Quiet Easter -- Then the Family Checks In

4/21/2019

Western PA: Halfway between NY and IL, couple crossed Roberto Clemente Bridge to catch a ball game.

After months of home-repair madness, it was a treat to spend a quiet Easter at home. Then the pinging began on the phone.

Long Island Sound: The Yapper was taking a walk in the soft spring air.

I was puttering around, trying to restore order from the detritus of repairs. Marianne made a delicious vegetable-and-chicken soup.

New England: Easter Egg Atelier checks in

WNYC-FM was playing weekly jazz show. Two versions of "April in Paris," first by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, then by Count Basie ("one more -- once") Homage to the stricken Cathedral de Notre-Dame. Mel Torme. Bob Dylan. An American blues singer acing a song. Not American, my wife said. It's Adele. As always, she was right.

Georgia: Aunt and niece bump into each other in the mall. Aunt helps niece select a dress for a dance.

Deepest PA: Enjoying spring sunshine -- with warm boost.

Upstate New York: Real-estate mogul has some planting done

The Fellas at Ye Olde Easter Parade -- Diane was there.

Hansen Alexander

4/21/2019 07:10:43 pm

How delightful, George, And Happy Easter to you and Marianne. And thanks for the shared photos.

George Vecsey

4/21/2019 08:17:04 pm

Hansen, thank you so much. I hope you and Taube had a good day, wherever you are. GV

Mendel

4/22/2019 03:21:27 am

Nothing quite like family, George. Best wishes from Jerusalem.

Altenir Silva

4/22/2019 10:26:24 pm

Dear George, I agree with every word that Mendel said.
"Nothing quite like family!"
Best wishes from Rio de Janeiro.

bruce

4/23/2019 03:40:55 pm

george,

good one.

perhaps adele had some blue eyed depth because her marriage had just broken up.

bruce

George Vecsey

4/23/2019 06:58:33 pm

Bruce, that is just what my wife said. I was thinking Nancy Wilson, somebody like that. GV

bruce

4/23/2019 09:00:41 pm

george,

loved Nancy Wilson.

bruce

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

Quiet Easter -- Then the Family Checks In

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