MSNBC just cancelled my mid-day appearance in order to cover more urgent news. Can you imagine?
However, the NYT has activated me to write a column from the Rangers' Stanley Cup game at MSG Sunday evening. What are the odds I slip in a reference to the Champions League final? Caveat: Book media schedules can change in a heartbeat, but readings/signings are secure. GV. . CANCELLED: Sunday, May 25: Weekends with Alex Witt MSNBC-TV (National) 12:15PM -12:45 PM NEAR FUTURE: Thursday, May 29: Appearance, Reading & Signing. Book Revue 313 New York Avenue Huntington, NY 11743 7-8 PM Thursday, June 5: Fenway Park Writers Series Dinner/Reading/Signing Hotel Commonwealth 500 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02215 6:30 – 8:30 PM NOTE: This is a ticketed event priced at $60 per person. The event includes dinner and every guest receives a signed copy of EIGHT WORLD CUPS. For information: http://www.fenwayparkwriters.org/fenway_park_register.asp Sunday, June 8: Up With Steve Kornacki, MSNBC-TV. 8-10 AM. Time to be arranged. Please keep checking Appearances on the left side. GV 5/25/2014 03:45:48 pm
George
Mendel
5/25/2014 11:53:41 pm
George, 5/26/2014 01:24:36 am
George
George Vecsey
5/26/2014 01:31:37 am
Alan, are you back?
Thor A. Larsen
5/26/2014 09:01:31 am
Hello George,
George Vecsey
5/26/2014 11:14:18 am
Thor, fair point. I started paying real attention in 1980 with the Islanders. That generation was a bigger breed than the players of the 50's and 60's. 5/26/2014 11:38:57 am
George and Thor 5/27/2014 02:18:19 pm
I saw the movie, “The Other Final”, on the plane coming home. It is about two Dutch fans who were disappointed that their country's football team failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. They decided to organize a match between the two lowest FIFA-ranking teams-Bhutan and Monserrat.
George Vecsey
5/27/2014 02:32:38 pm
Alan, that is brilliant. While I was enjoying myself in Tokyo, this was happening elsewhere. I never knew. Thanks, GV Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |