Post 285 - December 21, 2020

Day 285…

According to the calculator, I am in line to be the 268,000,000th American to get vaccinated. Michael has laughter-induced asthma, so he’s probably just before me.

On Friday night, the FDA granted emergency approval to Moderna for their vaccine. On Saturday, an independent panel of advisors to the CDC then voted to endorse it. Here in New York, Governor Cuomo announced that the state’s Clinical Advisory Task Force had also approved it.

We should have received 346,000 doses of it and, as of this morning, the inoculations should have begun. Most of those will be going to residents and workers in nursing homes.

We are meant to visit a friend of ours who lives out at the Actors’ Fund Home in Englewood tomorrow.

They are scheduling visits for residents in 20-minute increments. Visitors sit outside and residents stay in. A two-way radio has been set up so that we can speak through the window. Anything that we bring our friend needs to be sealed in plastic and left on a table where it will be disinfected.

London has been closed down. A mutated strain of COVID-19 that is reportedly 70% more contagious than any we have seen is ripping through the population there. 30 countries, including France, which lies right across the channel at the other end of the Chunnel, have cut off all land, sea and air links.

It’s still too early to tell, but it does not appear that this new strain is either more lethal or in any way resistant to the vaccine. It just appears to spread much faster than the strains we have seen so far. Of course, nobody knows for sure yet.

In a replay of the US government’s delayed action at the start of the pandemic, the US is not one of the countries that has banned travel from the United Kingdom. 120 countries now require a negative result on a COVID test before travelers can leave the UK, but not us.

According to the Governor, even with the sharply reduced travel, there are currently six flights a day arriving in New York from the UK. There are no health-screening facilities set up at any of the airports. Travelers from Britain just arrive and either head into our city or continue on to other parts of the country.

As the coronavirus replicates and circulates, slight differences and mutations happen all the time. According to the COVID-19 Genomics Consortium UK, there have already been thousands of such mutations reported. One of them, in Singapore, actually made the virus less lethal.

This particular British strain seems to have come out of Southeast England in Kent. It was first reported in September when officials were trying to figure out why case rates were still rising there despite strict mitigating efforts.

This mutation seems to have three major variants. Each of those had been previously detected separately. One hypothesis is that they could have been brought together by a single individual who got infected several times with each different version.

At any rate, it seems likely, given that we are doing nothing whatsoever to stop it, that it’s coming here. We aren’t even doing anything to slow it down.

Instead, according to White House staffers, the President has been sending out feelers about how to get an airport named for him. He has asked about what paperwork is needed to get the process started. Reportedly, he wants to make sure that whichever one gets chosen doesn’t have, “a bad reputation or crumbling infrastructure.” He has apparently also floated his desire to get an aircraft carrier commissioned and named in his honor.

As this Presidency continues to devolve, White House staffers are turning to the press more and more with reports about what is happening in there.

Former Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whom the President pardoned, appeared on their new favorite network, Newsmax, last week and suggested that Martial Law should be invoked to overturn the election.

Liking the sound of that, the President invited Flynn along with appellate lawyer Sidney Powell to meet with him, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone at the White House. Rudi Giuliani who is still down with COVID joined in via the phone.

Sidney Powell, in addition to being Flynn’s lawyer, also buys into any and all conspiracy theories surrounding the election and has worked overtime to spread them. She participated in many of the President’s failed lawsuits to get the election results nullified.

According to staffers, Meadows and Cipollone ended the meeting early when it became apparent that the President was seriously considering Flynn and Powell’s extreme idea of invoking martial law.

Deep breath.

Today is the first day of winter.

It is also the winter solstice.

It is the day of the year when the north pole is at its maximum tilt away from the sun which results in the shortest length of daylight for all of us in the northern hemisphere and our longest stretch of night.

Many cultures, some stretching far back into prehistory, viewed today as the end of one year and the beginning of another - the symbolic death and rebirth of the sun.

Stonehenge, built in Neolithic times on Salisbury Plain in England, is aligned with tonight’s sunset. The Great Trilithon, the largest of two standing stones with one lying on top of them, faces out from the center of the circle to catch the full blast of the winter sun.

Before the technological age, it was important to be able to gauge where people were in relation to the season. When should their domesticated animals be mated? How much food was on hand to get through the next very bleak months?

In many cultures, the Winter Solstice was marked with the final great feast of the season. Many animals were slaughtered, and their meat preserved so that they wouldn’t need to be fed in the cold coming months. Wine and beer that had been made during the year from crops harvested over the last months, were fermented and now ready for drinking.

Trapped inside during winter storms, there was at least one thing that people could do.

For the next six months, rather than getting shorter, our daylight hours will now start to last a little bit longer. While the worst of winter is still ahead of us, just behind it is spring, the time of renewal and strength. As of today, we are finally starting our long trek back towards the light.

Republican Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee addressed the people of his state this weekend.

He signed an executive order limiting gatherings in public spaces but refused to issue a mask-wearing mandate. He urged residents to avoid gathering with anyone outside their immediate households but exempted houses of worship from that.

"It only took a matter of days to see gatherings around Thanksgiving translate into a record level of sickness. Tennessee cannot sustain a similar surge after Christmas or New Year’s. Tonight, I am asking you to make some hard decisions."

Urging people not to gather, but then saying that it is OK to go to church together basically says that it is OK to gather.

People listen, sometimes unthinkingly, to the people who lead them. Hearing that it’s not a problem to go to church, means that most people who hear that speech will believe that it is not a problem to go to church. “Well, the Governor said it was OK, so it must be OK.”

Just because Great Britain is an ally doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to send their brand-new version of the virus over to us. The virus doesn’t care where or who people are. When it gets a chance to jump, it jumps. A room full of people singing Christmas hymns together is a perfect opportunity for it to spread completely unhindered by distancing or masks.

Tonight, after sundown when the dying rays of light align perfectly with Stonehenge, Jupiter and Saturn will, themselves, align in the southwestern sky. It will be the first time that this has happened since the Middle Ages - March 4, 1226 to be exact.

They will be so close together that they will appear as a bright Christmas star in the sky, apparently much like the miraculous one that was reported on the day that Christ was born in Bethlehem.

NASA claims that the fact that this extremely rare event is occurring on the Solstice is just a coincidence. I believe them. This coincidence, nonetheless, ignites a glimmer of completely non-scientific hope in my heart.

A month from now, there will be a new Administration leading this country. This virus mutation will just be another in a whole pile of woes that will need to be faced and overcome. At least we are getting closer to being able to start.

We are only a few days away from opening the last door of our Advent calendar. Perhaps we all need another Administration calendar for the coming month. I’m surprised that someone hasn’t created one.

Winter may have arrived today, but spring is truly coming.

Tonight, if you can, take a look up into the southwest sky in the hour after sunset and try to catch a glimpse of the conjoined planets. It won’t necessarily be easy here in the city, but it won’t happen again in our lifetimes so it’s worth the shot.

As a similar event two thousand years ago gave hope to people all over the world, take hope tonight as well.

Spring is coming.

Happy Solstice.