Season's Greetings, 2021

12/22/2021

Best wishes to all the nice people who read My Little Therapy Website, and those who add their comments, making this a community of sorts.

We give thanks for our blessings in the middle of all this. We know some people who are not well right now, and we wish for health.

I am planning a little holiday pause, no words, no pictures, no opinions, just wishes for peace and health for all.
GV

(Painting by Marianne Vecsey; card crafted by David Vecsey.)

Willie Weinbaum

12/23/2021 09:58:54 am

Beautiful painting and sentiments! Here’s to safe, happy, healthy and better times ahead for the Vecseys and all who are near and dear, near and far.

Jim Henneman link

12/23/2021 12:04:42 pm

Thank you George and the same to you and your family. I love your enthusiasm....and writing talent...for this "therapy" website. I know you'll never lose the talent and pray you never lose the enthusiasm. Stay healthy!

Hillel

12/23/2021 12:52:23 pm

Merry Christmas and happy new year, George.

Ina Lee Selden

12/23/2021 01:32:47 pm

Dear G,
Thanks for bringing so much of the outside world into our home in 2021. We drop everything to read your posts, and are particularly touched when you write so lovingly of Marianne. Stay warm, stay healthy, stay optimistic. This isn't one that will not be over when the fat lady sings, but it will be over. We look forward to the next time we can be together.
Ina & Maury

ahron horowitz

12/23/2021 05:04:21 pm

george-happy holidays and best wishes.thank you for your oasis and to all the parched travellers who stop for a brief respite.health and happiness for your family.ahron

Phyllis Rosenthal

12/23/2021 06:48:11 pm

We wish you and Maryann and your family wonderful Christmas and a happy,healthy and normal new year🎄

Alan Rubin link

12/24/2021 10:40:54 am

Enjoy the mini-break from your website. Everyone should periodically step back and small the roses.

Sandi and I were married on Christmas Eve and are celebrating our 60th an anniversary. It seems like it was yesterday.

All the best for a happy and healthy New Year to all the loyal followers of George's blog.

Ernie and Aviva Kirchman

12/24/2021 06:18:23 pm

Dear George, Marianne and family, Much appreciation for your holiday note. Best wishes for a good year ahead, and thanks for sharing your perspectives of these times!

Edwin W Martin Jr

12/24/2021 08:09:14 pm

Peggy and send you all a wish for Happy Holidays and a better New Year. We have been blessed by visits in the last two weeks by both of our sons, Scott and Bruce and Grandson Alec, and Grandaughter Gwen, a s special others Jennifer and Fila.

Shalom, Peace.

Altenir Silva

12/26/2021 03:19:50 pm

Dear George.
Thank you very much.
Beautiful Art.
Best/Altenir

bruce

1/1/2022 12:09:16 am

dear all,

into my dotage....i was positive i'd posted something several hours ago.

happy new year to all the regulars and irregulars to george's therapy site.

let's hope 2022 is better than 2021.

and more people in the great republic get vaccinated.

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

Season's Greetings, 2021

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