Plague Journal, Woolly Mammoth Is Back
Many months ago it felt right to use “Plague Journal” in the title line for these posts. I assumed that fighting the virus would be a process, that the work of research with the public’s self-interested cooperation would reduce the corona virus to a minor inconvenience. A two year anniversary is approaching since our identification of this contagious sub-cellular organism, and the end of the campaign is not in sight.
I am shaking inwardly this morning. Never mind the upbeat social-self that I present at Starbucks. We Americans are mired, immobilized in a three dimensional trench warfare. The Delta variant of the virus is more virulent, more lethal, and children without immunization are exposed in the classrooms now. There are stories from the southern states of hospitalized individuals, on the cusp of dying, insisting upon ivermectin, a medication for horses… We are under siege due to a global pandemic, and due to a tsunami of ignorance distributed by a “fire-hose” of social media pundits. Raw ignorance, superstition, absence of self-awareness is celebrated. Three dimensional trench warfare…
Here are some of the stories that were featured in this morning’s New York Times, The Morning edited by David 
Leonhardt.
- Intensive care units in southern U.S. hospitals are getting dangerously full, these charts show.
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett said politics didn’t affect the Supreme Court’s work. “Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties,” she said.
- Iran could have enough nuclear material for one weapon within roughly a month, potentially pressuring the U.S. to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.
- Millions of Afghans, including a million children, face starvation this winter, U.N. officials said.
- A new company aims to bring back the woolly mammoth.
Reference to the plague, the grim heading, must remain for the time being. A breakthrough is essential if there is to be a sunrise to this darkness.
