but a recent poll found that 42 % thought Cuomo was doing a good or excellent job compared to 60 % last summer; BLM has evidently been nominated for a Nobel Peace Price which should come as a surprise to the thousands of shop owners burnt out and looted out be BLM protests/riots and has disclosed it raised $90 million in 2020 ( White Guilt is the mother’s milk of PC donations); when it comes to inanity Jason Sattler of USA Today is leading the pack for claiming CV dead should be buried at Mar-A-Lago (guess Andrew Cuomo did not have a big enough yard); on the opening up classrooms front the rhetoric heats up and the in class learning still closed as Bethany Meyers a special ed teacher attacks rich white parents for kids’ distress and enhancing their entitlement; Psaki is out of her mind if she believes her announcements that this is not the time to come to the border will be listened to by the growing flood of illegal migrants streaming to the border; Biden’s first test on his rhetoric with China will soon come after Canada has called China’s treatment of its Uighur minority as genocide (smart money is that Biden will rant and rave and then do nothing); too bad we do not have a Truth in Labeling Law when it comes to Congress as the COVID Relief Bill which has almost nothing to do with COVID when there is still money to be spent from earlier bills may be voted on Friday which the Blues will try to ram down Red throats; Buffalo School System appears to be capitulating to the systematic racism scheme that all white people are contributing to (to bad in questioning Merrick Garland today as he ranted about the need of the DOJ to attack systematic racism that no one asked him to give specific examples of what a large portion of the population believes does not exist); leave it to political cartoonists to put reality into proper focus: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cartoons-slideshow ;although 80% of the recall Newsom signatures have been verified, signature drive continues to insure a recall in the event that any of the 1.5 million signatures already received are not valid to insure Newsom is put on a recall ballot where he needs to be given his unmitigated ineptness: https://recallgavin2020.com/petition/
Chicago Gun Violence: HeyJackass.com is back to show that through February 21, 2021, gun violence involving mostly persons of color shooting persons of color in Chicago is alive and well with 383 persons shot of whom 80 have died.
As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, factoids of interest for this day in history, a musical link to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, the fact that you enjoy a quiff on a hot day and a quote by Jonas Salk on the safety of his vaccine, secure in the knowledge that if you want to send a gift for any memorable events like Mother’s Day, college graduations, birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem at a great price tailored to the event and the recipient. Please contact me for the details on the pricing.
1. World Peace and Understanding Day—celebrated on this day since 1905 the formation of the world’s first Rotary Club by Paul Harris, Gustave Loehr, Hiram Shorey, and Silvester Schiele 2015 to promote goodwill, peace and understanding in one’s community and worldwide and memorialized on this day in 1983 by Rotary International which has grown to some 35,000 chapters.
2. Curling Is Cool Day—celebrating one of the oldest team sports known to man and played on ice covered ponds and lakes since the early 16th Century and now on indoor rinks and since 1924 a Winter Olympic Sport.
3. 1934 Number One Song—the number 1 song in 1934 on this day with a run of 5 weeks in that position was “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. Here is a recording of Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra performing “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsObSw3_LUo Paul was a violinist and with his Orchestra known as the “King of Jazz” who performed into the 60’s and died of a heart attack on December 29,1967 at age 77.
4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “quiff” which means a puff or gust of wind which on a hot day is always a refreshing event.
5. Delivering the Mushroom--celebrating the birth on this day in 1915 of Paul Tibbets, noted Air Force pilot who flew Enola Gay, a B-29 named after his mother to drop “Little Boy”, the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 which, when followed by a second atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki, brought a quick end to World War II. Tibbets had a successful career in business after retiring from the Air Force and died of natural causes at the age of 92 on November 1, 2007.
On this day in:
a. 1954 to the joy of parents fearful of the scourge of Polio, the first mass inoculations of children with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.
b. 1974 the Symbionese Liberation Army demanded a payment of $4 million to release their kidnapped captive heiress Patty Hearst.
c. 1983 the EPA announced its intent to buy out the dioxin contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.
d. 1988 Saddam Hussein began the Anfal Campaign of genocide against Iraqi Kurds in Northern Iraq which resulted in the deaths of some 182,000 Kurds whose only crime was being a Kurd.
e. 2008 a B-2 Stealth Bomber crashed on Guam, marking the first operational loss of a B-2 and probably the most expensive crash in Air Force history due to the enormous cost of the plane.
Reflections on the Salk vaccine: “Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:It is safe, and you can’t get any safer than safe.” Jonas Salk.
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© February 23, 2021 Michael P. Ridley aka The Alaskanpoet
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