excerpt:
Today's US coronavirus / COVID-19 numbers in the US
From the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
Confirmed US cases: 82,690,545
Confirmed US deaths: 1,000,037
We've officially hit 1 million dead from COVID -- with the actual number far higher. Our national shame.
COVID-19 cases are rising in almost every US state, up 57 percent in just two weeks. And with the wide availability of home tests, combined with mild symptoms thanks to vaccines, lots of cases aren't getting reported and counted in official numbers. Also increasing are hospitalizations (up 26 percent) and ICU admissions (up 17 percent).
In Eastern Massachusetts, the levels of coronavirus detected in waste water -- an early indicator of future COVID-19 infections -- has been climbing since late April.
Even though deaths seems to have plateaued, about 300 Americans are still dying of COVID every day.
And just in time, the FDA okayed a Pfizer booster shot for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds today. Now the CDC has to weigh in; its scientific advisers meet on Thursday.
THIS IS US: I wonder why we bother writing about the latest mass shooting in America anymore. Regularly gunning down each other is simply who we are, and lots of Americans are perfectly fine with that.
We might as well just accept that nothing is going to change as long as we keep voting in Republicans who are in thrall (and indebted) to the NRA.
Gun violence is simply part of the American landscape. Dawn's early light, the rocket's red glare, and a semi-automatic's white muzzle flash. Spacious skies, amber waves of grain, and bullet-riddled bodies. Don't trip over them on your way to Disney World.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: If gun obsessives didn't care a whit when a madman slaughtered 20 kindergartners at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012, then 10 dead Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo is a shoulder-shrugging event to them.
The 58 dead concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017 was a gambling inconvenience to them. The 49 dead gay nightclub patrons in Orlando in 2016 was a mere curiosity. The 23 dead Latino shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 meant nothing more to them than an annoying delay in their ability to buy cheap bananas.
Elections have consequences. Deadly consequences.
Speaking of the GOP, it is amusing to watch the growing rift between Trumpkins and the Republicans who are even further to the right and are trying to divorce the so-called MAGA movement from the Orange Menace and claim it as their own.
Take the GOP US Senate primary being held in Pennsylvania today. What a lineup:
-- Trump endorsed TV celebrity and quack doctor Mehmet Oz, who has morphed from a once-respected cardiothoracic surgeon (now retired) to a TV snake-oil salesman shamelessly plugging baseless dietary supplements to a pseudoscience advocate to a political hack. He's slightly ahead in the latest polls.
(Trump originally endorsed Sean Parnell, a decorated former Army Ranger, but he dropped out of the race after his estranged wife said he abused her and their children. Trump sure knows how to pick 'em, doesn't he?)
If Oz is elected, he could join eye doctor Rand Paul in arguing with Dr. Anthony Fauci about things they know nothing about.
-- Nipping at his heels is Kathy Barnette, a veteran of the Armed Forces Reserves, an author, and a political commentator on Fox News who believes it's okay to discriminate against Muslims because Islam is similar to views held by Hitler and Stalin.
(I wonder what Oz, who is Muslim and of Turkish heritage, thinks of that. I doubt he wants to remind MAGA voters of his religion.)
Barnette also thinks homosexuality leads to incest and pedophilia, clearly ignorant of the fact that incest and pedophilia are male heterosexual crimes. She believes transgender people are "deformed" and "demonic."
Oh, and she marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the Proud Boys.
She seems nice.
-- Then there's David McCormick, a former hedge fund manager who, to the astonishment of his business associates, has transformed himself into a Trump-loving, China-hating, MAGA cultist.
As Bloomberg has pointed out, he's another in a long line of businesspeople who think they can leverage their success to reach high political office, and they have a common set of characteristics: "They're hyperambitious, ideologically flexible, and convinced that their skill set will transfer easily to politics." (Usually it doesn't.)
The other candidates in the race aren't registering above the single-digits.
And then there's the GOP primary today for governor of Pennsylvania, where many Republicans are apoplectic over the expected victory by Doug Mastriano, a retired Army colonel who wanted the 2020 election overturned and also went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to do so, and who has embraced QAnon's crazy conspiracy theories.
The Pennsylvania GOP thinks he's certain to lose to Democrat Josh Shapiro, a lawyer (and presumptive nominee) who has been the state's attorney general for the past five years and who appears to be normal.
Elsewhere in primaries today, top Republican leaders, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are trying to unseat controversial freshman GOP Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.
Trump suffered a loss last week when his handpicked candidate, alleged serial groper Charles Herbster (two peas in a pod), lost the GOP nomination for governor. So he's trying again today in Idaho, but it doesn't look good: Trump endorsed Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin over incumbent Governor Brad Little, but Little is favored to win.
With mercurial billionaire Elon Musk making noises about backing out of his bid for Twitter (for the attention, no doubt Sad.), Snoop Dogg says he might buy it instead, and one commenter asked him to promise to rename it Twizzle.
McDonald's has finally sold its fast-food stores in Russia to a Russian businessman, which made me recall a humorous story. In the mid-90s, I hosted a Russian journalist for about 6 weeks at my home through some sort of Globe program. She told me about McDonald's vaunted arrival in Moscow, and how Russians could not grasp the training McDonald's was trying to give them.
Company trainers wanted the workers to greet customers at the counter with a smile and ask if they could help them. The Russians were baffled.
"Why should I say hello and smile at them?" the workers said. "I don't know them. They are strangers to me." The would-be hires also felt that if they were in a conversation with a co-worker, the customer should just have to wait until they were free.
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