June 6

Feels like it might be another moderate day temperature wise. It has been dry for the last few days and the forecast is for another several dry days. I will have to water the gardens early. I also have the herbs I dried yesterday to grind today. It is early so I won't have a lot of such work for now.

I wondered early in the pandemic what might have happened if we pursued a different strategy. This article describing the results of a Johns Hopkins/Lund University study of the effectiveness of the first lockdown in the UK indicates that the costs of the lockdown outweighed the benefits. Right now the supporters of the more restrictive measures are heavily invested in shooting holes in this critique while the other side is more invested in criticizing their political rivals. What would have happened if we encouraged, but not mandated, masks; encouraged, but not mandated, mass gatherings; encouraged, but not mandated, vaccination when it became available; encouraged, but not mandated, businesses to limit the number of customers entering their stores at any one time. I would like to see more studies like this one.

Saudi decision to cut their oil output by 1 million barrels per day has been a major topic for news pundits since last Friday. Everyone wonders what their aim is in doing so and are trying to read the tea leaves, or crystal ball, to see what it means for gas prices in this country. We noticed the gas has been creeping up of the last month. Part of that is the change to the summer blend which always provides the gas companies an excuse to raise prices. However, yesterday and today the prices range from $3.58 to $4.00. The lowest prices are $0.25 higher than last week. I also checked the price of oil on MarketWatch to see what is going on there. The prices about a month ago were, if I remember rightly, in the low $60s and were up to about $73 and a bit yesterday. However it has fallen since then. The same happened after the last time Opec+ did a similar production cut. The Saudi aim may not succeed. The market strikes again.

Bill Astore has a good primer on American history and what I learned in my history classes as the American Civil Religion.