Greetings from Boston, Mass. We decided to stay an extra day after my son's football game on Saturday and avoid flying out on Sunday to avoid the Thanksgiving rush of travelers. Some observations about Covid in Mass. as I sit here in the airport waiting for my plane to board:
1. Mask wearing in Boston, both indoors and outdoors, is a very high percentage. I will admit to wearing one outside on Saturday to keep my face warm, but I did not wear one on Boston College's campus (very pretty campus by the way) or at the football game on Saturday.
2. Masks are must be worn on all public transportation and in train stations. We traveled the city on the subway all weekend, so I had to wear a mask a large percentage of the time. Interestingly, some college aged girls got on our train to BC on Saturday morning and two did not have on masks. The subway driver STOPPED the train and demanded the girls put on masks before the trip would continue.
3. Of course in Uber's and airports, masks must also be warn and in the airports, both going and coming, I have seen 100% compliance and no unruly passengers.
4. For the Wake/BC game on Saturday, we had to present proof of vaccination or a negative test in the past 72 hours (what a waste of time that is) to enter the stadium. We had to go to special tents and present our vaccination cards and were given a wrist ban that showed we passed the screening. We had to do the same thing at Syracuse earlier this year, but that is an indoor stadium. BC plays outdoors and the wind was blowing the entire game. I would estimate my risk of Covid while outside in the wind at something approaching zero - regardless of vaccination status.
5. On the local news this morning, they said Mass. is implementing a statewide ban on elective surgeries and it starts in the next day. I understand NYC has just done something similar. Why? Apparently, hospital cases are increasing and they are afraid of the new South African variant.
6. On the CBS morning news yesterday, The Elf (Lord Fauci to everyone else) said you can not criticize him, since he is science and to criticize him is to criticize science. Apparently, The Elf has forgotten all he has learned about the scientific method and scientific inquiry. If The Elf is Science and you can not criticize him, Science as we know it is dead.
7. On the South African variant, reports I have read for the past couple of days out of South Africa indicate cases are mild and most cases are among the unvaccinated. Armed with this information, the mainstream media have chosen to whip up fear in people again, all in the name of clicks and viewer eyeballs. As I posted the other day - please avoid listening to the talking heads and "experts" in the mainstream media who only want to peddle in fear. They are not your friends and they do NOT have your best interests at heart.
8. I saw a report this morning that the new South African variant has been detected in Australia. Let that sink in for a minute. A country that has been locked down for almost 20 months, has people confined to their house most of the time, and are arresting people who violate the rules is unable to stop a new variant from entering their population.
9. We really need to get the Novavax vaccine approved. In a world where our two best vaccines rely on immunity driven by a spike protein mRNA strand to be effective, we need another choice. As I previously indicated, I am waiting on this vaccine from my booster, since I want more of a broad-spectrum approach to my vaccines. It does not target the more easily mutating spike protein mRNA. Instead, it is developed to target the viruses cellular bodies genetic make-up. As I mentioned earlier, it appears to be 90% effective against all known variants.
I will leave you with this little statistic this morning on the over-reaction taking place in the Northeast of the US.
