Another Milestone

The US hit another milestone this week - as many people have died from COVID as died from the 1918 flu, against which comparisons have often been made. Of course, in 1918 the US and world population was much less than it is today, so it was a larger percentage of people, but still...

We just commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a day when 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in the US, yet there is a 9/11 worth of deaths happening every 2 days in Florida alone, and nobody seems outraged by it..?

I mentioned that my employer started requiring that all colleagues either be vaccinated or tested twice weekly. Today a new communication came out regarding the "next phase" of their guidance - now that the vaccine is FDA approved, they will be requiring that all colleagues be vaccinated unless they have a medical or religious exemption. (Of course, Unicole Unicron will give you a religious vaccine exemption from the Unicult, so...) 90% of our colleagues are now vaccinated, which is amazing! Some do live in countries where vaccines are less accessible, which they are addressing.

There was also good news this week that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective in kids age 5-11, at about 1/3 the dose of the adults 12+ protocol. They will be submitting to the FDA for emergency use authorization, and hopefully that is approved soon, as many parents are worried about their young kids in school.

Foot Down

I don't know all the details yet of what was announced yesterday, but it sounds like the president has finally put his foot down and implemented some new requirements, one of which is that companies with more than 100 employees need to either confirm everyone is vaccinated, or perform weekly COVID tests, at the risk of a $14,000 fine per person.

How will that be enforced and tracked and kept honest? Who knows. Masks are mandated for all schools in our state, but there are school districts encouraging parents to let their kids to go maskless due to "health reasons" due to a loophole where you don't actually need documentation from a doctor for this excuse.

Again, I just can't believe there are so many people actively fighting to expose their children (and everyone, really) to a deadly virus whose long term effects are not known...