Happy New Year

9/25/2014

Photo by Anjali

I was going to write something about world politics, or Derek Jeter, or Gail Collins’ column on climate, or why it is raining in New York, when the Jewish holy days are supposed to bring gorgeous fall weather, or my friend from junior high school who is becoming a rabbi.

Instead, I am sending a photo from our granddaughter Anjali, currently visiting family in the north woods.

Shana Tova

Brian Savin

9/25/2014 02:17:16 pm

There is a saying on Wall Street that goes, "Sell on Rosh Hashanah, buy on Yom Kippur." As the market was crashing today, I called my dear friend and broker, and spoke to his wife to convey the message that he should head to his temple and tell his investor friends to STOP selling. My good friend's wife told me that getting him to the temple would take an act of God. So goes the market.....but I'd be happy to have Anjali's photos at services should I jump out a window.

George Vecsey

9/25/2014 03:50:33 pm

Smart people weren't there this morning to tell the lemmings not to scurry. But it;s all just numbers. Where else are people going with their money?
Plus, the weather behaved and Jeter won his last game in YS.
How New York is that?
The frolics on Wall Street are a sideshow.
GV

Roy Edelsack

9/26/2014 03:10:59 am

And now for a dissenting opinion let's go to a bitter old Mets' fan* in New Jersey:

"First base was open, Buck shoulda walked him."

Ah nuts, even I can't pretend it wasn't a magical moment.

*me

George Vecsey

9/26/2014 06:19:35 am

Betcha that Buck has thought, every day for 19 years, if he had played Jeter instead of Tony Fernandez in Sept. and Oct, he could have managed the Yankees as long as Torre did.

Alan Rubin link

9/26/2014 03:45:12 am

I’m always fearful when it rains on the Jewish holidays that the “Doomsday” prediction is coming true. So far, it has occurred so infrequently that the worst did not have time to kick in.

Great way for Jeter to finish up!

I never make New Year predictions or resolutions since I can never be wrong or feel guilty. However, I believe that the Mets have bottomed out and will rise. I like that they stayed with their management team.

George Vecsey

9/26/2014 06:21:14 am

Your lips to G-d's ears, as people said in my neighborhood.
GV

John McDermott

9/26/2014 07:18:29 pm

Tell Anjali the photo is beautiful!

George Vecsey

9/27/2014 03:11:00 am

John, thanks, from you that is a high compliment. G

Ed Martin

9/27/2014 05:01:40 am

Shana Tova to you and yours. Lovely picture. Growing up in NYC area I always remember Jackie Mason or another wit saying, "there are more Jewish holidays in New York than in Israel. (New Year is not one of them.). Shalom.

Mendel

9/27/2014 06:11:49 am

Catching this post after the extended holiday weekend in Jerusalem. Thanks for your wishes, George. Just seeing the news about Jeter tonight. Only thought: “Are you kidding me?"

George Vecsey

9/27/2014 09:11:01 am

Dear Mendel: It happened in the middle of the night in Israel, but let me tell you, it was nuts. I ducked most of the game -- had enough with Yankeemania, even for Jeter -- but clicked on the tube at 10 pm, bottom of the eighth. Amazing. What a treat it has been to cover him and watch him for this generation. GV

Comments are closed.

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

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