In talking with other vaccinated friends, several variations are emerging. Some get sick after the first shot but are fine after the second; for others the second shot makes them sick but the first one was fine.
Then there are the people like me who experience a general improvement in their health after the vaccinations. This seems to be happening with people who had had Covid and suffered long-term issues. Some of them report improvements after getting the shots.
In my case, there's no evidence I ever had Covid but I did effectively lose my sense of smell and taste a couple years ago. Eating has been reduced to a bland experience ever since -- until I got the Moderna vaccine.
Nothing much changed after the first shot but after the second, within a day or two, I noticed that my sense of taste was returning. It's been long enough now that this feels like a permanent change -- one of many this spring.
So if you've been wondering how our pandemic compares with the great Flu Pandemic of a century ago, the data are in. There were more "excess deaths" last year than at the height of the plague in 1918. That makes this one definitively worse.
I'm glad that you and I were not among those excess deaths, but it is tragically clear than many of people need not have died had we had functional national leadership last year such as the Biden administration is now providing. The virus-deniers misled roughly half the population into believing the whole thing was a fake news conspiracy -- with tragic consequences.
But now, ]thanks to the vaccination initiatives, we can start living in a more normal manner again, which means, as a nice essay in the Times puts it, it's time to learn to "live with germs again."
Pathogens are, of course, just as often really good for us as they are bad for us, something germaphobes may dispute to no avail.
Me? I'm saving the one bottle of hand sanitizer I own as a momento of the pandemic. I never actually used it because I have this thing about hand sanitizers -- I don't believe in them. But it's a cute bottle given to me on a worker on the ferry from San Francisco to Alameda one night, and now it is a treasured relic.
Even as things return to normal here, the pandemic is raging in India at tragic proportions. Bodies are piling up at sites that are running out of wood to burn them. Patients are dying because they can't get access to the oxygen that would save them.
It's a reminder that the virus knows no borders, so what is good here now and bad there may exchange places before much more time passes. Thus as much assistance as the U.S. can muster at this time is what we should be providing.
We've got the vaccines, the oxygen, even the wood if it comes to that. This is what "foreign. aid" should be used for, not what our dollars are funding in the Middle East. Supremacist groups are as unacceptable there as here -- there's no place for them in civil societies.
***
Headlines:
* It’s Going to Be Weird, but We Need to Learn to Live With Germs Again -- The health of our bodies and microbiomes may depend on society’s return to lifestyles that expose us to bacteria, despite the risks. (NYT)
* Indian hospitals turn away patients in COVID-19 ‘tsunami’ (Reuters)
* U.S. vaccine abundance gives rise to global envy, anger -- As new coronavirus cases soar in India and other countries, the United States has raced ahead with vaccinations, even as the Biden administration shares few doses and bans the export of vaccines and vaccine materials. (WaPo)
* Israelis and Palestinians Clash Around Jerusalem’s Old City -- The violence broke out as an extremist Jewish supremacy group marched in the city, chanting “Death to Arabs.” (NYT)
* Confronting a shifting climate, how will California grow? (WaPo)
* ASEAN leaders demand Myanmar coup leaders end killings (AP)
* Indonesian Navy Says Missing Submarine Sunk, Crew Of 53 Dead (NPR)
* ‘Excess Deaths’ in 2020 Surpassed Those of 1918 Flu Pandemic -- The pandemic brought a record uptick in deaths, interrupted a downward trend in death rates and spurred the highest death rate above normal ever recorded in the country. (NYT)
* Md. officials to review cases handled by ex-chief medical examiner who testified in Derek Chauvin’s defense (WaPo)
* San Francisco Contends With a Different Sort of Epidemic: Drug Deaths -- More people died from overdoses than from the coronavirus in San Francisco last year. Some think the toll, tied to homelessness, should force the city to re-examine its approach to illicit drugs. (NYT)
* A Malaysian artist was detained by police for allegedly insulting the country's queen by making a Spotify playlist that mocked comments on the queen's Instagram account, an arrest condemned by rights groups as a clampdown on free speech. (Reuters)
* Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Massacre Rescinded -- Native Americans are stepping up efforts to pressure Congress to revoke Medals of Honor awarded for the killings of Sioux, including unarmed women and children, at Wounded Knee. (NYT)
* Tens of millions of Brazilians are facing hunger or food insecurity as the country’s Covid-19 crisis drags on, killing thousands of people every day. (NYT)
* Those who got covid between vaccine doses urge caution: ‘We were so close’ (WaPo)
* Breaking Up With Your First Credit Card (WSJ)
* U.K. Far Right, Lifted by Trump, Now Turns to Russia (NYT)
* Stephen Curry, Warriors welcome back fans and beat Nuggets (AP)
* Match’s Dating App in Japan Gives Women Control, Makes Men Pay (WSJ)
* Baby Emerges From Game Of Peekaboo Wiser, More Reflective (The Onion)
***
And I'm so sick of love songs
So tired of tears
So done with wishing
You were still here
Said, I'm so sick of love songs
So sad and slow
So why can't I turn off the radio?
-- Tor Erik Hermansen / Mikkel Eriksen / Hazel Smith
-30-
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