On Sunday our son spotted a utility truck near his home.
It was from New Brunswick, the one in Canada. That night, his electricity was restored. Think of it: workers from a country with socialized medicine turned on the lights in the woods of Long Island. I am tired of stumbling around in the dark. I am also tired of the campaign, which amounts to the same thing. Earlier in the year I was reassuring my wife that I met that guy during the Olympics, and he could run the country if he had to. She knew better, long before his 47-per-cent remark and the Jeep-to-China lie. Now I read that Democrats would work better with a Republican president than vice versa. I also read blather about Obama being such a terrible person because he is an introvert. Something going on inside. Awful. . It’s a race. Workers from Canada vs. returns from 50 states. Maybe on Wednesday this will all be over.
John McDermott
11/6/2012 05:24:41 am
I'm beginning to think the entire world should be allowed to vote in the US presidential election since its outcome can have such a profound and far-reaching effect on the entire world. I also think that US election campaigns are way too long and involve people spending obscene amounts of money to acquire power for themselves(see Whitman, Meg) or their friends(see Adelson, Sheldon). And I also think we should listen more to what our wives tell us, especially you and I.
Ed Martin
11/6/2012 05:39:49 am
Glad you and family are safe and well, if cold I expect although I can remember gathering around the gas oven. 11/6/2012 07:57:48 am
George and John
Janet O'Rourke
11/8/2012 01:27:56 am
George, 11/11/2012 04:14:20 am
Governor Romney said after the election that he had not realized how organized the Democratic get out the vote ground game was. He should not have been. The Democrats continually said that they would win with their ground game.
george
11/14/2012 02:22:28 am
Comment deleted 9/8/2013 10:56:57 pm
I like your post. I agree with you waiting for electricity is not an option everyone need electricity to live. Thanks for sharing... 10/20/2013 08:42:27 pm
Your writing has impressed me. It’s simple, clear and precise. I will definitely recommend you to my friends and family. Regards and good luck 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 |