﻿Talking About My Favorite Interviews -- December 4

Talking About My Favorite Interviews -- December 4

12/1/2014

Dalai Lama, Waldorf-Astoria, 1979. Photo by William Sauro, The New York Times.

I’ve been privileged to interview some fascinating people over the years:

Lance Armstrong. Martina Navratilova. The Dalai Lama. Loretta Lynn. Jackie Robinson. Casey Stengel. Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street.

I petted Secretariat once. (Somebody smuggled a sugar cube or two, and Big Red rumbled over.)

On Thursday, Dec. 4, I will be talking about some of my favorite interviews, at the Amsterdam Harborside in Port Washington, Long Island, from 2-4 PM.

The Amsterdam Harborside is a residence high on a bluff overlooking Hempstead Harbor. I’m eager to see it myself.

I’ll be signing my World Cup book and a few other books of mine, courtesy of the Dolphin BookShop.

For information, please RSVP via:

http://www.theamsterdamatharborside.com/event/meet-renowned-new-york-times-sports-columnist-george-vecsey/

Loretta Lynn, Backstage, Ryman Auditorium, 1975.

Mendel

12/1/2014 02:42:28 am

Wish I could make it, George. What happened to the beard?

George Vecsey

12/1/2014 03:44:51 am

Mendel, I trimmed it back...didn't like a bushy grey-white beard. When I covered Appalachia, I had hair to my shoulders -- farewell to the 60's, and all that. Gene Roberts, great editor, once told me if he sent me to Alabama for a story, I had two hours -- one to get ready for the flight, and one for a haircut. Never came to that. Nature intervened. Shalom, GV

Alan Rubin link

12/1/2014 03:39:56 am

George

One of the joys of getting older, I prefer to call it years of experience, is being able to meet so many interesting people—famous or not. You have been fortunate that the job you so loved gave you unusual and special opportunities.

The best part of running a neighborhood retail appliance business was getting to know the customers.

November 4th should be a memorable experience. We are flying into Boston from Madison, WI the day before. If we had flown out of NY, which we often do, I could have made it.

Enjoy the evening.

George Vecsey

12/1/2014 03:45:51 am

Alan, you've heard my stories....have a good flight on Thursday, see you soon. 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