August 30

The weather people say we will have a break from the high temps starting this week. I hope so. We were supposed to get some rain last night but I don't see any evidence of it. I will have to water the containers this morning.

My morning reading started with an article in The NY Times questioning the data behind the recent push for COVID booster shots. We have listened and read what has shown up on our feeds but remain skeptical. We have learned that initial news reports are often unreliable. I did think that the Israeli trend might be replicated here at least as far as the spread of the Delta strain of COVID and the rapid full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. I expect that the Moderna and J&J vaccines will soon follow into full approval. I expect that COVID will (if it hasn't already) become an endemic virus we have to deal with every year. That will probably mean we will need new vaccines periodically like we do for the flu. But I don't care to be pushed into getting a booster  sooner than it is needed just to bolster the bottom like of drug companies.

My reading was interrupted because we impulsively decided to do our shopping today instead of tomorrow. Neither of us had anything planned that couldn't be postponed. It was a fairly big shopping trip because we hadn't really restocked after the last freezer failed. Just sort of holding off to really check what we needed and what we are phasing out. We were low on veggies, wet cat food, cat litter and a few other items. We had to go to our alternate grocery story because we couldn't find any beef bologna. The alternate store had it but it is weird when something you could always find suddenly not there. (We go with the beef because we have never liked the kind the chicken or turkey varieties even if they are mixed with pork.) That made it a very exhausting morning especially as we found a sale on a local brand of cat litter--2 35lb-buckets for $20.

This morning, during one of the news segments on the masking controversy, the doctor being interviewed made a very important point that was passed over without much comment. The politicization of masking has drowned out the hygienic arguments for masking--the fact that the masks minimize, not eliminate but minimize, all viral respiratory infections. I remember how surprised when the medical establishment was pleasantly surprised that flus and colds were much lighter last year while, it should be noted, when we were masking and distancing because of COVID.