July 29

Goodness--almost the end of July. This year has gone by at a--seemingly--faster rate. l than any before. That even though my life is actually less cluttered and frenetic than at any time in the past. 

There have been many times when I wonder what language people are speaking and hearing. The sounds are English but for some reason there is total confusion as to the meaning. The news on mask recommendations and the "confusion" illustrates that observation. I keep wondering what is so hard to understand about "If you are in an area experiencing an increase in cases, are immune compromised, related to a vulnerable person, or are unvaccinated, wear a mask and keep your distance." It seems simple enough. We have basically followed that before the "new" advice came out. We are vaccinated (but are watching the latest info on how lasting the immunity might be), we avoid crowds (but we have done that for some years before the pandemic), and we keep our masks handy just in case we find ourselves in a crowd we hadn't expected. When we go to Mom's medical appointments we know the hospitals and offices still require masks. I keep coming back to the conclusion: some people simply want to be confused so they can reject the advice.

July 30

Tomorrow is the last day of July and the year will be seven months down. We have a break from the brutally hot and humid weather for a bit--we hope. Given how often the weather forecasts have been wrong over the last few years, I say that with fingers crossed. The gardens are in their later phases when some things look a bit past their prime but, on the whole, it still looks very nice. I will have to severely cut the petunias back or dig them out. I guess it will be cutting them because I don't have anything to replace them with right now and probably won't til next spring.

A thought occurred to me this morning as we watched a segment on the news interviewing four nurses in North Carolina who are refusing to get vaccinated. Actually several thoughts. First, one, when confronted with what most of would call facts asked "But are the really facts?" Once upon a time Patrick Moynahan (I think) told an opponent that he had a right to his own opinion but not to his own facts. Facts were facts. Not any more. Second, all four expressed a deep distrust of a once trusted institution: the CDC--and by extension the government as a whole. That is of a piece with a trend I have noticed with increasing frequently with regards to our institutions generally. Third, we make a mistake in thinking that just because someone is a medical professional they have the knowledge to make an informed judgement on any given topic, medical or otherwise. Nurses generally, and the four interviewed in particular, have no great expertise in virology or immunology or (name your specialty). One showed her ignorance by claiming that the vaccines were developed too quickly and  weren't fully tested before being deployed. Previously the record for shortest time for development was the mumps vaccine which too about five years. However that vaccine built on a body of work which had already produced vaccines for polio, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, etc. The COVID vaccine built on the techniques developed over the last 15 to 20 years in the fight against AIDS. Her complaint about the short time doesn't consider all of the years of work the COVID vaccine was based on. And on the testing--the pharmaceutical companies had the results trials with several tens of thousands of participants before asking for emergency approval and since then tens of millions of people have received the vaccines providing even more data. To date some adverse reactions were noted but they are rare and often occurred in the same frequency as in the general population.

Another thought occurred to me as I typed that. Some time ago I read a piece on the present state of physics which noted that particle physics had yielded some very strange results and that those results are well outside our everyday experience. So much so that most of us really don't understand them even when we read about them. I wonder if some of medicine isn't following the same route.